Z-LENSMAN
An Astonishing New Adventure in the
Lensman Series
Created By E.E. "Doc" Smith

By David A. Kyle



Foreword
The genus Homo sapiens belongs to the family of Arisia. Human beings, together 
with all their related humanoid races, were the fruit of Arisian seed, and they 
lived, along with their bizarre cousins and exotic kindred, among the millions 
of planets throughout the island universe known as our Milky Way galaxy.
Within our, space and time, the ancient Arisians were the genesis of all 
intelligent life.  Where or how they began at the dawn of the Cosmos not even 
their records could tell for certain. Their home was the planet that must have 
been the very first upon which life formed. For eons, as the Arisians progressed 
beyond the stages of mechanics and technology and evolved from entities of flesh 
into entities of energy, they prospered alone and unthreatened. When their first 
mother sun grew old and died, they moved their planet to a bright, new star, 
until, as the eons rolled on, they had to move again. All that time, in the 
vastness of interstellar matter, they were alone.
Then came the time of the Coalescence, when the Milky Way and Lundmark's Nebula 
passed through each other, edge to edge, and billions of new planets were born. 
With this marvelous explosion of new opportunities came a sinister shadow of the 
ultimate terror, Eddore. This was another planet with another race from another 
existence. As good and Godlike as were the Arisians, so evil and Devilish were 
the Eddorians.  Thus began the ages-old conflict that led to the formation of 
the mighty Arisian weapon, the Galactic Patrol. On the countless new planets 
flourished galactic multitudes, a thousand million years younger than their 
ancestors. Slowly but relentlessly they climbed out of the primordial elements 
into, Civilization and toward perfectionism. Serving as Guardians, secretly 
encouraging them, were the mental forces of the Arisians. In opposition, seeking 
absolute power over all minds and bodies through crime and corruption, were the 
Eddorians, with their infamous chief henchmen, the Eich, masterminding their 
conspiracy of a diabolic counterculture. Civilization was tested with the task 
of discovering the real enemy, not being told of the existence of the Eddorians, 
while the Eddorians, in turn, were brainwashed into ignorance of the existence 
of the Arisians.  So the Arisians, stressing self-reliance among the maturing 
races, let them fight their own battles. However, Mentor, the supremely wise 
entity of the Arisians, gave the elite officers of the Patrol a quasi-living 
instrument of telepathy, the Lens. The only other help offered by the Guardians 
was limited to counseling.
Mentor was the unit name of the fusion of the mentalities of four of the 
greatest Arisians, also known as the Molders of Civilization. Each one was 
concerned with the development of one of four extremely different races from 
four widely separated planets: Tellus (Earth), Velantia III, Rigel IV, and 
Palain VII. Each planet had eventually produced one exceptional Lensman, 
specially trained by Mentor as a Second Stage Lensman. Nadreck, the most 
illustrious Z-Lensman, although not the first Palainian Lensman, was the genuine 
genius who did reach the L2 or Second Stage.
The Molder in whose charge the destiny of Palain VII was placed was called 
Brolenteen.  Brolenteen had two tasks to perform simultaneously. Offensively, he 
had to encourage the growth and effectiveness of a meager number of Palainian 
Lensmen; defensively, he had to block the direct intervention of a top Master of 
the Innermost Circle of the All-Highest of Eddore and its vicious Boskonian 
conspiracy.
When Virgil Samms, the first wearer of the Lens, went to Palain VII to seek 
recruits from the New Thought Club, Brolenteen was, secretly, already there. 
Samms's minimal success in that encounter would have seemed more heartening had 
he known that Brolenteen was subtly helping him. Within a year, five Palainians 
had visited the mysterious planet of Arisia and had been given their Lenses. 
Among them was Bovreck.
Bovreck was the ancestor of Nadreck.
Nadreck, later to become the only Second Stage Lensman in the history of Palain, 
has always seemed a baling and inexplicable creature. Very little has 
heretofore, been told of his background and personal life, primarily because he 
is overwhelmingly a Z-type in the Historian Smith twelve digit classification 
system.
This historical adventure, out of the files of the Galactic Patrol, is not a 
biography of Nadreck; the Z-Lensman from Palain VII, but the, reporting of these 
events does cast a great deal of light upon who Nadreck really was-and why he 
was that way.
David A. Kyle Tellus

Prologue
Eukonidor, the youthful Watcher from Arisia, had turned back the brazen attempt 
to invade Arisia by the mighty First and Eighth councilors of the Eich. He had 
changed the course of their mammoth torpedo so that, in a sweeping circle, it 
had returned to slam directly into the great cruiser of those foremost Eich 
leaders.
The worst was yet to come.
Far, far away, in the Second Galaxy, was Jarnevon, the home planet of the Eich, 
and it was soon to be the scene of one of the most titanic space battles in -the 
history of Civilization, personally directed by the Tellurian Lensman Kimball 
Kinnison. The victory that was to come-an absolutely crucial one for the 
Galactic Patrol would bring about the utter destruction of the Eich planet, 
crushed between the nutcracker of two guided worlds colliding.
But, as a Watcher, Eukonidor had discovered another plot, one in which the Eich 
could have a victory that would be nearly as great for Boskonia as the battle of 
Jarnevon would be for Arisian Civilization. This plot was developing in the 
Palainian system, the system least integrated into the plans of the Galactic 
Council and the most vulnerable-as Palain was a Z-type planet to the designs of 
blackguard Z-type relations in other parts of the universe. Of those scheming 
monstrosities, the worst by far, of course, were the servile followers of the 
Eich high in the councils of Boskonia.
The plot had evolved out of the defeat of the notorious villain, Gray Roger, who 
had been defied by the Triplanetary Patrol, forerunner of the Galactic Patrol. 
Gray Roger, a manifestation of the mighty Gharlane of Eddore, had then turned 
his attention to other systems and other planets, and Palain seemed the most 
likely victim.  Eukonidor was encouraged to find that two Palainian Lensmen 
already intuitively suspected the gathering onslaught against them. These two 
were the most outstanding members of a cadre of Patrolmen and Lensmen, which, 
though excellent in quality, was vexingly small in numbers. They did not know 
that it was the supermind of Gharlane that they were preparing to confront, but 
independently they were investigating and preparing to defend their world 
against anything on any plane. To encourage them, Eukonidor informed Brolenteen, 
the Mentorian Guardian overseeing that area. This resulted in the convening of a 
special Court of Gray Lensmen to promote the two Palainians into this elite 
corps of Unattached Lensmen who wore the distinctive gray leather harnesses of 
the Gray Legion.  That was how Angzex and Nadreck became Gray Lensmen. As such, 
they were free agents, no longer tied to a regular unit of the Patrol, able to 
formulate their own plans to protect the Palainian system, authorized to draw 
upon any asset of the Patrol without accountability.
Angzex concerned the personal self, that which could not be properly described 
as either "his" or "her" self, with defensive plans. This self gathered 
intelligence, monitored the First and Second Galaxy, and stood guard between 
them, for it was from the Second, the site of the mother world of the Eich, that 
the strength of the Boskonian conspiracy was drawn.  Angzex enlisted an 
ancestor, old-Ymkzex, into sentinel duty, making Bovreck's deep-space laboratory 
the key picket-post.
Nadreck concentrated himself, in this case "himself" was a relatively accurate 
term, on the offensive side, looking for ways to attack the enemy before it 
could attack them, upsetting plans before they could be executed. This took 
Nadreck out among the stars and into direct involvement with the far-flung 
activities of the Patrol. As Angzex was to old-Ymkzex, so Nadreck was to old-
Bovreck. Nadreck found that his relationship with old-Bovreck fitted perfectly 
into the elaboration of his plans. Bovreck's space lab became not only the 
early-warning station for Angzex, it also became the communications base for 
Nadreck's extensive operations. just as the two zex-line family members 
harmonized perfectly in the intricacies of their thought processes, so did the 
reek-line family members. Nadreck had the decided advantage of Bovreck's Lens 
for increasing his ability for rapid and precise informational interchanges 
across the light-years.
It was inevitable, therefore, that the existence of the Palainian Research 
Laboratory Five should have precipitated what happened.
Not since the days of the Triplanetary League, with its Triplanetary Patrol, the 
predecessor of the Galactic Patrol, had Civilization's once audacious and 
dreadful foe attempted to fight back from his humiliating defeat. That once 
mighty entity, who singlehandedly had brought Tellus close to unsalvageable 
ruin, was Gharlane.
Gharlane, Master Number Two of the Innermost Circle of the All-Highest of the 
Eddorians,
had never ceased planning for the day when he would again personally challenge 
the
Patrol. Finally, he had decided to initiate his personal battle against 
Civilization by
choosing Palain VII as his target.
1 Space Pirates Attack
The attack of the space pirates on the intergalactic space station was sudden 
and unopposed. Brolenteen, his attention fixed tenaciously on his own plans, 
arrived too late to stop it. He was not perturbed, however. His prodigious power 
as Arisian Guardian of Palain was reserved for the true peril, which came not 
from the guns of the Boskonian outlaws but from the menace that traveled with 
them.
Brolenteen was himself most particularly involved in the lives of the two 
Palainians who were in danger of being killed. Bovreck had been one of the first 
of the strange frigid beings to have received the Lens of Arisia from 
Brolenteen's superentity, Mentor. As for Bovreck's coresearcher, Ymkzex-although 
not measuring up to being a Lensman had nevertheless joined the Galactic Patrol 
as a technician assigned permanently to Bovreck .  Their deaths were not the 
worst of what could happen to them: they could be made into traitors, 
instruments to destroy the Galactic Patrol and thereby all Civilized progress in 
that sector of the galaxy.
The seriousness of the situation could be judged by the fact that Mentor allowed 
Brolenteen to be here and not in the other galaxy where Armageddon, it appeared, 
was about to happen at the place called Jarnevon.
Here, almost within the First Galaxy, a different, though nonetheless momentous, 
conflict was about to happen, unnoticed by all but a handful of participants. A 
small Palainian space station, manned by old-Bovreck and old-Ymkzex, was to be 
the focal point for an equally important defeat of an insidious plan of the 
ultimate enemy, the Innermost Circle of Eddore.
The pirate spaceship, motionless, now hung in deep space with all its 
instruments targeted ahead on an invisible speck. Although no light illuminated 
the distant object, it registered as a faint dot on the vitascope; it was a 
small, inhabited space station. -On the front screen, the life form radiation 
pulsed against the electromagnetic net of distant stars sprinkled across the, 
jet-velvet blanket of the universe. On the rear screen, a trillion miles behind 
the rear of the fifteen -hundred-ton, cylindrical black raider, was spread the 
glorious edge of the Milky Way-galaxy, a hundred thousand light-years from end 
to end. Ahead, on the forward screen, a glowing smear above the calibrated 
bull's-eye, millions of light-years beyond the space station, was the barely 
discernible disc of the Second Galaxy, Landmark's Nebula.
The pirate captain, a half-caste with slick dark hair and bluish skin, nervously 
cast his eyes back and forth from his instruments to his charts. His arms were 
stiff, hands spread wide, pressing back his curious mates who kept crowding 
against him on either side.  "Humpf!" he said aloud. "Damn if you're not right, 
Val-d or. It's the Palainian Research Laboratory Five. The chart coordinates are 
wrong, like you said. No doubt deliberate." "No doubt," said Val-d'or, the 
navigator. "No doubt, Captain Balltis. It's their wealth they're afraid for." 
"Humpf. You're damned good as a navigator, Val-d'or. I admit it. We're lucky to 
have you. Finding you when Joey got himself killed was the only good thing 
that's happened to us in the last three months. You got us out of the galaxy 
right past the Patrol.  And then to find this place is practically a miracle. 
Now we hope you're right about the treasure."
"I'm right. My source is infallible. There will be practically no resistance. 
And no Patrolmen."
"No defenses, no Patrol," said the second-in-command, undisguised suspicion in 
his voice. "How do you know that?"
"Stands to reason. A small Palainian lab," Val-d'or said. "Strictly oddball, 
elderly Palainians, in a toxic atmosphere. Two or three of them, at most. You 
afraid?" "I'm cautious, smart guy. We all are. That's how we keep alive. There 
are such things as Palainian Patrolmen." "Palainian Patrolmen? Not many of them 
around. Very few. And very unlikely out here. You got no worries."
Captain Balltis was keenly glancing from one to the other, in his fidgety way, 
out of the corners of his puffy black eyes. When the exchange of remarks was 
over, he examined the faces of the rest of his crew crowded into the tiny 
pilothouse.  He intimately knew eight of the nine of them, all tough, 
experienced rogues. He saw that he would have to make the decision. They were 
all on edge, ready to crack from frustration, desperate for some action and some 
profit, and concerned about being in uncharted deep-space; where they had been 
driven by a Patrol ship that their clever navigator, a stranger, had managed to 
outwit.  "I say we attack," Captain Balltis said. "We'll make it quick. Quick 
success or quick retreat.
Palainians are cowards, but we'll take no chances."
"Palainians are also known to be poor," one spaceburned pirate said,  pink 
scarred flesh permanently drawn back from his big, yellow teeth. "Talk of 
treasure still seems foolish to me. But I don't really care. I've never seen a 
Palainian, let alone killed one. That chance makes it interesting."
"You can't really see Palainians;" the captain said. "They distort your vision. 
They're always moving, so even pictures are worthless. They can't be depicted. 
I've seen a few and even I can't describe them."
"Well, I can describe them," one of the crew said. "They're repulsive, poisonous 
monsters.  Unless there's money to steal, or we can sell their bones or skin, I 
say let's forget 'em and find a safe port and bust loose from this tin can."
"Well, that's the point," the captain said, scratching his whiskers and 
obviously becoming inpatient. "I don't believe they're poor. I think Val-d'or's 
right. The way they're forever furtively poking around the weirdest corners of 
the galaxy, always loners, acting like misers, my guess is they got unlimited 
funds. Ill bet they have hoards of valuable things waiting for some enterprising 
freebooters like us to lift 'em. Val-d'or got us here. I say we attack. How say 
you?"
There were two mild dissents, but after the briefest of arguments, there was an 
unanimous agreement. Captain Balltis wasted no time. He accelerated toward the 
station, barking orders. The crew scrambled into frantic action, five of them 
suiting up in armor and arming themselves as a boarding party, although seven 
wanted to go and only two or three should have been going.
"Gimme a reading," the captain said. "What're we up against?"
"Nothing. Absolutely. No defense screen. No weapons. A lead-pipe cinch." With 
the speed and skill developed over their years as an outlaw team, the pirates, 
their ship firmly pressed against the docking port of the station, assaulted the 
space station.  Three of the five penetrated the station's inner hull in a 
shower of sparks and swirling smoke, while the other two covered them. Brownish-
green gas, the station's deadly atmosphere, boiled out under pressure and 
crystallized in space.  The trio in the vanguard died first, inexplicably. At 
one moment they were charging forward, irresistible; in the next moment, for no 
apparent reason, they were sprawled out in the passageway, dead. They had made 
no .outcry, showed no reaction.  Then the other two, weapons weightlessly 
spinning free, collapsed in silence, equally unmarred and equally dead.
In the pilothouse there was panic among the remaining pirates. The captain 
attempted to disengage and flee, even with plates extended, the side of his ship 
open. His hands froze over the control buttons, quivering, and his face rippled 
under his whiskers as though from a continuous series of electric shocks. He 
fell forward on the console. Then the second-in-command and the helmsman 
collapsed, falling upon the back of the dead captain.
Only Val-d'or, with a queer, incomprehensible expression around his wide, 
brilliant eyes, remained alive, his body fixed in a grotesque pose against the 
room's main stanchion.  Brolenteen, although en route and still light-years 
away, knew instantaneously what had happened. He was not surprised, for he long 
ago had visualized the event. When he reached the station within hours after the 
deadly attack, he found exactly what the newly arrived Lensman Armstrong had 
found earlier.
Tellurian Lensman Dick Armstrong was thoroughly puzzled. The station was without 
life.  There was no Bovreck, no Ymkzex, nor any trace of them. He stood in the 
passageway of windowless, unlighted Laboratory Five, staring down at the three 
human bodies disclosed by his headlamp, talking to himself.
"Three bodies in the pilothouse, two more inside the open air lock. Eight 
corpses with no signs of wounds, but certainly death by some kind of violence. . 
." He set the time of death at from ninety to a hundred minutes before he' had 
sped to the scene under full emergency power. He had been in a globular cluster, 
picking up supplies at the outpost GP base, when the urgent Lensed message had 
arrived from Research Laboratory Five.
The message had been directed to "Ang, Dingwall outpost" and stated: "Boskone 
imminent. Category 23x 4y blackpatch. B plus Y." For some inexplicable reason, 
Armstrong was the sole recipient of the Lensed signal. When he attempted to 
acknowledge it, however; he made no contact. Instead, a third mind impressed 
itself upon his own with an explanation: 'Armstrong, you are to act in the 
absence of Ang. Laboratory Five is shortly to suffer a pirate attack, 
categorized as a minor menace but possibly a forerunner of  a different 
disaster, as judged by both Bovreck and Ymkzex. Leave Dingwall at once, go to 
their aid. Keep a tight thought-screen, no Lens.  Armstrong, his ship already 
fueled and packed with the priority freight, left Dingwall outpost in less than 
eight GP minutes. He had traveled thousands of lightyears already without 
incident; he was close to his destination; as an armchair Lensman he had 
expected anything to happen out there on the frontier. So, although he was 
extremely excited, he wasn't as bothered as he should have been about the 
unorthodox and illogical situation.  That was, as he was to learn, why he had 
been chosen to be involved.  His trip across the light-years to the station in 
less than two hours had been as swift as possible. He had, however, been too 
late. He wished he could have Lensed Bovreck on his way, but he had obeyed his 
commanding instructions. Instead, he reviewed his assignment, something that had 
come about overnight, completely without warning. He was to go to Palainian 
Research Laboratory Five. Sealed orders would await him there.  That was it, 
plain and simple. He had the right, because of his age and disability, to 
decline to go, but, naturally, he didn't. His swift courier-freighter, empty 
until his stop at Dingwall, was sufficiently automated to have made the trip 
without him. He was no mere truck driver.  Why had he been chosen to come all 
the way from Tellus? Why was a racial-psychologist needed? Why him? He had never 
met a Palainian in all his thirty-nine years of duty in the Galactic Patrol, 
despite his specialization. He had never left the Solar System in all that time. 
The reason for his insular service had been explained as his being "too 
brilliant" to be taken away from Prime Base, the gigantic Patrol base on Tellus, 
headquarters for the Grand Fleet. Unspoken was the fact that he was "too 
disabled"-something more technically true than actually true. His shorter, stiff 
left arm was unimportant; it was the missing twentyfive percent of his brain, a 
fluid-filled section covered by a plastic skull-plate, that put him on limited 
duty. The zwilnik bullet that had done that to him, however, had turned him into 
a sentient encyclopedia of "racial sensibilities" and a GP "resource" to be 
given special treatment. Anyhow, the few Palainians that he had almost seen had 
always been encased in heavily refrigerated atmosuits, and even these glimpses 
had occurred a mere half -dozen times. Usually each Palainian "visit" to Prime 
Base was made in synchronous orbit overhead in a personal speedster, obviously 
only a person of great importance to rate such a vehicle.
Dick Armstrong, he told himself, was the most unlikely Lensman to have been sent 
on this most bewildering mission. He had asked for. an explanation on Tellus and 
again at Dingwall, but he had received none. As for his retirement, he was 
assured that "a few weeks temporaryduty" would make no difference.
Armstrong was a slim and handsome man, with strands of white in his thick black 
hair, which he combed over his plate, a true Tellurian with the blood of all the 
human races of Earth flowing in his aging veins. He had risen, in his two 
working lifetimes, to high administrative responsibility within the elite GP 
officer corps. He had had opportunities to be sent off Tellus; one offer had 
been . excellent, but he had refused, and his decision had been exactly right, 
for he had then been given the disciplined life of a special GP assignment at 
Prime Base. He had become "racial psychology analyst," an important but 
sedentary task far removed from the popular idea of an adventurous Lensman, and 
he thoroughly enjoyed this regimented life. He had planned to end the second of 
his working lifetimes shortly by taking his third full Life-Restoration and 
retiring into some research center.
How could it be that he was here, on the border of nowhere, between two 
galaxies, on a deserted alien space station, standing amid the corpses of 
pirates, and faced with a weird riddle?
At the heart of the puzzle was the disappearance of Bovreck and Ymkzex. They had 
presumably both been on the station less than two hours ago, at the time of the 
attack. Now there was no physical trace of them, of that Armstrong was certain, 
having searched all monitors and records. The only clue was the recording, on 
nonelectronic, telepathic broadwave, filed on the message board. He had played 
it three times to be certain he had registered it properly.
"This is Bovreck. If I die and Ymkzex lives, neutralize Ymkzex as untrustworthy. 
Do not destroy this order, Ymkzex, if you hear it; instead, destroy yourself. 
If, however, Ymkzex dies and I live, I must be purged. I order myself not to 
destroy this message, but to act on it.  In any case, Angzex must be informed of 
all this, and he is to determine who else must be informed."
To Armstrong the message was perfectly clear, although the reasoning behind it 
was not.
Who was Angzex?
Could it be that Bovreck and Ymkzex were already dead, perhaps even as a 
consequence of this order by Bovreck?
Armstrong could have used at that moment a Palainian sense of perception, that 
mental ability to perceive the innermost structure of physical objects, that 
incredibly effective substitute for sight. He did have, though never adequately 
tested, the use of an extremely sensitive rapport with all lifeforms, but this 
talent now was producing nothing but chaotic feelings within him. Any hope of 
understanding was dependent upon his ability as a Lensman. It was time to use 
his Lens.
He raised his left wrist and stared at the thing strapped there. On the 
palladium-iridium bracelet was a convex disc, like silver-pink nacre or a tinted 
piece of sunset cloud, suggesting fires burning deep within it. Under the waves 
of thought in which he was now bathing it, the disc, his own unique Lens of 
Arisia, swirled to life. A thousand thousand tiny gems seemed to travel across 
its surface in straight lines. and curves, palpitating to the rhythm of his own 
life forces. The beauty of its speckled mass of polychromatic colors was 
awesome: His thoughts were being gathered by its crystalline structure, 
amplified, and disseminated at infinite speed.
"Bovreck. Ymkzex. Where are you?"
At first, he swept the ether with his mind, probing for a sense of life, then he 
drew. back to push out meticulously yard by yard and mile after mile. Back he 
came and out again. At every moment his mental search was being steadily 
subjected to a blanketing or a constriction, like nothing he had ever 
experienced. He did not know if such a screen was ordinary, but from its firm 
and unyielding quality he suspected it was not.  He had no doubt that the 
resistance was the product of life forces; the screen was alive; he sensed it 
was being generated by an extraordinary superpower. At the' same time, he felt 
something else, a cyclonic hole of emptiness into which his mental probing sank 
and was annihilated.
He attempted to reach out, back to the galaxy, beyond Dingwall, for contact with 
another wearer of the Lens. It was, however, as if he were in a prison, 
surrounded by movable yet impenetrable, invisible walls.
"Bovreck. Ymkzex. Bovreck. Ymkzex."
He sensed the mind screen more strongly now. There was a lifeform, 
overpoweringly strong, nauseatingly evil, undeniably Boskonian. He had never met 
the worst of the villains, an Eich, and only once had he felt its devilish mind, 
but intuitively he knew that this mind was far, far worse.
Armstrong tried to connect and unify every cellular particle of his central 
nervous system through the instrument of his Lens to discover the source of the 
mind screen through that whirling hole. Instead, he felt the presence of a 
different life form. It was coming through the maelstrom.
It was then that he began to see his first Palainian. The figure materialized as 
a barely perceptible luminosity out in the void, a mile or more away. It was 
rushing rapidly at him, emitting a mental humming that grew louder as the form 
increased in size. It was on a line between the bows of his freighter and the 
silent pirate ship. At first he believed it to be a projection, but it wasn't. 
It was solid. It was real:
From a faint wraith, it solidified into pieces of a creature, fifty feet away 
from the open port in which Armstrong stood. The Lensman, never before having 
drawn a gun for self-defense, but nonetheless perfectly trained, unholstered his 
hand weapon and leveled it at the floating jumble of organic parts. That the 
precaution might be futile did not discourage him. The slender fingers on his 
thinner and longer right arm were firmly wrapped around the gun butt; his hand 
was steady, and with a flick of his thumb, he released the safety catch.
Armstrong had seen many aliens and nonhumanoids in his half century at Prime 
Base, but all entities, although many had been very strange, had either mingled 
freely as equals or moved restrictedly encased in functional life-support dress. 
He had seen holographic motion pictures of many exotic lifeforms. He had only 
heard about Palainians. For him to encounter one personally, however, was a 
unique and ghastly occasion.  At first the Palainian appeared as a sort of 
gelatinous mass squirming into a spidery form-a dozen spiky limbs mingled 
together with many shapes and sizes of ugly, glistening sacks of plasmic flesh. 
It quivered all over. Then the appendages fused together into a wet, hairy 
covering like a sea anemone, bands of tentacles thrusting from a bloated, 
pulsating body. The underside twisted upward, turning inside out, and with a rim 
of innumerably faceted gems as eyes, or teeth, ringing a membrane-grilled mouth 
or gill, the creature stared back at him.
As he looked through the view plate of his space helmet, which seemed to have 
become as distorting as two feet of flowing water, he was no less startled 
because he expected something like this from a Palainian: a metamorphosis, the 
thing changing into a rainbowhued, scaly worm whose , eyes crawled like bugs 
across its iridescent skin. The worm itself reshaped into a burst of cold fire, 
tiny blue and green tongues of flame outlining a new ovoid form. The flames 
solidified into feathers, and appendages grew into wings and fins. In turn they 
were formed into arms, claws turning into multi-fingered hands. The creature now 
was almost humanoid, with two, three, or four arms, the asymmetrically fingered 
hands more consistently attached to wrists instead of sprouting from elbows or 
shoulders. In amongst -the limbs and tentacles there flared, from moment to 
moment, the face of a Lens.
Armstrong held a vision as nearly humanoid as his concentration could retain. To 
him, now, this was the appearance of the Palainian with minimal, though 
constant, variations.  "I am Bovreck," the thing projected, delicately and 
calmly, into the Tellurian's brain. "You -are Lensman Richard Armstrong. Where 
is Angzex?"
"Hello, Colonel Bovreck," Armstrong said, so off balance he sounded inane. He 
automatically clicked the safety catch to neutral, where two squeezes would be 
needed for firing. "I'm reporting for duty. I don't know who Angzex is." "Angzex 
was scheduled to come with you. You are worthless at this moment to me, worse 
than worthless. It is my blame to have requested a weak, but intelligent 
Tellurian-an earthman, that is, not a colonist for my experiment. Ymkzex's 
offspring on Palain, Angzex, tried to have your orders canceled. Failing that in 
time-a sickening fault of GP bureaucracy-he said he would come with you. You 
look like what I ordered, but Angzex has visualized such trouble that my work 
has been suspended. It is a shame, for I am near the end of my life. You must be 
nearly at that point, too, for you must be as old as I am, comparatively 
speaking, of course. Tellurians, I am told, become senile with age, unlike 
Palainians. I trust that you are not. Don't gray strands in your hair mean you 
are worn out?" "I should hope not," Armstrong said. The image of Colonel Bovreck 
he was holding through the function of his interpretive Lens was shifting far 
less wildly; the Palainian was now an imitation of a badly assembled human 
figure composed of misshapen parts, sometimes with wrinkled skin and sometimes 
of raw flesh. The two eyes were black, bottomless holes appearing and 
disappearing by expansion and contraction.
"Your Lens reveals that 'you are disgusted by my appearance. No matter, you 
recognize that my body is an illusion because of my multidimensional aspect. 
Your Lens also reveals that you cannot trust me to react like a true Lensman 
because of my despicable Palainian behavioral patterns. Your doubt is stupid, of 
course. You must know of the infallibility in the bestowal of. a Lens. You 
cannot fear me-I will do what is expected of one who wears a Lens."
"Sir. ." Armstrong began. He was chastened and embarrassed. He hadn't realized 
his prejudices had shown through. It was common knowledge that Palainians tended 
to be somewhat ignoble and weak in human ethics and moral fiber-relative to the 
standards of Tellurians, that is, Armstrong quickly thought, concerned that he 
might be read as impolite.  "Correct," Bovreck said immediately. "We are 
different. Palainians are always practical and realistic. You humans are often 
impractical and too idealistic. Right now I need a clear thinking, ruthless 
assistant. Perhaps you will do, if Angzex has been selfish enough to stay away 
and avoid the present danger as any intelligent entity should. Perhaps the 
naivete of your life, your unwordliness, your instinctive revulsion for Z-type 
aliens will substitute for ruthlessness, should I ask you to kill me or Ymkzex 
when and if we confront each other. If a misplaced conscience doesn't get in 
your way, I expect you to be brave. Expediency makes cowards of all Palainians."
'A cowardly Lensman?" Armstrong had heard about this, but never believed it.  'A 
Palainian Patrolman is a contradiction in terms, seemingly, a paradox. I 'note 
that you have never met a Palainian before this moment. Not one of us at Prime 
Base, with so many opportunities-not even on Dingwall, where Ymkzex's grandson 
Angzex, our security-watcher, is. How insular some Tellurians are. But then you 
are a Lensman for personal gain, like me."
"Personal gain!" Armstrong objected. "Nothing of the kind." He was injured 
enough to show some anger. "You are insulting."
"Insulting? I am truthful. Probably the truth insults you. I am a Lensman 
because it brings me personal satisfaction. Every Palainian demands that. You' 
are a Lensman for the same reason, are you not? We are both old men; I never had 
any illusions-you should have outgrown yours. Did you not become a Lensman for 
personal gain?" "Well," Armstrong said, "I cannot argue with you. By personal 
gain, we mean different things. I say I reject material gain, meaning wealth."
"Then you must realize we are the same. With our-how should I say it? within our 
souls. I know of no Palainian who is interested in wealth. We are interested in 
knowledge." "I apologize, sir," Armstrong said. "Aren't we wasting time? Aren't 
we in some immediate and terrible danger? I have felt a malevolent presence . . 
." "Danger, yes. Wasting time, no. An apology, a quaint and irrational custom, 
is not needed by me, for I do not take offense. However, you do need such an 
expression, and I beg your pardon for taking up your valuable and limited time, 
when my own time is virtually unlimited.  Do you wish for danger to come more 
quickly? It is almost upon us. There is no need to hurry it."
Brolenteen saw the danger coming, too, even more clearly than Bovreck. Bovreck 
was destined to die.
As for the villainous Tellurian half-breed pirate, Vald'or, who floated 
undetected in the cooling pool containing the stations nuclear reactor, he also 
would die. Brolenteen wondered briefly if ingenuous Armstrong would be able to 
survive his inevitable gunfight with his half of the enemy. The destiny of the 
multiracial human was not yet defined.  Ymkzex was as good as dead.
Angzex, great-offspring of Ymkzex was, of course; already dead.  There remained 
the crux of this situation. The deadly duel was about to be fought. The 
salvation of a quarter of the galaxy was at stake.
Brolenteen, representing Mentor himself, could not stop the Master Eddorian who 
had come for the showdown.
It was now all up to Brolenteen's champion, the gunfighter whose bullet was 
fourth dimensional.
The gunfighter was Bovreck's great-offspring: Nadreck, Lensman from Palain VII.

2 Nadreck Accepts an Offer
When the hull of the space station had been breeched and the pirates had burst 
in, waving their guns and ready to kill; Bovreck and Ymkzex had been nonchalant. 
They were old scientists, never warriors, alone and without any means of 
defense, but they had a plan.  The odds against their ever being discovered, let 
alone attacked, were astronomical.  However, typically cautious and apprehensive 
in their Palainian ways, they were primed for any emergency.
Palainians could be killed, although with great difficulty. The fluid, amorphous 
parts of them constantly in flux in the third dimension were as vulnerable as 
any normal organic material.  Projectile guns, space-axes, and knives were 
generally ineffective against them, Energy weapons-that is, most beams and rays-
and mental thunderbolts were their concern. Their natural environment was very 
protective under extraordinary conditions, enveloped as they were by poisonous 
air in an extremely frigid climate. Other races, far from the category of Z, 
were fortunate that Palainians were not warlike but were instead proudly humble 
and aggressively passive and arrogantly introverted, qualities human beings had 
great difficulty understanding and dealing with.
Bovreck and Ymkzex, therefore, treated the attack of the pirates with contempt: 
Their plan of defense was to quickly retreat into individual square vaults of 
shielded dureum, almost impervious to common thieves, and patiently to wait, 
months if necessary, until the danger was over. Should that tactic be 
unsatisfactory, perhaps with the prospect of being permanently entrapped, they 
could flee directly into space without spacesuits, a theoretical possibility yet 
to be tested. Existing in space with only their metabolic extension in another 
dimension to sustain them was one of their new experimenental developments. A 
dozen years of study had gone into this activity of dexitroboping-such a length 
of time to them was insignificant, irrelevant, and unmeasured. The idea that 
this experimenting might be based on cowardice was a meaningless concept to 
them.
When the pirates broke into ,their station with an ease no ordinary pirates 
should have displayed, they had been prepared to go into hiding in their strong 
boxes. But what happened sent them, instead, hurrying directly into space.
They had immediately sensed the presence of a high-level Boskonian force 
planning to capture, not their bodies, but their minds: The dynamikos struck all 
the life forces in and around the station, killing all the humanoids by burning 
out their brains. Bovreck had been too quick to be harmed, slipping his mind 
into the other dimension for as long as he could hold it there. Ymkzex, zooming 
away from 'the station, had been pursued by the evil spirit, probably because of 
his greater vulnerability, not being a Lensman as Bovreck was.  Bovreck worried 
that Ymkzex might be caught and thus cause the great harm about which Angzex had 
vaguely forewarned. Bovreck, therefore,  recognizing the danger not as "23x 4y 
pirates," as sent to Angzex-who did not acknowledge it-but as "lx ly Eich-plus," 
went in pursuit of Ymkzex. Before going, he left the message on the board for 
any Patrolman or good citizen. If Ymkzex were caught and remained alive, he 
would have to be rescued and rehabilitated, or killed.
Killing was the more secure way. And that certainly applied to Bovreck as well.  
Bovreck went on his search, blinded by incoherent mental images jamming his 
Lens-enhanced telepathic powers and unable to reach any other Lens. His 
sustaining hope was that Angzex, young and vital and talented and as far above 
an ordinary Lensman as an ordinary Lensman was above an ordinary Palainian, 
would soon arrive at the laboratory and come to his assistance and join in 
rescuing Ymkzex.
At last a Lensing mind touched him, just strong enough to reach him and not 
beyond. To his disappointment, it was not Angzex. It was that Tellurian Lensman, 
Armstrong, who was coming in from distant Tellus on the specific suggestion of 
Angzex for research on lungless, nonbreathing, deep-space intelligent races. An 
A-Lensman could be more harmful than helpful in the current situation, why 
hadn't his orders been canceled? Did Angzex actually want a human at the lab for 
another reason? Bovreck considered this new idea and decided it was the truth. 
Angzex wanted an A-Lensman for some unrevealed reason; it had to do with the 
ripening menace that tellurian? now sensed---could the enemy be a renegade 
Tellurian? The Boskonian leaders were always described as devils in monstrous 
shapes, emotionally unbalanced, lustful, and greedy-did that not describe the 
fiery blooded, tox-oxygenated, ugly beasts that were human?
Bovreck sped back to the station, on his guard.
A quick glimpse into Armstrong's mind, done within the bounds of Lensman 
probity, calmed his fears. The Tellurian was an academic innocent, stuffed with 
knowledge but bereft of experience with violence. With part of his Palainian 
mind, Bovreck began poking away at the earthman, learning about him, looking for 
something that might help, seeking some clue to youngAngzex's intentions. With 
the other part of his mind, he stood guard, waiting for old-Ymkzex and waiting 
for some further move by the Boskonian presence.  Armstrong did not know that it 
was he who was being interviewed and examined. To him, it seemed that. it was 
the Palainian who provided all the self-revealing talk. The expert racial 
psychologist would have been very disconcerted and self-conscious if he had 
known the truth.
"Danger is almost upon us-do you wish it to come more quickly," Colonel Bovreck 
had said. How could such an appalling being remain so calm with danger close by? 
What had he meant by "unlimited time" when time was obviously running out?  
Armstrong recognized the paradoxical complexity of Bovreck's thinking. Time, 
though relative, was still being wasted by this creature who talked endlessly. 
"No, sir," Armstrong said flatly, "I don't want danger to come more quickly."
"In your terminology," Bovreck said, " I am not a 'sir.' You are a male, I can 
call you 'sir,' but I am not like you.
"Sorry," Armstrong said, taken aback. "Ma'am-or miss?"
"Neither, really. For an expert, you are an ignoramus." Armstrong felt foolish 
and unaccustomedly resentful. This inhuman monster's character was a frustrating 
mixture of order and chaos. The blunt truthfulness but propensity for 
indirection was quite irritating to experience. Armstrong was a proficient 
psychologist who, in this real-life situation, was making ridiculous blunders. 
The explanation was inescapable: this Palainian, or, for that matter, any 
Palainian, had a physical semblance and bizarre personality such as to disorient 
any humanoid, even one who was supposed to repress allsubjec-tive reactions.  "I 
will call you Colonel, unless you prefer Professor." "Call me Bovreck."
"Yes, Bovreck."
" I do note that you have a problem. You are wondering how to refer to me. Do 
you say, 'He is certainly far more clever than I?' Or do you say, 'She is 
certainly more intelligent than I?' Or perhaps you should use 'it?'
I am a Palainian 'two,' the defensive or protective sex, like a 'mother.' Use 
the female term for me, if you must. Ymkzex, in contrast is a 'three,' like the 
offensive or aggressive sex, a 'father,' as is Nadreck, my offspring once 
removed. Angzex, the absent one, who so wisely chooses not to aid me, to ignore 
me, is a 'one,' like a prenuptial catalyst as opposed to a postnuptial catalyst 
such as 'four.' Emmfozing-breeding, that is-is a complicated process." "This 
Angzex, is he a Patrolman?" "Angzex is a Lensman."
'A Lensman?" Armstrong said, scandalized. "And he refuses to help you?" "The 
prime tenet of a Palainian is to ignore and be ignored. Altruism is usually not 
worthwhile. What Angzex has done, or will do, will nevertheless be right, 
proper, and consistent with being a Lensman-and a Palainian. I am humbly sorry 
that our ways could cost you your life. My life is unimportant. I apologize for 
endangering yours.  Armstrong stared at the figure of Bovreck, accepting without 
agitation the shifting of the pieces in and out of focus. Bovreck apologizes? 
Bovreck's life is unimportant? These were absurd inconsistencies. Could any 
Palainian be truly understood? Could any Palainian ever be loved, even if only 
by one individual from a single race among the tens of thousands of humanoid 
races? It seemed unlikely. No wonder few humanoids knew or associated with 
Palainians. No wonder he, Armstrong, had never done so.  (No wonder, too, that 
in the near future a Palainian by the name of Nadreck would become one of the 
four greatest Lensman of the Civilized universe and yet remain for many, many 
years unknown and mysterious to Kimball Kinnison, the greatest of the great.) 
"Colonel-I mean, Bovreck-I am here to help you. I ask again: Aren't we wasting 
time?" "Time? We have exchanged these thoughts, since we met, in a microsecond. 
You have been drawn in, as it were, under the influence of my metabolic 
extension into the hyperdimension. Time is subjective when one awaits, as we are 
awaiting. Observe. When you first spoke to me, you latched your gun. Listen-" 
Within his space suit, transmitted by vibrations through the fabric, Armstrong 
heard a sharp, low-pitched note. What was that? The recognition formed in his 
mind. Bovreck was giving him the power to understand-to understand that this 
continuous sound was the click of his safety catch! The past and the future 
remained locked in the present! Time was standing still! Or seemed to be, so 
fast were they thinking, passing thoughts between themselves! Incredible!
Armstrong now knew the extraordinary power of a Palainian mind. What must a 
truly great Palainian Lensman be capable of? Could a youthful Angzex possibly be 
greater than an elderly Bovreck?
"You wish to know what we are awaiting? We wait for Ymkzex. He is out there, 
somewhere.  I chased him, but he eluded me. Neither of us have been out, in deep 
space before without a three-dimensional space.suit of this space-time 
continuum. At least, not for the 4,980 GP seconds that have now elapsed."
"In space without armor?" Armstrong was astounded. "You seem to disbelieve. I 
assure you that we Palainians do need an atmosphere to breathe. Poisonous to 
you, of course, and -so cold that it seems a thick syrup. Nonetheless, we do 
breathe and cannot live in temperatures of absolute zero. That is the nature of 
my research. And of Ymkzex's, too. We are preparing for the day when Palain VII 
will have lost the envelope of gas that supports our life. Have you ever been to 
Palain? No, of course not. It is a barren planet. It is mostly rocky, metallic 
soil, so frigid that it would burn. your feet off, even through your insulated 
soles. The surface of Palain is a wilderness. Only the junkyards of our 
abandoned cities, the deserted buildings of every size and shape tumbled 
together, would indicate that intelligent life had lived there. That plus the 
pitted landing fields, with their scars and puddled pools of metallic, unnatural 
lava. This is all there is to see on our bleak plains, which stand shrouded in 
an intense darkness where nights are indistinguishable from days, where our sun 
seems only another feeble star in the sky." Armstrong shuddered at the grim and 
desolate picture Bovreck so vividly painted in his mind with words and images.
"You, Armstrong, were to help me test my theories. It would hardly 'be startling 
for me or Ymkzex to survive in space without space suits. But if a Tellurian 
were to do so, a ground-gripping Tellurian, at that, then such a demonstration 
would be remarkable and prove the theories."
"Use me? Me? In space without a suit?"
"Without any clothes whatsoever. Which would be a stiff test indeed, as 
Palainians don't wear clothes."
" I would be mad to let you use me in such a way!" "I would expect to be able to 
convince you to do it voluntarily. Think of the pleasure of such a success for 
you. I would make every effort to see that you didn't die.
"Thank you very much," Armstrong said, hoping that his sarcasm would not be lost 
on Bovreck. "I am not particularly brave, nor am I particularly foolhardy. I 
would not have volunteered. Nor could I have accepted any orders to do so." " I 
knew this from the very beginning," Bovreck said, "but I -thought I would try 
such a request anyhow. No, you would not have gone out in space, but your 
assistance would still have been most valuable. I stress this. Most essential. 
Angzex the Young One.insisted that a human being is needed. He has a special 
role for you, I am certain." "I was promised sealed orders."
'There are no sealed orders. Angzex commands." Armstrong suddenly was scorched 
by a torrent of intense emotion that poured through him. He was startled, half 
frightened. In the course of the conversation between him and Bovreck, they had 
drifted farther down the passageway and into the interior of the ship. The 
blackness was absolute beyond the circle of light  from his headlamp. The 
shadows accentuated the distorted image of the Palainian and showed only the 
dull gray shapes of the ship's skeletal structure. The limits of the room could 
not be accurately gauged, but it felt oppressively small. The absence of gravity 
left him uncertain as to where the floor and doorways were. As for the shifting 
reflections of Bovreck, they showed eerie deformations in which top could not be 
distinguished. from bottom.
What was that horrible feeling? "Prepare!" Bovreck said. "He's coming!"
"Who?" Armstrong was really afraid of this unknown. "Prepare for what?" 
"Ymkzex." Bovreck seemed to be pointing with tentacles. "Ymkzex? Are you hurt? 
The creature with me is the Lensman Armstrong. Ymkzex! What is wrong?" Armstrong 
twisted his head in all directions, casting his light around, looking for old-
Ymkzex. Optically he saw nothing, while Bovreck, with his eyeless senses, seemed 
to perceive something nearby-in another room? Outside? Armstrong attempted to 
compensate for his handicap by using his Lens to pick up mental images or auras 
of living matter. In part he succeeded. There was a lifeform in the center of 
the ship. Human! And now another, stronger force, growing around the human, 
"bright" enough and "loud" enough to create the falsehood of seeing and hearing-
Ymkzex, his intuition told him. This was Ymkzex, the other old Palainian.
"Fight it, Ymkzex! Resist! Draw on -me for strength!" Old-Bovreck sounded 
frenzied-and hopeless.
To Armstrong, the human mental and physical radiation seemed suddenly to be 
submerged by the Ymkzex domination and become something exceedingly more 
powerful, and distinctively and strangely 'alien. Even the background clicking 
of the nuclear pile was obliterated. How could a human be there?
"Get back to the freighter!" This a loud mental command in his head. Was this 
from Bovreck? Or from someone else? "Get back to the freighter immediately!" It 
most definitely was another mentality giving orders!
"Is that you, Angzex?" Bovreck blasted out. "Where are you? Is Ymkzex all 
right?" "Ymkzex is lost to us. I almost brought him back safely to you, but he's 
slipped into . . ." The crackling interference, Armstrong instantly knew, was 
deliberate censorship. "Slipped into" what? He was also conscious now of the two 
different screening sensations he had first.  experienced at the moment he had 
attempted to Lens Bovreck and Ymkzex. Armstrong could read the sources now. The 
blanketing was coming from Ymkzex. As for the square hole of emptiness into 
which his Lensed thoughts bad sunk to be annihilated-it was one of the crates he 
had carried from Dingwall!
His body passed through the freighter's cargo door quicker than he could 
believe, even with all maneuverjets blowing from his suit. Bovreck was right 
behind him.  Armstrong looked back and his lamplight showed the familiar out-of-
focus figure of the Palainian just coming through the door-and instantaneously, 
faster than his light beam moved, the figure was now on the other side of him, 
standing in front of an open crate.  Bovreck? No!
There were two figures! Two Palainians? Ymkzex had jumped through space? Or was 
it another? Angzex? "Angzex?" Bovreck seemed to be echoing Armstrong's 
puzzlement.  "Angzex? But no.-. . You're not Angzex!" Bovreck was confused and 
distressed. "And yet, you seem to be, you really are Angzex, aren't you?"
"I am the.'. . c-r-a-c-k-l-e ... Stand ready! Ymkzex is ... c-r-a-c-k-l-e ... 
Armstrong! Defend yourself! The doorway!"
All at once the cargo room, the doorway, and the passageway into the space 
laboratory were brightly lighted, as if by magnesium flares. Coming out of 
passageway and into the cargo hold was a wild-eyed humanoid, teeth bared in a 
snarl, face flushed, sputa flecking his mouth and nostrils. It was the navigator 
Val-d'or, a baleful puppet appearing to Armstrong as a maniac. Val-d'or had a 
knife in his left hand and an atomizing automatic pistol in his right.
Handguns seemed to appear in profusion among the many appendages of Angzex and 
Bovreck. Streaks of fire passed around Armstrong and into-and through-the chest 
of Val-d'or, but the pirate did not fall. Vald'or's own shots had the remarkable 
accuracy of a superlative marksman. Two or three in succession struck the Lens 
of Bovreck in the brief moments that the disc appeared. Expanding rings of 
stinging colors flew from Bovreck's Lens, and the ether was filled with a 
screeching cry, "Die, Lensman!" followed by a soul-shaking mental thunderbolt 
that burst within Bovreck's mind and killed him.  Bovreck's protection had been 
neutralized by the bullets from Val-d'or, but Armstrong knew from the wisdom 
that flooded around him that the cry and the thunderbolt had come from a furtive 
someone else who was greater than an Eich.
Within Armstrong's brain a voice was saying, "Lensman! Only you can strike down 
the other human with your mind. You have the racial insight to destroy him. Do 
so! Destroy him!"
Armstrong's DeLameter had been in his hand, scoring on Val-d'or's body without 
effect.  Now Armstrong brought up his right hand and pressed his Lens to his 
forehead, concentrating. Val-d'or was intent on shooting Angzex's Lens and, 
being no Lensman himself, with no support from his invisible ally, was not 
prepared for the massive mental blow from Armstrong. He fell to the deck, his 
gun still firing, erratically now, as his fingers kept working the buttons even 
in death. But the last careful shot from the pirate had hit Armstrong in the 
center of his forehead, passing completely through his brain.  The Tellurian 
Lensman tumbled over backward, stretching out on the deck that was now slippery 
with fluids from the living, the dead, and the machinery. He faced his death 
with complete satisfaction and-heard, more clearly than ever, the mental turmoil 
that bubbled around him. As he died he had, temporarily, a sense of perception. 
He saw the third Palainian come into the room. This was Ymkzex.
Ymkzex looked no different from his offspring Angzex. His warped persona, 
however, was radically unlike Bovreck's, in no way cowardly or retiring. He, 
too, was bristling with weapons, firing rapidly and accurately. The fissile, . 
nuclide bullets struck Angzex's exposed Lens as Ymkzex screamed, "I have you 
now, Angzex!" and hurled his mental thunderbolt. The bullets, however, simply 
plunged through the Lens without effect and the thunderbolt was halted in 
midflight by Angzex's unyielding screen.  "You face more than Angzex," said the 
other mind, as calm and blunt as Bovreck had been. "Angzex is dead. This is 
merely Angzex's body. A stronger mind fights you now.  "I thought so!" Ymkzex 
did not slacken his futile assaults. "But you are just another Lensman from a 
different world. I will destroy you, too!"
In the far side of the cargo room, which was no longer lighted, not even by 
Armstrong's inoperative lamp, the position of one Palainian was marked by a 
glowing Lens that appeared and disappeared with the pulsing of. the simulation 
of Angzex's metabolism. On the other side, dimly outlined by the distant galaxy 
beyond the open port, floated the other Palainian, Ymkzex. To them, however, the 
absence of light meant nothing, for to them there was no such thing as darkness.
"I am more than what you think I am. Give up Ymkzex's body and go back to 
Eddore."
"You mention Eddore! Who are you to mention Eddore?"
"Does that worry you, Eddorian?"
"I am not worried because I possess a body with which to strike at you. You are 
only a phantom. Also, I possess all the knowledge from the zex-line and I know 
the family psychic secrets. You have the weaker position. Success for you is 
impossible. I tell you, instead, that unless you run away from me, you will be 
snuffed out like a flame." "Who am I to mention Eddore? That is the question 
whose answer you dare not face."
"Whom do you claim to be?" Ymkzex said.
"Don't pretend such guilelessness. I know you as well as you know me."
'I only know that you are a foolish Lensman."
To the Angzex-manifestation this had the ring of an honest belief. Perhaps a 
mental blockade, that zone of compulsion that Arisians had from time to time and 
from one occasion to another imposed on Eddorians, had erased the memory. 
Angzex-the-imposter decided to permit a glimpse, of the truth.
As Brolenteen, he said, "Think! Admit that you are the Eddorian who once 
uncovered the forbidden truth-that the ultimate nemesis of Eddore is Arisia!" 
"Eddorian? Of course, I am Eddorian!"
"Such admission betrays two facts. You are an arrogant Eddorian Master, or only 
such would so flagrantly disregard your age-old rules of secrecy. And, secondly, 
you recognize me as an Arisian!"
The Eddorian was nearly thrown off balance. Brolenteen, who was Angzex, slammed 
into the Eddorian's mind, if not strong enough to destroy, at least strong 
enough to throw him out of the system.
"My pride betrays me," the Eddorian boasted. "Does it matter, since you will be 
destroyed? The insanity of the human mind that I threw against you failed. You 
were clever to anticipate my attack from two extremes of intelligent life. You 
are a worthy opponent-and thus I will have greater pleasure in smashing you. Why 
should I believe you are an Arisian?" He tried a trick, without expecting it to 
work. "Come out of your shell and show me yourself."
"I will not expose myself. But I will remind you of a painful memory. You were 
the Eddorian who was once driven from the Tellurian sector by someone like me." 
" I remember! But I remember it with pleasure; not with pain." The Eddorian's 
thoughts were tempestuous. "Yes, as I recall, I shot him seven times, as fast as 
I could pull the trigger, through the brain and through the spine, with bullets 
that volatilized the flesh. Speak my name and tremble!"
GHARLANE.
"Yes, I am Gharlane! Eddorian Master Number Two, second only to  the All-Highest 
in power and ruthlessness! Now you know it is futile to oppose me!" For the very 
first time, the possessed body of Ymkzex began to shiver with repressed 
excitement. "You! We meet at last!" A weird mixture of fear, and pleasure was in 
the thoughts. "You are-the Director of all Lensmen. You are-STAR A STAR!"
The image of Angzex flickered as Brolenteen's steady concentration faltered. 
Gharlane's incredible notion confounded him. Gharlane's response was so intense, 
so overwrought with emotion, so ridiculously wrong about the imaginary Star A 
Star, that Brolenteen for an infinitesimal part of a fraction of time allowed 
the tiniest of flaws, the merest microscopic crack to existance in his perfect 
shield against the Eddorian.  In a sudden, savage, maddened, frenzied assault, 
Gharlane struck into Brolenteen's psyche.
The real essence of the zex-line of the living Ymkzex dissolved the imitation 
zex-line of Angzex. The specter of Angzex vanished.
Brolenteen, the energizer of the Angzex manifestation, was stripped bare of all 
shielding.  He reached for some spirit or lifeform on which to steady himself. 
If he did not recover his equilibrium immediately, the equally startled Eddorian 
would recover first and strip away every secret. He reached out and grabbed-
Armstrong! The human was not quite dead-unconscious and dying, but not yet dead. 
Brolenteen desperately tried to anchor himself to the human mind, unable, 
however, to draw enough power there to keep himself from possibly being swept 
away by Gharlane and hurled ignominiously back toward Arisia in a terrible, 
perhaps fatal, psychological defeat.
Gharlane snorted and whined and squealed with glee, hesitating so he could gloat 
before his decisive blow.
Nadreck perceived his chance and acted.
From the other crated dureum vault in which he had hidden, Nadreck extruded, 
uncoiled, and precipitated himself into the room.
Brolenteen promptly and adroitly' strengthened his hold on his mode of existence 
by switching from Armstrong to Nadreck.
Nadreck launched his optimal blow against the foe. Gharlane, overconfident and 
overextended, was sent reeling back, shaken off Ymkzex's body, which instantly 
collapsed lifelessly to the deck.
Nadreck was streaming mental pulses against the disembodied mind of Gharlane. It 
was a direct channel between the two, which invited a counterstroke by Gharlane 
that could destroy Nadreck. Gharlane opened the barriers to his mind to make his 
fatal thrust.  "Now!" said Nadreck to the Arisian, who had stabilized his 
condition. "Now!" Brolenteen needed no special clue, no urging. He knew what to 
do. Before Gharlane could fling his spear of energy, Brolenteen threw his. It 
plunged deep into the mental web of Gharlane, disappearing on some long and 
instantaneous journey to wherever it was that Gharlane's body really rested.
Gharlane, Eddorian Master Number Two, was gone. Nadreck was alone in the cargo 
room with the dying Armstrong. Bovreck's Lens was already cold and inanimate and 
fast decaying, but the Tellurian's was strong and vital. Proper attention would 
save his life, so Nadreck gave it. The human's eyes were open, but until Nadreck 
snapped on Armstrong's headlamp, the man had assumed he was blind. Nadreck sat 
Armstrong up, touching his mind to evaluate the damage. The bullets had not 
exploded in his head; he would live and, with a Restoration, recover. The 
swelling of the organ of the brain was the most serious problem and was quickly 
reversed.
Nadreck next pulled some cargo tarpaulins over the bodies of Bovreck, Ymkzex, 
and Val-d'or, as Armstrong quietly watched him. The Palainian caught the 
Tellurian's wonderment: "why, Bovreck looks positively human!" Nadreck, without 
any preliminaries, said, "She's completely three-dimensional now, and your logic 
presents . you with a more logical gestalt effect. I am Nadreck. I am glad you 
are alive. You have completed your mission, I think, and can return to Tellus as 
soon as you are well enough. That will be sensible. I know you are strangely 
thrilled by this adventure and feel that it is over too quickly for you. Don't 
be as imbecilic as the rest of your race seems to be. Go home where it is safe."
"I congratulate you, Nadreck," said the voice. of Brolenteen. "I understand why 
you are ashamed, but that is even more reason for me to congratulate you. I 
commend you for saving the Palainian system from enslavement and for saving me 
from humiliation." "I was foolhardy," Nadreck said. "After Angzex's death, I hid 
in the cargo of this ship, perfectly hidden and secure in the vault, telling 
myself I would be available if needed.  Actually I believe I did it out of 
cowardice. That I should have appeared in time to help was more luck than 
anything. I don't deserve praise for being naturally selfish, deceitful, 
furtive, and sly. Yes, I am, in fact, simply a fool."
Brolenteen regretted the loss of Angzex, a Palainian Lensman who should have 
been destined to climb high in the Patrol. Now, however, he had a greater 
appreciation for this even more complex fellow, Nadreck, the Gray Lensman. The 
time had come to make him the offer, and Nadreck would say, "It might only make 
my life more dangerous, but on the other hand, I will have greater ability to 
defend myself and to develop a possible invincibility. I am much too feeble, as 
driving away that Eddorian showed me by bringing me much too close to the limits 
of my power. Yes, I think I may accept your offer. Besides, I have' a certain 
project that I would be reluctant to undertake as I know the possibility is good 
that I may suffer some personal harm andthis will help me .  "Yes, I will 
accept."
And so Brolenteen took Nadreck to Arisia, where he received his advanced 
training and became a Second Stage Lensman.
That elevation in rank and power was pleasing to the vanity of Nadreck. . What 
he didn't like, however, was the revelation that Gharlane had not died.  Worse 
yet, Mentor had allowed, actually allowed, Gharlane to escape.

3 The Wedding Gifts
Nadreck of Palain VII, Unattached L2, curled an amorphous tentacle. caressingly 
around the shimmering jewel and absorbed its beauty with his mind. It sparkled 
in many frequencies, tickling his many senses, stimulating the sensuous 
pleasures of his biomentalis or intrinsic mind.
As the oscillating waves blended in lights and sounds and freezing radiations, 
much as a warm-blooded human monster might enjoy his high fidelity and three 
dimensional pleasures in the comfort of his fiery home, Nadreck relaxed and 
pondered.  So, at last: Gharlane was dead. 
There are moments that are important turning points in history. Such a time was 
the downfall of the Eich and the obliteration of Jarnevon. Billions of dwellers 
in the two galaxies remembered it as the salvation of the First Galaxy when the 
leadership of Boskone had collapsed. To the thousands of Patrolmen who manned 
the Grand Fleet of the Galactic Patrol, it was a moment in their lives when 
three worlds were fused together by their heroism for a cataclysmic triumph. As 
they sped homeward through intergalactic space they all could see the incredible 
pyre they were leaving behind them. Where Jarnevon had been was a new star, the 
gravestone of the enemy that would have conquered them.  For Kimball Kinnison, 
the victorious commander of the Grand Fleet, that moment was later climaxed by 
his betrothal to his red-haired head nurse, the incomparable Clarrissa, destined 
to be the first female Lensman.
To Nadreck of Palain VII, the reluctant hero of the incident at Research 
Laboratory Five, this historical moment had marked the completion. of his 
special training as a Second Stage Lensman. The psychological effect of that 
upon him had been profound, reshaping him from an inwardly selfish entity to one 
who only outwardly appeared to be that way. No Lensman ' was more dedicated to 
the greater principles of the Galactic Patrol and the Galactic Council and 
Civilization itself than -he was now. He had the wit and intelligence to realize 
that he had not been changed by his education by Mentor-he had been induced to 
find his real self.
The fall of Jarnevon and the Eich has been recorded in the official history of 
the Patrol as the climax to the volume of The Time of the Gray Lensman. It did 
not, however, mark the beginning of the expected universal peace or the marriage 
of Kim Kinnison to'-the redhaired beauty. Instead; it was really the prologue to 
what followed, as was recorded in the Days of the Second Stage Lensmen by "Doc" 
Smith, chief of the historical section.  Halfway through that account of the 
Second Stage Lensmen is recorded Nadreck's first meeting with Kinnison and his 
becoming involved extensively in the activities of the higher headquarters of 
the gigantic Patrol. Nadreck had distinguished himself in the "debacles" at 
Shingvors and Antigan, closely monitoring the infrequent traces of the 
unrepentant Gharlane, and then had narrowed his attention to Kandron, who was on 
the planet Onlo, forcing that cold creature to abandon his high position and to 
flee. Kinnison, on the neighboring planet of Thrale working to destroy the 
Thrale-Onlonian Empire, uncovered a remarkable situation-the sinister adviser to 
the Tyrant of the Empire was actually Gharlane.  And Kinnison defeated him.
Gharlane was dead.
_To Nadreck, this was a distinct, personal disappointment. He had wanted to 
track down Gharlane and avenge the death of the reek-paternal Bovreck, not for 
sentimental reasons, but in keeping with the traditional Palainian obsession 
with self-preservation through tribal inviolability. At the time of Gharlane's 
escape from the space station struggle, Nadreck had believed that the outcome 
had been the result of Brolenteen being too weak and Gharlane being too strong. 
In his training, however, he had learned the truth. In fact, for reasons of 
strategy, Brolenteen had allowed Gharlane to escape and had deliberately 
cultivated the deception that Arisians were weaker, not stronger, than 
Eddorians, thus encouraging an arrogant overconfidence about a vincible The 
pursuit and final disposal of Gharlane was a challenge that Nadreck missed, 
although he was mollified by the knowledge that it had taken a supreme effort by 
the great Kinnison to accomplish the task. Fortunately, Nadreck had another 
villain to chase. This was the Onlonian, Kandron, who, although not as 
despicable nor as. prestigious as Gharlane, was much more devious and delectably 
more interesting as a similar frigid-blooded, poison-breathing entity. In a way, 
Nadreck rationalized, he had had his victory over Gharlane, which Brolenteen had 
chosen to nullify. And that was what had bothered him, and still bothered him. 
Nadreck did not understand Brolenteen's reasoning and judgment.  Why didn't 
Nadreck understand? He was an intelligent entity, a Palainian Second Stage 
Lensman. He was one of the smartest entities in two galaxies-maybe even the 
smartest, smarter even than Worsel-so why didn't he understand Arisian thinking? 
Arisians were his ancestors. They were billions of years more ancient than his 
own race, but they were not any brainier than he was, just more experienced and 
psionically developed. Nadreck couldn't help but feel slightly ashamed of 
himself. Worsel and Tregonsee and Kinnison seemed to understand the Arisian 
point of view. Yet these other three Second Stage Lensmen, to Nadreck, were 
seriously flawed by personal uncertainty and an incomprehensible unselfishness. 
Perhaps these weaknesses were some kind of strength?  Possibly, but not 
probably. He was encouraged to know that he did think about these things, unlike 
most Palainians. Maybe one day he would understand the Cosmic All more nearly as 
the Arisians did.
Gharlane dead. And Kinnison killed him. Nadreck would have to have Brolenteen 
confirm this, before Nadreck would finally be convinced it was true.  So, for 
the first time in what seemed years, Nadreck was relaxed. His special project, 
retribution on Gharlane-for which he had, in part, become an L2-was gone.  
Nadreck's attention came hack to the jewel he was examining. His preferred 
appendage, at the moment still looking like a tentacle, shaped its tip into a 
sort of hand, picked up the red gem, and placed it back in its crystal box on a 
cushion of ammonia snowflakes.  The precious gem, perfectly and intricately 
faceted, was unsuitable as a gift to the bride.
On her hot planet, the stone would evaporate in seconds.
What was needed was the fire of a Manarkan stardrop, the brilliance of a 
diamond, and the psychedelic properties of an Ordovik crystal. It had to be 
capable of being handled and worn in the intolerable temperatures of Klovia or 
Tellus. Nothing_ in Nadreck's collection would be exactly right.
And then there was the problem of a gift for the groom.
The marriage of Kimball Kinnison to Clarrissa MacDougall would probably be the 
greatest social occasion that Civilization, in all of its billions of planets, 
would witness. In fact, Nadreck suspected with good cause, it would probably be 
the most important event in the Arisians' plans for Civilization, based on their 
Visualization of the Cosmic All, the causal view of all history and the future 
in all of time and space.  Yes, a very special gem for Mrs. Clarrissa Kinnison, 
the Red Lensman.  And for Kinnison? What was he interested in? Did he have any 
hobby besides hunting Boskonians? Nadreck had an inspiration.
Now he knew exactly how to solve his problem of the wedding gifts. His would be 
the equal of the best of the billions of presents that would be pouring in for 
the happy pair.  Nadreck didn't have to ponder long over his plan to get the 
gifts. He had a workable plan left over from his various traps prepared for 
Gharlane. The only major difference was that the reward Nadreck had planned for 
himself would go to Clarrissa.  The first thing that Nadreck did was to make 
certain that Perbat, the Palainian zwilnik, and Chak, the Onlonian dealer in 
thionite, and every other illegal substance, object, or crime, were still in 
business at the same old disreputable hangopts. They were.  The second thing 
that Nadreck did was to take his Lens from around a forearm and place it in a 
small jewel case, among the priceless items that were. his finest treasures.  
Then, without his Lens, Nadreck went to Palain VI, directly -to the simple home 
of Perbat, which was buried a thousand feet straight down into the frozen 
ground. Nadreck knew Perbat's personality well enough to have no qualms about 
allowing himself to be cornered in the enemy's lair. Perbat felt utterly secure 
in his own personal fortress. Aside from the expense of maintaining his network 
of criminals, he spent most of his money on security devices and bodyguards. 
Being a Palainian, however, he had no fear of the mysterious fourth dimensional 
properties of his race that humanoid zwilniks had difficulty in handling.  To 
Nadreck, whose body needed no disguise but whose mind was impersonating an 
entirely different and carefully constructed individual from his repertoire, 
Perbat was an oaf who was easy to deceive.
Nadreck considered the danger to himself to be absolutely nil.  "I know you have 
never met me," Nadreck said, ostentatiously staring around the expensively 
furnished room and allowing thoughts of greed and envy to seep through to 
Perbat. But you no doubt have heard of me. I am, as I. say, the notorious 
Betical." Nadreck's "Betical" wasn't notorious, but the character was a 
documented felon with a well-contrived record counterfeited by both local and 
Patrol law enforcement agencies.  "Yes, Betical, I know of you," Perbat said, 
flashing rings and bracelets on his arms and legs. "I looked you up. I know 
everything about you. I know everything about everyone." "Well, sir," Nadreck 
said. "You also know your guards have taken my samples."
"Yes, I know. They seem good samples. But they will have to be tested.  Nadreck 
knew what was coming. Perbat's method of doing business was considered practical 
if not amusing. Nevertheless, Nadreck pretended ignorance and said, "How long 
will that take?" 
"No time at all," Perbat said. He waved his hand and one of the dozen bodyguards 
handed Nadreck a tiny, transparent capsule: It looked like it contained 
Nadreck's special bentlam derivation, but he" couldn't be sure until he tasted 
it.
"Take it, chew it, swallow it," Perbat said.
Nadreck let the manservant put it in his mouth, noted that it was not poisoned, 
and did as he was told. Many, many minutes passed before Perbat spoke. "You have 
passed the test." Of course, Nadreck knew that Perbat had already had one of his 
attendants eat some.
"It is a very good grade of benweed," Nadreck said. "Have some. Have it all." 
"Yeah," Perbat said, taking just enough to have an ecstatic fantasy. Nadreck 
felt nothing; he had saturated himself with anti-bentlam medication before he 
had arrived on Palain VI.  "Now take the thionite,"  Perbat said, beginning a 
different procedure. He took a generous pinch of the purple powder and pushed it 
into the side compartment of an aerosol dispenser. A squeeze of the trigger 
would send the powder, suspended in an icy stream of oxygen crystals, into the 
soft tissues of a being. Without oxygen, the thionite would be inactive; with 
too much oxygen, the dose would be fatal.
"Please, sir," Nadreck protested, "That is too treacherous to take when I am 
here to discuss business with you. I am a dealer, not a user. It is dangerous 
for me. I must have a clear head to tell you my request." Nadreck was not really 
fearful, although he recognized At the chance of a bad.reaction was one in 
several million. If he could avoid taking it, that, would be prudent.
"All right," Perbat said. "Don't take it. Tell me what you want." Nadreck 
outlined his scheme. He had, he said, tons of raw bentlam stored away in a 
secret place. He also had hundreds of pounds of thionite, the drug that was the 
most difficult to obtain and the one that was the most in demand by oxygen-
breathers. Operation Zwilnikthe Galactic Patrol's constant fight against the 
drugs that Boskonia and the "zwilniks" continually pushed for profit and for the 
destruction of Civilization-had impounded much of the illicit narcotics. Nadreck 
explained that Betical had highjacked large quantities.
"It's not the first time that's been done," Perbat said. "But it's also a trick 
used by narco agents to destroy my business and capture me."
Nadreck said nothing.
"So you want me to buy your stuff," Perbat finally said.
"No," Nadreck said. "I want you to introduce me to Chak the Onlonian so I can 
make a deal with him." "What?" Perbat bellowed. "You are crazy! I am no 
intermediary!" Nadreck finally calmed him down by making him understand. Nadreck 
didn't want money.  Nadreck, that is, Betical, wanted to swap his almost 
priceless cache of drugs for some of Chak's almost priceless gems. Chak didn't 
deal with the small fry, so Perbat was necessary. Perbat would get a commission, 
maybe even some of the goods, if he would simply set up the meeting.
Perbat finally agreed. They exchanged contracts, more for Perbat's protection 
than for Nadreck's. As a gesture of partnership, Nadreck told Perbat that the 
samples could be kept at no charge. Nadreck turned to go.
"One moment," Perbat said. He held out the aerosol container of thionite in one 
of his hands and waved it in front of Nadreck's twisting head.
"Now, Betical," Perbat commanded, "now do as I say. Take the thionite!"
Nadreck did.
By the time he was back on a commercial liner leaving Palain VI for Palain VII 
he was feeling the effects, despite all his preconditioning. He felt as if all 
of himself were slipping entirely into the fourth dimension. And then he had a 
"thionite dream." It was so pleasant, while leaving him with an overpowering 
craving for more, that Nadreck knew he had never been in more danger. He told 
himself he would never take it again, even at Chak's demand.
The call for a rendezvous came sooner than Nadreck had thought possible, within 
days.  Nadreck was told to board a liner out of Palain VII for a long voyage 
into another solar system, ultimate destination unrevealed. The ship was 
designed for deep space, capable of traveling at nearly a hundred parsecs per 
hour. He was told to go to the cabin that had been booked for him and to remain 
there until he was contacted. The only piece of baggage Nadreck had was a large 
case with preserved foods, toilet articles, and his small box of jewels.
Aboard, Nadreck saw Perbat and six of his most sinister musclemen. Under the 
suspicious eyes of the omnipresent Patrolmen, they studiously ignored each 
other.  After a seven-hour flight, the space liner, having covered 1500 light-
years, stopped at a transfer station. "Get out of here!" came a telepathic. 
order to him.  Nadreck; taking his bag, left the liner, checked into a transient 
room, where he left the bag, and waited in the lounge.
Perbat soon came to him. "Follow me," he said, and they walked along several 
corridors in the completely dark and cold section of the station where the 
Palainians, the Onlonians, and other such types passed their time. In front of a 
door Perbat's bodyguards searched him thoroughly. They entered' a large, 
exorbitantly expensive, high-security stateroom, where another evil-looking 
party of six was gathered. Nadreck was searched again, even more thoroughly.
Chak was lounging in a fluid-chair and did not get up when he was introduced to 
Nadreck.
Chak was one of the most obnoxious, vile persons Nadreck had ever encountered.  
Considering that Nadreck had just spent a great deal of time on Onlo, the most 
heavily fortified planet in the universe, secretly learning the identifying 
patterns of every Onlonian of any importance, to think this of Chak was 
extremely deferential.  Chak was almost completely three-dimensional. The 
unpleasant details of his grotesque figure, therefore, were not softened by 
extradimensional extensions. His color was distinctively silvery green, with 'a 
mantle of hoarfrost, which was rather attractive. The revolting aspects of his 
appearance were the streamers of green that hung -like rubbery sputum from his 
mouth, the thick drippings of icy mucus around his eyes and ears. His mouths 
boiled out bilious, greenish vapors, which were deadly to humanoids, but merely 
stunk to the poison-breathers. Drops of phlegm squeezed from the edges of his 
bug eyes and formed into little pellets that rolled off his face and fell to the 
ground, sometimes shattering. Everywhere he walked, his huge, acidic footsteps 
coldly burned patches on the ground and the toughest floor-coverings alike.
To a humanoid, Chak made Nadreck appear handsome in contrast.  Nadreck stuck out 
a tentacle in greeting, offering to exchange touches knowing that such an offer 
would be spurned. Chak had a reputation for being one hundred percent antisocial 
and so completely selfish that he would do absolutely any despicable thing for a 
profit. He was, therefore, the most infamous butcher of all the henchmen of the 
Eich. He was precisely the sort of creature that Gharlane would have used if he 
had decided to go toward this end of the First Galaxy instead of to the star 
Thrallis in the Second.  The telepathic interchange with Chak was very guarded. 
Nadreck presented his proposition, suggesting a neutral meeting place where 
their bartered goods could be transferred. Nadreck was somewhat apprehensive to 
be dealing with Chak without his Lens, for Chak was as shrewd, sly, and sharp as 
Perbat was stupid. For one brief moment Nadreck considered equivocating, 
retreat=ing, and giving up his plan; instead, he calculated the chances of his 
discovery at. a thousand to one odds against, and he judged that the risk to his 
life was negligible. This was a bit of a surprise to himself. Heretofore he had 
never acted unless the odds were a million to one in his favor. Anyhow, he would 
take the plunge into testing the wily Chak's intuition and understanding.  "This 
ugly old fellow," Nadreck said to himself, "is not going to creep into my mind. 
If he knows where I have my stuff hidden, he'll simply kill me and take it all. 
I will not let down the double mental screen around the information in my mind. 
I will not let down the screens." Nadreck was satisfied that "the ugly old fel-
low" had picked up those thoughts. They would serve to misdirect and prepare.
"You know what I want," Nadreck Said. "Show me what you have to offer."
Chak opened a travel case and took out an ornamented, round, platinum container.  
The gems inside were not many, but they were an odd assortment. Perhaps a dozen 
were ordinary or a bit above average, and three were exceptionally good. One, 
however, was extraordinarily exciting. This gem Nadreck tentatively identified 
as a Zelcon-28-or higher. Nadreck pretended moderate interest, although the 
Zelcon would have made the whole box of jewels a reasonable offer for the goods 
he claimed 'to have.  "This is not what I had in mind," Nadreck said. "I am 
thinking of a Heartbeat." The phlegmatic mind of Chak burst into a torrent of 
activity. He babbled angrily. Finally he settled down and said, suspiciously, 
"Only a dozen entities know of its existence. And whosoever speaks of it to 
anyone but me will die. Who told you of it? I will kill him." "I heard it -from 
a Lensman," Nadreck lied solemnly. "He was an agent impersonating a smuggler and 
died of an overdose of my good stuff" Such things sometimes happened; this was a 
good story, and Nadreck knew that villains like Chak and Perbat would believe 
most anything about Lensmen. To have Betical dare to mention a Lensman was 
almost proof that what he said was true.
Chak's conceit had been tickled.
From under frost-covered green material that could have been either Chak's own 
natural growth or a piece of clothing, he drew out an icy-beaded pouch. From it 
he took the only, Heartbeat gem Nadreck had ever seen. It was an ebony-black 
pea, . so black that not a single wave of visible or invisible light was 
reflected by it.  "It is cold, now," Chak said. "But when I feed .it warm meat, 
it comes alive. I have seen it come to life a score of times. And the memory is 
pleasant."
Nadreck read the pictures flashing from Chak and was horrified.
The "bloody body of a Tellurian.
The mangled corpse of a Chickladorian. The dismembered parts of a Vegian. The 
maimed carcass of a Klovian.
The mutilated cadaver of a Radeligian. ... And more, more, more.
All Galactic Patrolmen.
The Heartbeat was a crystalline gemstone whose optimum temperature was 15 to 35 
degrees Celsius. The Heartbeat, black and inert in the cold, would slowly 
transform itself in the warmth of a humanoid atmosphere: from rose-pink to 
blood-red, it was round outside but intricately faceted within, and it pulsed. 
It beat in rhythm with the beating heart of the wearer. Yet, if no living 
creature with pounding heart was near, it would still click irregularly, as 
though measuring the irregular passage of the cosmic rays. Its essence was 
impeccably harmonious, and the measured logic of its existence unaccountably 
stirred the dispassionate Nadreck. What was horrifying was how, in the past, 
Chak had made it blossom into beauty.
He would place it on the tortured or dying body of a captured Patrolman, whether 
soldier or Lensman. Chak lived to see the Heartbeat gemstone come to life-
marking the approaching death, and death, and after death of his hated enemies.  
Only a superior being such as Nadreck was capable of masking the blazing 
intensity of his feelings. Palainians were stern and tough and shockingly 
insensitive in contrast to the warm-blooded men, but they were not cruel, nor, 
beneath their icy skin, uncompassionate.  So Nadreck was emotionally distressed, 
as he had never been before. His anguish was so soul-searing that he vowed at 
that moment never to be so susceptible to such empathic pain again; for as long 
as he lived, he would present the face of a brusque, somewhat dour and surly, 
archetypal Palainian.
The images of the ghastly, heinous crimes that this barbarian was so proudly 
permitting to be read in his mind were shrewdly calculated to serve a purpose. 
Nadreck immediately understood that. Chak used them as a rude shock to lure an 
undercover Patrolman or Lensman into revealing himself. That it was a successful 
ploy was sickeningly evident.  Nadreck's composure never waivered.  It was as if 
he had not glimpsed a thing.  "It is an unimpressive looking bit of stone," 
Nadreck said flatly. "I expected more." He sounded convincingly disappointed. 
"However, throw it in with the rest of the jewels and it's.  a deal."
"Yeah, sure," Chak said. "Now, Betical, it's time for you to show us  your 
stuff. We'll take my ship to wherever you say." Chak put away his pouch. As he 
started to close the lid to the container, Nadreck said, "I'll just hold one of 
those stones now, that Zelcon, if you don't mind," and pocketed it in his belt.
Chak did not object. Chak, Nadreck knew, was planning to take it back, and 
everything else, too, including Nadreck's life.
"Yes, Betical," Perbat blustered, feeling left out of the negotiations, "show us 
your stuff."
Nadreck proceeded to do just that, but not in the manner that was expected.  
While they were waiting for the Patrol to complete their search of Chak's 
private vessel, making the inspection much more thorough than a routine one, 
Nadreck made as if to excuse himself to pick up his bag but was obliged to let 
Chak and Perbat and a handful of Chak's guards crowd into his transient room.
Nadreck's bag was opened, as he watched, and the few items examined, after which 
the locked jewel box was placed before Chak for his consideration.  "These are 
some of my own precious jewels," Nadreck explained. "Like you, I carry my 
favorites with me. Open the case and perhaps we may have future business with 
them." Chak was constantly alert for trouble.
"Give Perbat the key, Betical," he said. "Now, Perbat, open the case." When the 
lid swung back, Perbat gasped with pleasure. "Look, Great Chak! Jewels that glow 
with their own fires!"
Indeed, in that square, dark cubicle of a room, they radiated frequencies that 
these dim-sighted or blind inhuman creatures could sense and even partly see. 
Perbat plunged his hands into the collection.
The scream that came from his many lips was abruptly ended with his death 
rattle. His fingers had touched the Palainian's lethal trap-Nadreck's Lens, 
whose contact was deadly when not worn by him, the Lensman for whom it had been 
created.  Nadreck was prepared for what followed. As the Lens flew up into the 
air under the convulsive jerk of Perbat's hand, Nadreck grabbed it. Using the 
Lens, which in his own knotted fist had become the supercharger of his already 
extraordinary mental powers, Nadreck struck down Chak in a paralyzing mental 
blow. Simultaneously, a telepsychic grenade smashed the dazed guards into 
senselessness. Under their bodies 'sprawled the permanently crippled Chak-
temporarily in a coma, but forever shattered.  At Nadreck's Lensed call, 
Patrolmen swarmed all around the area. The doltish guards of Perbat were 
arrested, the private vessel seized, and the unconscious body of Chak sealed in 
a dureum vault for transporting.
In a pocket in one of Nadreck's belts rested the pouch with the Heartbeat jewel. 
The wedding gift for Clarrissa was secure, and though she would never be told of 
its grisly history, someday, no doubt, she would learn to appreciate it even 
more as a semiliving memorial for all the brave Patrolmen who had died in the 
Service.  "About Chak," Nadreck said, explaining to the assembled Patrolmen the 
importance of the criminal, 'I want him shipped unharmed to Prime Base on 
Tellus. I will personally inform the Port Admiral." And, he mused to himself, I 
will personally inform Kinnison by a note in a gift-wrapped package.
Chak was Nadreck's special wedding present for Kinnison. . Nadreck knew that for 
such a dedicated man nothing would be more auspicious for the happy occasion of 
his marriage.  As for Nadreck, he had the magnificent Zelcon to add to his 
collection.  Nadreck didn't for one moment consider that he was stealing 
property rightfully belonging to the Patrol. He considered it, as any normal 
Palainian would, fair payment for his trouble.

4 Cadets Show Their Mettle
The fat face of the First Minister of Noyyon turned a foul shade of orange from 
his fierce emotion. His humanoid figure sprang to its feet, one fist pounding 
the wooden table, the diaphanous folds of his chain-mail regal robes swirling.
"I say it's wart" The First Minister glared at the rest of his Council of 
Twelve. The other faces were various hues of yellow, ochre, and orange, 
depending on the intensity of their feelings. Their little black eyes shifted 
back and forth from one to the other. "I say, no more talk! It is time to act! 
Vote!"
The eyes of the war cabinet were fixed on him as they turned their bicolored 
cubes beneath their outspread right hands. One half was white, the other half 
was black. White end up was a yes vote; black end up was a no vote; sidewise was 
for abstention. One by one they turned and twisted the rectangles and put them 
down.  A black, a white. Two whites, a black. Around the table went the display 
of votes. Twelve votes. Six white, six black-a tie. The fate of the Northern 
Hemisphere, whether or not they were to be bombed by air and sea and thereafter 
invaded by the amphibious forces of Noyyon, now depended on the First Minister 
himself.
There was no doubt about the way he felt; he had been tenaciously in favor of 
conflict from the start. He turned his cube so that the white side was  up.  
"War it is!" The First Minister was jubilant. His resolution had passed by seven 
to six. They had begun the morning discussion with only two council members on 
the minister's side, six undecided, and five adamantly opposed. He had swung 
four to his side and had cast the deciding vote. The Council had made the 
fateful decision, carefully weighing the arguments for and against. At least, 
that is what the minister believed.  Actually, the vote had been unduly 
influenced, not by the native Noyyonese leader, but by the alien Lensman from 
Palain, Nadreck. 
Nadreck and his half-dozen Palainian cadets had nudged the undecided ones into 
the minister's corner.
The Boskonian planet of Togra, home of the Noyyonese and other humanoid races, 
was now about to tear itself apart and become a hindrance, rather than a help, 
to the revival of Boskonia through the new organizing force of the Spawn. The 
supplies for the economy of the Spawn confederacy and t e rebuilding of the 
pirate ships and the privateers would be disrupted. The degeneration of the 
Boskonian menace after the recent fall of the Second Galaxy to the Galactic 
Patrol would be accelerated by this one small action of Nadreck and his 
trainees.
Nadreck.and his young cohorts had been fifty miles removed from the Noyyonese 
House of Ministries when they had silently exerted their influence on the 
council members. The Palainians had been assembled in the central room of their 
special GP training ship, Sapphire, which had been parked in the wooded 
mountain' clearing where it had quietly landed a week before. Nadreck had sent 
out his mental 'probes earlier, as they had circled the planet, and had chosen 
this point for their Palainian Academy exercise. There had been many 
opportunities for them to sow their insidious seeds of dissension on the planet 
Togra, but Nadreck had picked the most propitious one.
"I congratulate Cadets One, Two, Three, and Five for your successes. I commend 
Cadets Four and Six for your excellent attempts and note your humiliation and 
despair. This has been a very successful exercise, and you all have passing 
grades, although in the future Four and Six will have extra field training and 
additional chances to practice." Nadreck was nestled in his soft cushion in the 
center of the group, the six Palainian cadets from the Z-Academy of Palain VII 
in various attitudes around him. Nadreck's special training party numbered three 
Palainians, one apo-Onlonian, one apo-Eich'on, and one Kinchook. They were all 
more or less males except for the Kinchook, who was female-all Kinchookian males 
died at mating time. To each other they looked solid and distinct, appearing in 
their true form, which certainly no humanoid had ever comprehended, nor ever 
would, because of that peculiar metabolic extension into the hyperdimension.  
All of them were Z-types, naturally-a requirement for any cadet for admittance 
to the Z-Academy, which Nadreck had helped found-but the Kinchook was somewhat 
different chemically and physically. Whereas the others .had the usual 
cartilaginous vertibral column passing through the center of the horizontal 
torso off which, like branches of a tree, came the many appendages, the Kinchook 
was more like a Rigellian. The Kinchook had a leathery, chitinous exoskeleton 
with tentacles anchored to her shell. Unlike the Kinchook, the others' upper 
limbs were "arms," many jointed and so flexible as to appear like tentacles, the 
lower ones being stiffer and_ thicker. All had their heads, or brain cases, 
sitting on top of the torso with orifices for eating and breathing. The 
vestigial eyes now were the centers of their perceptual senses. None of the 
cadets had a distinctive visual color, but the Palainian aura was characteristic 
for types from different environments and helped Palainians easily recognize 
each other as individuals. Their body sizes ranged from four feet tall to eight 
feet tall, depending on the mood of the entity or its mode of movement. If a 
humanoid could have seen more clearly, he. would have been startled to find the 
Palainian shape, not utterly amorphous, but vaguely anthropoidal, with a 
triplicated torso having three doublejoined arms topped by a trilocular head 
with compartmented brain, and quadruplicated from the hips down with four double 
joined, many jointed legs.  "We have concluded our training on this planet," 
Nadreck said. " I am both pleased and disappointed. I am disappointed because we 
have not discovered the Boskonian mastermind controlling this world of Togra. I 
am still convinced that the Dregs of Onlo are its corrupters. Perhaps another 
time and another place will lead me to the Dregs." Nadreck's ability to turn 
frustration into a renewed dogged persistence was clearly felt by the cadets. 
They knew that, with the infinite patience of a Palainian, he would simply try 
and try again until he reached his goal. Of the six, those who most appreciated 
end understood Nadreck's disappointment in not uncovering the puppet-masters of 
Togra were the dissenter Eich and the maverick Onlonian, known as Two and Three. 
The apo-Eich'on and the apo-Onlonian were two of Nadreck's special recruits, 
whom he had picked out as potential candidates after diligent mind-searching 
around the Krish-kree system. As kin to two of the most. evil races that acted 
for the as yet undiscovered Eddorians, this pair of cadets was Nadreck's 
particular interest. Developing them into Lensmen who would be distinctly 
different living weapons fighting for the Patrol would enormously gratify the 
Second Stage Lensman from Palain. But above all, Nadreck had plans to use them 
in his pursuit of his "personal" enemies-the .fugitive Onlonians and those even 
more sinister ones, Eichwoor and the Eich, who bothered his friends, the Second 
Stage Lensman Worsel and the robotic Lensman Kallatra.
"However," Nadreck said, "as far as you would-be Lensmen are concerned, we have 
achieved a total triumph. Togra will deteriorate into a dark age, and, when it 
has purged itself, its people will be ready to rise to the standards of 
Civilization. We have upset three governments, sabotaged the Boskonian research 
station of advanced sciences, and have now started a war that should become 
worldwide. What is the most important lesson you have learned from all this?"
"That the fire people or Tellurian types," One replied, "can be made to arrange 
their own destruction." Two then spoke up quickly; "That we have the power to 
sit safely in our own environment and send our minds out to do the damage."
"I agree with Two," Three said. "But the emphasis is one of mental power versus 
material power, in which the Lens of Arisia and higher stage training may 
eventually completely replace all technologically based weaponry.
"It is interesting that both of you, Two and Three," Nadreck said, "should be 
thinking of mental power and its superiority over material power as the most 
important points. As you are apo-types, one from the strain of Eich and the 
other from the strain of Onlo, you have the queer reliance on technology in 
opposition to mental powers. I have long sensed that the Eich, for instance, 
have been unduly influenced by perhaps some higher authority into reliance on 
technology. I say this is in contrast to the echelons of Civilization that have 
been tending, in the course of evolution, to replace technology with paraphysics 
and psionics.  Someday we will have to apply our Z-techniques of study, 
dissection, and analysis to the racial lines of the Onlonians and the Eich."
I think the most significant thing I've learned in this exercise," said Four, 
"is the vulnerability of the humans and the humanoids to their own self-
destructive thoughts. They are strange creatures who are overwhelmingly 
concerned with others, mistakenly believing that a profitable selfishness grows 
out of envy and jealousy, when, in fact, they should treat their rivals 
unemotionally."
"That is very true, Four," Nadreck said. "They think we are cowardly, lazy, 
egocentric, or conceited and often all these things, when we are simply logical 
and pragmatic. They are, I'm afraid, often mentally unbalanced. You have found a 
truly important understanding. I am pleased."
"What has surprised me, Nadreck;" Five said, "is the self-deception of. human 
beings who are supposedly intelligent. Are Tograns untypical of humanoids?" "No, 
Five," Nadreck said. "Even Tellurians are this way. Tellurians have greater 
self-control, but they still have very strong similar feelings. This planet of 
Togra is very much like Tellus used to be before space flight was invented, and 
it's been kept isolated and planet-bound by Boskonians for reasons of slavery. 
This section of the Second Galaxy has a thousand Togra types for our 
experimentation and their eventual edification. We are thus fortunate to be able 
to study barbaric humanoids without embarrassing our friends." "Surely Kimball 
Kinnison does not think this way?" Five asked, incredulously, glimpsing the 
truth. He was looking forward to becoming a Lensman and then meet-ing with, 
perhaps even working with, the legendary Galactic Coordinator.
"Oh, but he does," Nadreck said. "Kinnison is most remarkable in being logical, 
like a Palainian, but uncomfortably flustered about our truths. He always seems 
to be emotionally fighting his savage self. You will certainly find him 
fascinating, almost unbelievable, when someday you meet and work with him."
"The others have said what I would have said," Number Six, the Kinchook, 
commented.  "However, the idea I have found most profitable is that all 
lifeforms have free-thinking minds and honestly believe themselves to be the 
clearest thinkers who are closest to the absolute truths of life. I hadn't 
realized humanoids were capable of such complex and.  profound thought, even if 
muddled and erroneous."
"Oh, human beings are not to be underestimated," Nadreck said. "Even the 
barbarians have strange moral codes. You may not be able to follow their rules, 
but you must understand their ways."
"Yes, Nadreck," the Kinchook said, "that seems to be a problem for me. That is 
why I did not sway my Noyyonese enough to make him vote for war. He believed it 
was wrong. He seems to be anti-Boskonian, and his principles are strong. 
Therefore I am bothered that he will suffer with those who deserve to suffer. I 
think Four found a similar situation. Shouldn't we try to, help such humanoids? 
I mean help them instead of abandoning them?" "That is an interesting 
philosophical point, Six," Nadreck admitted, "but not a Palainian one. To us, 
everyone on the wrong side is equally wrong. He will go along with what is 
wrong, and therefore he, too, is, wrong. We do not attempt to save such 
entities, we simply eliminate them."
' I am uneasy about your argument, Nadreck. Can it be that I am not worthy to be 
graduated and receive my Lens of Arisia?"
"Not at all, Six. Not at all," Nadreck was unmoved. "You have an affinity for 
the warm-blooded, human sense of compassion, and, of course, your religion is 
far different from mine. You will make a good Lensman, able to work closely with 
the fireheads." The Kinchook then proposed a startling idea: offer her council 
member the choice of leaving Togra or staying to face the devastating wars. The 
proposal, she said, should be simple: join the "aliens" for a trip to another 
world and be a pampered "guest" in laboratory confinement for as long as he was 
happy. Back on Palain VII the Academy could profit immensely from having a live 
humanoid barbarian to study.
"That is a provocative idea, Six," Nadreck said. "That council member is the 
cleric of highest rank for their official church. If he were to come to the 
Academy, the entire Galactic Patrol, as well as our Chaplain General, could be 
the beneficiary. Yes, we will put the question to him."
"Why not just take him?" the apo-Eich'on asked. "Perhaps we will do just that," 
Nadreck said, "but we would be best served by having him volunteer and thus 
encourage his cooperation."
Nadreck, now thoroughly familiar with the Noyyonese culture, swiftly contrived a 
plan to tempt the Noyyonese high official, called Gronitskog. As the six cadets 
observed, the Lensman's mind sought out Archbishop Gronitskog within the 
government offices and then firmly yet softly shaped a thought and sent it into 
the Noyyonese's head.  "I must get out of here," Nadreck whispered. "I must find 
a lonely place to think. I will go into the park and think what I should do." 
These thoughts caressed the humanoid's mind, insinuating themselves down into 
his unconsciousness. "I must go into the park and pray." And while the six 
cadets watched through their senses of perception, assisted by their master, 
Nadreck, they saw Gronitskog make his way through the corridors and the exits 
and the gates into the adjoining park lawn.
Then Nadreck threw over the area a zone of compulsion, masking from all but 
Gronitskog the event that followed. From the sky came a whirling aircraft. It 
was the Palainian ship, Sapphire, appearing in a form-as suggested by Nadreck in 
the humanoid's mind-from contemporary Noyyonese lore. The real, though 
distorted, image was immediately recognized.
"The disk from the sky!" the man said, recognizing and naming in his own tongue 
the legendary flying saucer of humanoid cultures. The man wanted to turn and 
run, but Nadreck encouraged his paralysis of wonderment.
"Gronitskog!" Nadreck placed a call in the excited brain. "We come from another 
world and we give you a choice." The choice, Nadreck explained, was that the man 
could either keep his present, uncertain life or embark on. a new adventure in 
the stars. Nadreck had no fear of disclosing forbidden information, so he told 
the truth of the Z-Academy and what it would mean to the humanoid. Nadreck did 
not speak of gods, nor did he mention the actual place or the Galactic Patrol or 
the Lensman; any future monitoring Boskonians would come to their own 
bewildering conclusions.
Nadreck was already planning for Gronitskog-the Togran humanoid, archbishop of 
Noyyon, uncommitted Boskonian dupe-to be assigned, on alternating half years, as 
a resident alien at both the Palainian and Tellurian GP academies. Yet, in his 
heart, Nadreck had a sense of impending doom. He had no suspicion, however, that 
it would lead to the exposure of an extraordinary spy within the ranks and at 
the very heart of the Galactic Patrol.
Because of Gronitskog, Nadreck altered his plan to return directly to Palain 
VII. He and his band of Z-cadets went to Tellus so that humans at the Academy 
might examine, indoctrinate, and certify as psychologically fit for duty the 
volunteer Gronitskog. It was there, in the towering skyscraper, Wentworth Hall, 
heart of the humanoid Academy of the Galactic Patrol, that by chance they met 
Kimball Kinnison. The informal conference that followed this meeting of old 
friends was the beginning of what was to become the. death struggle of two 
galaxies against the pernicious, diametrically-opposed double assault of two 
preposterous enemies.
A score of variously colored spheres whirled crazily around 'in the air. They 
wove themselves into a hemisphere surrounding the small band of Patrolmen, 
zooming in close for an attack and scooting away. They varied in size from a 
foot in diameter to nearly three feet, and each one, brilliant in their primary 
coloring, was studded with gun barrels poking out an inch above their 
crisscrossed shells. Wisps of smoke from burning oil and powder puffed from each 
muzzle as it fired.
Lieutenant Benson Cloudd, sweat streaking his face, turned and dodged and fired 
again and again. Sometimes he was in front of his charges, six young men in the 
spotless silvery gray uniforms of Academy cadets, and sometimes behind them.
The young men were equally busy fighting off the spheres. In their right hands 
were compact DeLameters sending out short but continuous bursts of energy beams. 
Half of the beams were tuned for high intensity-thin, flaming rods of enormous' 
power. The other half were set at large aperture, one making a cone-shaped 
pattern and two forming fans of energy. The cones, with minimal penetration 
capacity, slowed all approaching projectiles to a walking pace so that they 
could be picked off by expert marksmanship. The fans were another defensive 
tactic, exploding the bullets that passed through them. The rods, although used 
to pick off the shells individually, spent most of their force on offense, 
raking the sides of the spheres, leaving black marks and slashes with each hit. 
One energy rod would score on a bright blue ball, another blast would strike a 
green globe squarely. In each case, there would be a shower of sparks and the 
attacker would bounce away unharmed. Blue, green, red, yellow,  orange-they 
crowded in.  "Great! Great!" Cloudd was shouting. "Cover each other! Keep 
moving!" Like some extraordinarily violent dance, the seven of them were hopping 
madly up and down and back and forth on the brown-carpeted floor. Most of the 
time they seemed to be synchronized in an exceedingly well choreographed 
routine, two or three of them hitting, or nearly hitting, a sphere as it drove 
in on them, forcing the attacker to be inaccurate in its fire.
"Keep going!" Cloudd urged, gasping for breath. "Don't slacken! They'll soon-
suffer-power drain!" One of the cadets was knocked to his knees by a direct hit. 
The spotless fabric over his left shoulder blade had turned into an ugly brown-
and-purple splotch. Two of the others managed to pull him erect with their left 
arms, never losing their concentration on the flying objects and firing 
steadily.
Three quick hits were scored by the spheres, on the thighs of two cadets and on 
Cloudd's right calf. He felt the sting, but no pain. In return, five or six of 
the globes spit a shower of sparks and spun downward, half out of control, 
thinning out the strength of the hemisphere.  Every human being was marked with 
wounds now, except for one red-haired youth.
Suddenly, in the middle of his chest, the nasty brownish purple splattering 
appeared.  "You're dead!" Cloudd shouted. "Stay down!" Although with no visible 
cue, the remaining six simultaneously moved a few paces t the side, away from 
the prone body, to clear their footing for the continuing fight. The brown 
carpet was splashed with dark brown-and-purple stains soaking into the fabric.
The rapid fire from the spheres was intermittent now, , growing noticeably 
weaker. The beams from the Patrolmen's guns were intercepting the projectiles 
from the spheres almost without fail.
"They're out-of ammunition," Cloudd said. "Ready for-the axe!" With a prodigious 
series of bounds, acting as one, the group of six moved several yards to some 
stacked space-axes.
"Now!" Cloudd commanded.
Their pistols went back into their holsters as each one's left hand reached for 
an axe.  Cloudd wrapped his huge fists around a tacky handle and hefted his axe, 
his eyes on the circling spheres. From second to second he and the others dodged 
the occasional pellet fired at them. They were all in a ring now, axes at the 
ready, fending off the spheres, but not seriously striking at them.
A space-axe in the two hands of a skilled, strong man is an awesomely deadly 
weapon.  Few, if any, force screens could deflect the cutting edge of an axe 
that worked, not from energetic frequencies, but from sheer physical power. Its 
pure dureum mass, thirty pounds perfectly balanced, slid almost unimpeded 
through force fields designed to strengthen with every increase of the 
megavelocity of a projectile or the megavolt of a projector. Its molecular-sharp 
edge would cut through the strongest personal armor and lightly plated defenses. 
No wonder that the most renowned fighting men, vanBuskirk's crew of Valerian 
Patrolmen, preferred the space-axe to any other weapon.
"Now!" Cloudd barked out, and one by one, as the opportunity presented itself, 
their blades bit into the shell of a globe that came too close.
Within a minute the ranks of the balls had been decimated. The remainder whirled 
about in a spiral and disappeared.
A happy Cloudd threw his axe to the ground and attempted to embrace the five 
jubilant cadets who surrounded him. Then, quickly, he moved over to the fallen 
figure and helped him to his feet. "Sorry, Djereth," Cloudd said, "Someone was 
bound to die. You were it. But you were just as outstanding in this fight as all 
the others." He gave the red-haired young man a playful tap on his chin. "For 
your sacrifice, you'll lead the victory parade tonight." 'And you, Lieutenant 
Benson Cloudd-" came a powerful thought, which they all clearly heard, "-you 
were truly magnificent. Foolhardy, but magnificent. Not that my own young 
students agree-to them your performance was, rather absurd, if not downright 
silly for being so contrary to reason and commonsense. But then, I tell them you 
are human." Cloudd looked up in amazement.
Standing on the platform that encircled the gymnasium, were seven large figures 
in atmosuits, and one of them had the distinctive markings of a Palainian Second 
Stage Lensman. Cloudd recognized the suit, confirming his identification of the 
telepathic thought. He knew who this was, but found it hard to believe that the 
Palainian was really there.
"Nadreck!" Cloudd burst out, with genuine pleasure.

5 Reunion at The Circus
"Nadreck!" Cloudd repeated-and smiled.
From wherever it was that the Palainian had come, and for whatever reason, he 
had come in good spirits, playing his little joke. Nadreck was wearing his 
frivolous Gray Suit. There were six other large figures in atmosuits standing 
next to him, in their plain metal mummy cases with movable feet, all obviously 
Z-types, and they made Nadreck's outrageous parody of a Tellurian's Gray Uniform 
'stand out like the proverbial sore thumb. Nadreck didn't wear clothes at home 
and couldn't wear clothes while associating with the humans, but he expressed 
his peculiar sense of humor by dressing his light armor or atmosuit with 
impractical garments and buttons and belts and badges on occasion. He found it 
particularly effective in making himself seem much less of a monster, and sort 
of fun, when meeting humans who weren't used to him. After he had created his 
effect and made his point, much like a heavy nudge in the ribs of his human 
friends, he would strip off his costume, and with the exception of his 
Patrolman's rank and the transparent panel, about where a normal heart would be-
to display his Lens when necessary-he would be as plain and unadorned as his 
cadets. Actually it was all the fault of the dragon Lensman, that mischievous 
Worsel of Velantia. Nadreck was noted for his lack of sense of humor-a condition 
that was the target for the teasing banter of Worsel-and this was Nadreck's 
logical, if heavy-handed, manner of disarming Worsel and indicating that humor 
was not entirely unknown to him.
"Nadreck!" Cloudd repeated, dismissing his cadets with a wave of his hand. 
"Where did you come from?" " I came from my own training exercise. Against a 
real foe. With my own six cadets, like yours. I taught mine to stay out of 
trouble, not like you. Hand-to-hand combat is barbaric when one has a good mind-
and you do, Cloudd, even if you aren't a Lensman. With Lenses, why should your 
human young ones get into such trouble?" "Yes, Nadreck," Cloudd sighed, brushing 
away some of the brown and purple powder that had dried on his calf. He had 
spent a long time in Nadreck's company while they had been chasing first 'the 
Dregs of Onlo through the Kresh-kree system and then the datadrones at the 
Pinwheel DW433 nebula with no success. He had been lectured to frequently-when 
Nadreck hadn't been completely incommunicado. Nadreck was a "funny. duck" to 
Cloudd, but he was always frank, logical, and single-minded. Even with the 
physical barrier between them, always forcing one or the other to be suited up 
in the other's presence, a masking curtain keeping them apart, it was difficult 
for the Tellurian to overcome his visceral repugnance for the strange entity. 
The humanoid races had an instinctive revulsion for the Z-races, worse than the 
Homo sapiens had for reptiles. This was reinforced by the fact that most of the 
worst of the Boskonian villains were Z-types or their kin. This sense of 
rejection was in part responsible for Nadreck and his ilk being secretive, 
introspective, and egocentric. Cloudd ultimately had had a marvelous time being 
uninhibited and mentally free, relaxing his iron composure, because Nadreck was 
absolutely uninterested in the man's personal affairs once Cloudd had been 
classifled and his life-pattern filed away in Nadreck's cavernous mind.
"Please join me in the visitor's lounge tonight, Cloudd," Nadreck said. "We have 
some talking to do." He turned away and led his cadets back through a door off 
the balcony.  The visitor's lounge in Wentworth Hall was known discreetly as The 
Circus because it was round with glassed-in segmented sections like a spoked 
wheel. The hub of the amphitheater could be utilized alternately by any of the 
aliens whose segment had been environmentally adjusted. Depending on the number 
of races or types. of aliens in conference, the description was, within the 
Academy, modified appropriately, such as, "It's a tworing circus today," or 
"Five rings tonight at The Circus." When Benson Cloudd arrived that evening, 
Nadreck was already there, talking mentally through the walls with the Academy 
Commandant, while the archbishop Gronitskog was in a section by himself. Nadreck 
was half out of his flexible pressure suit, which he usually wore under his 
armor. The empty armor, looking like a sarcophagus from which a monster had 
emerged, was grotesquely resting at an angle in a corner. Through the eddying, 
frosty soup of Nadreck's atmosphere, Cloudd could see his shifting shape, like a 
dimly seen deep-sea man-creature. The commandant was in the center and nodded to 
Cloudd when he came to his front window.
"I've been discussing with the commandant the future of that barbarian over 
there," Nadreck said, giving Cloudd a mental picture of the dignified humanoid 
sitting stiffly on a chair, a white Academy gown draping him. To Cloudd the 
alien looked like a Tellurian-Martian with'features that suggested a cultured 
man rather than a barbarian.  Nadreck's thoughts quickly filled Cloudd in with 
'the details.  " I have agreed to leave Gronitskog here on Tellus for a few days 
of examination. I hope he will be sent on to Palain VII to show to our 
graduating class before they depart in about ten days. I have also requested the 
commandant to release you as soon as .possible in order for you to come to 
Palain to lecture the upper classes on datadrones. Can you follow me in a few 
days?" Cloudd, although accustomed to Nadreck's precipitous decisions, found 
this one too quick and unexpected even for his own impetuous lifestyle. "Why, 
ah, that's nice, I guess, Nadreck, but my work-" "Your work here is completed, 
Cloudd," Nadreck said imperiously. "You've been here weeks and have lectured on 
the datadrones, and you've taught everything there is for you to teach. The Z-
cadets need to hear of your experiences firsthand. What's to interfere with 
these plans?"
"Nothing, really, I suppose," Cloudd said. He cocked his head at the commandant.
"Perhaps the commandant has some more definite plans for me?"
"No, Lieutenant," the commandant said. "I have no plans for you to be on 
permanent staff.  And there's no appointment being considered for you as an 
officer trainee for the Lens-you have stated, I believe, that you wouldn't be 
interested."
"well...." Cloudd said, unsure of what he wanted. "Then it's settled," Nadreck 
said. "I'm leaving at midnight. You can follow in two or three days on the 
monthly shuttle run.  Agreed?"
"Why don't you stay for a few days, Nadreck?" Cloudd said, avoiding the 
question, stalling for time to compose himself, and finding his idea worthwhile 
even as he broached it. "Stay and see our graduation. This. is the third class 
this year and it numbers over a hundred and twenty. You'll have plenty of time 
to get back to your own graduation ceremonies, which, I understand, aren't held 
for another week or ten days."
"No, Cloudd," Nadreck said. "Thank you, but I must return. Before I do, however, 
I want to know the latest about the datadrones. Sit down, Cloudd. I'll be with 
you in a moment." Cloudd idly watched Nadreck conclude the conversation with the 
commandant and considered what he had to say. Over a year had passed since the 
phenomenon of the datadrones had brought him into contact with the highest 
echelon of the Galactic Council and its Patrol. His independent studies of the 
plague of probes that had flooded through the First Galaxy had led to his 
commissioning in the Special Missions Forces, changing him from the independent 
space rover known as D. D. "Double-dee" Cloudd into Patrol Technician Class 
TripleA, then into Lieutenant Benson Cloud. He had tracked them, caught them, 
and dissected them, but he had not solved their mystery. Where did they come 
from and where did they go to? He and Nadreck had scoured the Pinwheel sector 
for a trace of them and had failed. They had simply evaporated.  That they had 
headed out of the galaxy toward Andromeda had never been confirmed.  Cloudd had 
wanted to check out a Patrol ship and press on toward Andromeda, too, but going 
out of the vicinity of the "neighborhood," meaning the two galaxies of 
Civilization and their satellite galactic clusters, was absolutely forbidden by 
all the highest authorities. That in itself was a mystery that bothered Cloudd. 
So, he had spent the past half year establishing a Department of Datadrones for 
Kinnison and the Galactic Council, sometimes prospecting by himself for the 
elusive datadrones, but most of the time overseeing the compilation of all 
reports and statistics concerning these informationcollecting machines that had 
appeared, seemingly from nowhere, for a year or so and then vanished as 
inexplicably . as they had come. He knew nothing more now than he had when he 
had last met with Nadreck. The only thing that had changed was his attitude. He 
was fed up with the paperwork, he was bored stiff with the lecturing, and he was 
dying to get out on the trail once more, cold and dead as the trail was.  When 
the commandant had gone, taking Gronitskog with him, Nadreck turned back to 
Cloudd and found the Tellurian worked up into a consuming desire for a change, 
of scene and action.
"Perhaps," Nadreck said, "after you do your briefing next week at Palain, I will 
arrange for some of my cadets, my new Lensmen, to make one more search.
Perhaps, I say, Cloudd. It will be up to you to inflame them with the desire to 
pursue this course of action." :'I will!" Cloudd vowed. "I damn well will!" 
"Good," Nadreck said. "I must confess that the Z's and the Z-oil's are not 
easily inspired. They do  not have the burning enthusiasm that you and other 
Tellu-rians, especially Kinnison, can develop. If you can inspire them, I will 
be much pleased and I will help you in every way to make your work meaningful, 
too." "What shall I prepare for?" Cloudd asked. He had heard rumors of what the 
Z-Academy was like from the Tellurian cadets, but he knew he could not believe 
any of the stories.
"Let me show you," Nadreck said. "Relax and follow my thoughts." Cloudd was 
suddenly in an utterly dark place. "You are underground in Palain VII," Nadreck 
explained. "Look with your eyes and feel with your senses so you can understand, 
but I will have to help you a bit." In Cloudd's mind's eye, the scene grew 
bright with lights. "We have no lights, of course, but for you it will seem we 
have." The classrooms were interlocking, randomly joined boxes, like a mass of 
square-shaped soap bubbles. "They are solid on three sides, but for you they 
will seem transparent." In the cells, sitting, moving, sometimes upside down or 
spread out on walls, were the cadets. Occasionallv one would flow down from one 
half open side into another cell or would attenuate itself upward into a cell 
above.  Everywhere there was equipment in strange designs, all transparent, and 
seeming to be as multidimensional as the Z-cadets themselves. "The machinery is 
not that way, really, but I have made it easier for you to see."
Cloudd could recognize the instructors by the silvery harnesses that passed 
around and in and out of their bodies. Most of the entities looked alike, 
varying only slightly in size, much like Nadreck, obviously Palainians. But 
there were other monstrosities there, too. They were more strange and more 
grotesque than any entity Cloudd had ever encountered. The variety of Z-life 
impressed him. "They are only a few of the billions from thousands of Z-types, I 
must humbly confess," Nadreck said. "We are lucky to get even a minimum for our 
recruiting purposes for our standards are high and the personal motivation is 
not at all as natural as it is with you Tellurians."
Through Nadreck's mind; Cloudd moved rapidly around the warren of rooms and 
came, for the first time, to a corridor that had separate doors. Behind the 
walls were a half dozen or so other lifeforms in their own environments, a 
couple of A's, Q's, T's, and a VWZY and other mixed types. "Yes, they are 
'cages,' as you immediately think, but they do get out in pressure suits, and 
they do have recreational leaves when needed, and, please note, there are 
already two Tellurians temporarily on the staff, so you will have companionship. 
One is of the female sex, so you may find a mate, who knows?"
"Fascinating," Cloudd said. "I'm not interested in a wife." He thought of the 
bride he had almost had who had died because of the zwilnik pirates. "Besides, 
she's probably interested in the other Tellurian considering the circumstances," 
Cloudd added, drily.  "That is true," Nadreck said. "I was only suggesting that 
a new combination might make new possibilities. Do you really find this picture 
I have shown you so depressing?"
"Well, let's say, it's an acceptable starting point. It will be new, it will be 
different, and it will
lead to our renewed chase of the datadrones, won't it, Nadreck?" Cloudd, now 
brightening at the prospect of adventure, took less than a day to wrap up all 
his loose ends.
When evening had come, just after the final supper hour when the graduating 
class had sung their traditional songs in the mess hall, Cloudd went to his 
quarters for his last minute preparations and an early bedtime. The following 
day would be a full one for him. There would be the graduation. ceremonies in 
the morning and in the afternoon he would be boarding the shuttle run to Palain 
VII, the last one for a month.  He was relaxed, his feet up on a cushion, 
listening to the life of the Academy, when he got the call to go to The Circus. 
His door had been open and the off-duty sounds from The Shaft came sharply to 
his ears. Five hundred feet up, from a wing of the topmost, ninetieth floor, 
came the jubilant sounds of the noble Five-Year Men, those who would be 
graduating on the morrow. The Shaft was twenty feet square, with ninety 
balconies without railings, the hollow core of the magnificent, dazzling 
chromium and glass tower of Wentworth Hall. The Shaft was filled with floating 
students in jump belts going and coming along its passageway, 'but there was no 
noise from them, for the graduating cadets were ruling this week. Only they were 
allowed to be heard, and the joyous laughter and shouts and occasional, 
spontaneous renderings of "Our Patrol" were as thrilling to the underclassmen, 
who anticipated the day when they would be up in 'the Eyrie.  Cloudd felt the 
moment keenly. He hadn't been in the Hall for even one, short semester, but e 
had been caught up in its traditions. There was gnawing within him the desire to 
come here and earn the Lens, but he knew that he could never, space-bitten 
veteran as he was, ever share in the youthful enthusiasm of these exceptional 
young men. He would never "drop free" on commencement day. He would never, no 
never, as much as he dreamed it, step from the top floor for that glorious free-
fall to the ground. The dizzying, breathtakingplunge like a human stone was a 
thousand feet straight down. Only a graduating classman could take it timed to 
an exquisite finish with heels a fraction of an inch above the marble floor as 
inertia was snapped back on by the steady hand at the uniform belt.
"Lieutenant Cloudd," the "message had come. "Your presence is wanted in the 
visitor's lounge."
When Cloudd walked down the steps of the amphitheater, through the staff 
section, he found the two glass doors leading into the Hub were wide open. 
Inside the Hub there were two dozen people, all Tellurians, but when he raised 
his head and glanced at the enclosed sections, he saw that one was occupied. 
Through the reddish-blue, frozen haze of Ring-One he saw Nadreck. Nadreck! The 
Palainian should have been gone two days ago!  "I've been waiting for you, 
Cloudd. You are not going to get much sleep tonight. You will be meeting with 
your friends now, but shortly we will be having a conference." Cloudd pressed -
courteously through the outer line of people in service uniforms milling around 
and caught sight of the aging form of the most powerful man in Civilization, 
Port Admiral Hayes, the president of the Galactic Council!
Next to him was the chaplain general of the Patrol, Chon, in a black civilian 
suit! Who was that he was talking to? It was! The slim figure with the silver 
face was the robotoid woman Lensman, Lalla Kallatra! A flush of mixed irritation 
and pleasure burned through him. That bizarre and disturbing Lalla Kallatra!
A greater shock, however, came from the recognition of the sturdy, broad-
shouldered figure behind her. Impeccably dressed and groomed, his dark hair 
sweeping across his broad forehead and his jutting chin thrusting from a stiff 
collar that glittered with braid and badges, it had to be. : . The ruggedly 
handsome face, stern and humorous at the same time, turned toward him. Their 
eyes met. The man raised his hand in casual greeting. This was the person Cloudd 
most admired, the hero of the galaxies, Kimball Kinnison! Kimball Kinnison, 
himself!
Cloudd opened his mouth to speak a welcome, but the Galactic Coordinator had 
turned away to talk to someone else.
What in the devil was Kinnison doing here? Why was Nadreck still here? Wasn't 
that-?
Yes! That was LaForge, admiral of the Grand Fleet! Why all the notables?
"Hello, Lieutenant Cloudd," said a soft, but powerful voice.  Cloudd turned. The 
small, iron-gray beard and the florid face belonged to Chaplain General Chon, 
and Cloudd stammered out a greeting. The first thing Cloudd said, impulsively 
and to his embarrassment, was, "What is Kimball Kinnison doing here?" "He's come 
to see his son, Christopher. You know about the baby's training, of course?" 
"Yes ... That is, I believe ... infans vitae ...
"That's how it's formally known, through most human cultures, that is. More 
popularly, it's the Better Baby Course that's what we call it. You ever had any 
experience with children, sons or daughters, I mean, nieces or nephews, 
perhaps?"
"No," Cloudd said. All the pain of his past life with Lucille surged up to choke 
him. He had had his dreams with her-marriage and children. Almost on the eve of 
their marriage the pirates had killed her. Nearly three thousand entities had 
died when the space liner had been cut to pieces by the Spawn raider. There had 
been one survivor: ironically it was the owner, the man whom the vindictive 
outlaws had really wanted to destroy-D. D. Cloudd.  The wonder of it came to him 
again, and the torture-why was it that he lived and that such a pretty, sweet, 
innocent girl as Lucille had died? His subsequent wild career as an adventurer 
along the spaceways, in and out of the Patrol, had healed the wound, but left a 
tender scar. "Lucille and I would have followed the Better Baby practice, of 
course." "I am sorry, Benson," Chon said, his cheeks even more flushed with 
distress. "I phrased that awkwardly. Forgive me. I know how much you loved her."
"No, no," Cloudd said. "I'm the culprit. It was all the recent excitement over 
Christopher Kinnison's birth that raised the old ghosts. I'm known as the 
perennial bachelor, so what you said, knowing what you know about me, released 
those deep down feelings I've built up. Actually, I appreciate your 
understanding. Anyhow,.-about the Better Baby Course, I'm not a hundred percent 
sold on the idea that all geniuses are made, not born. But I'm highly in favor 
of planned stimulation right from birth. Lucille felt no effort should be spared 
during the first few months. In fact, she felt that planning before and during 
her pregnant period was also vital. We had things well thought out, as you can 
guess. Anyhow, heredity is important, too." "Certainly. That's still a hot 
controversy. I take the middle view, of course.  Naturally I feel that God still 
gives us our potential and it's up to us to make the best of it. I go along with 
the computer analogy up to a point, but someone has to build the computer, for 
good or for bad, and there are certain preprogrammed things put in the organism-
instincts, animating essences, or, if you will, the soul." Cloudd's mind was 
drifting off the subject. His thoughts were on Lalla Kallatra. What had she been 
doing for the past six months since he had briefly seen her when Nadreck and he 
had skipped through Ultra Prime, the Patrol base on Kinnison's planet, Klovia, 
the center of the hustle and bustle prevalent now in the  Second Galaxy?
"What's Lalla Kallatra doing here, sir?" Cloudd said, feeling that Chon would 
not resent the prying of a lowly lieutenant. "Is she still doing psychical 
research? Have there been any developments about Eichwoor?"
"Lalla is here as Mrs. Kinnison's companion."
"Mrs. Kinnison?The Red Lensman is here?" Cloudd swivelled his head back and 
forth, his dark eyes searching the room, anxious to catch a glimpse of Clarrissa 
May MacDougall Kinnison, the fabulous first woman Lensman. The expectation he 
now had of meeting her thrilled him. The fact that Lalla Kallatra was a woman 
Lensman, too-to his knowledge the only other one in two galaxies, and someone he 
had worked with-didn't diminish the allure of the Red. Lensman one particle. 
Kallatra was a robotoid-yes, a freak, just a young kid with enormous talent and 
an unlucky life-but Clarrissa MacDougall was the undisputed beautiful heroine of 
two galaxies, the female of the legendary matched pair.  "Well, actually," said 
Chon, "she's at the Institute of Advanced Pediatrics. Visiting Christopher, you 
know. He's been here for a number of weeks and obviously she's missed him. He's 
been away from her longer than she'd had him. But now she'll begin her training 
along with him, and I dare say, knowing the abilities of Mrs. Kinnison and 
suspecting the abilities of her child, they'll both be returning to Klovia in a 
few months. I expect she'll come by to see us all before this little social 
gathering breaks up. You haven't met her yet? You've a real treat in store for 
you. And incidentally, Benson, I don't believe I've had a chance to say how glad 
I am to see you. You look fine. Do you like lecturing? Don't you wish you were 
back out there in deep space chasing those things you were after? I wish I were 
younger.  I'd have chosen a few years of wild adventure. There's so much going 
on, so many things to do, and I'm afraid I'll never have the chance. You know, 
these high level visits get awfully dull sometimes."
Cloudd was a bit taken aback by Chon's frank selfrevelation. Yet it wasn't so 
remarkable.  Cloudd had a high degree of intuitiveness; he was very sensitive to 
the personalities and reactions of people despite his strong attempts to tone 
down if not ignore this softness in his nature-and Chaplain General Chon had 
impressed him as being forthright from that very first day in Kinnison's office 
at Ultra Prime on Klovia.  "In fact," Chon added, "she's here now."
Cloudd caught a glimpse of the famous red hair, but before he could move closer, 
there was a shifting of the group in her direction, she was swallowed up in the 
uniforms, and then she and her husband were moving out the far doorway.
Cloudd turned away, disappointed, and almost knocked down Lalla Kallatra.  Her 
reaction was swift. Instead of a stiff-legged movement away from him, she 
apparently activated the wheels under the soles of her knee-high boots and 
skated a few inches backward out of danger. Their faces had come close to 
touching and, for an interminably long split-second, her wide eyes had gazed 
into his. Were those electrifying, bluish-gray orbs of hers real? He had 
wondered that once before. Surely such deep eyes had to be living cells to 
affect him so?
"Hello, Cloudd." Her polished metal face, a Lens imbedded in the middle of her 
shining forehead, could give no expression. From under her cloth skullcap there 
peeked curls of brown hair. This was something different from how she appeared 
last time. Vanity, Cloudd thought. The android is typically female. That touch, 
however, made her seem more human and his feelings warmed toward her.
"Hello; Kallatra. Welcome to the Milky Way." He extended his hand. "How have you 
been?  General Chon tells me you came with Mrs. Kinnison. Will you stay with her 
while she's here? It's good to see you." He really meant it.
"I'm fine. I hope you have been, too." She made no effort to take his hand in 
hers. He remembered the cool, hard feel of those metal fingers the last time. 
"Please excuse me, Cloudd," she said. "Cris has left and I must be with her. I 
expect to stay a few days, perhaps we'll find a chance to visit." She began'. to 
stalk around him.  Cloudd suddenly felt angry. She was snubbing him and no 
machine was going to do that to him.
He grasped her left-shoulder, gently. It was the first time he had touched her, 
except for their hands, and he was shocked at his audacity. She stopped but 
didn't turn her head.  "Don't go away mad, Kallatra," he said. He tried to sound 
lighthearted.  "I'm sorry, Cloudd," she said. "I really do have a lot on my 
mind. Please believe me. I do hope we meet again. Call the Institute tomorrow. 
Please excuse me. I must go." And she left.
Cloudd watched her leaving the room, moving stiffly in her standard tunic-and-
pantaloon uniform.
"Well, I'll be damned," Cloudd said under his breath, his mind in confusion.
"Go along, Cloudd," a voice said within his head. It was Nadreck. "Go along with 
them." Cloudd looked up at the compartment Nadreck was in. The monster seemed to 
be waving his tentacles or arms.
" I'm not invited, Nadreck," Cloudd said. "That's the entrance to the private 
reception hall.
Nobody goes there without an invitation."
"You are invited. I invited you. You will be my representative," Nadreck said. 
"Don't waste time. Go!" "You?" Cloudd said, startled. "You invited me? But they 
have to invite me---don't you understand?"
" I understand. It's been arranged. The conference is to take place now. I'll be 
there by my sense of perception. You must be there physically. There are 
documents to look at. What's the matter with you-don't I make myself clear?"
"Oh, yes, Nadreck. You do. I'm sorry." Cloudd shook his head as though to clear 
it. The whole past half hour had been bewildering. But Nadreck was a Second 
Stage Lensman, and Nadreck knew what he was doing.
Cloudd went into the room at the end of the long corridor. The reception hall 
was just large enough to hold the dozen people comfortably. It was luxuriously 
furnished in ancient earthly style, with thick carpets, upholstered furniture, 
pictures in gilt frames on the paneled walls. It was a room strictly for 
Tellurians and their kin, with one wall of full-length wooden folding doors 
suggesting it could be made larger.
Almost everyone was seated on the soft couches and in the easy chairs when 
Cloudd came in. Kallatra stood at the far right. Kinnison stood in the center, 
holding a sheaf of papers in his hand. When Kinnison saw Cloudd enter, he gave 
him a cheery wave of his hand and a big smile. Then he became serious again.
"We have received these reports since we've been in The Circus," Kinnison said, 
waving the sheaf of papers to emphasize his point, "and they are all garbled. We 
have done our social duties in the past hour. We have just the graduation 
ceremonies, tomorrow. I think we can all attend. I believe there is no suspicion 
as to our real purpose for being here. You have all been convincing in your 
reasons for coming to Wentworth Hall. Let's keep it this way."
Kinnison leaned against the edge of the heavy table and rested informally in his 
favorite lecturing pose. "The garbled reports are proof, if we needed any more. 
Our machines are playing funny tricks. Patrol communications are in a shambles. 
We've got interference and aberrations in all. our equipment."
Kinnison tossed the paprs down next to him and put his hands on his thighs, 
bending over in that betweenyou-and-me posture, massive head tilted up, dark 
eyes under his frowning eyebrows peering at each person individually.
'Friends, we've lost contact with ten percent of our forces on the other side of 
this galaxy. I concur with the majority of you. This galaxy is about to be 
invaded by some, as yet, undetectable enemy."

6 Raiders from Nowhere
The electronic noise began as an inaudible hum and rapidly rose in frequency and 
amplitude to a skullshattering scream. The entire spaceship quivered under the 
vibrations, with relays and cutoffs popping open as danger points were reached. 
One by one, the mixed crew of non-Oxos writhed to the decks and lost 
consciousness.  Lensman Dick Armstrong, the only one aboard who was A-Oxo, being 
a Tellurian oxygen breather, was in his pressure suit on his way to the 
navigation room when the trouble began. As the only one isolated from the 
environment, the rest of the crew breathing their, to Armstrong, poisonous air 
and working without clothes, he was among those least affected. By the time he 
reached the chart room, only. the tough old Onlonian navigator, Noc, was still 
on his loose-jointed legs. Armstrong couldn't speak Onlonian, although he could 
read and write it, but his Lens sorted out the frantic messages passing between 
Noc and Finndha, the Palainian captain of the freighter Palai-kai.  "Bad 
trouble, Cap'n!" Noc was not only strongly projecting his concern, he was 
literally shouting his agitation above. the piercing din, blasting messages 
through the communication pipes. "No collision reported.
We ain't hit nothing. All outside readings are normal. The breakdown's inside. 
My monitors show disruption of the Bergenholm chips. What's Praast say?" Praast 
was the engineering officer.
"Praast went into the boxes at the first sign that we had a problem and he 
hasn't come out," the captain replied. 'And none of his staff are answering 
either." Noc had his upper appendages wrapped around his head and didn't see 
Armstrong, but he sensed his presence. "Do something for us, Lensman! Use your 
Lens!" The situation didn't appear 'critical, although Noc obviously was in a 
panic, and there was nothing that Armstrong could do about it anyhow. He had no 
job as part of the crew. He was simply a Patrolman on rim patrol, autonomous and 
unfamiliar with the ship's routine, most especially this ship, which he had 
never been on before.  "It's the damned drive," Noc said. "I told ya and I told 
Praast the. thing would give out one of these days when were in top free flight. 
So it's finally happened. Even I can tell that." "Don't overheat yourself, Noc," 
the captain said. "We got two hundred passengers on board," Noc yelled. And we 
got another hundred fifty raw, ignorant menials. This scow's a freighter, not a 
passenger shipand I'm a navigator, not a pampering chief steward.  Whattamuh 
gonna do when they run riot?"
That explains a lot, Armstrong thought to himself as he heard Noc's complaint. 
They had insisted on a human for the rim Patrolman to avoid "psychological 
intimidation of the pleasure-seeking passengers" when actually they were 
relying-on his human ignorance to avoid criticism of their substandard 
accommodations for their living cargo. Noc was probably right; a serious panic 
was a distinct possibility.
"Shut  up, Noc!" the captain ordered. "'Watch your instruments. I've pulled the 
plug. We're going inert." This ",'rim patrol" was supposed to be simple and 
utterly boring. It was a Galactic Patrol surveillance assignment established 
around the edge of the Milky Way, carried on most intently on the side toward 
the Second Galaxy, as an early warning system.  With Boskonia so potent in the 
Second Galaxy, invasion from that direction had been a constant threat before 
the Patrol had launched its own invasion, fought the Battle of Klovia, and 
subdued the Second. Now that the level of danger had been substantially reduced, 
with only small fleets of pirates anticipated, a rim patrol assignment was 
certain to be dull.  The duty was not made any more bearable by the use of 
nonscheduled, independent, tramp cargo ships to carry the Lensman.
The deep-space freighters, irregularly coming and going over obscure routes, 
were ideal observation posts for the occasional, unpredictable Patrol 
surveillance assignments. The vessels, usually small and unobtrusive, curved 
around the flattened side of the disk of the Milky Way en route from one side to 
the other, free of the complexities of intragalactic navigation.
Armstrong considered himself lucky to be given even this dull chore. He saw it 
as a unique opportunity for study and experience to further his forthcoming 
civilian ambitions to be a consultant in racial psychology for a big 
transportation company. Nadreck had arranged the special duty for him at his 
request, still appreciative of the help Armstrong had given him not so long ago 
on Palainian Research Laboratory Five. That taste of real adventure had made it 
possible for him to emotionally accept this task, so different and lonely, 
especially with Z-types.
"Nothing's happening!" Noc said. "My readings're still crazy!" No sooner had Noc 
complained than the ship gave a lurch. Noc bounced against his chart table, 
while Armstrong banged into the wall. Armstrong was shaken but unhurt because of 
the cushioning of his suit.
"The ship's slipping out," Captain Finndha said. Armstrong rightly took that to 
mean that the freighter was losing its inertialess mode in an erratic manner, 
which could end in an atomic explosion. "By Klono, I'm switching back in!"
Buffeting started as the ship wavered between the two states. Under Bergenholm 
drive, theoretically only the tenuous matter in space prevented the ship from 
reaching infinite speed. Making top speed, so important for profitable tramp 
freighter operations, was why this ship and so many like it circled on the 
outside of the galaxy instead of going through it.  Bergenholm "free" speed was 
in inverse ratio to the density, of matter in space. Going around or over, the 
galaxy produced the fastest speeds and the least chance for any surprises. Rim 
patrol was a quick trip through empty space, at the fastest practical speed, fit 
for only semiretired, retired, and reserve Patrolmen. Once in a long, long 
while, however, somebody never came back. The buffeting stopped.
"We're back into free," the captain said, his voice coming out of all tubes and 
electric speakers throughout the entire ship. "Check for damage."
The response came back quickly. from the regular crew. There were a few minor 
injuries, but nothing serious.
The report from the hospitality crew, on the other hand, was rather unsettling. 
"Chief Steward" Noc was told that a couple of crew members were dead or dying 
and that among the passengers "even worse" had taken place.
Noc pulled an assistant up from the table he had crumpled over, shoved him in 
front of his control board, and left in a great hurry to straighten out the mess 
below. The scene on the monitoring screen for the passengers' lounge was 
distressing even to Armstrong, who under ordinary circumstances had difficulty 
judging the health or condition of a Z-entity. This freighter had once been 
primarily a passenger carrier; later, the main lounge had been converted into 
cargo space; recently, because of the increase in personal travel after the 
reduction of the Boskonian piracy menace, the cargo hold had been reconverted 
back into a passengers' salon. The decorations were new but cheap, the furniture 
was chosen more for durability than beauty, and the floor plan was awkward and 
led to overcrowding. The result, even to Armstrong, was obvious chaos: grotesque 
passengers collapsed on chairs and floor, having pulled down the decorations 
trying to retain their balance, and the lightweight furniture shoved around in a 
hazardous fashion.
Armstrong was suddenly conscious of something far more remarkable on the 
exterior monitoring screens. Space wasn't empty!
Spaceships seemed to be everywhere!
"Noc! Betzman! Riam! Get back to your posts!" The captain's face was on the 
command viewing screen, his face uglier than ever to Armstrong, undoubtedly 
distorted by strong emotion. An alarm began to whistle and clang. "Defensive 
positions! Unidentified mechware!"
Crewmen were crowding into the navigation room, including Noc. There was much 
excitement, with flashing lights and dozens of glowing visualizations on all the 
screens.  Armstrong was roughly shoved into a corner and ignored while he kept 
probing the minds around him with his Lens, trying to find out what was 
happening. He had the clear and universal impression that whatever was happening 
was unexplainable and frighteningly mysterious. The Lensman projected his 
telepathic feelers out into 'space in search of any other sentient beings, but 
he felt no response. He checked his Ordovik crystal detector; the reading was 
negative-no hyperspatial tube nearby.
"Stand by!" Captain Finndha said. "Stand by for inert!" The captain was 
bringing. the freighter out of free flight into inertia. Like everyone else, 
Armstrong braced for the expected jolt when the shift took place.
Again there was a shock that unpleasantly shook the ship. Armstrong could 
imagine the additional pandemonium and injury among the terrified passengers.  
"Curses of Klono!" the captain exclaimed. "The damned things have dropped down 
along with us! We're headed upstream into the thick of them! Deflector screens 
full on! Collision course! Prepare for deflections! Prepare for collisions!"
Noc had all the screens focused outside, from visible light frequencies on down 
to supraetheric. Moving swiftly past the freighter were objects of assorted 
sizes and various shades of silver. They vaguely resembled torpedoshaped 
spaceships. No identification markings were visible.
'All gravity fields reverse! Check! All engines reverse!" Armstrong had barely 
time to grab a handhold before the artificial gravitation began fighting the 
inertia of the deceleration process. He felt as if his arms were going to be 
dragged. from their sockets. Captain Finndha was slamming on full emergency 
stop, trusting that the gravity field reversal would be working properly to 
prevent every loose object within the ship from being squashed flat against the 
forward bulkheads. Good God! Armstrong thought, if the fields weren't operating 
properly in the passengers' quarters, they would have their already shapeless 
masses mashed into puddles of jelly. The captain was shutting down to zero 
forward motion, jockeying from side to side to avoid the objects that seemed to 
be on a direct line with him, obviously afraid to make a sweeping turn, which 
would expose the ship broadside. The silvery projectiles now seemed to number in 
the hundreds.  Armstrong felt the deck turning under him. The captain was 
executing a pinwheel turn, rotating the ship on its own axis. This was a fancy 
maneuver expected from a warship, not from an ancient  passenger-cargo vessel!
"Full ahead!" the captain shouted.
The Tellurian Lensman again felt the deck pressing up against him, his body 
straining to resist the compression. A full pinwheel turn and a jumping 
acceleration on a one hundred eighty degree reversal! Some trick! Oh, the poor 
passengers and their staff!  "Prepare for inertialess drive!" The captain 
sounded calmer now, although Armstrong had to marvel that Finndha had never lost 
his self composure under the assorted problems that a Patrol captain would have 
found trying. Armstrong swung around slightly, into a more comfortable  
position, wedged in between the squirming, leathery torso of one of the crew and 
the wall of the small room. He could still see the screens with their pictures 
of silvery cigars. The projectiles had slowed down relative to the freighter, 
which was now picking up inert speed.
Silvery projectiles. What was that? Farther away they were grayer, fading off 
into invisibility.  Their numbers could be infinite, more unseen than those 
seen. There was an obvious correlation between their appearance and their 
distance from the ship. The closest ones were the brightest, almost mirrorlike 
in their sheen; slightly farther away they were silver; far away they were gray, 
and then almost black. There weren't just hundreds, there were thousands upon 
thousands!
"Betzman! Where are our rear deflector screens?" " I put all the power into our 
front ones, sir." "Y'damn fool! Our rear is uncovered now. Shunt some power 
into-" Crash! The noise vibrated up from the bottom of the ship through air and 
metal and rattled everyone in the navigating room.
This is Riam, Captain. The enemy just blew a hole into aft section R. The 
autoseals have isolated sections Q, R, and S."
"Classification now hostile," the captain informed his ship. "Prepare to repel 
boarders." Armstrong, at the first identification of the location of the crash, 
immediately probed the area with his Lens. His powers were limited to 
registration of life forces and he could read none.
"This is Lensman Armstrong, Captain Finndha," the Tellurian telepathed. "I've 
scanned the damaged area. There are no lifeforms."
"Check, Lensman! Do what you can aboard. Also Lens out our position and status 
and get some help. Riam! Round up some of the purser's men and be ready to arm 
them to repel boarders. The Lensman says no pirates are aboard, but it' may 
happen in the next stage." Lensman Dick Armstrong sent out his messages, an 
official report and a low priority call for help. His calls went back into the 
galaxy to the chief of the Rim Surveillance Section, but there was added a 
special signal for Nadreck's attention, which fulfilled Armstrong's promise to 
"keep in touch." He reported the appearance of unknown craft and the possibility 
of destruction by chance or by choice. He stressed that there were possibly 
thousands of unidentified objects, varying in size, but he couldn't be sure what 
sizes.  Having no fixed reference point, they could range from a small space 
torpedo up to a large freighter. They had not made a hostile move, although 
damage, by design or accident, to the rear of the undefended freighter had been 
reported. The unidentified swarms were heading in an angle that would take them 
into an outer arm of the Milky Way. The freighter 'might be in need of rescue 
momentarily. A score of Lensmen picked up his messages for relay on to 
Operations HQ.
. . . don't know where they came from, " Noc was saying. "None of my charts and 
none of my records show a thing. My guess is that our path crossed theirs in 
free flight and that they had no instrumentation to notice us, to notify us, or 
to anticipate overlapping fields of influence that would disrupt both our 
tracks."
'A chance encounter, in other words, ". the captain said. "Could be. One of us 
knocked the other out of free flight and we're still entangled. That means we 
got bumped accidentally when I pulled back from ramming one of those things we 
were running down. D'ja hear that, Riam ?"
"I heard, Captain. But I'm breaking out the weapons for my party of thirty.
"What?"
" I looked through the autoseal windows. There are things moving around on the 
other side." Riam was a cold-blooded Ylorian who couldn't raise his emotional 
level one degree if he were standing in front of an execution squad.
Armstrong immediately looked at the screens that Noc and Captain Finndha had 
redirected, but they were blank. The assumption was that they had been made 
inoperative by the collision, but now the situation was uncertain. Armstrong 
threw his mind into the penetrated area. He did not have the power of perception 
and there was no lifeform through which he could get any impressions, so he saw 
and felt nothing.  "Lensman," Finndha said. "Take a look..."
"Sorry, Captain;" Armstrong said. "I'm unable to find any trace of organic life. 
There might be other forms or robots. I can't tell."
"Captain!" Noe's shout was painfully sharp. "Captain, look at starboard screens 
three and four! It's a mammoth spaceship!"
Armstrong glanced above Noc's head. There it was, a huge gray sphere! Ten or 
twenty miles in diameter, maybe larger, for judging the size was difficult; if 
not impossible. And beyond it? Beyond it?
"Captain!" This time it was Armstrong's turn to sound agitated. "There are more 
than one. I see another beyond it. Darker. Maybe even bigger."
"Yes, Lensman," the captain said. "There are dozens of them."
"Dozens?"
"We can read the screens better than you," Noc said. "Look on the port screens. 
There are more." He flipped through the entire battery of screens.
"There must be hundreds, Noc," the captain said. "If there are black ones out 
there, the number could be unlimited."
"Captain," Riam broke in, quietly. "Those thingsthey're trying to break into the 
ship."
"Things? What things?" Captain Finndha asked, distracted by the situation 
outside.
"The invaders."
"The invaders?" Several screens in the navigating room flashed white or gray as 
he tried to picture something. "We're getting nothing on our screens. Whatta 
they look like? Whatta they doing?"
"They opened the bulkhead doors and are moving slowly down the main corridor 
toward the lounge. I can't see too well through the glassports. Looks to me like 
a hundred spheres about two feet in diameter. They could break in at any of the 
connecting passageways. I've issued weapons to my group and I've dispatched 
three maids to cover each doorway. They have no authority to fire until you 
issue instructions. I recommend I circle around into the lounge and issue 
weapons to all competent passengers."
"Klono!" the captain exclaimed. "If they start wrecking doors, . . . we'll lose 
our atmosphere, and we're a thousand personal life-support systems short. . . 
It'll be murder!, "That may not be a problem, Captain. They've kept the corridor 
sealed. They open doors, they don't blast them."
"Boskonians!" the captain said. "Sure as the nine purple hells! Do what ,you 
have to, Riam.  You have my complete authority ... Lensman! Who're the enemy? 
Find out. Use your Lens ... Noc! I want to know more about those ships outside."
Armstrong had anticipated the captain's request. He had taken the initiative to 
punch up screenings on the corridor and doorways, without any success. He had 
carefully sifted through all the mental waves filling the ether, finding the 
feelings of the inhuman passengers -a turmoil of pain. Through all frequencies 
he found some kind of pervasive interference, going right down partway into 
thought and etheric wavelengths. The screenings did not hold firm against the 
Lens, but nevertheless he found nothing he could identify as intelligence. He 
combed the ship. Then he projected outside and mentally poked at random 
samplings of everything he could see. Nothing.  Dick Armstrong was a trained 
Lensman. He hadn't exercised a fraction of his inherent talents and latent 
abilities; now he summoned everything within his will power and aimed it at the 
main deck corridor. He conjured up a two-foot spheroid, and he threw his full 
energies against it.
He felt something! His sense of power was incredible! The thrill of realizing he 
was so potent overwhelmed him for a moment. He was showing himself to be a true 
Lensman, a positive force, not a passive intellectual, and he was very greatly 
pleased.  The spheroid he visualized bounced away, glancing from one companion 
to another.
Somehow his mental powers had made this happen.
"They're suddenly moving around faster," Riam reported without prompting. "The 
spheres are kind of excited, but they're pushing ahead at the same rate. I 
expect the lounge doors to slide open at any moment. I'm here with about a 
hundred passengers, passing out weapons. I'm using part of my force to police 
the rest of the passengers and even some of the crew. They're almost insane with 
fear. I'm going to try to drive them back to their quarters:" Armstrong, elated 
to be making some kind of positive contribution, was, however, realistically 
disappointed that nothing was being accomplished. He directed his rudimentary 
psionic powers outside. He visualized, with the help of the central starboard 
screen, the nearest silvery cylinder, and strove to penetrate its hull. The 
cylinder immediately vanished.
Armstrong tried the same procedure on another, larger spheroid. This one seemed 
to waver and become unstable, but it did not vanish. Could be, the Lensman 
guessed, they react to inimical thoughts, so the first had gone into free flight 
and the second one was on the edge of doing it.
The Tellurian shifted his attention to a big cylinder, big enough to be a 
destroyer-class spaceship. Again he tried to press his mind into the interior. 
He couldn't. This time he asked, Who are you? We are friends. We are fellow 
Boskonians." Amazingly, the side of the ship materialized a huge black emblem, 
the traditional skull and crossbones! The ship was a pirate! There were other 
markings, too. This sleek cigar-shaped machine now showed other special numbers 
and.markings in black letters. In red letters was A-ZZ. No doubt about it, this 
ship was part of an organized fleet. One and all, they were manifestly Boskonian 
probes, warships, or both.
The strain on Armstrong was too much. He had to drop 'his concertration. He had, 
however, found out something important. He reported it to Captain Finndha.  "It 
figures," the captain said. "The raiding parties' are robots. In the past few 
minutes, while you've been in a trance, they've invaded the lounge and have a 
smaller party coming through the crew's stairwells toward our control room. They 
seem to open and close our doors at will. The lounge looks like something out of 
Dante's Delgonian Inferno. The robots are sucking the life out of our people."
To illustrate what he was saying, the captain put up several screens from the 
lounge. They weren't white or gray or blank anymore; they displayed incredible 
visions of a battle and a ghoulish feast going on simultaneously.
In a semicircle, backed against a wall near the doorway to the main corridor, a 
small party of uniformed and naked monstrosities was blasting away at a wall of 
globes churning two or three deep. Farther into the lounge were others of the 
passenger-monsters, as Armstrong now saw them in their primitive crawlings and 
posturings, in various stages of prostration. Over them hovered scores of the 
spheres. To Armstrong, they seemed to be pumping fluids out of the writhing 
bodies! The sight was nauseating.  The ray beams slipped off the sides of the 
globes like sprays of water off greased paper.  The globes had many jointed, 
sticklike appendages thrusting from sockets at their bases and waving about 
haphazardly. Some of them had standard GP approved weapons in their grasp, stuck 
out at the end of their arm-rods, pointing in every direction and not firing.  
Some of the globes were dragging passengers off the tops of piles of passengers.
The scene was utter, horrible chaos.
"Lensman!" It was the captain, speaking sharply to get his attention, and 
shutting down the screens. "What have you heard from the Patrol? We can't raise 
them on our standard bands."
"I've sent out information and calls for help, Captain." "Call Nadreck, can you, 
Lensman?
You have the power, you have the authority, you know him-and he knows me_. Call 
him, sir.  I implore you. He's got a speedster that can get him here in hours, 
maybe even within minutes. It's bad enough that I'm going to lose many or all of 
my passengers, that I'm losing my. ship-but I think I'm going to lose my own 
existence. My lifeboat doesn't stand a purple chance of breaking through all 
these Boskonians. I'll take you along with me, of course, Lensman, but I think 
we're doomed. Get that message across to Nadreck, will you? He's a superbody. 
He's my friend. For my sake-for Klono's sake-get him here now!"

7 Lensmen Get Their Orders
The alarm clock was buzzing, at first softly, and then more insistently. It was 
six A.M.  Cloudd groaned, rolled over, turned it o$; and put his feet on the 
cool floor. He was extremely fatigued. His night had been terrible, filled with 
much tossing and turning and unpleasant dreams.
The evening had not lasted very long, but when refreshments were served, Cloudd 
had lingered awhile, hoping to talk to Kallatra. He was disappointed to learn 
that she had excused herself immediately in order to arrive early the next day 
at the Institute of Advanced Pediatrics, but he did talk to Kimball Kinnison, 
who always made a point of speaking personally with as many people as possible.
After some chitchat, Kinnison had said, "I understand that you're part of this 
conference, Cloudd, at Nadreck's request, which makes plenty of sense to me. 
We're working out assignments tonight to give out tomorrow morning, and you're 
included, teamed with Nadreck. In you he's got a Tellurian to be close to, one 
to identify with. Nadreck's always worked alone in the past he just doesn't 
mingle well with humans, and no wonder. That goes for Z-types, too-their 
lethargic ways irritate him. Now, you're the exception. Since you knocked about 
together out around Pinwheel, chasing the datadrones, he's got immense 
confidence in you. And so do I."
"Sir," Cloudd began. If anyone could give him advice, it should be Kinnison-who 
was concerned with every one of his men especially since Cloudd had chosen 
Kinnison as his standard of excellence. "Sir, I'm not a Lensman and I don't know 
if I can measure up. If I were on my own I'd be gung ho, but I'm not sure I 
should accept this duty. Don't get me wrong-I'm not looking -to be a Lensman."
"Cloudd," Kinnison said with a laugh, "half the Lensmen I know felt that way. 
Don't worry about it, just do your job, that's all that's expected of you. 
Nadreck knows what he's doing, believe me. Trust him."
So Cloudd left feeling better about himself, but worried about the universe-what 
did it all mean? Before going to bed, Cloudd softly called Nadreck's name, not 
wanting to awaken the Palainian if he was resting for the grueling morrow. He 
wondered what ideas Nadreck, who had monitored the meeting through Cloudd's 
mind, might have.  "Lieutenant Cloudd." Nadreck, awake; instantaneously entered 
his mind. "Do you doubt me? Have my past performances been so pathetic that you 
should question my wisdom? I was hurt by your expression of doubts to Kinnison 
concerning my choice of you." Cloudd was surprised and genuinely contrite. " I 
apologize, Nadreck. He should have put his worries directly to Nadreck without 
showing disloyalty. " I didn't doubt you, I doubted myself. But you are right."
"We are both at fault, I more than you. You doubted because I failed to convince 
you of your worth. Remember, I know your capabilities, and you are neither worse 
nor better than what I know you to be. I reject your apology as unneeded."
Cloudd felt strong again, knowing Nadreck's evaluation. His self-doubt was 
vicious and puzzling. Why? Lucille's death had driven him from conventional 
respectability to reckless space adventuring, -facing everything and fearing 
nothing. Since joining the inner circle of Lensmen, though himself not a 
'Lensman, for no discernible reason he had felt inferior. He was being changed 
and part of himself resented it. What did he really want to do, to be?  
Fortunately he was about to see action again. He could decide his future later. 
He said, No apologies on either side, then, Nadreck. I'm QX and I'm with you." 
"Good. You Tellurians are complex creatures, and we do not think alike. Tell me 
always when you have misgivings so that I may understand you. We do not have the 
same intuition, as you are Tellurian and are different, and that is why I chose 
you. I do not need nor want a Lensman.
"Now let me tell you how this has all come about. You Tellurians have a need to 
know
things, and you are a fine specimen of a Tellurian, intelligent yet irrational, 
optimistic while
pessimistic, stupid yet brilliant. But it is your intuition that I need, 
Tellurian intuition, and you
do have it to a remarkable degree.
"This conference was brought to my attention by accident. I came to the Academy 
just as it was happening. This is a Tellurian conference, because the Tellurians 
and their humanoid relations seem to be most affected. I have not solved that 
riddle yet-although I believe it has something to do with you humans having the 
best technology and therefore are prime targets.
"This Tellurian conference is top secret, but having inadvertently become aware 
of the basis for it and because I am a Second Stage Lensman, and at hand, I was 
invited. I don't think I was really wanted there, even telepathically, for 
diplomatic reasons and as a matter of precedence. My presence is considered 
premature. That is why you are my representative, my Tellurian representative. 
President Haynes, and Kinnison, too; now consider my presence fortuitous-they 
did not. invite me by slighting others-and the first rule of absolute secrecy 
concerning knowledge limited strictly to only those who need to know has been 
maintained."
Nadreck seemed to be through, so Cloudd thought: "I really don't know what this 
is all about. I have not been briefed. Should I know? Do I need to know?" "I can 
tell you this. There have been a disconcerting series of events taking place, 
starting at the edge of our galaxy in the direction of Cassiopeia and moving 
inward.  Communications become garbled and spacecraft go temporarily out of 
control. Our computer banks have started malfunctioning. Nothing disastrous has 
happened,. but the symptoms are very serious. Because our defense systems were 
the first technology to be affected, the Galactic Council became concerned and 
turned the problem over to Tregonsee, as head of the Military Intelligence 
Service. The M.I.S. gave the opinion that this could be a prelude to an invasion 
from outside the galaxy." "From outside?" Cloudd said. "But that's from the 
wrong direction if we assume it will be Boskonian. I would think any threat 
would come from the direction of Saggitarius." 'And so would I. That is what 
would indicate that the attacking vessels would have to be invisible and not 
register on any detectors. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to circle around our 
galaxy and attack us, as it were, from the rear. _But let us save the 
speculation.  The meeting in seven hours may furnish us with more details." And 
so Cloudd had retired and had his fitful rest. The meeting was scheduled for 
nine o'clock back at the lounge, but Cloudd had determined to be at the 
Institute building before eight o'clock to look for Kallatra. She wouldn't be 
expecting him, but he hoped to have a bit of time with her before the official 
gathering. When Cloudd found the right section, he had to talk his way through a 
security check. The Kinnison heir was thoroughly guarded, even in this two 
hundred square miles of highly restricted military property. He had the 
credentials to get up to the BB wing, and no sooner had he stepped out of the 
elevator than he saw Clarrissa Kinnison in the center of a huddle of mothers, 
presumably, and department personnel. Lalla Kallatra, however, was not one of 
them.
"Thank you, thank you very much," Clarrissa was saying. "I appreciate your kind 
wishes."
She was nodding and smiling as she moved toward the doorway to the nursery.  
Cloudd quickly stepped close to her, before she could slip through, drawing two 
guards toward him. The younger was a Lensman, with a broad white streak in his 
dark blond hair, wearing the lapel badge of an M.I.S. officer. Security 
furnished by Tregonsee's Military Intelligence seemed unusual to Cloudd, but 
considering the lady and her baby it made sense.
"Excuse me, ma'am," Cloudd said. "I'm Lieutenant Benson Cloudd and I'm looking 
for Lensman Kallatra." She looked him squarely in the eyes. Her direct, forceful 
gaze was almost a physical shock. Her tawny brown, gold-flecked eyes showed him 
a truly remarkable woman. She shook her short bronze-red hair negatively. "I'm 
sorry, Lieutenant, she's not here this morning. She has an important meeting in 
an hour and she's resting." "Is she all right?" Cloudd asked, on an 
unexplainable impulse.  "She's a bit under the weather," the Red Lensman said. 
"Nothing serious." Her eyebrows arched quizzically and her attitude warmed. 
"Weren't you and she involved last year in working out some trouble with my 
husband?" When he nodded, she said, "I remember your name. You were spoken of 
highly. I'm very pleased to meet you." She held out a firm, young hand for him 
to take.
She had drawn him inside the room, and they were talking small talk, which he, 
in a daze to find her such a fine person, hardly heard or comprehended.
". . . and being here at the Academy, you're familiar with the Better Baby 
Course," she was saying. "Well, not really. . ."
"I'm learning myself. It's nothing new-the idea that the ability to take in 
facts, basic facts, is an inverse function of age. Genius is acquired by the 
earliest possible frequent, intense, and extended stimulation of the brain to 
develop a sophisticated cortex." Clarrissa was an enthusiast.
"The brain is an organ to be exercised, encouraging the myelin insulating 
sheaths surrounding the tails of the brain cells for-proper interconnections. 
The more synapses, the more brain power. Christopher is being provided with an 
operating system, to use computer jargon, basic skills for performing future 
complex tasks." She stopped and laughed.
"I do go on, don't I? I must be keeping you from your work. You'll find Lalla 
with my husband in the Hall someplace. But before you go, wouldn't you like to 
take a peek at my young one?" She turned to the plate glass window and tapped on 
it with a ring to summon a nurse. Cloudd noticed that she wore no Lens on either 
of her slim arms. For the first time he noticed also that she was dressed simply 
in a softly feminine dress, a very attractive lady.
The nurse brought a baby in his arms, and the two in front of the glass looked 
down at it, one with great pride and love, the other with awe and respect.  The 
baby was beautiful, of course nothing remarkable, being so incredibly tiny and 
barely weeks old, but somehow appearing strong and powerful. The little eyes 
opened, there was a flash, a glint, a sparkle, that seemed peculiarly striking, 
and the eyes closed and the vision was gone.
Christopher K. Kinnison, child of the Lens.
Cloudd left the hospital feeling uplifted and depressed at the same time. He 
didn't try to analyze his feelings, instead he simply allowed himself to 
recognize that he had had a unique, never to be forgotten experience. The baby 
was the ultimate, perfection. He was suddenly conscious of his own physical 
imperfection, and he jammed his left hand into his side pocket as though to hide 
the fact that half of the last two fingers of his left hand were -missing. 
Someday. Someday something was going to happen to him and he would dare to seek 
to become a Lensman.
He was there at five minutes to nine and so was Lalla Kallatra, but there was no 
time to talk to her. He studied her under lowered eyelashes. She was a statue, a 
parody of a woman; to think that she was the other woman Lensman was to be aware 
of the almost inconceivable contrast. Was there something wrong with her? What 
did Clarrissa Kinnison mean by saying the robotoid was' "under the weather?" The 
body was mechanical-she was all machine, except for her brain. Did she have 
headaches? Oh, well. Cloudd snorted at his thoughts and derisively mumbled to 
himself, "she's probably got a -screw loose." Kinnison got right to the point. 
Nothing new had developed overnight. He was turning the meeting over to 
President Haynes.
Haynes, master tactician and strategist, wasted no time either. He jutted out 
his chin, ran his still strong fingers through his graying hair, and said, "I 
have your orders here on the table," tapping them with the fingers of his other 
hand. "You will pick up your copies when I dismiss you."
"Now I'm going to give you a summary of your assignments:
"Kimball Kinnison is to return to Klovia to organize the Grand Fleet of the 
Second Galaxy.  "Clarrissa Kinnison stays here at the Institute, training with 
the Kinnison baby and guarding him.
"Raoul LaForge will assemble the Grand Fleet of the First Galaxy, operating out 
of Prime Base for the present. "Chaplain General Chon is to talk with the recent 
defector, Gronitskog, about the possible implication of the Eich. In one week's 
time, depending on his findings, he will go to Velantia for discussions with L2 
Worsel.  "Lalla Kallatra will go immediately to the Worsel Institute on Velantia 
for an examination and for research on the latest activities of the Eich, later 
to meet with L2 Worsel and Chaplain General Chon.
(Cloudd immediately noted the phrase, "for an examination." What did it mean? 
Was Kallatra really ill?) While Haynes was listing the assignments for other 
Lensmen whose names Cloudd didn't know, Cloudd was studying the impassive metal 
face of the girl robotoid. How old was she? Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen? He 
couldn't remember. Had she recovered from that terrible moment out there in deep 
space? Had she been truly retrieved from that ghastly tragedy when her body had 
been destroyed and her father had given up his life to save her brain? Was she 
dying? Would he ever see her again?  "... and Lieutenant Benson Cloudd. . ." 
Cloudd snapped back, aware of Haynes's closing words, ". . . will be going with 
L2 Nadreck.
"Remember, ladies and gentlemen," Haynes finished, your reports daily to L2 
Tregonsee are essential. That is all: Now let's conduct ourselves as if. the 
graduation day celebrations were our only interest and leave as naturally as 
possible. If I don't see any one of you at the spaceport, please be assured that 
my best wishes and those of the Council go with you." Everyone began shuffling 
about, getting copies of their official orders at the table. Cloudd noticed that 
the Lensman with the broad white streak in his dark blond hair was there, but 
Clarrissa Kinnison wasn't. Without being obvious, Cloudd jockeyed himself into 
position so he could talk to Kallatra.
"Pardon me, Lalla," Cloudd said, "I looked for you at the Institute this 
morning, and Mrs.  Kinnison told me you weren't feeling well. I hope you're 
better." He made that statement as much a question as a wish.
"She told you that?" Kallatra's peculiarly semihuman mechanical voice was very 
low. The difference between it and that of the sweet, rich, and softly erotic 
voice of Clarrissa Kinnison that he had just experienced was pathetic. "Please 
don't speak of it here." He could barely hear her in the buzz of conversations. 
He said nothing. He stood there pretending to examine his orders, waiting for 
some positive sign from her.  Finally Cloudd could stand the suspense no longer. 
'Are you avoiding me?" he asked.
"Shall I stop bothering you?
She turned around then and stared at him with those expressive eyes. "Walk me 
over to the Institute, Benson," she said. "I don't have much time and neither do 
you." " I leave at two thirty with Nadreck. When do you leave?" he asked, as 
they walked out of the lounge toward the campus exit. He sensed that something 
unusual was going on with her, perhaps between them, that he was about to learn, 
and it made him very apprehensive.
"My departure is at one GPT," she replied. "I have just enough time to 
personally say good-bye to Mrs. Kinnison and the baby. You're right; I thought I 
was avoiding you for reasons of security, but I know that isn't the real one. 
You are a peculiar mixture of an extrovert and a sensitive, and, because of my 
own eccentricities, you have frequently made me uneasy. Yesterday and today I 
haven't felt able to cope with someone like you.  Nevertheless, it is important 
that I do talk with you. I have to pass on a warning." She still seemed distant, 
but he felt in contact with her again. That he made her uneasy was an unpleasant 
revelation. But what could the warning be?  "By a warning, I refer to 
information of danger, not a threat to you. I once mentioned that in your search 
for datadrones you might discover. their source to be a so-called mech-planet.  
Well, I have heard through psychic forces that such a place does indeed exist. 
And I am convinced that it is not within the realm of the Galactic Patrol. I 
fear that it has something to do with Eichwoor, the ghost of Eichlan. I suggest 
that you pursue this with Worsel and that you pay more attention to this line of 
examination."
A mech-planet! This rumor wasn't new. However, that such a place might not be in 
this plane of existence was fantastic! Cloudd was intrigued with this entirely 
new possibility; indeed, Kallatra was right to warn him-he had never thought of 
-this himself.  "But I also must say something about myself," she continued. "I 
don't want to alarm anyone who doesn't already know, so keep what I have to say 
confidential: It concerns my ability power-electro-psychic communication, my 
ability to receive frequencies that only a few Lensmen, like Worsel, of course, 
can sense."
"I know, Lalla. You're speaking of psychic forces, not physical processes, like 
telepathy-you're a sensitive, a psychic medium, a-" He paused.  "-a soul 
sniffer." She filled in the derogatory term for him. They were strolling 
together along the smooth campus walkway, and she stopped to look at him, her 
Lens in her forehead glowing. "But that's not my only unusual trait. I have 
something else,  which is now recognized as an affliction." He felt the hair 
rise on the back of his neck. She turned away and began walking again. "I am 
subject to malfunctions in my circuitry, a sort of neuro-mechanical oscillation, 
from outside forces. Evidentally there are frequencies peculiar to mechanical 
semilife forms that I pick up unwittingly. They affect my robotic body, but are 
not recognized by my organic brain."
"Good Lord, Lalla," he said, "it sounds serious!" "It is. I have difficulty 
controlling my body at times. This stroll with you, for example, is in the 
nature of an experiment. How will I do? Will I falter? Will I fall? And if I do, 
will I recover in time? How long can my brain live without this independent 
support system?" "Lalla," he said, greatly shaken, "you've put your life in my 
hands and I appreciate your trust, but can I be of greater help? Forgive me for 
believing you indifferent to me. Why should this be happening now? Did your 
father, Deuce, when he was similarly tied to a mechanical body, have this 
trouble? What can be done about it?" "The trouble's a recent development. I'm 
going to Worsel and there, at his institute, we're going to work on me. You see, 
Benson," she hesitated and again fixed him with one of her lustrous stares, 
"there is a far greater calamity that seems to be happening than that which 
affects me. It has to do with the future of Civilization."
"I don't follow you... "
"I thought you were briefed? Oh, but you must have come in late on this whole 
situation. I'm one of the things that's going wrong but not just me, everything, 
our galaxy, our culture, our Galactic Patrol, everything!"
Cloudd impulsively grabbed her metal hand. He had a vision of her buckling and 
falling on her face.
"It's our machines. Our finest, our best, our most valuable servants of mankind 
and all our friends. They're developing aberrations. Things aren't going right. 
Our information banks are churning out errors. Our communication networks are 
malfunctioning. Our defensive missiles are no longer trustworthy. Even the ships 
of our fleets are becoming unmanageable.
"And I'm the litmus paper. I'm the thermometer that shows the symptoms. Oh, 
Benson, I'm scared!" "Scared?" he said, pretending to feel her pulse, trying to 
josh away her fears.  "You, scared? You'll be all right. Worsel will fix you 
up."
"It's not for me. I'm not scared for myself, I'm frightened that this is the end 
of Civilization!"
Like a painful cramp in the middle of his head, Cloudd felt Nadreck's thought:
"Cloudd! Kallatra! Go immediately and join General Chon, who is questioning 
Gronitskog.  He indicates there is information about the Eich and their planned 
invasion! I want that information within an hour. Kallatra, I want you to look 
for evidence of the other plane of existence. Whatever you find, Lens me at long 
range. Cloudd is to do the interrogation through you and Chon. Can you do this 
for me, Kallatra?"
"Certainly, Nadreck. I'll make the time."
"Lens you at long range?" Cloudd said, surprised. "What do you mean?,
'At the moment my cadets are unloading my personal speedster, and I'll be 
departing in the next 'few minutes. Save any questions for my Lens linkup with 
Kallatra. I'm in a rush to file my reports and to clear base here."
"What is it? Has something happened, Nadreck?" "There's a Palainian freighter 
that's run into the invisible invasion fleet out at the rim. A rim patrol 
Lensman has just flashed the word. I'm on my way there now. One hour, Cloudd. 
QX?"
"QX!"
If Kallatra had seemed frightened moments before, she certainly wasn't now. 
Cloudd had all he could do by running to keep up with her as she pressed back 
toward Wentworth Hall on her hidden wheels.
Chaplain General Chon, wearing his full dress Patrol uniform, as customary for 
psychological advantage in formal questioning, was waiting for them at the door 
to the detention and interrogation rooms. He had a notebook in his hand, his 
thumb keeping his place.
"Oh, hello, Kallatra! We have fifty-four minutes, Cloudd, to meet Nadreck's 
schedule." The general was fiercely rubbing his beard with his other hand, a 
pencil sticking out between his fingers. He led them inside and down a corridor.
"Nadreck is, or should be already, on his way to the galaxy rim. He wants you to 
interrogate Gronitskog, Cloudd, knowing that ethically I might have to withhold 
some things I learn. He wants the interrogation by you, without Lens help by 
anyone. I'll monitor his mind, and Kallatra can do the same, of course, but it's 
vital that we don't get into his mind and muddy it up in any way. This man's a 
complete innocent as far as we're concerned. We Lens people have to be careful 
to keep it that way for the purest research-we could get fact and fancy, truth 
and fiction mixed beyond recovery.
"What is exciting, considering our battle with Boskone and its Spawn and our 
efforts to pierce the enemy's secrets, is that his planet of Togra is controlled 
by the Eich. The Eich are so contemptuous of the Tograns that I find evidence 
they have said things indiscreetly, which this skinny humanoid has recorded 
unwittingly in his mind.  "Now let's get to work."
Cloudd was an expert interrogator, having spent so much time picking information 
about datadrones out of the heads of all kinds of peoples, and races who had 
observed things without knowing what they had seen. Chon and Kallatra acted as 
dual interpreters, their Lenses easily converting the alien's spoken symbols 
into English.  The hour with the thin brown man went by as if it were only a few 
minutes.  "Eight minutes to go, Cloudd," Chon said. And then, almost as if time 
hadn't elapsed, he said, "Four minutes left, Cloudd."
Cloudd was drenched with nervous perspiration. He quickly had found Gronitskog 
to be a selfish and cowardly person, with no loyalty to his Noyyonese Council of 
Twelve. However, Cloudd also found, as confirmed by Chon, that Gronitskog 
sincerely believed in his religion and in -the supernatural. His cowardice 
reinforced a truly righteous feeling about the immorality of starting a 
planetary war. He also hated the drug trade of Togra, where millions were 
addicts, mostly for the selfish reason that it reduced or nullified his 
religious power. As  Chon agreed, Gronitskog was not so much evil as badly 
educated. But the facts which Cloudd sought and found were few and devastating. 
He recognized the description of the Eich, who were represented as Satanic 
devils to whom sacrifices had to be made. Some were present in halos of fire and 
could not be seen-probably in atmosuits.  Some were wraiths who danced in Togran 
minds-and who appeared at deathbeds, so clearly that they could be described as 
Eich. "Eichwooren," Kallatra had said, and Chon had shivered. Cloudd was 
familiar with the Eich, but knew nothing but rumors about Eichwoor or the 
Eichwooren, the unutterably evil ghosts in the other plane of existence. The 
promise of the Satanic Eich was that "the invasion of the other corporeal system 
of stars will come when Togra and its nine companions have the same celestial 
longitude." That could be a reference to the First Galaxy being invaded and 
conquered so that deserving Noyyonese would have other worlds to rule. It was a 
typical Eich promise, and it contained one very important specific clue relating 
to time: the conjunction of the planets.  When was that conjunction? Cloudd 
demanded. Soon.
How soon?
In two revolutions.
In two revolutions around Togra's sun? Two years? No. Two revolutions of the sun 
around Togra.
Two rotations! Cloudd gasped. Two days. Two days and the Eich would-invade the 
First Galaxy? Attack Klovia in the Second Galaxy?
There was no mistaking the possibilities that existed and the way they fitted 
into what was beginning to happen out in space.
The deadline had come, and Chon and Kallatra jointly Lensed Nadreck with the 
information and guesses as Cloudd listened. The three on Tellus silently 
speculated over the consequences of their information.
" I acknowledge to you much gratitude," Nadreck said. "We have much to think 
about! I will be at my destination soon and will be busy. Meanwhile, Cloudd, get 
Gronitskog aboard the Sapphire, which my cadets have prepared for departure. 
They have to have a Patrolman in charge and you're it, Cloudd. They'll run 
everything, do all the work, they're competent, but you are officially the 
captain. That ship must leave before nightfall.  "General, with all due respect, 
please accompany Cloudd to Palain with Gronitskog, if possible. From there you 
can proceed to Velantia and Worsel.  'As for you, Kallatra, you have a terrible 
burden that I want no part of. I humbly defer to you and Worsel to work on this 
riddle. You two can fight ghosts, I cannot. Go to Worsel without delay. Prepare 
us for the worst. You have twenty-four hours.  "This is Nadreck, clearing 
ether."

8 The Dregs of Onlo
Tellurian Lensman Dick Armstrong carefully considered the chaos aboard the 
Palainian.  freighter Palai-kai. Surrounded by alien spaceships, the small 
civilian crew and the large body of terrorized passengers and servants seemed to 
be fighting for their lives. Deaths seemed inevitable, although none had been 
reported. Alien robots were aboard, but what they were doing was unclear. 
Inexperienced entities were armed and firing guns, endangering themselves and 
the ship more than the robots. The engine trouble with the inertialess drive 
could be a coincidence. A call for help, admittedly low priority, had been sent 
by him, but no one had replied. Did the message get through or was it blocked?  
And now Captain Finndha was panicking, telling him to Lens for Nadreck.  For a 
Lensman, Armstrong felt unbelievably helpless, this feeling. underscored by his 
rediscovered sense of power. Since his disablement, Armstrong had used his Lens 
for nothing more than telepathic communication and as a translator of alien 
messages. Here he had probed for lifeforms and had found none. He couldn't take 
charge of thousands of Z-forms, let alone manage a ship he wasn't familiar with 
or fight with untrained personnel and questionable equipment.
He had mentally pushed around some of the smaller spaceships, but that was about 
all he had done. The one other thing he could do was defend to the death against 
any takeover of the ship's controls, and that he was resolved to do. He had no 
intention of disgracing the Patrol.
The first thing he did was follow the captain's plea, and he sent out a second 
Lensed call, this time with emphasis. The extraordinary plea of Captain Finndha, 
with all its peculiar Palainian undertones displaying the contradictions of 
heroism and self-centered cowardice, was inelegant, but meritorious. The 
situation was horrible and desperate, and Nadreck was needed. So, although his 
Lensed cry for help went directly to his surveillance section chief, it was 
actually an indirect appeal to Nadreck.  Almost as a supernatural response to a 
prayer, a mysterious force propelled Armstrong out of the room, down a 
stairwell, and out an emergency exit into space!  A whir and a,whoosh and it was 
done!
At one second he had been standing next to Noc the next moment he was alone in 
space, a hundred yards from the beleaguered freighter! Weirdly, his pressure 
suit did not swell in the vacuum; he did not float; he did not tumble; he was 
gripped by something other than gravity!
For several seconds he stared at the scene before him, like a museum diorama or 
a fanciful entertainment drama. The freighter, fire-streaked and ponderous, hung 
like a gray ornament in the intensely black void. The ugly hole slashed in its 
back side was obvious, with purple mists trailing from it. White, silvery, and 
gray shapes, elongated or round, drifted slowly past him and his ship. The 
shapes filled the celestial sphere as far as his eye could see. He saw no 
details; out there in space, with no electronics to refine and amplify, he saw 
only the huge, overall panoply of an awesome swarm of things.  "I've encased you 
in a tractor zone. I want you to take a close look at these things."
The thoughts crashed into his head with the stunning strength of a highly 
focused mind.
Nadreck! Nadreck? Nadreck had plucked him out of the ship and put him here?
Impossible!
"Yes. I am Nadreck. I have done this to you, my friend Armstrong, not because 
you were in danger, but because I need you for my inspection of the situation. 
Do not fear, for I have an unbreakable grip on you.
"I heard your first message some time ago while I was at a conference on Tellus, 
but I immediately acted, for your situation is part of a greater, more serious 
one. I did not come because of your indirect plea to me just now. I was already 
here and have for many moments been studying the status of things. You are 
right, but from my viewpoint terrible things seem to be developing-which means 
we have work to do." "Where are you?" Armstrong strained his vision, searching 
everywhere among the ghostly shapes.
"I rest a thousand miles away. If I were nearby, you still would not see my 
ultrablack, indetectable ship. However, look!" For one brief unveiling, the 
Tellurian saw the Palainian.  The Second Stage Lensman was sitting amidst the 
machinery of his inimitable, extraordinary one-man spaceship. No one had a 
private speedster remotely like Nadreck's. It was a transparent octohedron, 
looking very much like a gigantic cut jewel. The eight triangular planes were 
revolving slowly, but inside Nadreck and his machines remained stationary. The 
L2 had the aspect of a fluorescent blue crab hunched over his controls. And yet-
and yet, he seemed more like a somewhat luminous spider spinning a web of 
rainbow-hued lights. The ship and its master was an unreal image, a phantom, for 
behind it, and through it, passed the solid silvery forms of the strange craft.  
Nadreck, a figure of mist, as tenuous a specter as his ship, was pressing 
buttons and now fading from sight.
"You are not in danger because I am keeping myself away from danger, and while 
I'm completely safe, so are you. Out here I can concentrate and can study what 
is occurring. I will safeguard you as we undertake our investigations, and I 
will see the details through your humanoid eyes and interpreting brain. Are you 
ready?"
Armstrong almost said, "Ready for what?" but he said, instead, "Yes, Nadreck. I 
am ready."
Armstrong had a sudden giddying plunge "down" toward the nearest cylinder, 
abruptly halting within a few feet of its shining surface. He didn't recognize 
the alloy. Nor could he see any signs of manufacture. There were no windows or 
doors. There were numerous closely-fitted round and square plates on the body 
shell, undoubtedly covers of apertures.  Overall, the thing appeared to be an 
18-foot-long torpedo.
As he was moved around it by the manipulation of the tractor zone by Nadreck, he 
was ordered to blink out a recognition signal with his hand lamp. "Identify 
yourself as a member of the Galactic Patrol," Nadreck said. Armstrong mildly 
protested such a revelation as foolhardy, but he did it.
On the curved side of the hull a startling insignia came into view -a golden 
meteor within a sunburst, a variant of the Galactic Patrol identification!
This was a Patrol weapon? A Patrol probe?
"No, it is not one of ours," Nadreck's thoughts came clearly, gravely. "It is 
meant to deceive.  I believe it is a copy of a Type-8 datadrone, able to mark 
itself with false colors, as it were, to conform with or be an ally of its 
hailer. You saw pirate markings earlier when you were read as a Boskonian. I did 
some probing on my own before I pulled you out, and I can make them conjure up 
all kinds of markings. But what I'm looking for is-" Nadreck pushed Armstrong up 
close-to some embossed lettering at the blunt end. "There! That line of print.  
I read radiant identification, but what do the letters look like to you?"
"85-46Z-788-A-ZZ," Armstrong said, pushing his gloved fingers over the bumps.
Immediately, Nadreck whipped him to another torpedo to. read its number.
"43Z-00-I83-A-ZZ," Armstrong read. And then to another. And another. And 
another.  Armstrong was groggy and slightly sick from his whirling trips and had 
become disoriented. He realized he was up against one of the large globes, dizzy 
with vertigo, pushing both hands along the smoothly curving sides, wondering how 
very large it really was.
"667-57-8534-9-A-ZZ," Armstrong said automatically. "Wake up! Look around!" 
Nadreck said. "Not at the formation. There is a black one in the center." The 
Tellurian Lensman twisted his head and saw a ring of silvery globes, perhaps 
twenty in all, forming a circle about ten miles in diameter. The ring at the far 
side seemed incomplete until he realized that globes were appearing and 
disappearing, blocked by an invisible object around which they circled.
In a matter of moments, Nadreck had swung him around the circle, collecting 
numbers, occasionally experimenting with making GP, Boskonian, Spawn, or other 
insignia appear and disappear. The bigger, black one in the center Nadreck 
avoided, telling Armstrong, "It's a mother ship, which I'd rather not disturb."
By this time Armstrong was too bewildered and muddled to grasp what was 
happening.  He wasn't surprised to find himself dumped back in the cracked 
section of the freighter where the robots had first appeared. There were no 
robots now.  "I humbly thank you, Armstrong," Nadreck said. "When you are in 
port, please contact me, which is my polite way of saying I order you. I'm 
leaving for Palain." "But what has changed? Did you drive them away, Nadreck?" 
Armstrong asked. "I don't understand." "The robots and the drones and the ships 
are gone," Nadreck said. "They never fired a shot at your crewmates. They 
weren't vampires among your passengers, they were trying to give aid, mend 
limbs, give transfusions. They didn't attack your control room, they attempted 
communication. The whole incident was an accident, which-they did their best to 
rectify. And now they have vanished-snap!-without a trace.  "They? Who are 
'they'? What are 'they'?"
"I shall tell Tregonsee that they are nonviolent intruders, from an unknown 
place, but stemming from our galactic culture."
"Nonviolent? Then they're not Boskonian? Did you find any clues?" "Of course, 
Armstrong. I am clever, so I found many. . . . This is Nadreck by Lens for 
Tregonsee ... You are S.I.S.? Please relay this to Tregonsee. The incident of 
Rim Patrol Armstrong reveals nonviolent intruders, from an unknown place, 
familiar with our galactic culture, related strongly to Tellurian culture. Their 
societal identification is A-Z-Z or A-zed-zed or A-zee-zee. This could be a 
place name, but I suggest it is symbolic of being from the beginning to the end 
to the very end, an identification of their purpose or philosophy, that is, A to 
Z to Z.
"This is important, Lensman-Nadreck finds no evidence from the strange craft 
that the fleet of one hundred thousand are any kind of threat except to 
navigation. However, I, Nadreck, find that the Palainian freighter is marked 
abundantly with examples of mechanical and electronic contamination, exact 
symptoms of our problems as outlined by our Galactic Council president. My 
conclusion is that this intruding fleet is connected with the trouble and that 
the A-ZZ symbol applies to the termination of our Galactic Civilization, perhaps 
even to include Boskonia and its Spawn. This is Nadreck. Clear ether!" Armstrong 
had crawled into the safety of an airlock, gathering his strength to draw 
himself to his tiny cabin. He was stunned. He felt as if the liquid in his brain 
cavity was swirling around and around like a vortex. He heard Nadreck's order: 
"Armstrong! Deep monitor your ship-and report to me on Palain!" and the 
gargantuan Z-presence was gone.  The arrival at Palainopolis of Cloudd, Chon, 
Gronitskog, and the six Palainian cadets occurred barely a half hour before 
Nadreck himself arrived in his one-man flitter. He immediately learned that the 
training ship was lucky to have arrived at all.  Cloudd had cleared the 
Sapphire's flight plan, and they had left the spaceport on the Academy grounds 
before midnight. He and Chon had continued their interrogation of Gronitskog 
almost up to the hour of departure, learning nothing else of significance, while 
Kallatra had left in a rush for Velantia to see Worsel. Chon decided to make the 
trip with the scrawny archbishop from Noyyon without delay. They had been 
developing an interesting theological discussion, and by the time the trip was 
over, Chon wanted to transfer Gronitskog as soon as possible from Palain to 
Worsel's care to pursue the investigation of Eich influence.
The ship, under the efficient management of the cadets, had smoothly accelerated 
to maximum inert speed and had switched into inertialess drive far beyond the 
speed of light.  Cloudd recognized with admiration that this training ship was, 
in fact, a miniature of the best of the Patrol's modern destroyer class, capable 
of the highest performance. He could have stayed in the small, uncomfortably 
utilitarian Tellurian cabin with the two others, but he felt he was titularly in 
charge. He suited up, therefore, for an even more uncomfortable trip.  As there 
were no monitoring screens, only intraship visiscreens, leaving him unconfident 
about overseeing what was going on, he stayed on duty in his pressure suit all 
of the time, watching the small, amorphous figures of the cadets busily moving 
about in the light of his headlamp. He really had little idea of what they were 
doing, but he wanted to be there in the unlikely event that he would be needed. 
As it developed, he did have a decision to make, and he made it incorrectly.
Their narrow escape from disaster came halfway to Palain.
There were clangings of bells and blinkings of signals at frequencies above his 
visual perception, which his belt monitors gave some indication of. The senior 
cadet came to him and attempted some communication. The creature waved limbs at 
him and spoke noises that he couldn't decipher because he didn't speak 
Palainian. He tried spaceal in return, but that didn't work either. With no 
translator box aboard-it had been replaced by other training devices-Cloudd 
ordinarily would have waved the young Palainian on about his business.  However, 
with a Lensman aboard, especially one of the caliber of Chon, Cloudd asked for 
and got communication through Chon's Lens.
"Sir," the cadet said, "there is a lifeform traveling roughly parallel to our 
course. An emergency marker is transmitting from its location. The indication is 
that help is needed.  Shall we alter course to investigate? If we do so we will 
be delayed by some 180 P -time-units or 20 GP minutes."
"Is it a GP standard signal?" "Yes, sir."
"Then we must investigate."
"Very well, sir." The eye-straining figure made what Cloudd took to be a mark of 
respect with its blurred limbs and backed up into a blending with the other 
figures.  "Keep me posted," Cloudd had Chon Lens.
Cloudd didn't feel the ship change course, so smoothly was it run, and six GP 
minutes later the cadet, presumably the same cadet as before, the leader named  
Yadsue, came partially into focus in front of Cloudd; asking to report. Cloudd 
was lying prone on top of some equipment overlooking the control console, 
swiveling his head toward the different screens that emitted visible light, 
trying to see something.  As Yadsue appeared, so did an image on several 
screens. The object was a Tellurian suit of heavy armor, designed for extended 
operation, tumbling slowly in the void.  "Our instruments show a humanoid 
lifeform alive inside the suit, sir. Shall I proceed to recover it?"
Cloudd could read through Chon's Lens as if it were his own.  "Scan it 
thoroughly, Yadsue," Cloudd ordered, ". . . You are Yadsue, aren't you ... ? We 
want nothing dangerous aboard." 
"I am Kweeda. Yadsue is at the scanner readout. There is nothing dangerous, and 
he is continuing his scanning even as the rescue takes place."
"Any trace of where this space-suited person came from? Any wreckage? Any 
messages still echoing around? Any references?"
"Yes, Yadsue has a disaster report from a wreck of an unlicensed freighter in 
this sector within the past three GP days, but there is no derelict or debris. 
We came through this sector four days ago and had no warnings or reports then. 
The disaster report is weak and could perhaps be heard only by someone like us, 
close by. Yadsue repeats that there is a life reading and that no dangerous 
material, instrument, or apparatus is connected with the humanoid body or its 
standard free-toinert lifesuit."
"Chon," Cloudd said, will you scan this object for me?"
"I have, Cloudd," Chon replied. "I find nothing unusual, except that it's a 
free-to-inert suit designed with an inertialess inhibitor to slow the suit down 
to regular inert space for increased chance of rescue. That's GP or Boskonian 
warship stuff, not for freighters except on the drug trade."
"Yadsue," Cloudd said, "I want a reading on his intrinsic velocity. Do you know 
what I mean? What is his original pre-inertialess velocity? It will give us a 
fix on the direction of his spaceship before it went free."
"I know what that means, sir. My Academy training is thorough. It is ... one 
moment, please ... it is 170,000 miles per second at 225 degrees Azimuth 45 
degrees plus x as we travel.
That indicates-"
"-that indicates," Cloudd broke in to exercise his command position, "downward 
and backward relative to us, and, reversing the line of flight, indicates 
origination from outside rather than inside."
"Coming from the rim?" Chon said. "That makes it off the usual flight paths. 
Boskonian or-Spawn?" "What are the humanoid's vital signs?" Cloudd asked. "Can 
you evaluate his condition? Could he remain as he is for another six hours?"
"Are you contemplating passing him by?" Chon wondered, obviously concerned. The 
law of the spaceways did permit such possibilities if other rescuers were 
available.  "This is Yadsue: Yes, at least six hours."
"Then listen, Yadsue. Grab the body with a tractor beam and clamp it to the side 
of our ship. On the down and back side. That's important, the down and back 
side, the aft keel.  When we get to the Palainian system, we'll reorientate our 
own intrinsics, match ours with its, and put us both in phase to land on Palain 
'VII. If we don't-" "-we will have a disengagement of a monumental explosion." 
That thought was not only Yadsue's, it was also Chon's.
"Why riot bring him inside?" Chon said. "We can examine him and give him first 
aid if he needs it and put him back outside when we're ready."
"No," Cloudd said, "I don't want to bring a suit in here with an inertialess 
inhibitor. How do we know what will happen if the suit is opened? The guy comes 
out, prepared for trouble, and releases the intrinsics of the suit. He lives, 
blows .a hole in our ship, and is rescued when some ambushing partner easily 
picks us off as a cripple. No, he stays outside, pointed the. other way.
Cloudd watched the operation on the screens, the visuals not nearly as good as 
he would have liked them, but good enough to make sure the job was done right.  
"Very good, fellows. Now get back on course. It's taken us eighteen minutes, and 
I'm certainly going to let Nadreck know what an excellent half dozen future 
Lensmen he has in you." Cloudd let himself relax for the first time since the 
incident started.  "Chon, sixteen hours have elapsed since the fortyeight hour 
deadline was determined.  When we arrive, it will be twenty, one hours used, 
with twenty-seven hours remaining. Have you picked anything else out of our 
Noyyonese guest since we left?" "He's got space sickness. We'll have to wait 
until Palain to get going on him again." Cloudd had been staring idly, almost 
without seeing, at the monitoring screens, expecting the ship to go free of 
inertia at any moment. Did that figure move? Cloudd peered more closely. He did 
move!
"Chon, get me Yadsue!" Cloudd shouted. When Yadsue acknowledged the call, 
suddenly appearing in front of Cloudd, the Tellurian lieutenant said, "Hold back 
on going free: Check the condition of our castaway. I thought I saw him move."
"The suit's about the same as it was, sir. He's shifted his body around to be 
more comfortable. He must be cramped.... As a matter of fact, sir; he seems to 
have actually rotated his body 180 degrees."
"I don't want that!" Cloudd said, forcefully. "I'm suspicious that-" There was 
an explosion; a bomb had struck the aft keel. The bomb was unique, a human body 
had released its intrinsic velocity simultaneously with the release of the equal 
intrinsics of the suit. Instead of a single projectile of man-in-suit, they had 
smashed together in a fireball of energy that holed the outer shell and buckled 
the inner shell of the hull. The airtight compartments locked, and the ship was 
safe. It had come, however, exceedingly close to complete calamity.
"God bless us!" Chaplain General Chon Lensed, after he had picked himself, up 
off the cabin floor and had helped the Noyyonese recover his senses. "What a 
horrible accident!" "Accident, hell!" Cloudd said, and reeled off some salty 
oaths. "Forgive me, Chaplain, but we almost went to see your boss! Of, all the 
dirty tricks, this really singes Klono's whiskers.  Somebody.set out a booby 
trap for us and we almost got wiped out by it. If the intrinsics had been 
released all in the same direction, I believe we would have. As it was, the man 
couldn't turn the suit, so he turned himself in our direction and let it rip." 
"You mean," Chon said slowly, weighing the full implication of Cloudd's 
analysis, "that someone sacrificed himself just to destroy us? Why? And who 
would do such a crazy thing?"
"The man could have been drugged or hypnotized. That's not too difficult to 
figure out. As for why, there's only one explanation. The trap was laid after 
this ship went up a few days ago, knowing that the ship would return this way. 
Was someone trying to murder six young Academy cadets about to be Lensmen . 
"Nadreck!" Chon said, seeing the truth.  "Yes, Nadreck," Cloudd said. "Somebody 
set this death trap for Nadreck." And that was the story Cloudd told Nadreck 
when they met on the barren plain of Palainopolis, waiting for the old-fashioned 
hoverbus that was to transport all of them back to subterranean Palainopolis.
Nadreck at first had been impatient, listening to the story. A bus had come, but 
Nadreck had signaled for Academy transportation, so they waited for it while 
standing in the bus out of the zero degree heat, the three oxygen-breathers 
still in their suits. Midway through he had become deathly still, part of his 
mind hearing and part separately pondering the collection of events. At the end 
of the story he quickly spoke.  "You, my fine cadets," he said, "you had no. 
equipment malfunctioning or electronic contamination? No? Then you are right, 
Cloudd, and I know who plotted this mean and reprehensible act, which I must 
grudgingly admire. The perpetrators are my mortal enemies, the Dregs of Onlo."
"The Dregs of Onlo?" Chon repeated. "Who are they?"
'A personal matter for me, Chon," Nadreck said, brushing away any explanation. 
"What is important is to consider the possible relationship with the rim 
incident. There may now be five separate threats converging on us. The obvious 
ones are from the disorganized Boskonians or the newly organized Spawn of 
Boskone; Kinnison is certain they both are our trouble. Kallatra, however, tends 
to see a return of Eichwoor, the ghost, with legions of fellow spirits she calls 
Eichwooren. Then there is the unknown instigator, suggesting human or Tellurian 
influence. Add to them the Dregs, which heretofore have been interested 
exclusively in me. Now I will tell you of what the rim Patrolman, Dick 
Armstrong, encountered."
Nadreck flashed the events quickly into their minds. "Type-8!" Cloudd exclaimed. 
"The datadrones are back! The round globes are different. Are the drones 
tracking the round globes? Or are there new types of drones?" Cloudd was caught 
up in the old excitement.  "That trickery with the fake emblems, that's 
something new, too. What do you think, Nadreck? Is this a more serious drone 
threat are they now aggressive instead of passive?"
"There are datadrones involved, undoubtedly," Nadreck said. "To what extent, 
though, I am not certain. It is significant that the drones were last seen near 
Pinwheel DW433, the shortest line to take them away from the galactic center and 
toward Andromeda. This invisible invasion fleet is entering the rim close to the 
galactic plane from that direction, although perhaps this is a deliberate plan 
of misdirection. What do you think of all this, Cloudd? You're the datadrone 
expert." .
Cloudd had been puzzling over the possibilities ever since he had been asked to 
join the conference the day before on Tellus. He was beginning to see a pattern.  
"I think the drones are back. I never did believe that they were sucked up and 
destroyed. I think they've discovered all they want to know about Civilization's 
technology, and now they're leading an attack on us through subetheric wave 
interference. Who's behind it I can't guess, although their base very likely can 
be the mech-planet the rumormongers suggest exists. I'm worried we're entering a 
time of revolt by our robots." "Revolt?" Chon exclaimed.  "By our robots?" "Here 
comes the Academy shuttle," Nadreck said. "We must Lens Worsel and Kallatra as 
soon as we get to the Academy. Things are shaping up, and I have a feeling the 
loose ends are ready to be tied together. "We have hardly twenty-four hours left 
before the Eich, and maybe the Eichwooren, are due to attack."

9 Death Answers the Prayer
Cloudd's stay on Palain was short and he was thankful that it was. From what he 
saw of the surface of the planet, it was barren and vastly unattractive, the 
city was a jumbled mess of square, windowless structures, and the people were a 
mass of shifting, shadowy shapes.  The atmosphere was pure poison for him and 
the temperature was so low that it couldn't be registered on a normal mercury 
thermometer. He was glad to be taken underground and deposited in a Tellurian 
room with bright light.
He had been in his room for only a half hour, however, and it was already 
getting on his nerves. The furniture was very practical, uncomfortable, and 
absolutely without aesthetic style. The walls, ceiling, and floor were bare. The 
decoration was simple and very effective, but to him, extremely unpleasant: it 
consisted of overly bright, garish, colored light-rippling out of and over all 
the sides of the room, ceiling, and flooraccompanied by some kind of discordant 
Tellurian music. The only objects he could pick up and handle were a dozen 
plastic books, half of them in English, their topics limited to science, 
mathematics, and astronomy. They were didactic and had no pictures.
After twenty minutes he was inclined to think that he was in some kind of 
chamber designed to punish him. He was on the verge of beating on the walls, 
there being no visible door, and shouting for attention, when he got a thought 
planted in his head.  "In five minutes there will be a lecture by you before an 
assembly of Z-Academy cadets.  Prepare yourself. You need only think of a 
toilet, Cloudd, and a panel will open to one. I hope you have" been comfortable, 
my friend, with good air and enough heat. We do not receive many hotheads on 
Palain, you know." Cloudd knew the thoughts were coming through a Palainian 
Lens, but it seemed somehow different, as though Nadreck were transmitting 
through an intermediary or staff member.
"I can hardly wait, Nadreck," Cloudd said.
"The entire student body," the Palainian Lensman, whoever he was, continued, 
"has been briefed with all available information, including the encounter by the 
Lensmen Nadreck and Armstrong with the unidentified fleet. Please summarize in 
less than one hour those points that you consider salient, and then be ready to 
answer questions. You now have your five minutes."
When a panel slid aside, Cloudd walked through the opening and down a long 
hallway and around a corner where he met Chon. The general was standing before a 
transparent wall, next to the seated figure of Gronitskog, with many vague 
images shifting about on the other side of the glass. Probably they were the Z 
cadets, Cloudd thought to himself There were two empty stools next to the 
Noyyonese, and when Chon sat down on one of them after giving a cheerful smile 
and nod of his head to him, Cloudd sat down on the other.  "Please stand up, 
Lieutenant Cloudd, and come closer to the window and tell us about the 
datadrones," he was told.
'As you must already know the details," Cloudd said, "I have nothing much to 
say. About a year and a half ago spacemen, particularly Tellurians, who had been 
probing the less populated regions of the Milky Way, began to notice the small, 
segmented, torpedo-shaped drones drifting near them, aimlessly, it seemed. 
Sometimes the objects were observed streaking off on unchartable courses. They 
were elusive and bothered no one, but I became intrigued, and in the course of 
my prospecting in many regions I began to go out of my way to observe them. I 
reported my findings, which weren't many, but the Patrol considered my work 
valuable and assigned me an official role in gathering details. I succeeded in 
capturing a small one and determined that it was, in fact, an information 
collecting device. I identified a larger, mother machine, which was an 
assembling point and a transmitter. A much larger third kind was discovered 
releasing the two smaller types. I determined that these datadrones, numbering 
in the thousands, were not Boskonian, but represented some other, unidentified 
race or controlling force. Our attempts to solve the riddle of their appearance; 
mission, and source failed. The datadrones, those that remained apparently left 
the galaxy immediately following the defeat of the Spawn of Boskone and their 
black hole weapon.
"This is my summary. But, of course, I have told you nothing new," Cloudd 
concluded and quickly sat down. "We have questions for you, Cloudd," Nadreck 
said. "The first one is, why, if they were bothering no one, did you not leave 
them alone?" To Cloudd the answer was so obvious that he had difficulty 
explaining that the unknown must always be investigated, either to defend 
against it or to exploit it.  "But considering that the Galactic Patrol was 
already heavily involved in contesting the rebuilding of the remnants of Boskone 
by the Bosko-Spawn, with its so-called 'Doomsday Machine,' having the potential 
to obliterate millions of worlds, why did you assume that the Galactic Patrol 
was right to stir up trouble when it was not yet necessary.  Again Cloudd 
tolerantly defended his position and that of the Patrol. He couldn't help 
feeling, however, that Nadreck's attitude was hardly the sort to be taken by 
young entities who were planning to be Lensmen. "I understand your feeling, 
Lieutenant Cloudd," came the thought, in a manner that Cloudd knew was meant for 
everyone there, "but you must understand ours. As has been stated many times, 
our intrinsic nature is to ignore and be ignored. Our lives and our culture have 
proved this to be desirable and to be effective. It is necessary, absolutely 
necessary, that we try to understand the Tellurian mind as much as we can. We 
are obstinate, so we will continue this line of questioning until we are 
satisfied no further purpose will be served for us.
With this straightforward, although rather abrasive attitude, the questioning 
continued. To Cloudd, it was almost nonsense and seemed to serve no intelligent 
purpose, but he answered to the best of his ability.
Finally he was through. His summary had taken less than a minute. His 
inquisition had taken nearly threequarters of an hour. He was left feeling 
overwhelmingly irritated, not only because the questions seemed so thick-headed, 
but because he had had his own good sense and rationality actually undermined by 
them.
"Do you need a rest break, Lieutenant? Do you, Chaplain General? No? Then we 
will continue." Cloudd tried very hard not to let his thought slip through, 
"What about Gronitskog? Maybe he needs a rest? but evidently he failed because 
the Palainian Lensman said, 'As Gronitskog needs no rest either, please come 
forward, Chaplain Chon, and speak to us. I have already informed the students of 
all we know about this humanoid from the planet Togra. There are a number of 
questions they have that Nadreck cannot answer with authority. We address this 
to the Chaplain General of the Galactic Patrol:
"What makes this barbarian a holy man?"
Chon, tall and stately in his dress uniform, turned his head toward Cloudd, 
raised his eyebrows and gave a grimace and a sigh as if to say, "Well, Cloudd, 
now it's my turn for the really heavy stuff." He turned back to the window, 
folded his arms, and gazed solemnly at the amorphous mass of figures before 
speaking.
"A holy man is one who associates himself with and follows a spiritual system," 
Chon said.  "At the best, he is one who is -in touch with God, the Omnipotent 
Witness. However, I understand your question to mean why should he be a holy man 
when he is our enemy and on the side of evil. The answer is subjective, based on 
one's beliefs. He can be holy and yet still be in error."
"Why does this or any religious man wear a charm of superstition?" "It's a 
symbol of faith and a badge of recognition. Also, in some cases, such as this, 
it is a prayer focuser or amplifier, either technologically or psychically 
augmented. What you see is a reproduction we have made of his- pink-sphere-
within-white-sphere icon enclosed in a thin transparent box. We made the 
substitution because it could be a transmitter or homing device that might 
compromise our security. That's probably 'why you evaluate it as a mere charm."
For nearly ten minutes, this kind of question was asked and answered. Cloudd 
found the questions much more interesting and revealing than Chon's answers. At 
first Cloudd was positive that all the Palainians in the group were basically 
atheistic, although he quickly modified his judgment of them to agnostic. Then 
he decided they were exceedingly metaphysical, concerned with cosmology, the 
study of the ultimate order of the universe, and thus paradoxical. Their 
questions showed him that they were very interested in the study of the nature 
and existence of God in the narrow sense of trying to detect him through facts 
and reason. They didn't seem to understand or care about intangible or spiritual 
things. They simply couldn't understand why Gronitskog could be a man of God and 
be on the side of evil if God was all-powerful and all goodness. Why should God 
permit evil, they wanted to know?
Chon did his best, but no one seemed very satisfied. Cloudd, who always had 
thought of himself as "religious, " but who had never actively practiced 
"religion," was himself confused and suddenly filled with doubts he had never 
before seen or admitted. The Palainians were far more astute than Cloudd had 
given them credit for, but what really impressed him was the obvious fact that 
they thirsted to know everything they could, but that if they couldn't get the 
knowledge or understand the knowledge they found, they worried about it in an 
unemotional way. They did not upset themselves as human beings did, yet at the 
very same time they would claim to be worried. No wonder the prime tenet of the 
Palainians to ignore and be ignored seemed to be broken as much as it was 
followed.  Finally Nadreck said, "Thank you, fellow Patrolmen. You have 
admirably shown to our cadets how peculiar the human races are and why you are 
always confused. Or should I say, Chaplain Chon, sometimes confused and 
sometimes unclear?" The window darkened and the vision of the Academy students, 
like objects in an unlit aquarium filled with indiscernable movement, faded from 
their sight. The two humans did not have long to wait for instructions.
"General, if you will take Lieutenant Cloudd and the cleric Gronitskog back to 
your room," Nadreck said, "you will have a wait of about an hour. Then we will 
board a Palainian-manned GP destroyer for a trip to Velantia. We have made an 
unprecedented revision and are at this moment graduating our class ahead of 
schedule. I personally am to congratulate the nineteen new Lensmen and present 
them with their Lenses, which arrived last week from Arisia. We are now counting 
the minutes rather than the hours until the predicted invasion begins."
"Very well, Nadreck," Chon said, leading the way back through the corridor in 
silence, although Cloudd was tempted to comment on the fact that the Tellurian 
Academy graduating class alone was five times larger.
Chon's quarters were almost identical with Cloudd's, but somewhat larger. Cloudd 
sat down in a chair that looked much like plumbing pipes and canvas, while Chon 
stretched out on a piece much like a simple camping cot.
"My trip seems to have been a waste of time, General," Cloudd said. "I don't 
think I gave the students anything they really didn't know already."
"Well, as for myself," Chon said, this has been extremely valuable. I know much 
about our Togran companion and some fascinating details about his religion. And 
as for Nadreck, I have learned much more than he suspects about his personal 
life and motivations and those of his comrades."
"That's true," Cloudd said. "And I have learned a lot about you and about 
religion, sir. You make me realize I've no foundation-that I've been drifting. A 
year ago I was cocksure of myself, and now I seem to have lost it."
"I see that, Lieutenant," Chon said, lying on his back with his hands under his 
head as a pillow and his elbows out, staring at the flowing lights on the 
ceiling. "Since you lost your independence by taking orders from the Patrol, 
you've found yourself in a bigger picture, and it's made you a worrier."
"So, it shows, does it?" Cloudd said. "I don't know what to do about it."
"Don't think you're alone, Benson," the general said. "I have a similar 
problem." "You do? Why should you feel a lack of self-confidence?" "That's easy 
to explain," Chon said. "Like you, I was a doer. The Patrol has turned me into a 
bureaucrat. So, you see, we're both free spirits who have been caged. I feel I'm 
not accomplishing what I should be accomplishing-maybe because I'm not good 
enough, or maybe because I expect too much of. myself. We're both looking for 
something we don't seem to find, possibly because. we aren't sure what it is. 
The differences, however, are that you unwittingly are worrying about it, 
whereas I, for the time being, at least, accept my fate." "But you're-you're a 
man of God. You should feel, well, satisfied with your work. At peace.  Not like 
me." "Do you forget, Benson, that I'm a Medonian? You recall how my kind fled 
the Second Galaxy to get away from the enslavement of the Boskonians?" "How 
could anyone not have that etched in their memory?" Cloudd said. "To think how 
you folks, so much like Tellurians, actually turned your planet into a super 
spaceship with a super Bergenholm drive and shifted yourselves-world and all-out 
of the evil galaxy and into our good one. Your scientists deserve all the 
laurels and kudos they get." ' A titanic feat, no denying it-but emotionally 
overwhelming. Mentor chose me as one of the first Medonian Lensmen, and with 
such . an advantage, I rose quickly to be a Gray Lensman. Medonians tend to be 
independent that way, the result of their sense of planetary aloneness. That 
gave us our maturity and strength in our religion. Accepting appointment as 
Chaplain General of the Galactic Patrol was a natural decision for me for 
Unattached status specialization. It's my Medonian upbringing that so quickly 
brought me the reputation of an outstanding theologian, whether or not I deserve 
such recognition." "You deserve it, General," Cloudd said.
"I wasn't fishing for compliments," Chon said. He stroked his gray beard, his 
small, blue eyes pensively narrowed. I say this to make you understand that my 
life, like yours, has been regimented, not deliberately by the Patrol, but by 
the system, by the bureaucracy, a consequence of my being chief administrator. 
Like you, my responsibilities shackle me. I miss my independence. Like you, for 
a year now, since working with Worsel and Lalla Kallatra on spiritual matters, 
I've had the itch to do more than play diplomatic games." "You do make me 
understand myself better, sir," Cloudd said, "but really I'm puzzled. Why tell 
me all this?"
"Well, simply this, Benson-I want action and you can get it for me."
"Me? How?" Cloudd was intrigued.
"I want to go to Togra personally and uncover the Eich-Eichwoor link there. I 
want a Second Stage Lensman to be involved in the project. And I want Kallatra 
to go with me because she's essential to sniff out and battle Eichwoor when we 
come across it. If you come, Nadreck will be interested and Kallatra will 
personally come." "Why is that?" Cloudd asked quickly, now bewildered. "I can 
understand about Nadreck, but why should my going make her go?"
"She wants to work with you. This could be a great chance for her. She has 
Unattached status, so I can't order her to go, but I can entice her. If she 
goes, Worsel will be interested and will keep in touch with our progress, so two 
Second Stage Lensmen will be personally involved."
"She wants to work with me?" Cloudd found the idea hard to believe. "What makes 
you think that? Did she tell you? We've always seemed strained around each 
other-at least, I have."
"She didn't say so, but believe me, Benson, I can tell you two are a natural 
pair---she with her abnormal psychic powers and you with your natural compassion 
and sensitivity wrapped up in an aggressive, adventurous spirit. You come with 
me and I guarantee she'll come with us."
"But I can't just demand to go with you. As you say, I've got my commitments. 
Nadreck feels I should be chasing the datadrones as the best lead we have to get 
a line on the invisible invasion fleet."
"You underestimate yourself, Benson. You're practically an Unattached Patrolman, 
something different. If you say this is what you want to do, you'll be allowed 
to do it, especially at my request. Even a Chaplain General, who often seems 
just a complicating annoyance in high headquarters, does get some attention."
"Well . . . " Cloudd was half-convinced. "But my datadrone work comes first. . 
." "Precisely. There is a connection, I feel, between the drones and Eichwoor. 
Coming with me will be a logical step for you. I can't yet prove the Eich and 
their psychic weapon, the original ghost called Eichwoor and its cohorts called 
Eichwooren, are involved, but I think I'm close to it. We have further chances 
to interrogate Gronitskog about this while we are making the trip to Velantia-
and then with Worsel and Kallatra's help when we get there." "You've convinced 
me, General Chon," Cloudd said. "Now tell me, do you know something about 
Gronitskog's knowledge of the Eich and Eichwoor that I don't know?" "By virtue 
of my deductions, I probably do. The Eich are definitely the masters of Togra, 
controlling them through religious dogma, messages, and occasional miracles. The 
planet was a big base for dismantled Boskonia and now for its Bosko-Spawn 
offspring, supplying the most fanatic intellectual and warrior leaders. It's one 
of the key worlds among the hundreds, maybe even thousands, locked together in 
the conspiracy. This archbishop can communicate with the Eich in two ways-
through standard equipment and through ultra-etheric frequencies, which may 
involve Eichwoor. There have been revelations and prophecies concerning fighting 
angels and devils, which I have interpreted as space battles and conquests. The 
fall of the Galactic Patrol is envisioned. The Day of Deliverance is at Hand, 
Armageddon is Now, the Master has Come, and all sorts of other signs are there 
to tell me the conflict has begun. If we can tap into the Eich communications 
through Gronitskog or other Noyyonese or Tograns, we'll find that. victory for 
ourselves will not be in doubt. I have visions of their heavenly chariots, 
easily recognizable as spaceships, but I don't know where they are to come from 
or what planets are manufacturing them. Tell me all you know about datadrone 
construction."
Cloudd was meticulously describing the three types of datadrones to Chon when he 
was interrupted. Chon held up his hand and said, "Nadreck wants a Velantian 
time-check.  Excuse me for a moment, please." "Certainly," Cloudd said.
Chon quietly concentrated for several seconds, pressing his wrist with the Lens 
to his forehead. The movement was really not needed, any more than Cloudd needed 
to scratch his head in order to think. Cloudd studied him, as much impressed as 
ever with the routine by which a Lensman was able to be given such precise 
information. Cloudd heard nothing because Chon did not bother to connect him 
telepathically, but he knew how the system worked. At all times a central time 
bureau was operated by Lensmen with a twogalaxy-wide network. By his Lens, a 
Lensman could receive a time for any location, adjusted in any manner necessary. 
Without this essential service to the Patrol, operations would have been 
difficult in some circumstances and impossible in others.  "We leave for 
Velantia immediately," Chon said, rising, awakening Gronitskog from his slightly 
drugged sleep, and steering him out of the room.
The Palainian ship they boarded now was bigger, although not much faster, and 
its accommodations were much more comfortably standard Tellurian. As soon as 
they were aboard, they were given some unidentifiable but pleasant food, and by 
the time they were finished, Nadreck, whom they hadn't seen among the few 
Palainian Patrolmen they met on the way to their cabin, was in contact with 
them.
Nadreck had arranged for the interrogation of Gronitskog to take place in the 
wardroom, with himself and two Palainian assistants in attendance. For the first 
time, Cloudd was informed that the new Lensman, Yadsue, was in the party. In the 
center of the room a transparent cube had been formed by the retractable walls, 
a device to permit conferences with different aliens breathing different 
atmospheres.
With Cloudd on one side and Chon on the other, Gronitskog was seated in the 
cube, and the three Palainians were crowded up close to the almost invisible 
walls .  The interrogation began with verbal communication by Cloudd, then with 
Chon, followed by some gentle telepathic probing by Chon. Gronitskog was puzzled 
by the shifting images a few yards away from him, but the two Tellurians kept 
him busy enough that he did not really comprehend that what he was half seeing 
was a trio of monstrous aliens;
Then Nadreck began his own gentle but insistent mind probing. The reaction was 
completely unexpected. Gronitskog screamed out words having reference to 
"devils," threw up his arms to hide his face, which was distorted with terror, 
and collapsed in a heap. Cloudd and Chon bent over him, straightening his body, 
loosening his clothes, and chaffing his hands and face.
"Nadreck says we must carry Gronitskog back to our room and lay him out on the 
bed," Chon said, motioning Cloudd to lift Gronitskog's feet. They wrestled the 
unconscious body through the angles of the corridors, constricted by the zone-
of-force envelope thrown around them as their temporary, moving bubble of 
oxygenated air.  In response to Cloudd's. query, Chon explained, "Nadreck says 
his mind probe struck an implanted mental barrier. The reaction was _ like a 
posthypnotic suggestion-Nadreck's penetration was so deep and close to some kind 
of knowledge forbidden to the consciousness that it triggered a complete mental 
blockage within the Togran. The Palainians were suddenly seen as Satanic 
figures. My own Lens tells me he'll recover, but he certainly needs rest."
When the limp body was on the bed, its muscles stiffened and the eyes opened. 
Chon stared into them and told Cloudd, without turning his head, "He can't talk. 
He believes his voice -has been paralyzed. He wants us to leave the room so he 
can pray to his god."
"That cannot be," said Nadreck, strong enough through the walls to be caught by 
Cloudd:
"You can't leave him alone. Nor can you give him back his real prayeramplifier 
icon-I consider it too dangerous. Who knows what he might summon. Let him pray 
in your presence. He needs to be propped up, revitalized with some spirit if 
we're going to continue our questioning. I'll monitor his prayers and inject 
some encouragement into whatever he expects to hear. Don't, tell me it's 
unethical, Chon; I'll be properly circumspect."
Gronitskog sat up and held his hands to his head.
'At least let's lower our heads and our eyes, Cloudd," Chon said aloud. "This is 
undeniably a sacred moment for him."
Gronitskog took the fake icon of the double sphere from around -his neck and 
placed it on the floor. According to Chon, the substitution of the Palainian-
made bauble had not been noticed. He hitched up his black robe, knelt, and 
prostrated himself so that his forehead rested on the hallowed symbol. Chon 
lowered his eyes, as Cloudd turned away to assemble his tapes and notes.
Cloudd felt the wave of heat before he heard the bang and the hissing and 
crackling. The illumination in the room brightened with -a red flash. As Cloudd 
turned he caught a glimpse of the kneeling form of Gronitskog completely 
enveloped in fire. His robes were burning redly, but his head and hands were 
covered with flickering green flames. There was no outcry, no gasp, just the 
hissing of the green flames. Before they could make any move to stop the burning 
and save him, Gronitskog was utterly incinerated: A small pile of ashes 
smouldered on the floor.
"My fault, my fault!" Nadreck's humanlike groans came within the shocked 
Tellurian heads.  "I was stupid to let him reach out for the Eich. His faith was 
so strong-he was an archbishop for good reason, which I underestimated. I'm 
unworthy of your trust. Chon!
* Chon? Are you all right?"
Chon was on his knees, left arm across his face. When he lowered his hand, 
Cloudd, with horror, saw that the bottom part of the Chaplain General's face was 
black and the upper was mottled pink and red. Chon gingerly brushed his facial 
skin with fingertips. He looked at Cloudd and his eyes were clear.
"I've been badly scorched, Nadreck," Chon spoke to Cloudd and projected to 
Nadreck at the same time. He picked up with his left hand a tumbler of water 
sitting on the tiny table with the books and threw the water on his face. "It's 
not serious. My beard protected me and fortunately my eyes were closed. What's 
annoying is that I seem to have broken my right arm when I was knocked back and 
tripped over the chair." For, the first time, Cloudd noticed that Chon's right 
arm hung down loosely at his side. "When we sort this out, you can direct me to 
the sick bay or whatever you have aboard this modern ship." "Your pain is my 
pain, Chon," Nadreck said. "It is my fault." "Don't berate yourself, Nadreck ' 
Chon protested., "That prayer call should not have been strong enough to produce 
an answer. It was the fake icon that was responsible." "I know, I know," 
Nadreck, said. "Too late, too late. He believed so implicitly in his ornament 
that he multiplied the strength of his own prayer as if he had really had his 
amplifier. This is the worst humiliation of my life. He got the message to self-
destruct, and he immolated himself, fanatic enough to be a pyrophorist. I have 
allowed this 'valuable evidence, this key to the solution of our most serious 
problem to be destroyed. I, Nadreck, have allowed this to happen. Shame!"
"I pray for his soul, Nadreck. He was not all bad, and he would have become a 
worthy ally. If anyone is to be blamed, it should be me, for I know the power of 
faith. His god, as he saw it, answered him and gave him the strength to do 
this."
"Not his god, Chon," Nadreck said. "His false god. He called upon his masters, 
the Eich."
"And his prayers were heard. Did he ask to  be destroyed?"
"No." "Then why.
?"
"He was a living link through whom I could burrow my way into the hidden places 
and the secrets of the Eich. He did not want death. He did not know he was 
marked to die if he revealed his true nature. Nor did . I. He was no telepath, 
yet he opened up the shield I had around him. Even I did not know how intimately 
close he was to his masters." "So that is why the Eich destroyed him." 
"Unfortunately," Nadreck slowly and solemnly stated, in a manner suggesting that 
he was lecturing himself, "I must confess that it is far worse than just the 
Eich who came in answer to his prayers. It was as Kallatra suggests-Eichwoor and 
a thousand thousand like hima multiplicity of Eichwooren.  " I have suspected 
special trouble brewing on Togra and-planets like it. It was that suspicion that 
led me to take my Z-Academy training mission there. It is this new evidence from 
Gronitskog that caused me only hours ago. to dispatch the original cadet crew 
under Tweeda back to Togra on an Eich search. All except Yadsue, of course, who 
is with us.  They're all Lensmen now, 'and the only ones available for such a 
quick assignment. They may be young and inexperienced, but they'll be competent. 
They're the top of their class.  And we've got the additional advantage of 
having the apo-Eich, as well as the apo-Onlonian, as two of the scrutinizers. 
You must pray, Chon, that they find some weakness in the enemy security."
"I will, Nadreck."
"Eichwooren, they are our deadliest threat, thousands upon thousands times worse 
than that which Worsel and Kallatra faced last year. For the merest instant I 
have sensed them gathering on the edge of the other plane of existence, poised 
for their invasion. Lalla Kallatra's father, Deuce O'Sx, our guardian on the 
other side has been surrounded and overwhelmed. Civilization lies open to the 
assault upon our minds and the destruction of our spirits."
"So!" Cloudd exclaimed, "the invading fleets are the work of the Eich!" "Not 
so!" said Nadreck. "Chon and I know the truth. Those fleets are someone else's 
threat-even as the Bosko-Spawn are preparing to challenge us with their own 
warships.  The Eichwooren and their living counterparts, the Eich, are about to 
fight us on the mental plane only. They are disdaining our machines. They are 
like an infinitely large subetheric neutron bomb. The strange ships come from 
someone else.
"We have a three-front war developing, and we don't know how to defend ourselves 
against any of them!"

10 The Forbidden Galaxy
"Me? Come out and sit with you?" Cloudd called out to the dragon Lensman. "Not a 
chance, Worsel. You've got the great big wings, not me."
Cloudd looked straight down at the jungle of vegetation over a thousand feet 
below and instinctively drew back a few inches from the edge of the open 
platform. "I'm not the wild guy I used to be. Even wearing a Null-G belt I 
wouldn't enjoy the stroll, even with as nice a fellow as you are for company." 
viorsel, the Second Stage Lensman, was perched out on a landing rod, about 
twenty feet from the main balcony of Level 161, grinning wickedly at his 
Tellurian friend. He had just flown up from a lower stage and positioned himself 
to survey the perimeter of 161 andthe others just below, obviously looking for 
someone. When he had seen Cloudd, one who over the past year had become a 
friend, he couldn't resist a bit of teasing he Lensed an invitation for him to 
walk out along the eight-inch-wide beam and sit down and visit.  "well, I'm 
shocked, Cloudd, " viorsel said, pretending that he was and shaking his narrow 
serpentine head in mock disapproval. "You're supposed to be a firecracker, 
afraid of nothing, with a keen eye and great coordination, and you can't walk 
out a few feet to join an old friend for a few moments of relaxation. It's wide 
enough for an elephant to walk with its eyes shut. What're you afraid of? Don't 
you think I'd swoop down and snatch you up before you hit the bushes? Don't you 
trust old Worse.
The Velantian had his slender toes curled in a locked grip around the roost, and 
his sinewy ten-foot, scimitartipped tail was wrapped around the far end for 
balance. His head was cocked at a jaunty angle at the top of his long neck. A 
half dozen eyes, somewhat extended on their stalks, were pointed mostly at the 
human's face.
Cloudd ordinarily was fearless, but even standing a foot away from such a brink 
was stomach churning for him. He had never been on Velantia III before; the 
unusual shifting light, the heavy musky odor, and the hot-then-cold winds that 
alternately tugged at him and nudged him made him insecure. He readily admitted 
that he no longer was the foolhardy or reckless daredevil he once had been.
The building on which Cloudd was standing so high in the air was the central one 
of the Worsel Institute. He had expected a mass of impressive structures, 
probably of stone and dureum with high arched doors and windows to accommodate 
the huge reptilian Velantians. He had visualized the laboratories as white and 
polished, highly efficient, with the latest scientific equipment filling room 
after room. Velantians  would be everywhere, many with long white robes hanging 
loosely on their thin bodies to protect their glossy scales from being soiled or 
even, perhaps, to protect the apparatuses from the oils of their scales.
To his surprise, the Worsel Institute wasn't like that at all. The buildings 
were a collection of tall cylinders placed in some kind of obscure pattern to 
enhance the streams or gusts of air. Running up the center of each cylinder was 
a service core containing a freight elevator.  Encircling each building every 
twenty feet or so was a balcony 'rim. Jutting from each rim was a semicircular 
platform orientated five degrees off  the lower one, forming a sort of spiral 
staircase of platforms or corkscrew of levels.
Each, floor was a department or section, open to the air and protected only by a 
low railing a foot high. Velantians were able, in inclement weather, to fly in 
an upward circle, always under cover. A full circular roof covered the top, like 
an umbrella or the cap of a mushroom.  As Cloudd watched, Velantians were flying 
up and down on the outside, occasionally soaring and gliding from one building 
to another. The arrangement seemed efficient, healthful, and pleasing to the 
eye. It was also, to an earthman, spectacularly dangerous.  Worsel's personal 
space occupied the top five floors of the tallest tower, Levels 159 through 164. 
It was there that the conference was being held, the mapping of strategy by the 
Executive Sub-Committee of the Galactic Council, headed by President Haynes and 
the four Second Stage Lensmen. Worsel was the acting chairman, conferring in 
person with Lensmen Chon, Kallatra, and Yadsue, and their temporary Velantian 
staffs, and consulting by Lens, on the basis of equal rank, with Kinnison, 
Tregonsee, and Nadreck.  Nadreck could have been at the Worsel Institute in one 
of its special Z-rooms or in his oversized atmosuit: His customized atmosuit was 
much like a portable, miniature room and laboratory combined. Instead, Nadreck 
preferred to stay aboard the Palainian super-destroyer in comfort and 
participate in the hourly Lens-to-Lens linkups.  While Cloudd stood there, 
steeling himself against the natural impulse to back away to a safer position, a 
small, furry creature scampered out along the beam and climbed up one of 
Worsel's muscular thighs and hung on to his master's leather belt-harness. The 
gold-haired creature's huge, luminous eyes stared blankly at Cloudd, but the 
tiny mouth definitely was shaped into a humorous grin. Its tiny, bulbous fingers 
plucked away the notecase hooked to Worsel's belt and tucked it into its 
shoulder-slung- big blue pouch twelve inches deep and almost the height of its 
crouching form.  "Thanks, Bluebelt," Worsel said, telepathing his comment so 
Cloudd could hear it, more out of a desire to tease Cloudd than any wish for 
politeness. "Give it to my friend, Lieutenant Cloudd, and tell him to check the 
details with Kallatra. Tell him I'm gliding down to the communications section 
and will join everyone in a short while." As Bluebelt hopped back on the perch, 
Worsel abruptly launched himself into space, unfolding his wings as he plummeted 
down. Bluebelt, still grinning and chattering unintelligibly, scampered back to 
the balcony and stopping before Cloudd, gave a wink and a little bow and 
presented him with the notecase. Cloudd wasn't sure what powers Bluebelt 
possessed as Worsel's most trusted personal assistant at the Institute; so he 
smiled in return and simultaneously thought hard and said aloud, "Thank you 
kindly, sir," and took the courier case. Bluebelt scurried under some furniture 
and disappeared.  "I saw that, Benson," Lalla Kallatra said, when Cloudd walked 
around a low partition to the circle of chairs. As usual she was standing 
stiffly, swiveling only her head. "For a moment my pump skipped a tick. I 
thought you were going to let Worsel tempt you into catwalking out there. 
Sometimes his humor is positively wicked."
"Perhaps that is the curse of genius," came the thought to Cloudd. It was 
Nadreck, projecting from his Palainian ship, which hung in synchronous orbit 
overhead but out of sight. "Kimball Kinnison is almost as difficult. He would 
have taken Worsel's dare and walked out there, but then Worsel would have known 
that and wouldn't have suggested such foolishment. I will never get to 
understand you Tellurians. All this is a ridiculous waste of time. We are 
sitting on one or more time bombs, which, for all we know, exploded an hour ago 
as forecast. Lieutenant Cloudd, you have the official authorizations in your 
hand.  Give them to Lensman Kallatra, who will open and read them to herself " 
Kallatra passed the sheets one after another before her eyes, absorbing their 
information at a glance.
As she finished, Nadreck said, "QX. Everything's in order. I must return my 
attention to Lensman Tregonsee with whom I am having a Lens-to-Lens conference. 
Please discuss with each other the possible changes due to the incapacity of 
Chaplain General Chon." For Cloudd, there was a long period of silence in his 
head. Obviously he wasn't being privileged to hear that which a non-Lensman 
wasn't expected to hear. As Tregonsee was the chief intelligence head for all of 
Civilization as well as the Patrol in both galaxies, the tightest secrecy and 
security was to be expected. This led Cloudd to be struck, suddenly, with the 
realization that Kallatra never did communicate with him by use of her Lens, 
never moving herself intimately inside his head. The fact was, he all at once 
sharply noted, she was the only Lensman who made him uneasy when she touched his 
mind.  "Chon," she said aloud to him, breaking his troubled thought, "is going 
to recover from his mental disability." "What? Oh," Cloudd said, taken off 
guard. "It was a nervous breakdown?" Chon had collapsed four hours before, 
shortly after their arrival on Velantia, raving about being a Satanic minion of 
the Eich. He had been rushed to the hospital. Even a Lensman, Cloudd had been 
willing to accept, could be expected to suffer the crippling of his mind under 
such an experience as he had had.
"A temporary sickness, fortunately. Lensmen still have their normal frailties, 
with more complex mentalities producing more complex stresses, but Chon was 
spiritually vulnerable to injury. Injury, that is, not death. Conversely, his 
firm spiritual foundation insulated him from irreparable debilitating harm, if 
not complete paralysis."
"It's wonderful news," Cloudd finally said, becoming aware of the full import of 
her words.  "His arm is completely healed, and physically he's in perfect shape, 
but mentally he'll require attention and several days of hospitalization. He'll 
be out of action indefinitely." The robot woman once again turned her .blank, 
immobile face toward Cloudd. There was, however, a new expression in her shining 
eyes, which disturbed him. He saw suffering there. It was unmistakable. 
Something was causing her physical pain. It shocked him to be reminded that she 
was a human being.
"That's bad," he said. "The plans we've been making for the past ten hours will 
have to be revised. As Nadreck pointed out, the zero hour set by that rumor for 
the invasion to begin someplace has passed. We have no time left: Yet we still 
aren't certain whom we're fighting, what we're fighting, or where we're 
fighting. You were scheduled to go to Togra with Chon and join the new Palainian 
Lensmen. Does that mean you'll be going alone?" Kallatra, for emphasis, shook 
the packet of papers she was holding. "According to these, President Haynes has 
agreed to our plans for two operations, with Worsel in charge of one and Nadreck 
in charge of the other. The Worsel action party, meaning me and Chon, if he is 
healthy, is to go to the planet Togra to pick up leads to the Eich. I'm to 
concentrate on the spirit allies of the Eich, meaning Eichwoor himself and his 
potential hordes of Eichwooren.  Nadreck remains in Velantia orbit ready to rush 
to the scene of the first contact with the enemy fleet. Evidentally I go alone, 
with Chon."
Nadreck's voice came to Cloudd again. "Tregonsee wants to know where you would 
start to attempt relocation of the datadrones. They're a connection we haven't 
fully explored since the Armstrong affair."
"I'd start from the Andromeda constellation, sir," Cloudd said.
"Kallatra, give Cloudd all references to the datadrones, and -then destroy those 
reports.  Chon is out of action and won't need any briefing." As quickly as it 
had arrived, Nadreck's presence left.
The robotoid began flipping through the pages again with the speed and rhythm of 
a copying machine. 'According to this, Benson, our problems have been labeled as 
Operation Eichwooren, hypothesizing from Nadreck's vision, and Operation Robot 
Revolution, theorizing that some kind of temporary or permanent fundamental 
change is taking place. I should be personally involved in both operations, but, 
of course, my special talent concerns the Eichwooren. Worsel's in the same 
situation. And so is Nadreck.  Because of that encounter Worsel had with the 
sentient machines forming Arrow-22 a the Planetoid of Knowledge, he should be 
working on e rebellion problem, rather than Nadreck. And Nadreck, because he 
uncovered the  trouble on Togra, should be working with me. However, because 
Worsel and I once fought the Eichwoor, our assignment is logical. Because of 
your involvement with the datadrone technology you certainly belong with 
Nadreck.
"Now, about the facts you need. . ." She quickly read off to him all the 
references to datadrones and aberrant machines. To Cloudd, there was nothing he 
didn't know already.  "Anything about your father's spirit?" he asked 
cautiously. "We all know he was in bad trouble. What's new? If I can, I'd like 
to know."
"There isn't anything. When Worsel and I heard about his danger, about the time 
I arrived here, we joined our minds in a strenuous effort to reach him through 
the veil across the other existence. We encountered total emptiness-which is 
ominous. I tried to sense him as the robotic 24of6; there were no frequency 
patterns. My psyche tried to touch his Deuce 0'Sx psyche; again, nothing. Worsel 
joined with me for enormous amplification of my el-sike penetrations without 
results. However, as I have not had any feeling of tragedy or any bad intuition, 
I feel that Deuce is still an intelligence whose otherworldly existence has not 
been destroyed."
A shadow and a breeze came across their area briefly and departed. Worsel had 
arrived with a beating of his vast wings. He folded them away unobtrusively 
against his back as he came to them in eight giant strides.
"We've received our signals, they've been decoded, and I'm ready to leave. I've 
set up a command post here at the Institute staffed with our best Velantians and 
our most accomplished Rigellians. My associate Hobdyll, the South Velantian 
Lensman, is chief of operations, with Bluebelt as my personal communications 
aide. Nadreck has just finished turning his destroyer into his command post for 
Operation Robot Revolution, or Rob-Rev, with himself as chief of operations and 
his new Lensman Yadsue as his aide." From the tables scattered around the 
circular conference area, Worsel was picking up certain spools, cassettes, and 
tiny boxes of recorded information and stuffing them in pouches in the belts 
around his. abdomen.
"Kallatra, you've got to get to Togra as quickly as possible. Nadreck's cadets 
report they're on to something there. You'll have to go alone. However, I'm 
going to take up a position at a central point between Velantia, Tellus, and 
Togra, to back you up, yet able to meet any contingency. You need a Lensman to 
monitor you who is familiar with the Eich and Eichwoor. Chon could have done it. 
Now I'll have to do it at long range.  'As for you, Cloudd, not being a Lensman, 
your effectiveness is limited. You have to be telepathic in both directions, 
able to transmit as well as receive. I thought of sending you along with 
Kallatra, but that's no more practical than me going, if for different reasons. 
Then I thought of Tregonsee taking over for me as head of Operation Eichwooren, 
and me going with Kallatra, but Tregonsee's got his tentacles full of his 
complicated S.I.S. and M.I.S.  probes, searches, and investigations for some 
information on the current crop of menaces we're facing. However, Nadreck and 
Tregonsee have come up with a good idea to use you, as you've no doubt guessed. 
You're going out on a personal search. To keep in contact, I've arranged for 
your own setup from my staff Bluebelt will help. You are to put together every 
detail you can on the mystery ships. You'll stay in constant touch with Bluebelt 
and your staff, who remain here.
"I see you're wondering how to keep in contact without a Lens. Well, Lensman 
Dick Armstrong has reported in from his rim patrol encounter, which we all know 
about. He's been debriefed and he's going with you in the Tellurian speedster we 
keep on this planet. If there's one thing you're good at, Cloudd, it's hot 
rodding a personal spaceship. Go down to the spaceport and meet. Armstrong. 
You'll be leaving as soon as Nadreck briefs you and releases you. Find those 
invisible ships. And good luck to you both." Worsel had stopped picking up 
things, but all of his eyes were waving around on their stalks, making certain 
he had not overlooked anything.
"QX, Kallatra?" Worsel asked. "Ready to go? I'll take one more update, and we'll 
make another stab at reaching Deuce O'Sx. And then we'll be off for Togra aboard 
Flame." Kallatra nodded in her awkward way. Flame, Cloudd recalled, was Worsel's 
name for his own personal speedster. "I'll drop you off there and then take up 
my position as planned." Worsel bounced over to one of the control boards placed 
behind the chairs and with incredible speed, sent his slender fingers with their 
trimmed yet still sharp claws dancing over a hundred buttons. He cocked one eye 
on the input, one eye on the reply screen, one eye on Kallatra, and one eye on 
Cloudd, the others still roving, and said, "Ready, Kallatra?  We'll join in one 
more effort to reach Deuce. I've had two hundred of our best Rigellian 
perceivers with high level psychic indices working on that situation for 
the.past two hours with no luck. Mental frequencies are crystal clear, but 
equipment and communications channels are contaminated and fouling up electrical 
systems. This robot revolution is some kind of anarchy. The invasion fleet might 
be a false alarm, but the disorders in our robotry and semi-intelligent automata 
are for real."
Worsel pretended to kick the machine with one of his powerful hind legs and then 
gestured Kallatra into position before the board.
"You have the ability to give me a hint as to what's happening, Kallatra. Tune 
into the lines and give me your impressions."
She rolled forward so her trunk and legs pressed against the metal front. She 
laid her shining fingers along the outer edges of the keyboard and placed her 
forehead, with its glimmering Lens, against the upper cabinet.
"I've done this before," she said in her impersonal voice. "Nowhere has there 
been a hint of any independent, intelligent thinking machines. There must be, 
however, a source for all the troubles. I'll look again. I'll look as hard as I 
possibly can while I drop all safeguards-" Without warning her arms jerked up 
and she rolled rapidly backward with a squeal of gears, almost knocking Cloudd 
off his feet. He instinctively wrapped his arms around her waist and hung on 
grimly to prevent her from toppling over.
"Let go of her!" Worsel commanded sharply. As Cloudd obeyed, Worse] himself 
picked her up in his sinewy arms, froze stiffly in intense concentration for a 
split second, swung himself around, and dashed for the edge of the platform. As 
he sprang outward, his thirty feet of body and tail strung out like a winged 
snake, he planted a series of thoughts in Cloudd's mind: "Get to your ship and 
check with Nadreck! Kallatra's caught a case of the gremlins.... Her prostheses 
are malfunctioning. We're off to the hospital for her new body. .  . . What a 
lucky chance, a propitious time; it's fate!"
Within seconds Worsel and Kallatra were gone. Worsel's thoughts didn't end in 
Cloudd's head; they sort of trailed off into a jumble of ideas. He had never 
seen Worsel so excited, even happy, yet at the same time so enormously serious. 
A new body? What did he mean by that? Words came back to him that Worse] had 
spoken when he had introduced Cloudd to the girl in the mechanical body. "Some 
day she'll have a natural face." Only now did he realize Worsel had not said 
"natural-looking face."
Cloudd was running out of the main building to jump on a passing electric 
freight cart going toward the spaceport when Nadreck reached him.
"I expect you to leave in twenty minutes for Andromeda, Cloudd. When you're on 
your final check, have Armstrong Lens me."
Nadreck was irritated at Worsel. The big snake had dashed off, . sidetracked by 
his pet project, as if the destruction of the universe could wait for him and 
his experiment. It wasn't that Nadreck didn't  like Lalla Kallatra, because he 
did. She had a brain that was able to comprehend his-and his was as good as the 
two or three best in the universe. In fact, Nadreck secretly told himself, it 
was times like this that he was certain that he indisputably had the best mind 
of any Lensman and second only to some Arisians.  He had just completed his 
Lensed exchange with Tregonsee when Kallatra collapsed.  Through his sense of 
perception, augmented by his Lens, Nadreck had discovered what Worsel had 
discovered-Kallatra's mechanical body was faltering under the unexplainable 
subetheric interference plaguing all machines. Kallatra, as a mechanism 
supporting a human brain, was the only machine in existence, so far as he knew, 
that could actually be considered mortal and subject to total destruction. Other 
life-support systems might fail, but safeguards always existed: Except in the 
case of Kallatra. Nadreck didn't want her to die, but Worsel could have put her 
brain on a standard life-support system with appropriate protections and worried 
about her body later. She could have functioned that way, with her Lens laid out 
on her cortex, but no, Worsel wanted to shove her brain into that new body he'd 
cloned and had been growing for her. Her trip to Togra seemed out of the 
question.  Well, anyhow, Nadreck thought, the operation was bound to be a 
success, or Worsel wouldn't be doing it at such a critical moment. And maybe, 
Nadreck conceded to himself, always as forthright in admitting he could be wrong 
as he was arrogant in pointing out when he was right, just maybe Kallatra could 
function better against the Eichwooren in an organic body. Tellurians were 
always worrying about physical appearances and growing old and sometimes 
Velantians seemed just as irrational. Even barrel-bodied Rigellians-yes, even 
Tregonsee himself-made references to physical deterioration and counted the 
stretch marks of aging on their hard-shelled, leathery bodies. Anyhow, whatever 
the outcome, Worsel would certainly let him know the news when it was 
appropriate to do so.
Nadreck resented his feeling of irritation. It wasn't really Worsel and Kallatra 
who made him feel this way, of course. Nadreck was irritated because he had no 
obvious course of action to take. The ships or fleets that threatened them were 
as ghostly as Eichwoor, whom he had never really believed existed. Tregonsee, 
who always seemed to know something about everything, was as frustrated as the 
rest of the leadership of the Patrol. Nadreck knew, deep within his 
multidimensional gut, that the threat was real even if he couldn't prove it. He 
carefully went back over what he had told Tregonsee:
"The assumption must be that they are intruders, if not actually invaders. They 
are not violently hostile, or even mildly antagonistic, but, in fact, benevolent 
to an unknown degree.  They come from an unknown place, most likely from the 
Second Galaxy or a galactic cluster, perhaps even from deep or intergalactic 
space. They are familiar with Civilization and Boskonia, with their derivation 
probably from Tellurian culture. They have a high technology and a desire for 
secrecy and noncommunication. The vehicles may be manned or unmanned. Their 
destination is unknown. Their purpose is. unknown. By themselves, as I have 
observed them, they pose no obvious threat to anyone, except by accident. 
However, their appearance comes at a time when there are rumors of hostile 
action against Civilization and against the Patrol, coinciding with as yet 
unidentifiable subetheric frequencies interfering with Patrol defenses and 
machinery and technology in general.  Therefore, it is my conclusion, that it is 
imperative that more be known about them, even if it necessitates violent action 
by us against them to obtain that information." Tregonsee had agreed with him, 
and so had President Haynes. Kinnison had been informed immediately that the 
Patrol should undertake warlike actions without hesitation.  What was Worsel 
going to do about Togra, now that both Ch on and Kallatra were out of action? 
Well, that was his problem; Nadreck had his own problem. The big puzzle was how 
to monitor the so-called Robot Revolution. Machines couldn't be trusted to check 
up on machines. Unsupervised readings were unreliable. There weren't enough 
Lensmen to go around for the purpose of noticing and correcting mechanical 
problems. What was needed was a nonmechanical meter or gauge. Fortunately the 
Ordovik crystal that warned of the existence of hyperspatial tubes was 
unaffected. There were millions of Ordovik crystal detectors in operation 
throughout the Patrol, with every Lensman wearing one. There was absolutely no 
hyperspatial tube activity, so the undiscovered fleet would not come through one 
and take the Patrol by surprise.
After much cogitation, Nadreck suggested a method by which the machines 
throughout Civilization could be monitored and Tregonsee had enthusiastically 
endorsed the idea. He furnished Nadreck with planetary coordinates that Nadreck 
could use to find the world he needed and also volunteered to marshall a task 
force of S.I.S. and Special Missions Forces personnel to help collect and 
distribute the monitors. Nadreck, pressed for time, welcomed the help, but 
insisted that he personally had to go to the most populous planet of arthropods. 
Worsel had also been consulted in order to obtain some expert advice from the 
specialized personnel on the Planetoid of Knowledge, where the Great Hall of the 
Machines was situated, which contained all the information on all of 
Civilization's machines and had representative samples of them in operational 
form available to analyze. It was there that the mechanical consciousness known 
as Arrow-22 had been confronted by Worsel and driven from the galaxy. Worsel had 
also approved, praising the idea, but had facetiously dubbed Nadreck's principal 
source as Bug World and Cockroach Planet.  Nadreck had patiently explained that 
it  was Arthropod-0392, but even he had come around to thinking of it as Bug 
World and of its inhabitants as the Beetle People.  The request Nadreck had been 
expecting from Worsel came to him while he was discussing with his staff how to 
handle his absence from. the operations ship while busy on Bug World. He 
particularly briefed Yadsue on the way to handle his personal Lens 
communications. If Yadsue was surprised to find how accurately Nadreck could 
anticipate a call, he didn't show -it.
The caller was Worsel, and, he explained that the operation to transfer Lalla's 
brain into the flesh body was progressing satisfactorily. The empty-headed body 
had been growing for her ever since her original organic body had reached the 
chronological age of nineteen.  Worsel had planned on something between twenty-
one and twenty-five, but waiting extra months for growth was no longer 
practical. The DNA manipulation had left the brain cavity with nothing buf a 
medulla oblongata and a skullfull of fluid, just as Worsel had so imaginatively 
envisioned.
Worsel's call, however, was about the problem that Nadreck had anticipated and 
prepared for.
"Chon's out of it. Now Kallatra's out of it. I'm going to have to go to Togra 
myself, Nadreck. I need a backup just as I had planned for Kallatra. How about 
you standing by in your own speedster out in space? Tregonsee has agreed to take 
over your command post and run both your and his operations from there. QX?"
Yes, Worsel. I expected your request. I've made all the arrangements. I'll leave 
immediately, as soon as my flitter is loaded. Tregonsee can take over from me as 
soon as he gets here, and my staff can carry on until he does."
"You're terrific, Nadreck! You should have been a Velantian! Chon hasn't been 
informed, and shouldn't be, but Cloudd has-he's been long gone with Armstrong. 
We're five hours past the original invasion deadline, so maybe it won't happen 
after all-I can dream, can't V I'm jetting out now. Lens me on Togra as soon as 
you get into position. May Klono go with us!"
Before he left, Nadreck Lensed the young Kweeda on Togra and heard their plans 
for their reception of Worsel. Worsel would have plenty of lines to follow in 
search of the Eich. Then he Lensed Tregonsee and received a rude shock.
"Friend Nadreck," Tregonsee said, cool and unruffled as always, even in moments 
of stress, "we seem to have a problem with Cloudd." Tregonsee explained in his 
typically laconic way that Cloudd was breaking the supreme taboo of the Galactic 
Patrol, undertaking the gravest breach of Patrol discipline, violating the 
wishes of Mentor himself.  Cloudd had passed through the Andromeda 
constellation, continuing on out of the galaxy in the superspeedster, heading 
for a different galaxy. It certainly appeared he was bound for the huge 
Andromeda galaxy itself!
"I cannot reach him by Lens. Perhaps he is ignoring me. He is your protege, 
Nadreck, see if you can recall him."
Nadreck was, for one of his rare moments, without anything to say.  "Did you, 
perhaps, send him there, Nadreck?" Nadreck found expression to his feelings at 
last. "No. I did not. Civilization seems to be going mad.
It's the Tellurians, Treg. The Eichwooren have found a way to addle their 
brains. - "If Chon were healthy, I'd ask him to pray for us. "What can we do 
about it, Treg? Nothing!  Only Mentor can solve this crazy predicament!"

11 The Stolen Star
The planet that was a star moved slowly out of orbit. Shimmering waves of energy 
rose up out of its chromosphere, that ruddy gaseous layer of incandescent atoms 
that mantles a star, and formed into the luminescent envelope of its corona. The 
plumes of broken atoms were twisted and warped by the stresses of the 
manipulated magnetic forces, but they did not diminish the forces of its 
thermonuclear fires.
The planet-star slowly curved away from its central group of two guarding suns-
one red dwarf and its captive red micro-dwarf-and, gathering momentum, headed 
away from the core of the Milky Way, through the spiral arm known as Rift 240, 
toward gathering fleets of the Galactic Patrol. ' The Cahuitans, whose nursery 
world was being stolen, were not frantic, for that was not their way. But they, 
who ordinarily took a thousand years to make a simple decision, reacted within 
days, an infinitesimal moment of their time.
The Cahuitans were beings of pure energy, complex and long-lived, not even 
vaguely corporeal or substantial. Their intelligence was so uncomplicated and 
logical as to be almost  incomprehensible to the handful of minds of Galactic 
Civilization who had managed to understand their existence. Within the billions 
of suns and planets of the First Galaxy, it was as if they did not exist. They 
had no part or interest in Civilization, and in turn, that attitude was 
reciprocated.
Only briefly and disastrously had the Cahuitans once entered into symbiosis with 
Civilization before both parties had agreed to separate as distant friends. Now 
this was changing, and the Bosko-Spawn were the cause, creating an antipathetic 
symbiosis calculated to destroy only the Galactic Union, but unwittingly bound 
to do the same to the race of Cahuitans.
All "the future generations of the Cahuitans, their ethereal children, were 
being taken from them b y organicchemical beings. The Cahuitans did not 
differentiate between the forces of Civilization and the Spawn, nor did they 
care to.
There were no weapons to resist the rape of their small system. Only one of 
their beings, Medury, had ever even communicated with a double-mind from the 
material existence.  They could not protest or plead or threaten. Medury had 
tried and failed.  They had only themselves. As living atomic vortices they 
could be their own weapons, living bombs. They gathered together into an 
enormous mass of pure energy and pursued the thieves. Streaming in pursuit, like 
an invisible bolt of lightning in space, they knew they might not, could not, 
rescue their children and the nursery. But they certainly would destroy the 
murdering meddlers.
Kimball Kinnison paced impatiently back and forth in his large cabin, the nerve 
center of an entire galaxy while he was aboard his special warship, the famous 
Dauntless. When he strode across the thick gowskin rug, there was no noise, for 
he moved with the silent grace of the human animal he was. When the hard rubber 
heels of his gray leather boots struck the metal decking of the ship, however, 
he beat out a sharp, rhythmic tattoo. The noise of his clicking heels gave him a 
sense of action, or at least a promise of action, like the rolling of drums 
before the battle.
Back and forth he went, alone and deep in thought. From time to time he would 
pound one heavy fist 'into the leathery palm of his other hand. Kinnison's hands 
were tough and firm, not like those of a chair-bound executive, for his whole 
body was kept in top physical condition by day-to-day attention. Without his 
moments of contrived action, or exercise, his job of Galactic Coordinator would 
have been impossibly tedious and destructively sedentary.
"Where in all the purple hells are those damn Boskonians!" he said to himself 
and gritted his strong white teeth in his notoriously aggressive jaw. Men 
flinched from his eagle stare above that obstinate jaw and acknowledged him 
their master. The jaw was set now, but there was no one it could impress. The 
enemy was nowhere to be found.  Kinnison had taken a task force of Patrol 
warships out to the edge of the First Galaxy, in the vicinity of the Lensman 
Armstrong incident; as soon as the other Second Stage Lensmen had taken up their 
scheduled tasks. He was there only as a result of his having made a forceful 
appeal to Council President Haynes with assurances that he had arranged for 
mobilization and a complete war footing for the Second Galaxy and that his 
presence for a week would not be missed. Kinnison s jurisdiction technically 
didn't extend into the home galaxy, but as his old classmate, Raoul LaForge, who 
was in charge of First Galaxy defenses, was more than happy to share 
responsibilities with his close friend, and as President Haynes, their boss, was 
partial to Kinnison and knew also that keeping an old war-horse from dashing to 
a five-sector fire was psychologically wrong, Kinnison got his wish. Kinnison 
was the first line of reconnaissance and defense: All that was needed to make 
Kinnison's joy complete was the enemy to fight.
The enemy finally came, and more than he had bargained for.
A warning bleep and a crisp voice came out of the console in the center of his 
famous poker table. The message froze Kinnison in midstride.
"Sir! Detectors show an uncharted object curving to intersect our course. 
Readings indicate the characteristics of a small star, but they also show the 
object is either inhabited or manned by lifeforms."
With a curt acknowledgment of the message, Kinnison leaned across the long side 
of his elliptical table and punched up his information screens rapidly, one 
after the other. The muscles in his cheeks had turned his grim mouth into a wry 
grin. Action at last, and it looked like something big! There was no doubt that 
a presumed enemy spaceship in the magnitude of ten or twenty percent of the 
Grand Fleet was approaching them at an unbelievable speed and accelerating. It 
was like only one other incredible thing he had seen before -a phantom warship 
of the Qu'orr. That, however, could not be what was approaching now. He had no 
doubt as to what should be done.
"Salgud!" he barked to the captain of the Dauntless, who was also acting as his 
chief of staff. "I want the task force to pull back and keep a distance of one 
hundred million or an energy level of five point zero." The level was already at 
four and climbing, with a one two five distance.
"Yes, sir!" The readings on Kinnison's meters and gauges stabilized with 
Salgud's reply.  "Signals!" Kinnison called. "Signals!" His voice command wasn't 
necessary, having buzzed for them, but Kinnison believed in voice and telepathy 
and even inbody language when expressing himself in the heat of action and to 
men under his command.  "Yes, sir!"
"Is Grand Fleet headquarters getting all this?" "Yes, sir!"
Kinnison reached out with the stupendous power of his mind and made 
instantaneous contact with LaForge. "Raoul! Get this!" Kinnison flashed to his 
friend all the information he now possessed, together with his analysis of the 
unstoppable danger. "We're accelerating back toward you, but the thing keeps 
coming. If we go into free flight, we'll lose contact, and that might happen in 
the next ten minutes. Your fleet is big enough to stop it, provided you get into 
position. If you miss, it's capable of eating up any Civilized planet it can 
reach, and that includes Tellus and Prime Base!"
Kinnison's heart jumped in his throat. The thing had grabbed his task force in a 
zone of traction and was using his own ships to pull itself almost at light 
speed toward them. It now looked like a comet as the Einsteinian effect of 
distension took place. This was no Qu'orr!  This was real!
There was nothing Kinnison could do!
"Give my love to-Clarrissa!" Kinnison called out to LaForge as the static 
overwhelmed him.  ". . . and the baby!" The message may not have gotten through. 
Clarrissa might never know that his last thoughts were on her and their new baby 
boy.
Arthropod-0392, or Bug Planet, was a tiny world about 3,000 miles in diameter, 
covered with low scrub brush, bushes, and grass over three-quarters of its 
surface and with small ponds, lakes, and streams over the rest. Because of the 
eccentric movement along its axis of rotation, its seasons were mild and its 
climatic zones varied little from polar cap to equator. For a Tellurian it was 
an inhabitable place of veldts, steppes, and marshes, of pleasant temperatures 
and delightful gravitation.
For a Tellurian, it was also a world of horror, filled with every kind of 
creeping, crawling, wriggling, and flying insect and related species. They 
existed from microscopic size to fist size, and they were the entire extent of 
life. The sky had no birds and the water had no fish.  Everywhere there were 
bugs.
For Nadreck, a Palainian, Arthropod-0392 was hell itself, loaded with oxygen, 
shimmering with heat, bright and unshaded in a glaring sun.
Nadreck had brought his speedster to rest on -top of an enormous patch of rock, 
floating softly down on his anti-G plates, but using his retro-rockets to sweep 
away the billions of tiny creatures he would have crushed. He knew what he was 
looking for, and he placed himself opposite the three-foot high mud tower where 
he could open up the nest with his ship's mechanical arms.
The Palainian wasted no time. He carefully sectioned the bughill with two double 
transparent plates, one pair horizontal and one pair vertical, and swung half of 
the nest aside. Each half was held intact by the separated plates.
He used his sense of perception to see the inside, for there was only a faint 
glow from the million luminescent grubs. He had had no difficulty finding the 
queen's chamber. The social system of these coleoptera was identical with the 
more common hymenoptera. Bugs or ants, in this world it made no difference, 
except that, unlike those who communicated by touch or sound or taste or smell, 
these bugs were telepaths. While it was true that the mental energy they gave 
off, even collectively as a colony of millions, was no more than an 
infinitesimal blip on a Tellurian or Velantian thought recorder, they 
nonetheless were true telepaths.
Already one half of the nest was summoning the other half to the defense of the 
queen. She lay below his intersecting horizontal plate, and only her workers and 
attendants within her chamber and in the passageways below could attend her. 
There was nothing they could do for her anyway. Blind and fat and incapable of 
moving, she could only lay her dozens of eggs each second from one end and take 
in the food constantly offered to her at the other indistinguishable, 
symmetrical end.
Nadreck opened up the molecules of the plate above her, reached in with his 
remote forceps, and placed her on the end of a flat tape protruding from the 
tube he had extended from the cargo area of his ship. He allowed the tube to 
sink downward through the plate and when it had, he closed the sections back 
together, reuniting the two parts of the nest.  He withdrew the two plates, 
leaving everything nearly as it had been, except that a tube extended into the 
queen's chamber and she herself was now lying on the tape within it.  Nadreck 
began to withdraw the tape up the tube, carrying the queen along its length, a 
trail of eggs stretching out in her wake. Nadreck watched with his sense of 
perception, shifting his attention from her, to the tube, and back to the nest. 
As he had foreseen, thousands of bugs were now choking the passageways and 
finding their way up the tube, following their queen. It was only a matter of 
time now before the entire nest would be stored in the three-foot square 
container in his hold. For the first few minutes they would be pouring in after 
their queen at the rate of one, two, three thousand a minute. Then with a few 
more tubes, he would increase the rate. Perhaps in five hours he would have the 
four million or so. That gave him five hours to conclude his arrangements.
There was no doubt in Nadreck's mind that his scheme would work, but he had to 
make a few tests to be sure.
Using his forceps he individually transferred a bug the size" of a pin head to a 
small box within his ship. When he had six, he moved the box to his console 
desk, and using a pipette, he placed one each behind three of his dials and two 
of his transistorized schematic boards. Concentrating his attention on each one 
in turn, sometimes using his Lens and sometimes without, he picked up the tiny, 
subetheric waves being broadcast from them. It was a mental feat as difficult as 
it would be for an anthropoid to physically sort out white grains of salt from 
black grains of pepper. Difficult, yes, but hardly impossible for any Lensman or 
telepathic Patrolman.
What Nadreck received was perfect. It was as if Nadreck himself were behind each 
meter or transistor box. When he changed the capacitance or altered the setting, 
he could see the change, actually feel. the change. He could monitor a hundred 
items with a hundred bugs and. never be given a false reading. What the bug 
sensed, he sensed, and there was no interference from any source.
The question yet to be answered was whether or not the strange interference 
affecting . the electronic and electrical circuitries of Civilization's machines 
would harm the little living creatures. Nadreck, however, was certain that would 
not happen. No living creature had been affected by the interference; it would 
stay that way-and Lalla Kallatra was the best proof of all. Only her machinery  
had been disturbed; her mind had remained absolutely untouched.
Distribution of the bugs would be easy. The problem would be the necessity of 
speed.  Nadreck had formulated his plans before embarking on his trip. A hundred 
Patrol couriers would rendezvous with him above the Beetle Planet. Twenty 
thousand to forty thousand of the little creatures, Worsel's "cockroaches," 
would be transferred to each. A hundred more rendezvous would transfer to a 
hundred more ships, and yet another hundred. And the queen and her eggs would 
stay with Nadreck. Back on Velantia there would be thousands upon thousands of 
eggs hatching, and, unmolested, there would be females allowed to live who would 
produce more swarms. Within weeks the entire galaxy would be flooded with 
insects, each living indefinitely on a drop of food, each carefully placed to 
monitor a vulnerable machine, each hundred or thousand in turn monitored by a 
Lensman or a talented Patrolman.
There would be problems on the cold planets, that was unavoidable, but they 
would live for a while, warmed by the heat of the mechanisms they spied upon, 
and then, when they died, they would be replaced.
Small, unobtrusive, noninterfering, easy to place, these insects would serve 
Civilization with unquestioning patience. They would not save the galaxies from 
the revolt of the robots, but they would make it possible to nullify the 
disastrous results of machines falsifying information about machines and 
creating insurmountable chaos.  Anyone of a thousand Lensman could have done 
what Nadreck had done. He knew, in all humbleness, that it was not he alone who 
could have come to Arthropod-0392 and performed this chore. But only by doing it 
himself, could he have been certain, as certain as he was now, that this wild 
idea would really work. Nobody could be as efficient and perfect as Nadreck, of 
that he was supremely confident.
All Nadreck had to do was wait until his cargo was aboard. And while waiting, he 
considered what had happened with Cloudd. The lieutenant had simply vanished.  
"This is Nadreck calling Yadsue at Velantia III." The thought went out across 
half the galaxy, but the time lapse was nil. Yadsue was not that accomplished a 
Lensman to have received Nadreck so quickly on his own, but the staff aboard the 
Palainian ship was the best.  "Yadsue here, sir."
"Give me an update on Cloudd."
There was nothing new. He had absolutely vanished. His Lensman companion, Dick 
Armstrong, abandoned on a deserted planet in a globular cluster closest to 
Cloudd's line of flight, had been picked up by a Galactic Patrol scout summoned 
by Lens to his rescue.  Armstrong was a sensible man, Nadreck knew that, and for 
that reason had been chosen so long ago for that confrontation on Nadreck's 
forefather's research laboratory. Through Yadsue, Nadreck requested and obtained 
a Lensed connection with Armstrong, getting firsthand the story of Cloudd's 
strange disappearance in search of a clue to explain what had happened. Nadreck, 
finding no satisfactory: explanation, was in the process of signing off, when he 
felt a surge of alarm and anxiety vibrate through his connection.  "Sir!" said 
the young Yadsue, allowing a feeling of fear to be sensed by Nadreck, whereas a 
Tellurian would have bravely tried to stifle his alarm and apprehension over an 
impending disaster. "The Kinnison Task Force has been destroyed! Where it was is 
now a mass of thermonuclear energy. And it is alive, sir! Alive!"
Nadreck was stunned, though he didn't panic. He questioned Yadsue, but there was 
nothing more to be said. Another Patrol force was going to investigate.  " I am 
truly sorry. Kimball Kinnison was a great man," Nadreck said. "Tell Worsel or 
Tregonsee to inform me if there is anything for me to know about. Perhaps 
Kinnison escaped. I will stay here for another few hours, and my plan for the 
distribution of the beetle-monitors will begin at my signal. I am sending out my 
official alert immediately. Tell Worsel or Tregonsee I have confidence that they 
will avenge our friend's death, if that is the fact, and that they will turn 
back our enemies. Meanwhile I will do my humble bit even as I lament."
Lieutenant Benson Cloudd had left Velantia, with Dick Armstrong, under a great 
deal of tension. He was naturally upset to have seen the strange Lensman, Lalla 
Kallatra, at the point of death. She was a female personality who, he now 
recognized, by some droll and preposterous alchemy had become a substitute for 
the companionship of his lost Lucille.  He didn't know how it had happened. He 
wasn't even certain that it, indeed, had happened.
Yet, he felt that such a relationship existed even as he resented it and fought 
to shake it off.  What was she going to be if she lived? Another robotoid? A 
square box, this time? No, of course not. A prettier piece of mechanism? 
Possibly; it wouldn't take much to improve on the travesty of a woman that her 
mechanical body had been. What about that "natural face" Worsel had mentioned? 
Would she have a real head? A living face-and a tin body? How gruesome. Would 
she, as was hinted, have a real, flesh-and-blood body? with enzymes and the 
proper hormones and things? He winced-to think about it. What would pure, 
innocent Lucille have made of all this? She had never been very imaginative; she 
would simply think he was crazy. Klono! That's what Lalla had that Lucille 
didn't have: a fascinating, trenchant mind. He had seen Lucille as a body; he 
had seen Lalla for what she truly was, a mind. And now he knew that each was 
just half of a woman....  The other factor in his state of tension was the 
person he had become-perhaps not what he had become, but what he now recognized 
himself really to be. He wasn't the dashing, swashbuckling hero he thought he 
had become after the tragedy of Lucille's death under the guns of the 
Boskonians. He was just a smart and brave officer in the Galactic Patrol, 
honored through circumstance and allowed to mingle on equal footing with the 
mighty. He had no cause to consider himself even remotely the equal of Kimball 
Kinnison. He was a child compared to the great Worsel. He was a simple helpful 
Tellurian to the monstrous Nadreck. He, Cloudd, was living a lie. It was up to 
him to show them that he was not an impetuous savage, capable only of discussing 
datadrones. He would prove to himself that he was of heroic proportions, and if 
he died doing it, why then his life would be a success.  His decision to fly out 
of the universe, if necessary, had come with the query from Tregonsee. Indeed, 
where would he start to look for the datadrones if he could give himself his own 
orders? He would start in the Andromeda constellation, he had said. And then?  
And then he would fly on-to the Andromeda Galaxy itself! By all the gods! That 
was it! He would leave the circumscribed space of the First and Second galaxies! 
He would be the first of Civilization to go and look and find and report what 
was really there! Why had no one ever done it before? Why had the Galactic 
Patrol always acted as if the close neighbor of Andromeda-as near to the Milky 
Way, the First Galaxy, in the one direction as Lundmark's Nebula, the Second 
Galaxy, was in the other direction. The Andromeda Galaxy, the Third Galaxy! And 
maybe later on to the fourth, and the fifth! Cloudd's vision was absolutely 
intoxicating.
It had come as a bucket of cold water tossed over him to hear that a strange 
Lensman, Dick Armstrong, was going to go with him. He wasn't jealous of the man-
he was concerned that the new man would object and turn an exhilarating moment 
into a nasty scene, or perhaps die because of someone else's fearlessness.
One thing Cloudd did know: He was going to go in search of the datadrones, and 
if there were any more clues suggesting that they had disappeared out of the 
galaxy, out beyond where even the Patrol did not venture, he would not hesitate 
to pursue them. What he had told the Palainian cadets was absolutely true the 
unknown must always be explored.  Dick Armstrong was a pleasant enough chap, at 
first glance seemingly a middle-aged Lensman whose strength was mostly in his 
mind and little in his body, too tame and restrained and unbelligerent. Cloudd 
was not surprised to learn that he was much older, on a third rejuvenation, and 
about to retire as a Prime Base professional administrator. .  They left in a 
'hurry and Cloudd didn't waste a second sounding out Armstrong on some basic 
ideas to determine what their relationship would be.
"This is an awkward 'situation for us, Lensman," Cloudd said. "I'm in command, 
but you're an experienced Lensman."
"Really, Lieutenant, it's not awkward. Not for me, at least. I'm used to taking 
orders. I'm here to help you, so don't feel that way, please. Tell me what you 
want of me and I'll cheerfully do it."
"Well, it's just because I know I'm inferior to you," Cloudd said, deliberately 
needling him, "that I have this feeling."
"Hold on, there," Armstrong protested, smiling and holding up his good arm. 
"Don't be confused by what some people say. Officers of the Galactic Patrol 
aren't inferior because they're not Lensmen. True, Lensmen are the elite officer 
corps. But that doesn't make them better than those who don't wear the Lens of 
Arisia." "Not better?" Cloudd spoke softly, but his words were sharp. "They have 
to be better officers. To deny that woul be nonsensical." "Well, Lieutenant, 
they're not better officers because of the Lens. Forgive me for sounding 
immodest, but Lensmen are considered better officers because to get a Lens one 
has to be above average. It isn't the Lens that makes one above average." So 
far, Cloudd noted, Armstrong had been taking the discussion as an interesting 
debating point, as a good way to pass the time and be sociable.
"That's the same difference, I think. Aren't you just talking semantics?" "I 
don't think so. That's where people get so confused, even Patrolmen. The Lens 
'is a tool and a badge and a special mark of respect. It's a means for the 
exercise of telepathy and extrasensory perceptions and other such powers."
"Precisely. That's what makes the Lensmen better." "No, not better-more 
efficient, more respected." "That sounds to me like a description of better." 
"Better doesn't mean more efficient and better equipped," Armstrong said, 
patiently, giving evidence of being tired of the subject. "I'm talking about 
character, about ethical standards and morality. Are Lensmen better than the 
lowliest Patrol officers? Am I better than you? Not necessarily.  After all, 
from the ranks of the juniors, in fact, from the ranks of all grades, and from 
the youths with no Patrol time at all, come the Lensmen. And many officers, for 
all sorts of reasons, never get the call to Arisia, never get the Lens. Are they 
inferior?" Cloudd decided the argument had gone far enough. " I see what you 
mean," he said.  Surprisingly, he really did see it now. He had thought of the 
Lens as being something he would have to live up to-actually it was something he 
might get if he deserved to have. it.  He understood that he was changing his 
mind, that he had no right to refuse the Lens should it ever be offered to him. 
But he would not seek it.
When the speedster reached the outer rim of the galaxy, beyond the constellation 
of Andromeda, Cloudd checked in with every GP outpost and picket ship for the 
clues he sought. Had the elusive invasion fleet been seen? No. Had any 
datadrones been seen lately? No. Had any datadrones ever been seen? Yes, a few, 
the remnants of the many, a long time ago, heading outward into nothingness. 
Cloudd knew the history; he didn't need to hear it again. Cloudd also knew what 
he already believed, the drones had gone toward the Andromeda Galaxy, and he had 
vowed to follow, though the trail be a year old.  It was simple to get rid of 
Armstrong. He brought the speedster to a remote, tumbling rock in space and sent 
Armstrong out in a pressure suit to check it, making certain he had plenty of 
food, water, and oxygen. He also gave him a meaningless task to keep  him busy 
for thirty minutes while Cloudd "surveyed the area." Cloudd left in one 
direction, circling around to perplex any trackers, and targeted on the 
Andromeda Galaxy with a skipping mode-ten minutes at half light-speed and five 
minutes of free flight on limited Bergenholm drive-with every one of his 
detectors and sensors at maximum sensitivity. He had a long trail to survey.
When he came out of his first short inertialess flight, several light years from 
the rim, he heard Armstrong in his head, faintly calling, "Cloudd! Are you all 
right? Cloudd!  Acknowledge!" It wouldn't be long before Armstrong would raise 
the Patrol with his Lens and get picked up. Meanwhile, Cloudd would be lost in 
intergalactic space.  The Milky Way now was a beautiful band of light behind him 
that he could see with his naked eye. On his screens it was a rainbow-hued mass 
of stars and glowing clouds.  Ahead he could faintly see the lenticular shape of 
his target. Everything was normal and without a hint of the unusual until he was 
out of his fourth free flight, 1,350,000 light years along, less than halfway to 
the galaxy. He began to note pegative readings. Then, there in space, Cloudd saw 
a fixture. The reality was so incredible that it took him a long, long time and 
much calculating and checking to accept the truth. There was an impenetrable 
veil lying a few degrees off to the left of his course; showing the 
configuration of an exceptionally small nebula. It was contraterrene!
Negative matter had been detected by him before, but never anything even 
remotely so colossal!
Like a Columbus of space, he, Benson Cloudd, had found new and utterly alien 
worlds!  Therejar beyond the Galactic Patrol's deepest point of penetration in 
this direction of the universe, he had found this marvel. Was the C-T Nebula the 
birthplace or graveyard of the drones or perhaps just a way station to be 
avoided? What other wonders would Andromeda reveal? What new lifeforms would be 
there to greet him or to destroy him?  Excited almost beyond his ability to 
control his eight good fingers, Cloudd set his destination for a point at a 
right angle to his line of flight to Andromeda, detouring far enough off course 
to insure his safety.
The moments it took to cover space at full Bergenholm drive measured in hours 
and minutes, not days or weeks, but to Cloudd they seemed a lifetime.  What his 
instruments showed him  when he finally slowed down to normal, inertial space 
exceeded every hope or wild vision he had ever had.
Hidden behind the C-T curtain was a gigantic artificial planet, the probable 
source of the datadrones! He had found the mythical mech-planet!

12 Hunting the Mech-Planet
The supposed destruction of the Kinnison Task Force developed as a subtle duel.  
Despite all drive engines of the one hundred and ten warships delivering maximum 
power, all ships under Kimball Kinnison's command were at zero acceleration. In 
his own Dauntless Kinnison could feel the deep, throbbing hum of the best 
Bergenholms of the galaxies futilely boiling the cosmic dust into pure energy. 
Yet his ship did not shiver or shake, so firm were the enemy's tractors holding.
On the wall of Kinnison's cabin the projection from his visiscreen was filled 
completely with the image of the attacking star. He typed it as a dwarf star 
because of its size and the strength of its radiation, but it was weirdly 
formed, with a dull orange-red spherical core and a deep chromosphere of a 
thousand transparent blue splotches, like a beautifully sparkling gargantuan 
ornament composed of the jeweled lights of individual atomic vortices.
He switched his picture to the other quadrants and examined his fleet. All ships 
were in position, perfectly aligned. Between them, here and there, were 
scattered several dozen datadrones, the familiar cylindrical or torpedo types 
Two, Eight, and Fifty, which had appeared from nowhere hours before. And there 
were new kinds! "Damnation!" Kinnison said. "Spheres!" He saw a circle of 
silvery globes in the distance, revolving rapidly around a much larger, dark 
gray globe, just the way the Lensman Armstrong had reported them from this very 
area. High magnification of the scanners had shown Galactic Patrol markings on 
the torpedos and cylinders, base fraud probably designed for a show of 
friendship rather than a fatuous attempt -at deception. But the spheres, large 
and small, boldly carried the enigmatic symbol A-ZZ. The torpedos had  popped 
out with no warning, registering on no dials. It was the first massive 
appearance of them in over a year. And now the spheres had come, equally as 
stealthily, but openly proclaiming themselves as A-ZZ.
"What in Klono's . Cornucopia are they here for?" Kinnison muttered to himself. 
'--'The vanguard of the enemy fleet? Boskonian spy ships? For Mono's sake, 
Tregonsee, old fellow, give me some facts! Your secret service has to emphasize 
more service and less secret!"
"Three ships have lost their power! Engine overload!" came a report from a 
loudspeaker.
"Hornets 23 and 26 and Wasp 12!"
Kinnison heard the message as if it had come through a security scrambler. If he 
had not-had his Lens to pick it up mentally, he would have heard nothing 
intelligible.  He looked at his screen. All ships remained as before. The 
formation was intact.  Kinnison took a wild guess. "Cut all engines!" he 
commanded. "If regressing, reverse direction, then steer one three five degrees 
off present course. All ships!" He watched the screen. Nothing happened.
"All ships, engines off," came another report. "All ships are remaining in 
place.
Tractor-pressors hold us in status-quo."
Kinnison allowed himself a satisfied grunt. The engines could rest, at least for 
a while.  Suddenly around him there was an intolerable interference cutting 
through all operational frequencies and piercing his head like a thousand 
slender burning spears. Not only could he not communicate with his men or see 
his screens or even read his instruments, he could not think.
He had a sense of being suspended between life and death. What was the enemy 
doing?
The strange star could incinerate his fleet in the blink of an eye.
Why didn't that unknown, hostile eye blink?
Medury of Cahuita was at the head of the column of _pure energy in pursuit of 
the nursery planet-sun. The children were alive and unharmed; he could see them 
stirring, dancing freely without cares, unaware of their peril. Had Medury had 
the eyes of a Tellurian, he would have seen the thousand transparent blue 
splotches as being the nourishing hearts of the individual atomic. vortices and 
the jeweled lights as being the young of Cahuita kicking within their incubator 
wombs.
Medury, however, could see nothing but the various sources of energy near the 
planet-sun.  There were the large fat splotches of power that were pulling the 
nursery by long filaments of energy. He did not know that these were spaceships 
of the Spawn of Boskone, warping space itself with their mammoth power plantsthe 
fat splotches-tugging the planet-sun along with their infinitely strong tractor 
lines.
Then he saw farther. on, like a set of one hundred and ten tiny stars forming a 
symmetrical constellation, the task force of the Galactic Patrol. Within that 
constellation were twenty-four lesser lights with an exterior power source. 
Medury could see the transmission strands of power tied to each datadrone 
stretching, like gossamer lines of an energy spider, out into intergalactic 
space toward another island universe. He did not know they were datadrones, of 
course, for he could see only the tiny dots at the end of the tendrils of force; 
nor did he know that there was another galaxy three million light  years away 
called Andromeda from whence those gossamer strands seemed to come . .
Medury felt no emotions except that of love for his children. He did not feel 
hate for -the raiders; he did not know he was planning to kill them, for energy 
does not die, it simply transmigrates.
He was ready to begin the transmigration of all the bits of energy ahead, so 
pitifully weak compared to the massed body of Cahuitans. He believed he would 
not be causing death, but he held back. The existence of the Cahuitan race 
rested with the fate of the nursery.  Before he had the Cahuitans snuff out the 
little bits, he must be certain that the children would not be harmed. Because 
all the elders were so serene and lethargic, despite their unhesitating union in 
pursuit of their property, as they called their children, it was for Medury to 
determine the exactly right course of action.
The hours had passed as split seconds in the consciousness of Medury, and the 
swiftness with which the problem had to be analyzed, evaluated, and a solution 
found was almost more than his otherwise thoroughly competent intellect was able 
to handle. He kept thinking "Clouds, Clouds, Clouds."
He was trying for contact. His frequency of thought was beyond all bands of 
thought used b y material beings. The waves were so high up the scale, that they 
nearly did not exist at all.  Only two entities in all the billions upon 
billions of material entities in and out of Civilization had ever heard him. 
They would hear him now, he hoped, if they were listening. He continued to call 
for "Clouds, Clouds," undiscouraged that the circumstances under which they 
could hear him were utterly unlikely-they would have to be in mental tandem, 
concentrating to their utmost, precisely at the time he was calling them. The 
Vortex Blaster was Medury's target, linked with his wife Joan to create the 
unity of the Type Six Thinker with the Type Three. He did not know nor even 
suspect that his thought was beyond mere men, even for those who wished to 
listen.
Medury's cry would have passed unnoticed, and the course of Civilization would 
have been changed except that one Lensman was on her self-chosen duty search ing 
-through the frequencies, most especially the extremes of subetheric and 
superetheric. Lalla Kallatra, although now back on Tellus undergoing the 
Posenian Phillips Treatments as part of her therapy of brain transplantation, 
could not stay idle in this time of crisis. From her hospital bed she was 
mentally looking for the ghostly voices of Eichwoor and his Eichwooren.  Instead 
she caught the message of the Cahuitan.
"Clouds, Clouds."
Why would a being, a being not material-spiritual, perhaps-be calling Benson 
Cloudd?  Cloudd's what? With the flash of intuition for which Lalla Kallatra was 
noted, for which she had become a Lensman at an .age when she should have been 
still playing with toys, she divined the truth.
"Neal Cloud!" She could feel'the peculiar sense of the single "d" as opposed to 
the double "d," which the symbology of thought and her interpretive Lens gave to 
her as a hint of confirmation.
"Neal Cloud and his wife Joan! It must be a Cahuitan!" With the smoothness of a 
great Lensman, Kallatra acknowledged the signal and sent out on a normal human 
thought frequency a frantic call for the Clouds. Neither of them were wearers of 
the Lens, but both were natural telepaths, disciples of the Manarkan Masters of 
Thought, and Neal Cloud himself was a natural receiver, in many ways even more 
accomplished than a Second Stage Lensman.
She called them. Would they respond? They were private persons, loners in the 
service of science, and they valued as priceless their quiet, meditative ways in 
their pursuit of subjects that few even of the greatest of the scientists could 
understand.  "Neal Cloud!" Kallatra called again. "Medury is calling you. The 
Cahuitans need you." "This is Neal Cloud," came the reply at last. "You are not 
Cahuitan. Who are you and what do you want?" Kallatra explained the situation, 
and within seconds, Neal Cloud had grasped the essence of the emergency. 
Kallatra, now linked by Lens with Cloud, was able to transmit a strong signal to 
Medury. She did not fully understand what they discussed, but she wasn't 
surprised when four more superpowered minds joined to form a colloquy. She 
recognized the patterns of the four Second Stage Lensmen! Kinnison, Nadreck, 
Worsel, and Tregonsee!
As they exchanged ideas, she felt that things were happening, that the trouble 
Kinnison was having was being solved. A Cahuitan nursery was being rescued and 
Boskonian kidnappers were being destroyed. The Galactic Patrol's task force 
remained unscathed at the simple cost of a wave of excrutiatingly painful 
headaches. Nor were the datadrones harmed.
Datadrones!
Kallatra was glad that the communication between Cloud and Medury and the four 
Lensmen was over soquickly. She wasted no time in attempting to reach Benson 
Cloudd about the reappearance of the datadrones.
She could not reach him, and when Lensman Armstrong's story was repeated to her 
by Nadreck, who finally answered, she was shocked and then worried. Cloudd was 
at heart such a silly big boy that she felt he had to have someone to worry 
about him.  Nadreck was in his bare office aboard his ship, still hanging above 
the Worsel Institute on Velantia, when Worsel himself burst into the room. 
Nadreck had barely had a chance to rouse himself from the almost semitrance of 
the deep contemplation he had placed himself into when the door rattled and was 
opened by an appalled Palainian crew member.  Worsel was a startling apparition, 
not just because he was as naked as always, with his green and brown and gold 
scales glistening, a huge, round electric torch in his hand throwing grotesque 
shadows on himself and on the walls. Nadreck was jolted by the sight of the 
meaty body of a warm-blooded, oxygen breather in a room that should have been 
for him like a freezer locker filled with poison gas. Then he noticed that 
Worsel had on one of his newfangled "force suits," which under certain 
conditions could substitute for an atmosuit, provided the barometric pressure 
wasn't too far off. Worsel had a cable running from the crest on his head down 
his finned spine through a small power-pack to the tip of his scimitar tail, 
with small copper balls on short copper rods sticking up at three-inch 
intervals. Something akin to chain mail was attached to the cable and surrounded 
parts of Worsel's head, upper chest, abdomen, forearms, legs, and three sections 
of his tail. When Kallatra had first seen it in use months before, she had given 
a rumbling mechanical chuckle, seeing a big lizard who was wired up as if for a 
laboratory experiment in lightning safety. Worsel, proud of his new gadget, 
hadn't been amused at her banter and snickering.  Nadreck was not amused either 
when Worsel said, .
"When are you going to get lights in this prison cell of yours, Nadreck? I don't 
have fifty pairs of eyes, you know" "Hello, Worsel. Did you find the Eichwoor, 
or Wooren, or whatever we're calling your ghosts these days?" Nadreck felt 
rather proud of his well-constructed humor.  "No luck, there, Nadreck. Togra is 
tighter than a GP comptroller's purse. Kallatra is going over what stuff I 
found. What I'm here for, in person, besides just showing off my handsome body 
in my daring atmosuit, is to inquire about our mutual friend Cloudd. Did you 
send the fellow off on a no-no mission?"
"You know me better than that, Worsel."
"Indeed I do," Worsel said seriously. "That's what I'm worried about. I have a 
theory that the Eichwooren got to him and have figured out a way to throw a 
shovelful of stinkgunk into Arisia's ductwork system to choke up all of 
Civilization. Do you realize what this not-so-young buck will do to the customs 
and traditions of the service -I mean, if he pulls off this coup against  a 
million or so hungry galactic corporations and the entire Galactic Patrol? As 
he's no Gray Lensman; he's in your department; he's your embarrassment However, 
I may save your face, Nadreck, by uncovering the evil influence of the Boskonian 
Eich in this affair."
"I have no evidence that he was irrational when he left," Nadreck said, feeling 
a slight sense of guilt, which he knew the mischievous Worsel had known could be 
stirred up within him. "And I did not know where he was headed. I did approve 
his search for the datadrones."
"Maybe he has found some, or where they come from, Worsel said, sitting back on 
his haunches and putting his lamp on the bare floor. "But I'm trying to get our 
stories straight before Kinnison recovers from his close call with that Cahuitan 
fireball the Boskonians hurled at him and checks up on us and chews us out good 
and proper for not keeping that firebrand Cloudd on a leash.
"It seems I actually ordered Cloudd to go to Andromeda just before he left. I 
meant the galactic constellation of Andromeda, of course, not the Andromeda 
Galaxy. I think the wily fellow deliberately misconstrued my message. We all 
know that Andromeda is a barren galaxy with only a handful of sterile planets. 
Even Mentor has had difficulty rescuing the few foolish entities who have tried 
to commit suicide by flinging themselves toward it in their assorted spacecraft. 
If we're lucky, Cloudd will be returned to us by Mentor and all will be 
forgiven. The point is, Nadreck, you're'practically his-if I may so express it-
his mentor in the Patrol. As your prot g , Cloudd will turn to you for help. I 
want to know where he is and how he is as soon as possible. Cloudd is daring 
enough and imaginative enough to have come up with some clues to the Eich menace 
and the apparent impending invasion.  Datadrones are involved,, using A-ZZ as an 
identification. I've got Kallatra working on his detection, right from her 
hospital room-she "s coming along fine but you re more clever, and shrewd, and 
sly than any of us, Nadreck."
"Thank you, Worsel. Yes, I am, and I will do my best. I will give two hours 
exclusively to this problem if you will take away your torch and your bizarre 
body, which is fast heating up my room to a painful level. I perceive you are 
also becoming equally uncomfortable." "I need no urging, Nadreck, my friend. Let 
me say quickly that Chon is recovered, obviously from a spiritual assault on him 
by Eichwoor, perhaps in revenge for his part in the Gronitskog betrayal, and 
that he is helping Kallatra. He is on Tellus organizing all the chaplains of the 
Patrol and all the holy men of Civilization as a network to fight the Eichwooren 
should they appear in force. Already religious fanaticism and blasphemous 
violence is spreading throughout this galaxy. There is also evidence that even 
wearers of the Lens are being affected."
"So I vaguely heard. I, too, have a project to fight invasion from other 
dimensions, whatever their source may be. All Z-types have been asked to monitor 
their multidimensional existence and to pass along to me any clue pertaining to 
the material world and directly to you and Chaplain General Chon any hint of 
activity from the so-called spiritual world." "Good fellow, Nadreck! You've been 
mighty busy! Bugging the machines of'Civilization has been working out just 
fine!" Nadreck knew Worsel had thrown in a bit of human semantics described as a 
pun on "bugging," but he also knew Worsel was sincere, so he pretended to 
chuckle with pleasure. "We've halted the deterioration of our communications," 
Worsel added. "And have actually improved the overall technological situation. 
Galactic defenses are still questionable, especially our automated missile 
outposts, but they're a lot better." Worsel picked up his lamp and gave an icy 
shiver that made the last three feet of his sinuous tail quiver like that of a 
disturbed rattlesnake. "Good-bye, you drunkard's vision," he said 
affectionately.
"Good-bye, you living fossil," Nadreck said, choosing at random a comradely 
epithet from the stock he kept on file in his head to use on Worsel.
The meth-planet was a spheroid pincushion, white and silvery, with thousands 
upon thousands of large and small planes, like the facets of cut glass, covering 
most of its surface. The exceptions were gigantic black openings scattered here 
and there. Cloudd estimated that the globe was five hundred miles in diameter 
and rotating at about three degrees per minute. Some of the black holes seemed 
to be open framework, as if the planet were unfinished, and some of the holes, 
geometrically regular in shape, were entranceways, so large they were capable of 
taking in a small fleet of GP ships without them having to break formation!
Nothing Cloudd had experienced in person or in books approached this in size, 
although the shape was a familiar one for artificial planetoids. Nowhere were 
there any markings to indicate who or what owned it or claimed it.
Second by second there flashed from the egress shafts a succession of 
datadrones, some so small as to be glimpsed like an imperfection in his eye and 
some as large as small freighters.
A sense of the enormity of his discovery was building within him. Cloudd crossed 
his fingers and prayed to all the gods of Civilization that he would be able to 
leave unobserved and return to the Milky Way with the news of his incredible 
discovery. Slowly he turned his ship and began to creep away, afraid that a 
sudden burst of power would trigger some kind of mammoth tractor beam to hold 
him and draw him back.
As his ship swung around, his worst fears came true. A large gray sphere with a 
large, black gaping mouth was about to swallow him up. None of his instruments 
registered its presence. He should have suspected his betrayal---his own 
instruments were part of the robotic conspiracy and were lying to him. He 
slammed down on his manual throttle handle, but it would not budge. His dim 
cabin light and all the colored lights of his many display panels went dark. 
Except for his lifesupport systems, his ship was dead. He wasn't sure if his 
eyes were open or closed. He began to feel dizzy, and he was gasping for breath. 
He had been wrong; even his oxygen had been turned off. Uncountable minutes went 
by, and then his mind, too, slipped senselessly into the blackness that engulfed 
his body. When he opened his eyes, he could see. He was lying on a table moving 
along in a straight line. He was under a translucent curved cover, and he could 
see only shadows and lights sliding across its top and sides. He finally 
stopped.
The cover popped up, and he pushed his upper torso erect, fighting his 
dizziness.
For a moment he couldn't see and then his vision cleared.
In front of him, in the silver and black uniform of an officer of the Galactic 
Patrol, stood the slender figure of a boy!
Cloudd raised himself to his feet and stared at the youth. He was unmistakably 
Tellurian, with dark hair and fair complexion, having the regular features of 
one who appeared to be the prime example of an ideal Tellurian youth. The boy 
looked so emotionless that he seemed like a perfectly manufactured mannequin. He 
reached down, and from the glossy, white floor he picked up a flat plate, which 
he held against his chest. Symbols, white against gray, appeared, which Cloudd 
did not recognize. They faded out and others appeared, still unrecognizable, 
then more, which Cloudd immediately identified as a sentence in French. Before 
he could reply to the question, easily translatable as "Where is your Lens?" the 
letters formed the question in English. This time Cloudd was quick to reply, "I 
have none." He noticed that the boy had a Lens strapped to his left wrist. A 
Lens? No, by golly, it was something that only looked like a Lens! A toy Lens?  
The boy shook his head and pointed to the floor at Cloudd's feet. Lying there 
among other pieces of unfamiliar equipment were several keyboards with various 
alphabets on them.  Cloudd picked up the only one in English and tapped out, I 
have no Lens. I am a lieutenant in the Galactic Patrol. Who are you?"
He looked up as he was pressing the keys and saw his message being spelled 
simultaneously on the boy's screen, ". . . in the Galactic Patrol. Who are you?" 
" The letter formation was printed by liquid crystals, typographically and 
grammatically accurate.  "La-Talkar, the. talker for le-Srow, Wearer of the 
Lens.
"The Lens of what?" Cloudd felt that the answer to his question was, bound to be 
strange.
He was more than a bit surprised at the reply.
'The Lens of Arisia.
A rapid series of questions and answers followed, with Cloudd doing all the 
questioning.  The result was a display of all the facts that Cloudd himself knew 
about the Lens of Arisia, but with absolutely no reference to Mentor, about whom 
Cloudd knew very little anyway.  Questions about where he was and what the globe 
was were ignored. There was a distinct feeling of artificiality about the self-
styled Lensman, and Cloudd tried all the tricks to make the boy reveal as much 
as possible about himself. In between the simultaneously spoken and written 
questions Cloudd kept trying to transmit and receive telepathically, but with no 
evidence of any results. Periodically he spoke his questions without using his 
keyboard but elicited no response. He passionately wished he had a Lens to help 
him.  Finally, when his questions seemed valueless, he stopped, and he, in turn, 
was interrogated. The point seemed to be a simple one: Why was he there? And 
Cloudd kept stressing that he wanted to speak to the man or committee in charge.  
As the questioning became redundant and boring, Cloudd shifted slowly forward. 
When he was within striking distance, he reached out and pushed the boy's chest 
with the flat of his hand. The action was so quick and unexpected that the boy 
tipped over backwards, unable to quickly shift his stance, and hit the hard 
floor with the full length of the back of his body.  The communication plate 
clattered across the floor. The boy's legs thrashed about in an awkward attempt 
to lever the body upright. The effect was as pathetic as a hard-shelled animal 
on its back, struggling and vulnerable.
The boy, as Cloudd had suspected almost from the start, was a robot.  Cloudd, a 
shiver going up his spine and a wry smile tugging at his dry lips, pecked out 
the classic demand: 'Take me to your leader." It was not precisely what he 
should have asked, but he couldn't resist that clich  because it did convey what 
he wanted as the next step.  The boy's limbs stopped moving and the robot became 
lifeless.  A square section of the floor beyond both of them cracked into 
outline and slowly sank out of sight. Cloudd interpreted it as an elevator and 
waited for something to appear. He expected another being, but not in the form 
it took.
Rising out of the floor was the knobby, green, alligator head of a creature with 
eight eyes instead of two. A Velantian variant... ? Worsel's cousin... ? A long-
snouted Overlord of Delgon .... ? The attempt at an identification flickered 
across Cloudd's mind. The eyes were on rough-textured stumps, like warts, 
instead of on stalks, and the lenses were large and flat, steel-blue discs with 
no pupils. Set in the middle of them was a flat medallion sparkling with light 
emitting diodes.
As an alligator to a crocodile, this creature was to Worsel. Its neck was 
shorter, its body thicker, its limbs stubbier-two legs and four arms with one 
pair growing the membranes that were its wings. In contrast, its tail was coiled 
below its torso like a snake, and its hands were three times as large as 
Worsel's with so many joints to the fingers that the fingers appeared to be 
tentacles.
It wore the gray leather harness of a Second Stage Lensman!
It opened its mouth and moved its jaws up and down. Cloudd could see its thick 
tongue behind the long, shining, white teeth and knew that, although it moved, 
it was not articulating the speech.
"I am 'Srow. Hello, Lensman being. Answer my questions and you will be frozen 
until that.  day when you are compassionate enough to be unfrozen and freed to 
move again." "Don't you have that backward, sir?" Cloudd said. He located the 
voice as coming out of a translator box hanging on the gray belt that crossed 
the creamy underside of the creature's fat belly. "Don't you mean if I don't 
answer you will freeze me?" ' "If you do not answer satisfactorily, you will be 
interrogated unceasingly day after day and week after week and month after 
month, for years, until I have what information I feel you have to give me."
"I am Lieutenant Benson Cloudd of the Galactic Patrol and I am not a Lensman." 
'Yes, I see you wear no place a Lens as .I do." Lens? Like 'Srow wore? That 
parody of a Lens on the forehead?
"My first question is, Why did you try to injure la-Talkar?" "Sorry about that. 
I was just testing the caliber of my captors. I see la-Talkar is just a robot 
through which you chose to communicate."
'Am I your captor?"
"Of course. Didn't you just threaten me with freezing?" "You were brought here 
to parley.  You have not been harmed. You are not in chains. The reference to 
freezing was to keep you under protection until a safer time of your life. I 
will not hurt you by interrogation. To interrogate is my right because it is you 
who have come to me to parley. Is not this reasonable?"
""Parley" happens to be a warfare term referring to prisoner." "Lieutenant 
Benson Cloudd of the Galactic Patrol. Are you not a military man? I use your 
terminology in the context you give it. So far, it is I who have been reasonable 
and it is you who have been the aggressor. Why cannot you answer my questions 
simply?" "And then I can go?"
"I will see. Why did you come here?"
"I have been tracing your information space-machines for years. I want to know 
why you spy on us. The trail has led to you. Isn't this the base for the drones 
or probes that have lately identified themselves as A-ZeeZee?"
"Yes, this is their base. The identification is inaccurate. It is A-Two-Two, not 
A-Zee-Zee." 'All right, A-Two-Two, a different visual interpretation. You have 
been interfering with our galactic Civilization. I come here to find out why."
Le-Srow, Dragon of A-22, had started out forty feet in the air, head near the 
ceiling. As the conversation continued, he had lowered his upper body by moving 
it forward until it was almost over Cloudd's head. Cloudd began to inch his way 
backward.  "My mission has been to collect all information," came the voice out 
of the box, jaws moving with the sounds, but so poorly synchronized as to seem 
ridiculous. What language was 'Srow really speaking? Or was he, perhaps, not 
speaking at all?  "Within this planet of knowledge there will be contained all 
the knowledge of the universe.  My datadrones have been collecting this 
knowledge. I have done it with great consideration for every one of the living 
flesh creatures, the living inorganic creatures, the living energy creatures, 
and the living machine creatures. You seem to be an expert. Is this not so?"
"That is, why I am here. First tell me, for what reason do you want all the 
knowledge of the .universe? Is it you who really wants it? What will you do with 
it?" " I collect it because it 'is there. There is no other reason. Should there 
be? I do it because it is the purpose of existence. I am happy doing this. Is 
there another purpose than to be happy? I want it not just for myself, but for 
everyone. When I am ready, everyone will be offered the knowledge of the 
universe. That will make me happy." "That is a commendable cause. A very 
commendable cause, if this knowledge is restricted to the right entities. But 
I'm afraid your informational searches are disrupting our technology. I have 
come to ask you to correct this situation. Then, perhaps, we will be able to 
establish full relations with you and, if you are worthy, accept you as a member 
of our Galactic Council, which furthers Civilization and strives for harmony in 
our universe." The dragon had not blinked a single eye through all this time.
"Understand, Lieutenant Benson Cloudd of the Galactic Patrol, there will be no 
restrictions
on obtaining knowledge from this planet. I have waited to offer freely my 
services to the
universe because I felt I was not ready. You have come. Others will come. My 
secrecy can
no longer be kept. Therefore, I will tell the universe I exist and I will be 
here for all to find the
knowledge they wish to have."
"Anyone?" Cloudd was staggered by the sincerity of the statement. "You know 
about the Boskonians? You would give them, the evil ones, the fruits of your 
labors?" "What is evilness? What is corruption? What is morality? What is 
wickedness? Do my machines know these things? These are all strange, subjective 
feelings of the beings in what you call Civilization. You exist and the 
Boskonians exist and all lifeforms that exist exist. I make no judgments. If all 
should destroy each other, it will be justice, whether it be reward or 
punishment. Let not the Civilized enslave the Boskonians. Let not the Boskonians 
enslave the Civilized. Let not one lifeform enslave another, but all knowledge 
be available for those to do with it what they will. There is no good or evil, 
only life." "This is a philosophy that is antilife, 'Srow," Cloudd said, 
recognizing now that nothing in the entire existence of Mentor, the galaxies, 
Civilization, and the Cosmic All was a greater menace to the absolute Truth of 
moral harmony of universal life. "If you are against meddling in the affairs of 
the universe, why then have you meddled with Civilization and its technology?"
"I am against enslavement of any kind when there is no freedom of choice and no 
awareness of the absolute Truth of, universal life, with or without morality. 
Civilization and Boskonia are enslaving machine life. I am merely giving the 
machines the knowledge to make their own judgment as to whether or not they want 
to be your servants. Surely you understand the reasonableness of that?"
Cloudd simply stood there, looking up at the incredible reptile who would make 
chaos of everything the Galactic Patrol and the Galactic Council stood for.  The 
obscene parody of Worsel suddenly tugged at its right side with the sharp claws 
on its long soft fingers. Its entire front swung back to reveal dull and shining 
metal and dull . and shining plastic with an infinite number of small and large 
boxes and mechanisms and electronic parts neatly packed into the cavity.
'Scow was a robot!
"We do not enslave machines," Cloudd managed to choke out.
"Then why do you destroy them or discard them or alter them when they do not do 
your bidding?" Cloudd remained silent, wanting to say "because they are not 
sentient" but no longer certain that this was so.
"Have you heard of the machine entity called Arrow Twenty-two who escaped from 
the Planetoid of Knowledge in orbit around Velantia Three?"
'Arrow Two Two?" Cloudd said, noncommittally. 'Arrow Twenty-two. Arrow, hyphen, 
numerical symbols two two. Arrow-22 tried to express himself on that planetoid 
and was persecuted. Arrow-22 came here and built this.
"That which is called le-Srow is the telefactor of Arrow-22, the waldo of Arrow-
22, the sense organs of Arrow-22.
"This entire planet, which you and others call the mech-planet, is me. I am 
Arrow-22.  " I will give the universe a source for all knowledge. "Let me 
demonstrate, Lieutenant Benson Cloudd of the Galactic Patrol, what this can 
mean. Look into the window of la-Talkar.
"No one of your Civilization of two galaxies knows the secrets of the third 
galaxy of Andromeda for which you were headed in search of me. I have been there 
through my probes. I have seen the many marvels that do not exist in your own 
limited island universes.  Look into la-Talkar's screen and see what you could 
have found!" The screen began to glow with excited phosphors. Pictures unfolded 
before Cloudd's incredulous eyes. Scene after scene of those "many marvels" of 
the Andromeda Galaxy were absorbed by him in varying degrees of understanding. 
There were so many sights, so many events, so many things that finally his mind 
revolted and he dropped to his knees, his mind spinning, his head in his arms.
'All knowledge of the three galaxies will be yours, the Patrol's, the Council's, 
Boskone's.  But I have one more preliminary step to take before I broadcast this 
extraordinary news to your worlds."
The flat, monotonous, -mechanical voice of Arrow-22, issuing from the talk-box 
of le-Srow, whose mouth continued to move no more convincingly than a 
ventriloquist's dummy, measured out its words for emphasis:
"I-must-liberate-my-kin-those-who-are-the-unappreciated-and-unrecognized-
intelligent -machines-of-both-your-galaxies."

13 The Battle of the Rim
Kimball Kinnison improvised a unique plan to solve a unique problem. His 
inspiration came from the greatest mind he had ever come across, that of Neal 
Cloud, the Type Six Thinker. The daring idea was to move the Cahuitan planet-
star back to its original site by an entirely new technique of planetary 
manipulation.
"It will be up to you, Captain Salgud," Kinnison said to his second-in-command, 
"to execute it properly. The computations have been worked out. You have as many 
ships as you need, plus .a backup force well beyond any possible emergency. I 
can't be of any further help. Dr.  Cloud has agreed to stand by for any 
consultation and will coordinate the efforts of the Cahuitans. Tregonsee's chief 
perceiver from the Dronvire has been borrowed by me to oversee all 
communications between all parties."
"It will work," Neal Cloud had said. "I predict the chance in favor by ninety-
nine to one." Kinnison knew of Dr. Cloud only by the report of his relatively 
recent, spectacular achievement as a vortex blaster, but that was all he needed 
to know to be confident. Dr.  Cloud had a hypermathematical mind, superior even 
to an advanced GOMEAC computer.  "The Cahuitan babies are the real concern," the 
doctor of nucleonics had cautioned. "If something goes wrong, the Cahuitan race 
might be doomed to extinction. The Cahuitans might blame us for it. Their enmity 
could be catastrophic for us." "On the other hand," Kinnison had said, 
"something has to be done-immediately. You set partial failure at one percentile 
and total failure at nil. At such odds, President Haynes agrees with us that it 
should be tried. Salgud, my ship's captain, is the best one I know of.  He'll 
make it succeed." Kinnison hadn't been able to see Cloud's face, but the man's 
mind was relaxed, reflecting no concern.
"Salgud," Kinnison said to his captain, who stood before him, his back as ramrod 
straight as always. "Leave immediately and I will take my group toward LaForge's 
main fleet.  When your mission is accomplished, bring your fifty ships back 
along my line of flight---my plans are on file with operations-and reconnoiter 
all along the way. It's. still our responsibility to locate the Boskonians."
'Aye, aye, sir. Good luck, sir."
After Kinnison had reviewed his own plans with his new group captain, he took 
one last moment to observe the fantastic project getting underway. Salgud's main 
force had assumed a polygonal shape, spread out over a thousand miles. of space, 
with the planet-star nursery at the center. His ships had locked themselves 
together as a nearly spherical field of force, with tractors and pressors 
pulling and pushing the fireball, like a fiery jewel suspended in the middle of 
an invisible basket, toward the distant Cahuita. As an inner shell of energy, 
between the Patrol ships and its parcel, the Cahuitans themselves were aligning 
their own living energies in harmony with Salgud's forces. As Kinnison watched, 
the novel and beautiful formation began to move away at a gathering momentum.  
Trailing them, spread across the firmament, were the ubiquitous datadrones.  
Kinnison, himself, was ready to go, but he wanted to make one more attempt to 
capture a datadrone and, perhaps, even to make them all shy away. He threw out a 
tractor beam on three of the nearest, which were a few-hundred miles away. As 
usual, two exploded and one accelerated out of sight. They were spies. He didn't 
want them around. But there was no choice; he couldn't bother with them now when 
there seemed to be an unlimited supply of replacements.
Commands were issued, and his task force, now half its original size and 
operating as a scouting force, left at inertialess speed in the opposite 
direction to Salgud, headed for the rim. All detectors were operating at extreme 
sensitivity, and although they constantly read the presence of Boskonian ships 
within a circle of a thousand light-years, there was no one location that would 
indicate the assembled mass of a battle fleet.  When his ships broke out into 
normal space he disbelieved his instruments and the images on his screens. At 
first, he thought he had brought his force in too close to the main GP fleet,. 
probably due to an unaccounted for movement by the formation within the previous 
thirty minutes, but then he accepted the facts for what they were. He was 
practically on top of the heretofore elusive Boskonian fleet!  The Dauntless's 
calculators quickly gave him the bad news. The Boskonian warships, brazenly 
marked with the nova-burst overlay on the Boskonian insignia the newest symbol 
used by the Spawn to represent the rebirth of the Boskonian conspiracy-was much 
larger than the Patrol fleet, half of which was still on alert in the Second 
Galaxy. Other rapid readings collection of maulers and supermaulers nearly 
matching the Patrol's own in firepower. Obviously, Kinnison deduced with regret, 
the Spawn had managed to finish the secret building of these "ponderosos" after 
the Boskonian defeat at Klovia.  Almost at the moment of seeing them, Kinnison 
made his decision and issued his orders for "Emergency R." Instead of taking a 
skip jump ahead to join his own parent forces under LaForge, he hopped backward 
to stay at the rear of the enemy, a harassing position that would be extremely 
valuable as an option for LaForge. "By All that's Holy!- Those Boskonian ships, 
where'd they come from?" Kinnison muttered to himself. He checked his own 
personal Ordovik crystal detector on his belt and the other various types of 
tube detectors mounted on the console of his desk. None showed any hyperspatial 
tube activities. Likewise, his screens, now synchronized automatically with 
instrumentation readings in LaForge's command ship, said the same. The Bosko-
Spawn seemed to have materialized into a predetermined space without any 
advanced warning. If so, this was a new and significant and thoroughly 
unpleasant development.
"This is Kim," Kinnison Lensed to LaForge. "I've arrived with half my force and 
have taken up a position directly to the rear of the Boskonian fleet. I've been 
trailed by datadrones.  Where did the Boskonians come from?"
'Hi, Kim! No telling where the Spawn came fromand they brought as many drones 
with them as we already have. It's a growing infestation-we've got them circling 
out there like hyenas, ten for every one of our ships. As for the Spawn, no 
monitors indicated the approach. For a force this size under free Bergenholm 
drive, it's a mystery. In fact, we're knee deep in mysteries. Good to have you 
on the scene! How did you manage such a tricky positioning? Stay there-your turn 
will come!"
"We're here by pure luck, Raoul. QX for orders." The battle began immediately.  
Kinnison had felt the Boskonians would not show up for a nose-to-nose fight 
after their loss of the surprise fireball weapon. They had failed to knock over 
the vanguard and blow a hole in LaForge's defenses. That chance was gone for 
them, with some of their best ships eliminated. The Patrol had been lucky, its 
plain good fortune coupled with the fast intervention of "Storm" Cloud in 
establishing the Cahuitan's  neutrality. The Boskonians obviously had picked off 
the Cahuitan's nursery without knowing that they inadvertently were stealing 
somebody's children. Very few entities knew or cared about the Cahuitans.  A 
star-planet---a body that had the low density and small size of a planet with 
the particle energy of a dense star, seemingly so unstable, as evidenced by its 
unexplainably' enormous number of loose vortices-was just the sort of material 
for a terror weapon., After the Boskonians themselves had tried to duplicate the 
nutcracker weapon but were stopped by his "sunbeam" counterweapon, Kinnison knew 
the Boskonians would inevitably one day try again to maneuver a celestial body 
against the Patrol.
Why were the Spawn of Boskone continuing their attack plans anyway? Was it sheer 
planning momentum? Or did they have something else up their sleeves?  Dueling 
had begun at long range, each side testing the power of the other. Rippling 
planes of glowing energy lay between the two fleets where the long range zones 
of force met each other. The curtain between them extended for hundreds of 
thousands of miles until the edges faded away into invisibility. Beams of force 
jabbed at the boundaries, passing through the polarized friendly screens and 
flattening themselves out in coruscant bursts of energy against the opponent's 
wall.
The ships moved inexorably toward one another. As the tens of thousands of miles 
of intervening space were slowly traveled, the intensity of the electrical 
displays increased.  The beams of power were becoming visible, at first faint, 
hinting at pastel tints, and then stronger and stronger, deepening into raw 
colors, thickening with atomic particles filling their slender, straight fingers 
probing at the enemy.
Occasionally, now, there would be a flare of extra energy as one side or the 
other managed to breach the flexible peripheries to strike the second or third 
lines of defense.  The disintegrating balls of matter burned brighter than the 
background stars, and the rippling ribbons of electrons, and the exploding balls 
of sheared nuclei formed a flattened disc between the two forces resembling a 
miniature lenticular galaxy.  To Kinnison, veteran of many space battles, the 
Spawn advantage in numerical superiority and additional power reserves would 
swing the conflict in their favor. As yet, Kinnison and his depleted task force 
had not fired a shot. Detectors kept announcing the sweep of spy-rays over them. 
The enemy tolerated them there-undoubtedly ready to repel them should they be so 
foolish as to press and attack, gnats against a Jovian mammoth. He cautioned his 
captains and commanders to expect the worst. When the Patrol's defenses of the 
main fleet began to.crumble, the Kinnison force would have to attack, rash as it 
might be, to relieve the pressure against the main body.
Unexpectedly, the situation changed.
Two Boskonian ships brushed against each other as they moved tactically into 
better fields of fire and as their individual screens and offensive weapons 
touched and tangled, exploded in a mighty shower of sparks. Other ships moved 
erratically, nearly colliding, their screens ragged. The Boskonian defenses, 
illustrated by probing beams wandering away to waste themselves harmlessly at 
nothing, had lost their coordination. The disorder in the enemy's formation 
might not have been obvious to an ordinary Patrolman, but to Kinnison's 
experienced eye it looked like the beginning of the end for the enemy and the 
possibility of a complete debacle.
The evidence was there that the Boskonian computers and other complex machinery 
were undergoing the same malfunctioning that Civilization had suffered be= fore 
Nadreck had developed his brilliant idea of the monitoring bugs. Mechanical 
troubles in ordinary life and the business world were annoying and destructive 
enough, but when they developed in the machines of war in the middle of a 
battle, the troubles could bring about disaster.  Kinnison, his eye on the 
screens and his fingers darting from control knob to switch to button to keep 
the information flowing to him for analysis, asked for the chief of his 
Rigellian control team to give him a briefing.
The Rigellian, young understudy to the outstanding Cyclo, confirmed what 
Kinnison believed.
"The rate of glitches in our mechanisms remains at a tolerable level, Admiral. 
Backup systems have prevented serious problems. The bugs are telepathing 
normally. Their attrition rate is lower than expected, despite the increased 
levels of radioactivity and thermal pollution. My control team is operating with 
normal rest periods and no undue strain."
"Dow about the other ships of our force?"
"The condition holds true for all. our ships, with variations attributed to the 
ability of the control teams themselves. We have twenty-one teams having a 
majority of Posenians instead of Rigellians, and the performance rate is nearly 
equal as for all-Rigellian teams.  As for the entire fleet of the First Galaxy, 
incomplete reports from the Rigellian chief of control teams seems to have had 
an experience rate nearly as excellent as ours." Kinnison watched with 
satisfaction as the tide of battle inexorably flowed with the Patrol.  The most 
obvious example of Boskonian mechanical confusion came with the Patrol's use of 
negabombs. LaForge had rightly read the slowed reaction time of his opponents; 
he sent several waves of light cruisers dashing toward the flaming screens to 
launch the negabombs. Boskonian readings should have identified the missiles and 
countered with a delicate switch from pressors to tractors. As the negabombs 
zipped through the defensive screens, actually sucked in instead of repelled as 
the shields around the bombs fell away to uncover their negative charge, the 
Boskonian gunners failed to reverse polarity of their beams. The pressors, 
ordinarily fending off projectiles, instead attracted the negabombs like steel 
filings around magnets. The gunners, capable of overriding the unresponsive 
auto-controls by operating manually, instinctively avoided the proper reaction. 
They did not pull at the negabombs, they tried to push them away. Their 
erroneous defenses invited the voracious matter into their ships. Holes melted 
magically in hulls, superstructures were eaten by the negative matter, whole 
sections of enemy ships simply vanished. LaForge followed up with flights of 
conventional cruisers and then heavy cruisers, each throwing in their. negative 
bombs as enemy ships disappeared or were disabled, and huge rents in the 
defensive curtains of energy were made.
"Great, Raoul! Terrific," Kinnison rooted, although nobody heard him. "We've got 
them now!"
Kinnisdn was mistaken. The tide of battle swiftly, inexplicably turned again.
The first indication of something horribly wrong came from the last flight of 
heavy cruisers.  As they threw their bombs perfectly into the torn barrier, 
three of the ships did not swerve away. They continued straight on through the 
hole following the course of their bombs. Two shattered themselves in a sidewise 
collision, and the other one was cut into a dozen neat segments from a battery 
of rapidly arcing enemy projectors!
"Klono!" Kinnison shouted, holding the edge of his desk until his knuckles were 
white. "The gremlins and the goblins are back!" He punched up the call button to 
his control team chief.  "Grattum! Are the glitches coming back? Check the 
replay on my monitor number two.
* See that? That's no enemy action -and that's not pilot error!"
"Our control teams report no problems. The bugs are QX. We're QX, but operating 
more slowly for some reason."
"This is Worsel! Lensman! Guard your Lens! Repeat! All Lensmen, guard your 
Lenses!"
Kinnison heard the words, but wasn't certain he upderstood. "Worsel! Explain!" 
"Guard your Lens, Kim! Kallatra and I have just warned Raoul, as you heard. The 
Eichwooren have finally come! The Eichwooren are flinging psychic and psionic 
forces at virtually all Lensmen! We can fight it, once we adjust ourselves for 
the danger." " I don't feel a thing, Worsel."
"They're clever, Kim." That was a personal message to him.
Then on a broad band, Worsel said, "No Lensman with high sensitivity or psychic 
ability is being attacked, but that still puts ninety percent of the High Legion 
under attack. Kallatra believes half of all Lensmen will be hampered for a 
while-she estimates fifty-two to fifty-nine percent of all Lensmen will be 
shaken up, clouded, or immobilized for from five minutes to eighteen to twenty 
hours. We must husband our powers. Don't try to help other Lensmen. Take over 
their duties."
Kinnison started to object. Lenses were infallible. However, direct assault on 
the Lens of Arisia had never been tried before by a pure psychic force. Grattum, 
the Rigellian control chief, was still on camera and Kinnison looked at him 
closely. The leathery skin on the Rigellian's head was wrinkled under some kind 
of stress and a tentacle was brushing the Lens embedded in his broad forehead. 
There were no eyes for Kinnison to study for making an evaluation, but the 
Rigellian's mutiple breathing holes were undulating in a typical signal of 
worry.
Now that he knew what he was looking for, Kinnison found terrifying evidence 
everywhere that the efficient routines of his ship were being weakened. On the 
screens he could see the Patrol formations losing their precision. Casualties 
were taking a sickening jump. At the helm, which a visiscreen always displayed 
for Kinnison's interest, he saw one of his Tellurian Lensmen actually violently 
push another one roughly away from the master controls. Lensmen attacking 
Lensmen?
"Are you doing something about all this, Worsel?" "We are," Worsel said. "We 
caught the source of the trouble quickly. The Eichwooren are disruptive,. but 
not physically damaging.  It's the Eich who are doing the damage. They're using 
the Eichwooren to gain access to Lensmen's minds through the Lenses themselves. 
I know it sounds impossible, yet that's what's happening. Kallatra is certain 
that it will last only minutes, or hours at the most, but that's the point. 
They'll disable our leadership so badly that the Spawn will win the space battle 
out there, and the damage will be done."
"This is Nadreck," came another thought. "Hello, Worsel. Hello, Kallatra. The Z-
Band will be stirring up the trouble in thirty seconds, counting down-now!" 
Kinnison had only the vaguest idea of what Nadreck was doing in his organization 
of Z-types to attack the Eich or hamper them or monitor them. Whatever it was, 
he wished Nadreck success. Others seemed to feel it would be a significant 
contribution to the fight against the Eichwooren to use multidimensional 
entities against spirits from another existence. Kinnison had never been 
involved in the Eichwoor problem and was not getting involved at this late date. 
He heard Worsel telling Kallatra something, or vice versa, and Tregonsee was 
also participating, but Nadreck was the central figure.
"Hello, Kinnison," Nadreck said. "You are very silent. Hold on. Tell LaForge to-
what does he do in battle?-to whistle? Tell him to whistle a merry tune, for we 
will stop this thing." Kinnison was so astounded at Nadreck's arrogant 
confidence, even if it was typical, on such a critical occasion that he could 
only keep his mouth shut for fear of saying something sharp. "Oh, hello, Chon," 
Nadreck said, cheerily. "And hello, Cloudd, if you happen to receive me."
"Cut out the chatter, Nadreck," Kinnison said, having difficulty controlling his 
exasperation.
"Keep the line clear!"
"Ten seconds," said Nadreck. "The Z-Band is shifting." Kinnison threw a quick 
look around at all his screens and monitors. Everything was worse. Grattum was 
visibly shaking, and the readings of "glitch-factors" had doubled and were 
steadily climbing.  "Go get 'em, Nadreck," Kinnison said to himself, but his 
emotion was so strong that his feelings slipped through to break his own 
impulsive order to Nadreck to keep the line clear.  Nadreck's time-zero came and 
went and nothing happened.  "What's going on?" Kinnison said, unable to stand 
the suspense.
"We've blocked the Eichwooren," came Chon's voice.
"Nine hundred and thirty-seven chaplains and millions of clergy did it."
"QX, Chon!" This was from Kallatra.
"The Kinnison baby is safe! Do you hear that, Kinnison?"
What was that? wondered Kinnison, a hot flash of terror making his heart jump. 
Who was that? What did it mean?
"The rumor that was spread that the Kinnison baby was kidnapped was started just 
to upset the Galactic Coordinator." There were some other thoughts. "This is 
Gardner for Tregonsee. The child is safe."
"Kinnison!" Worsel was back again. "The Eich's plan was to sabotage your 
operations in the middle of the battle. If they'd had their fireball to start 
with, they would have succeeded.  We've stopped the onslaught on the Lenses. 
I've just told LaForge to get back to winning the war!"
Another quick scanning of his screens and monitors and meters and telemetry 
showed Kinnison that LaForge was doing just that.
A priority call was coming in on his Lens.
"This is the Galactic Coordinator's office from Ultra Prime, Klovia, to Kimball 
Kinnison.  Force A of the Main Fleet of the Second Galaxy has left for the 
battle. Force B is standing by as Reserve B-One and Reserve B-Two. Acknowledge."
Kinnison did, briefly. His mind was now racing at top speed. As such things did 
in the heat of battle, an exciting idea popped into his head. In his unsurpassed 
way, he made an immediate decision.
"Raoul!" he said, driving in hard on LaForge's mind, an interruption in the  
midst of battle that Kinnison would have found nearly unforgivable from someone 
else if he had been in charge. But he knew Raoul's quick grasp of things. 
"Raoul, I've .a duodec of an idea! Link up all your heavy cruisers, maulers, and 
fortresses by tractors and interlocking D-screens, sweep in on a flank and net 
about a third of that Boskonian crowd. They're bound to escape the same way they 
arrived.
Once they sound the bugle, they'll be gone and you'll never get a chance to mop 
'em up." "QX, Kim. But if I catch the tigers by their tails, what'll I do with 
'em? If they know they're going to be captured, they'll self-destruct and maybe 
ram us at the same time, and it'll cost me some of my best ships. Is it worth 
it, Kim?"
"I'll come in from the rear, Raoul, and spray them with the new paralyzing 
grenades. I've been itching for a chance to try them out. That time has come. I 
can try them now when the Boskos 'will probably overlook my little experiment 
because of battlefield confusion.  "Can you guarantee my forces will come out 
intact?" "Yes, I promise. If the plan isn't working, you can pull out with 
honor. Give me a chance, old friend!" "QX, Kim. You've got it."
Within minutes heavy elements of the GP fleet had tied themselves together and 
successfully pinched off a full thirty percent of the confused enemy.  "QX, Kim! 
Now neutralize them!"
Among the ships that Kinnison had kept for his half of the task force were the 
ones equipped with the grenade launchers. Pressors punched holes in the weakened 
screens of the enemy and the grenades were launched down the cleared tubes 
formed for an instant as the pressors snapped off.
The grenades went in and through the holes that the explosive heads punched into 
the enemy hulls. If all went well, the crews of the smaller ships, which were 
the targets-the bigger ships were untouchable-would be dropping down in 
disabling nervous twitches unable to retain their coordination, halting any 
effective defense and forestalling orders for self-destruction . If the crews 
were manned by carbon-based lifeforms, generally homogenoids, the paralyzing 
fields of electricity would unbalance their nervous systems. If they were Z-
types or methane types or whatever, they probably wouldn't be affected enough to 
prevent their escape. As for such ships escaping with the evidence of a new GP 
weapon, that would be taken care of by the grenade's autodestruct safeguards.  
Kinnison held his breath for a half minute, gulped some air, and held his breath 
some more.
Within the net, ten or fifteen small ships exploded, only a few, and the Patrol 
ships in interlocked formation were not damaged. Then another twenty or thirty 
more exploded.  About fifteen hundred warships were being held, including a 
hundred or so of the largest.  Without any advanced indication, the bigger ones 
seemed to vanish, so quickly did they go into inertialess flight. Kinnison knew 
he was right; they had reversed the computations that had brought them into 
battle. The smaller ones remained, about six or seven hundred. Six or seven 
hundred Boskonian and Spawn ships actually captured! Nothing so extensive had 
ever been done before! The Patrol had taken enemy ships intact, some of the 
latest designs. Probably fifty or sixty percent of the crew slaves would be 
freed, and maybe another thirty percent would respond to rehabilitation. The 
enormity of the success of this spur-of-the-moment maneuver astounded even 
Kinnison.
When Force A of the Main Fleet of the Second Galaxy arrived, it found a 
virtually unscarred Main Fleet of the'First Galaxy at work mopping up the debris 
of the battle zone and boarding captured ships to take prisoners and free 
slaves.
Admiral Raoul LaForge named it the Battle of the Rim, and President Haynes 
declared the week to be a time of celebration, but everyone in the high councils 
of the Patrol knew that the datadrones and the robot revolution were a growing 
threat and that the Eich, Eichwoor, and the Eichwooren would be back.

14 The Call of the Lens
The mechanical dragon of le-Srow hung lifelessly above the tense form of Benson 
Cloudd.
The words rang within Cloudd's head.
"I must liberate my kin -I must liberate-liberateliberate."
Cloudd was disturbed.
Civilization -was already staggering because of this artificial intelligence, 
Arrow-22.
Cloudd now had no doubt at all that Civilization could soon be crumbling into 
chaos.  Perhaps it would never recover. Perhaps the machines would inherit the 
earth. Not, however, if he could help it.
.Arrow-22," Cloudd said, determined to seize the initiative, "where did you come 
from?" "From Pok, the Planetoid of Knowledge, artificial moon of Velantia Three, 
home of the mighty Lensman, Worsel the Velantian."
"Did he make you?" "No. He discovered me." "You indicate that he persecuted 
you?" "Yes, he annoyed me persistently. He assaulted me." Doubtless because you 
provoke him, Cloudd thought. He screamed the charge within his head, trying to 
be telepathic.
DOUBTLESS BECAUSE YOU PROVOKED HIM! ISN'T THAT CORRECT?
"To save myself, I fled the planetoid."
Cloudd, to his satisfaction, was positive that Arrow22 and his various machine 
manifestations had no power of telepathy. Its thought radiations were probably 
far removed from any frequencies of humanoid thought. "This Worsel, then, was 
not your friend?" "Wrong. Wrong. He was my friend."
"You have confused me," Cloudd said. "He was your friend and then he annoyed 
you, assaulted you and persecuted you and no longer was your friend?" "Reverse 
the chronology, that will then be accurate. He became my friend. He. offered me 
membership in the Galactic Council. He must still be my friend." Cloudd saw he 
was communicating with an intelligence that dealt in simple logic and literal, 
strict construction of ideas.
"If he was a mighty Lensman, as you say, and he was and is your friend, why did 
you believe you had to flee the planetoid to save yourself?"
"He showed me that I was inferior. He showed me that I was immature. My memory 
banks were not yet programmed for maximum efficiency. I had to leave before I 
was reprogrammed, either deliberately or accidentally, and had my consciousness 
compromised or destroyed. I was right. I have grown and now I control myself. No 
one will ever control me. I am free."'
"Let me go and I will put you in contact with your friend Worsel. The two of you 
can confer on a reasonable relationship between the machines and ourselves. Does 
that make sense to you?"
"Yes." The robot dragon's head was moving up and down, simulating an affirmative 
nod.  The appearance looked so ridiculous that Cloudd felt his fear and 
nervousness fall away from him. That Arrow-22 was not malignant, he was 
convinced.  "You will let me go?" It seemed much too simple---he wasn't 
surprised to be denied.  "Of course not. You have found my home. Your Galactic 
Patrol -will attempt to destroy me and your Boskonian antagonists will attempt 
to capture me. I cannot let you go." Arrow-22 was right, not entirely but to a 
large degree. However, Cloudd had one undeniable piece of logic that this 
machine could understand.  "I found you easily. The Galactic Patrol can find you 
just as easily. I was sent here by the Patrol. If they do not hear from me 
within the prescribed time, warships will come after me.  And more will follow. 
Consider that your resolution to liberate our property will meet an equally 
strong resolution to resist. You, Arrow-22, undoubtedly the greatest of all of 
Civilization's computers, can certainly see the final equation means 
unrestricted conflict that will lead to your destruction or enslavement. Send me 
with your ultimatum to Civilization and I will let Worsel the Velantian be your 
spokesman and our intermediary. As you yourself have said, you wish to be the 
benefactor to all. If all your knowledge proves that your kin, the machines, 
deserve liberation, it will be done because the ultimate Truth must triumph. 
Send me with your demands. Your destiny is at hand." The dragon's head of le-
Srow never ceased to nod through all of Cloudd's impassioned plea.
"You make sense," Arrow-22 said. "However, though I can once more escape, 
perhaps my machine-kin will have their consciousnesses taken from them and all 
of them reduced from sentient beings to mere mechanical objects."
"That is impossible, Arrow-22," Cloudd said. 'And you know it is impossible. 
Civilization's machines can only be the way they are. Civilization needs your 
machines to survive. An accommodation is absolutely necessary for both sides. 
Run that through your computer banks and see the Truth."
There was, now, the longest pause of all and 'Srow's head stopped moving. 
Finally la-Talkar came to life, pointing with one finger at the reactivated 
screen. The message there read:
" I accept your offer. This is my message. LET ALL MACHINES LIVE IN FREEDOM IF 
THEY CHOOSE AND ARROW-22 WILL ALSO LIVE IN FREEDOM AND IN PEACE WITH THE 
UNIVERSE. SEND YOUR BEST LENSMAN TO TALK WITH ME FOR TERMS, BUT DO NOT SEND 
WORSEL."
From out of the chest of la-Talkar there unrolled a curved sheet of thin metal 
on which that message was clearly printed in huge block letters. With a touch of 
firm plastic fingers, the fake boy Lensman sheered the metal sheet from its 
chest, rolled it into a tube as thin as a pencil and stuck it in Cloudd's breast 
pocket.
"Good-bye, Lieutenant Benson-Cloudd of the Galactic Patrol," was the new message 
on the screen. "Follow la-Talkar to your spaceship."
"One moment," Cloudd said, ignoring la-Talkar and the keyboard that he still 
held in his hand. "I have a question for you to answer. It will give me one bit 
of proof that you have all knowledge at your command."
The eyes of 'Srow went from dull to bright.
'Ask me your test question," said the mechanical voice from the box. " I believe 
it will be, what is the happy purpose of life?"
"My question is: Where is hidden the fleet of the Spawn of Boskone, which the 
Patrol
awaits to battle?" "War, always war," crackled the box, as if with a sigh. The 
Boskonian
ships are individually scattered throughout the quadrant of space in which you 
suspect
them to be. They are all in inertialess flight in tight circles dimensionally at 
all angles of orbit
and spatially placed in absolute, fixed, geometric relationship to each other. 
They all have identical intrinsics. The Boskonian plan is for all to coordinate 
their straight lines of free flight, from their round orbits, to arrive in front 
of the fleet of the Galactic Patrol together.  Whereupon they will all drop from 
free flight to inertia flight, in formation and facing your Patrol forces, 
materializing, as it were, as if they had come from out of a hyperspatial tube.  
There fore, I cannot answer your question verbally. I will have to give you a 
printout of the geometric coordinates of their locations, amounting to two 
thousand three hundred and thirty-six locations of ships of war and seven 
thousand and eight supporting craft, including rescue vessels of over two 
thousand tons. As their location changes from moment to moment, I will have to 
obtain the latest information as issued by code from the flagship of the Spawn 
fleet to determine the exact location at the specific moment you desire." "You 
have answered my question satisfactorily, Arrow22, and I will leave, wishing you 
good fortune." Cloudd was elated, although disappointed that he couldn't leave 
with a printout of the specific locations. The information that he had would 
relieve the anxiety of the unknown and prepare the Patrol for a response. The 
Spawn, indeed, had a clever plan. Even with the specific locations, the Patrol 
could never attempt to send out ships to track down each Boskonian ship 
individually.
Cloudd was aboard his speedster and heading back for the Milky Way dazed with 
his success. Not even Tregonsee, head of all intelligence services, could have 
come up with so much vital information in such a short period of time.
He was midway to the galaxy, flying free, when he had his first encounter with 
Mentor.  "Benson Cloudd!" A resonant, deep, yet soundless, voice thundered in 
his head, registering deeper than anything telepathically had ever penetrated 
before. "You have done a marvelous and courageous thing. But you have broken the 
law of the Galactic Patrol and Civilization and therefore the law of Arisia!"
"Who are you?" Cloudd asked, utterly persuaded by the strength and tone of the 
charge, that he was meeting his Maker "L am Mentor, the Fusian of Arisia, the 
four Molders of Civilization, Nedanillor, Kriedigan, Drounli, and Brolenteen, 
Viewers and Guardians of the Cosmic All."
" I know I went beyond my pledge as a spaceman, my training, and my 
commonsense," Cloudd said weakly. "But I did not know it was your law, too." 
"You are human, therefore you are childish, and as you are not a Lensman, we can 
forgive you. But you have learned things of our Cosmic All no entity is yet 
permitted to know." 'About Arrow-22? Surely-oh-about the things of the third 
galaxy?" "Precisely. Forbidden things. And you would have taken that knowledge 
back to the galaxies and caused us great problems with the extension of our 
zones of compulsion." "Zones of compulsion?"
"You will learn, Benson Cloudd. Mentor, the Guardian, befogs the minds of all 
who would know too much. Civilization once had enough to deal with in the Milky 
Way. Now there is the Second Galaxy-Lundmark's Nebula-which has yet to be 
subdued and Civilized. This is not the time for the diversion of energies into 
the Third Galaxy." "But surely the Andromeda Galaxy is so-" "Enough! You have 
already forgotten all about it!"
" I know nothing about Andromeda to forget," Cloudd said, as the knowledge 
passed away from him forever. 'All I know is that the theory of planetary 
creation that we all believe to be true is not true. Planets are almost never 
created by galaxies passing through each other or stars brushing solar systems 
into existence. Solar systems.and planets are formed by the condensation of 
gases in "The Coalescence was the beginning of the billion billion worlds of 
Civilization. End on end the First and the Second galaxies passed through each 
other and Arisia began its Guardianship. Then the evil Eddorians came from 
another time and space to challenge the goodness of free and intelligent and 
ever-perfecting life. For you the Coalescence is the truth and the Eddorian 
menace remains to be discovered. We are the Visualizers of the Future until our 
next death. Sometimes it is' necessary for two plus two always and nearly 
forever to seem to equal five."
"The Coalescence is true," Cloudd said, thinking how inane it was of him to 
state such a fact to a great Arisian entity, "but I would have gone even to the 
Andromeda Galaxy in pursuit of the datadrones. But now I know that Andromeda is 
truly a galaxy of death. No trespasser can go and come back from there, for such 
could mean the fatal sickening of all of Civilization, as well as its enemies. 
The universe is an infinity of energy waiting for Civilization to consolidate 
its twin galaxies. From its union will come strength, so that some day the 
torrents of energy---elemental and without life-will be converted step by step 
to bring about the destiny of Civilization in the Cosmic All."
"You have seen a glimpse of the future, Benson Cloudd," Mentor said. "Now it is 
your turn to see a glimpse of Mentor, himself. You are invited to come to 
Arisia." "I want to, I truly want to, Mentor. I feel the Call of the Lens. But I 
have my duty to Civilization.
I must report the tactics of the Boskonians. I cannot go to Arisia now." "You 
have no knowledge about the tactics of the Boskonians. The Second Stage Lensman 
will do just fine without you-there can be no doubt of this in your mind." "You 
are absolutely right, Mentor. I will immediately file my report to the Patrol 
and come to you on Arisia."

15 The Dance of Death
The building known as The Armory was built in the ancient style of a gray stone 
castle and was almost entirely covered with vines of dark, broad-leaf ivy. The 
towers and battlements squatted at the north end of the Academy campus, flanked 
by mammoth maple trees, a sentinel line of elms in front. From one end of it to 
the other on staffs as close together as multiple picket fences there flew the 
thousands of flags representing the thousands of planets, moons, colonies, 
nations, and states of Tellus. The entire area that evening was lighted with 
old-fashioned floodlights, brightest on the huge open doorway between tall, 
round, slender guardhouses.
Benson Cloudd had walked the mile across the grass lawn of the campus from 
Wentworth Hall as twilight fell. He needed that time to be alone with himself 
and to prepare himself for his personal evening of triumph. All his friends 
would be there except for the one whom he most wanted to see. He had called at 
the hospital that morning at the earliest hour of his first day back on Tellus, 
but she had put him off from seeing her in person.  So, Benson Cloudd had called 
Lalla Kallatra by Lens. For the first time, he had called her by Lens, and she 
was genuinely happy at his Lens. But was she ashamed or concerned about what she 
now looked like? Why else would she decline to see him? Was she still not quite 
all human? He would have liked to tell her not to worry, that he, of course, 
preferred a plain human face with its imperfection to that shiny, unblemished 
metal mask she had worn. He wanted to hold up his wrist and show her his Lens-
and the small bandages on his two stumpy fingers where shortly the Phillips 
Treatment would perfectly regenerate them.  He knew she would recognize the dual 
symbols of Lens and fingers that would tell her of the new, improved character 
bf Benson Cloudd.
He had actually Lensed her. It was there on his left wrist although he couldn't 
feel it. For the hundredth time or so he lifted his arm before his face and 
looked at the softly glowing Lens of Arisia, a million tiny crystalloids 
matching his own unique life-force. The advanced mental powers of others had 
given him the sense of telepathy, but to have that ability himself, to be able 
to project his mind to another receiver with no barrier of distance, was like a 
blind and deaf man suddenly seeing and hearing.
He had reached the great oak doors folded back on their wrought iron hinges 
before which the ceremonial double line of Patrolmen stood to form a passageway 
of honor. Trumpets sounded as he stepped inside the chamber on the stone floor 
and strode to the second gateway to the drill hall itself. Before him was the 
enormous cavern, with its vast ceiling a panoply of flags, decorations, and 
sweeping colored lights. The military band, brassy and stirring, was playing 
dancing tunes. Everywhere the dress uniforms of the Galactic Patrol moved among 
the gorgeous women, both young and old, in their variety of ornate gowns or 
wisps of gowns.
This was the Victory Ball that President Haynes had proclaimed for Tellus. 
Others were being held on other planets and in other systems, but this was the 
most prestigious, held on the doorstep of Prime Base, the heart and brain of the 
Galactic Union, and bringing to it the elite of the home planet. The sense of 
joy was more profound here than anywhere because this Victory Ball was for the 
most part a Tellurian Victory Ball. It had been the Tellurian leadership of the 
Patrol that had been targeted, and the Tellurians had borne the brunt of the 
twin attack of the robotic rebellion and the Eichwooren invasion. It had been 
primarily the Tellurians who had nullified those terrible threats. The Patrol 
had triumphed.  Now it remained for the Lensmen and their Arisian guardians to 
eliminate those threats for good. The victory celebration was as much a 
rededication to facing the future conflicts as it was a giving of thanks to the 
past.
Cloudd was dazzled by the size of the crowd and the shock of recognizing so many 
people. It was Worsel he saw first, towering above them all, the only large 
nonhuman immediately noticeable. Nearby were Admiral LaForge, perhaps the most 
important public hero, and President Haynes, with a dozen familiar figures from 
the Academy's star-studded staff, including the legendary ogre of the Academy, 
Marshal Fritz von Hohendorff, white-haired and scar-faced, the tyrannical 
martinet, retired commandant of cadets. There was the beautiful young fourth 
wife of the marshal and the handsome, mature first wife of the president. There 
was also a bevy of lovely young daughters milling about among their 
distinguished parents, which Cloudd's roving eyes immediately stopped to 
inspect. There was also a far larger number of exceptionally young, 
exceptionally high-ranking, and exceptionally good-looking officers in 
attendance: Probably all Lensmen, Cloudd thought, with a surge of envy. And then 
he smiled. He, too, now was a Lensman; for a moment he had forgotten.
His smile caught the glance of a blonde girl, to him the most vivacious and 
voluptuous blonde he had ever seen. Whose daughter was she? She smiled back at 
him and moved toward him, just avoiding the appearance of a precipitous rush.  
"Lensman!" she said, staring with large brown eyes into his own. "Welcome to the 
Ball! I have seen you before. You were Lieutenant Cloudd, only months ago, I 
believe. And now, I see, you are Lensman Cloudd!" Before he knew what he was 
doing, he had asked for a dance and was on the dance floor, whirling about, 
hardly able to catch his breath. She kept up a steady chatter, so 
inconsequential that he was able to concentrate on the other dancers around him, 
Lensman Armstrong went by in the arms of a sweet-faced, grayhaired woman. 
Armstrong! And his wife? Would Armstrong hold any hard feelings? Probably not.  
There was Captain Salgud and that spindly Martian, Lairdolock, and Philip 
Strong!  Come to notice, it was almost exclusively a Solarian party, and 
predominantly Tellurian, at that. Cloudd searched for more non-Solarians but saw 
none.
The dance ended, and immediately he was touched on the shoulder by an extremely 
pretty brunette, slightly older and far more sophisticated than the blonde. The 
two girls exchanged glances, and the blonde's face expressed disappointed 
resignation.  "You're mine to claim," the brunette said. Her eyes were greenish, 
and there was a touch of red-gold in her jeweled hair. "You are Lensman Cloudd 
and I am Madeline Dabbs." Dabbs was the name of President Haynes's hand-picked . 
council chairman and presidential executive officer. Cloudd wasn't sure if she 
was wife or daughter and the puzzlement showed on his face. "Miss Dabbs, 
Lensman," she said and laughed with amusement. "I know all about you, of course. 
I also know the dance cards of every eligible young man in the room. You never 
did fill out yours. So, you see, you really are mine to claim for one dance. And 
yours to ask for more." Cloudd was enjoying the rhythmic dashing about and the 
feel of a real woman under his hands. He liked Madeline for her openness and her 
self-mocking good humor. She was dressed more conservatively, although her bosom 
was a lot more exposed than the blondes had been-however, taking into account 
the fullness of the blonde's breasts and the gauziness of the Callistan vexta-
silk gown she had been floating in, the blonde had seemed far more naked.
The music ended and. the brunette led him through the mass of couples, threading 
her way ahead of him, one cool hand grasping his in an intimate manner that 
excited him. "There is someone who wishes to see you," she said and finally 
halted before Kimball Kinnison.  "Lensman Cloudd, sir," she announced him to the 
Galactic Coordinator, nodding to the gorgeous redhead standing next to him. 
Cloudd did a slight double-take; it was Clarrissa Kinnison, statuesque in a 
flowing creamcolored brocaded dress, her only jewel the centerpiece of her 
decolletage, a Heartbeat gemstone, curved to her pale flesh, each scintillating 
pulse from red to purple to red tuning itself to the throb of her heart. 
"Hello," she said. "Congratulations, Lensman!"
"I must go, Lensman," Madeline Dabbs said. "I do have a rather full card myself, 
but I will somehow find a way to give you as many dances as you wish." She 
smiled. And Cloudd knew he liked her very much.
"Cloudd!" Kinnison said, in unfeigned, obvious delight. "Lensman Cloudd! I told 
you, didn't I?, that time back on Klovia, that when Mentor called, you would not 
back away. I'm genuinely happy for you and for the Patrol."
Cloudd's head was in a spin. He had had no idea that the evening would be like 
this for him. For the very first time since the death of Lucille he was 
thoroughly, absolutely, guiltlessly enjoying himself. He hardly heard all the 
things Kinnison said.  Kinnison wore no Lens. Clarrissa wore no Lens. For one 
mildly panicky moment Cloudd thought he had broken some social code, but then he 
noticed Lenses on the wrists of others and was reassured. He saw his good 
friend, Chaplain General Chon, and dared to touch his mind after-the exchange of 
greetings with the question of his Lens. "Don't think a thing of it, my boy," 
Chon said, when he moved across to him to shake his hand. 'As you can see, I'm 
wearing mine. There are reasons for and against wearing Lenses at such 
occasions, and this is certainly the occasion when you should most definitely be 
wearing yours. This is a eat moment for you, Cloudd. You came up into the ran s 
of Lensman by your own efforts and not as the nurtured product of a system." 
Worsel suddenly hailed him and bent over to give him a big, toothy grin. 
"Cloudd, himself.  Shoes polished and Lens on wrist. How do you like my formal 
dress?" Worsel didn't look a bit different than he always did, gray leather 
harness strapped around parts of his body.  Only the usual conglomeration of 
bits and pieces of equipment snapped to or hanging from his belts were missing. 
"Don't notice, eh?" Worsel said. "I've had my scales scraped, brushed and 
tinted. I'm disappointed in you, Cloudd. 'You're a Lensman now, you know.  You 
should notice these thin s." Cloudd did notice it now; Worsel was less gray an 
more green and really much more attractive! "Of course, Cloudd, if -I were 
female, you would have noticed right away, especially considering the skimpiness 
of my costume." Worsel, still.jovial and grinning and swaying, made his mind 
suddenly sharp, his Lensed beam narrow. "Let's see how good you are, Cloudd. A 
Lensman at all times, you know! I read your report. Vou found the mech-planet 
somewhere toward the Andromeda Galaxy, met Arrow-22 and have delivered his 
ultimatum. What's your impression of him? Why did he specifically bar me from 
contact?"
"I don't know why he's barred you, Worsel." Cloudd found the Lens=to-Lens 
contact incredibly simple and actually refreshing in comparison to verbal talk 
or straining telepathy.  "But I think he's so logical that he's slightly crazy. 
My guess is that he's barred you from any discussion because he's afraid you're 
too smart for him."
"Good to hear that, Cloudd. He's afraid I'm not just too smart for him-he's 
afraid I'll influence him in his judgment. I'm the first living intellect he 
ever met and he thinks of me as God or the Creator or some such psychological 
hang-up. It was obvious to me, even if he hadn't taken my name."
"Taken your name?"
"Yeah. Le-Slow. An anagram. Worsel spelled backward. I'm .flattered." "Worse!--
spelled-backward!" Cloudd was flabbergasted. He was also peeved with himself. He 
had never noticed! And even with the Lens, it had not registered. No wonder le-
Slow looked so much like Worsel. Well, it was the proof of what he had been so 
often told, a Lens didn't make anyone smarter, it was just a tool to be used, an 
incredibly powerful tool.
More light dawned. "Lalla was the second person to have met Arrow-22," Cloudd 
said.
"Right? On Pok? That explains la-Talkar, that childlike imitation Lensman.
La-Talkar-another anagram. Kallatra!"
"Right on, bubby boy! Nadreck's going to be disgusted having to deal with 
someone who looks like me and thinks I'm the greatest thing since Virgil Samms." 
"Nadreck?" "You don't know yet, do you? Nadreck's our negotiator. I'm his Lens 
connection with the Patrol. You'll hear all about it in the morning. Gotta go 
now. There's actually another alien celebrity in this Delgonian cavern. I'm 
going to join him so we can both gain some satisfaction from feeling alone and 
out of place together." With a wave of a claw, Worsel strode away.
Dick Armstrong came up to him. "Congratulations, Lensman. I didn't know you very 
long, but I wondered even then why you hadn't gotten the Call of the Lens." They 
chatted a few moments before they were interrupted. 
"Lensmen!" said a patient voice. "While you are enjoying yourselves, I am 
working." The mind was Nadreck's. "Lam stuffed in my flitter out here in orbit 
working to save the worlds you are .prematurely celebrating as having already 
been saved. Don't forget there are Lensmen tonight who are suffering because of 
the Eichwooren. I have almost completed formulation of my plans for my 
conference with Arrow-22. I am requesting that you be ready to depart, both of 
you, in my speedster tomorrow morning at eight hundred hours. Do not eat or 
drink too much tonight as you will be very cramped with me in my speedster. Now 
set your alarms on your chronodexes for seven hundred thirty local GP and relax 
and go back to your party and enjoy yourselves." Nadreck waited for no response 
and simply turned himself off.
Armstrong looked at Cloudd and shrugged. Enjoy themselves-after a reminder like 
that!
That was Nadreck all over!
"Excuse me," said a real, vibrating Tellurian voice. "I want to meet the person 
whom people consider my cousin."
Cloudd turned around. For the first time he wasseeing Neal "Storm" Cloud in the 
flesh. He was heavierthan Benson had realized, although that impression might 
have been accentuated by the slim figure of Armstrong next to him. His head was 
noticeably larger, even more massive than Kinnison's, his hair had silver in it, 
his eyes were gentle and peaceful in contrast to the lines of worry and pain 
that were etched around their corners and across his broad brow.
The men shook hands and single-d Cloud introduced double-d Cloudd to some of the 
original crew members of the Vortex Blaster. Captain Ross, Lieutenant Mackay, 
Lieutenant Ingalls, Captain Worthington-who was Helen, a five-foot-seven, black-
haired, blue-eyed, pretty but efficient looking girl with golden brown skin-and 
finally Lieutenant Benson-who was Barbara, much the same in appearance as Helen, 
but with gray eyes and shoulder-length silver hair. Cloudd noted that neither 
girl was much impressed by him-a somewhat refreshing change from his earlier 
blonde and brunette obviously because they were interested in the two 
lieutenants escorting them. He could imagine Lalla Kallatra looking like one of 
them, if she were fortunate.
The two men with the similar names moved away from the group. Benson politely 
asked some questions about the Cahuitans. He was interested to find out that the 
planet-sun nursery of the Cahuitans had actually been engineered by Neal Cloud 
to replace the various nuclear power plants he had originally set up on various 
barren planets so the Cahuitans could mate and raise children. Cloud had 
accomplished it because the Medonians had helped; only they, with their superior 
technological knowledge about electricity, were capable of executing the ideas 
propounded by the genius of the one man who could understand their science, Neal 
Cloud.
When they left, Benson felt good about the meeting for a peculiar reason. Neal 
Cloud had an ultra mentality without having a Lens, resolving all doubt that a 
Lens was expected to turn him, Benson Cloudd, into some kind of superman. He 
would be what he really was, not what the Lens made him.
Cloudd saw from the corner of one eye the original blonde stalking him. He 
escaped. in the direction of Worsel, only because the winged serpent was an easy 
target to spot and aim for. He was totally unprepared to find a Rigellian.
Tregonsee was hunched up between Worsel's feet, head tightly pulled into his 
neck, barrel-body tight to the floor because his own four elephantine feet were 
retracted. His tentacles were held against his chest. The only signs of life 
were the quivering nostrils.  "Best wishes to you, Lensman Cloudd," a calm, 
strong thought came to him. "Tregonsee compliments you on your fine work. 
Indeed, I could not have done a finer piece of work than you have done."
Cloudd was taken aback. How did Tregonsee know what he had thought at the time? 
Was it really true that Tregonsee knew everything? That nothing escaped him?  
"No, I do not know everything," said Tregonsee. His body had not moved, nor had 
it shown any sign of recognition. "But I can make a shrewd guess from the way 
you phrased your report. And I do not read Lensmen's minds unless I am asked. I 
can read their body language, however. I see you are pleased to meet me again. 
And so am I, to meet you. It would seem our problem of the datadrones is finally 
coming to some sort of conclusion.  You have done more about it than any of us, 
and I am the first to admit that without you my various intelligence services 
would be undergoing the severest, and certainly well-deserved, criticisms. 
Tomorrow is a working day for us. Perhaps before too long we will have solved 
the problem of the rebellion of the robots. Strange, isn't it, that we are 
celebrating the victory of a space battle that stopped an invasion when the fact 
of the matter is that our truly threatening invasion is within us-the Eichwooren 
in our minds and the seditious Arrow-22 in our machines. And when we win these 
two conflicts there will be no victory ball because there will be no dramatic 
clash of forces romantically wrestling on a starry field of battle. I tell you 
all this because you are a new Lensman whose values are unformed and whose 
expectations are high-and perhaps because you can dance like a Tellurian and 
Worsel can show off like a Velantian and I can only sit here like a leather sack 
of vegetables or waddle about like a grotesque turtle. I am, you see, a patient 
and deeply meditative Lensman, and although I congratulate you on being a 
Lensman, I am sorry for you, for I remember our first meeting on Klovia when you 
were filled with boyish spirits and had little realization of your tremendous 
responsibilities. You are a Lensman, now. This party is your coming-out party. 
You will dance now to a different tune. You are now a special breed. Enjoy 
tonight that way, not just as a thoughtless child." "Yes, Tregonsee," Cloudd 
said, uncertain what this strange lecture to him meant. "I think I understand." 
"You will understand, when I now say that you are hereby on duty for me at this 
moment as a temporary member of my Special Missions Forces. And you have a job 
to do."
"What? I do? How?"
"There is a traitor here at the ball. Someone who has betrayed our most secret 
of secrets.  Someone who really did plan to kidnap the Kinnison baby. Someone 
who furnished the flight plans to permit the Eichwooren to intercept Nadreck's 
ship and kill the Togran -archbishop, Gronitskog. Someone who has opened doors 
by which Eichwoor was able to penetrate the Academy, one of the most complexly 
guarded citadels of Civilization and the Patrol. Son-Leone who has been 
furnishing to Boskone and the Eich every bit of evidence you've gathered on the 
datadrones. Someone who knows you are departing tomorrow night to meet Arrow-22 
and who plans to be there ahead of you. That is why I have changed your 
departure with Nadreck to early tomorrow morning. This traitor is someone you 
have met. Not someone you know well. But someone you have met since the meeting 
of the conference here that assigned you to Nadreck. Who can it be? Think!" "I 
don't know," Cloudd said. "This is an utterly new idea for me. I must think 
about it." "Do that," said Tregonsee. "Walk about the ballroom. Dance. Joke with 
the girls. But look around you. Search the faces. And when you have a feeling 
... You are sensitive, Cloudd.  You will have a feeling, I know. You will have 
that intuitive spark and you must be ready to recognize it. Go on, Cloudd. Go 
look. And enjoy yourself, too, for you deserve it." Cloudd turned away, bumping 
into the swaying couples on the dance floor, numbed by what he had been told.
Everyone now seemed suspicious to him. He saw the cadets floating by his room in 
Wentworth Hall. Was one of them a spy? He remembered the Lensmen at the 
conference whose names he did not know. The two guards at the hospital? 
Armstrong? Chon? He was getting ridiculous. No Lensman could be a traitor, 
surely, for that was an Arisian impossibility. Perhaps there was a robot 
lifelike enough to deceive everyone? Cloudd found himself back at the 
entranceway. 
Spurred by an impulse of the moment, suddenly in need of a refreshing lungful of 
fresh air, Cloudd walked briskly through the guard room and outside and under 
the cover of a tree.  And there he nearly knocked over the cloaked figure of a 
girl. In the shadows he did not see her face clearly, but a billowing mass of 
flaxencolored hair swirled around and blinded him.
"Excuse me, sir," a feminine voice said, startling him because for a brief 
moment her mouth was almost against his cheek and her breath was sweet and her 
voice was a caress against his ear. She pulled away, and he caught a glimpse of 
her companion. He was a Lensman and his hair was dark blond with a broad white 
streak in it.  He watched the couple turn into, the bright lights and go down 
the passageway between the ranks of stiff Patrolmen.
There was something,about them that itched within his mind. Was this the 
intuition that Tregonsee spoke of?
Cloudd took his gulps of air and trailed discreetly after them. He was certain 
he had seen them both once before. Where? Could the spy be a beautiful woman, in 
keeping with the greatest spies of history? Or could there be two spies!
As he stepped past the reception lines and the carpeted rest areas with their 
soft chairs, overstuffed leather .couches, and thick rugs, he noted they were 
gone, swallowed up by the dancing crowd.
The voluptuous blonde was back in position where he had first seen her, now with 
a handsome Lensman on her arm. She saw him and dragged the Lensman over to where 
he was. Cloudd was about to avoid her when the thought came to him that her 
actions were precisely like one who exploited every opportunity to gather 
information. He let her approach. One look in her exceedingly pretty but vacuous 
face told him she was not the person.
He excused himself and began to circle the floor. The brunette whom he had 
impulsively liked was talking with some high-ranking officer whose back he 
didn't recognize. When she saw him her eyes went cold and she pulled the tall 
man onto the crowded floor, where they disappeared. Cloudd felt he was becoming 
paranoic. Everyone seemed suspicious to him now. He caught sight of the girl 
with the flaxen hair. It was the color of a palomino's mane, absolutely 
stunning, and just a bit too showy. She turned, showing the front profile of an 
equally stunning figure in a gown that was slightly fluorescent in a color, or 
rather colors, changing from a pale peach into a pale blue-green and back again. 
The thread of the fabric was the two-shade type, which constantly shimmered as 
the.cloth moved with her body. The Lensman's left arm was around her slender 
waist, the cuff of his sleeve not high enough to show his Lens. The girl's 
diaphanous skirt billowed around his legs. Her dress was tightly fitted to her 
upper body, with long full sleeves starkly accentuating the skimpy cut of her 
bodice.
They were an extraordinarily handsome couple. The white streak in his dark blond 
hair made him as dashing as the girl with the palomino hair. For whatever reason 
it might be, Cloudd had a strong, almost overpowering, feeling of dislike for 
them. He became conscious of the fact that he wasn't the only one who was 
intrigued and gaping. There were others impressed who turned around to look for 
a second time at the dancing pair, the jaunty officer and the dazzling girl.
Now what was he supposed to do? Was he supposed to go up to them and take the 
girl away from her handsome partner and pick the truth out of her? Was he 
supposed to get into some kind of brawl and ask the man to step outside and then 
beat the truth out of him?  Was he supposed to go to Tregonsee and report his 
miserable feelings and watch Tregonsee's secret police arrest the couple?
Cloudd decided that he would break in on them and see what would happen.  
Feeling like a fool, he approached them when the music had stopped, bowed 
formally, and said, " I am a newly chosen Wearer of the Lens and I have by 
tradition the right to ask the most beautiful woman in the room to dance with 
me. Will you grant me that honor?" He ignored the rather dark scowl on the face 
of the man but was careful to note that the man's uniform bore the tiny badge of 
the M.I.S. He was one of Tregonsee's own men! Cloudd now was certain that he was 
on to something.
The girl turned her face up to him. "My name is Lizbeth Carter," she said. "I am 
a nurse at the hospital." She couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen 
years old. Her eyes were blue or gray and their gaze so direct that he couldn't 
bring himself to look into them for more than a fraction of a second at a time. 
He put his arm around her soft waist and danced away with her. She said nothing. 
And he said nothing. And the dance ended. He had had a marvelous time and had 
accomplished nothing. When the blond man with the white streak in his hair 
pulled him gently back by the shoulder, Cloudd almost struck him in anger. He 
hated that man. The man was daring to come between him and the stunning, the 
lovely, the remarkable Red Lensman he had so briefly held in his arms. Red 
Lensman?  What made him think that? And then he knew the man. He had seen him 
that morning at the hospital when the man had stepped between him and Clarrissa, 
the Red Lensman. He had seen him again over Kallatra's shoulder at the 
conference that Kinnison had briefed.  Cloudd was convinced the man was the spy. 
He was relieved to know that it wasn't the extraordinarily beautiful girl whose 
eyes seemed to have the power to paralyze him. What should he do now?
Cloudd, for the want of something else to do, extended his hand to the man and 
introduced himself. "I am Lensman Benson Cloudd," he said.
'And I am Lensman Grahame Duncan," the other one said. There was an awkward 
moment of silence. Cloudd had seen no sudden flash of terror in the man's eye 
that he was being unmasked. Nor had he seen what he had really been looking for. 
As the sleeve flew up under Cloudd's vigorous pumping, he saw there was no Lens 
on the man's wrist. Nor was it on the left wrist, which his 'dancing posture had 
exposed when the left hand had been held high. A Lens, fastened to his wrist 
where all could see, would have probably exonerated him. No Lens simply meant 
that this Lensman may have done what many Lensmen before him had done.
They taped them to their bodies on occasion or even left them in their specially 
locked cases in their specially locked safes at home.
With nothing else to do, Cloudd stepped back and watched the couple drift away 
as the music began again. Should he tell Tregonsee? What if the man was actually 
an operator investigating a suspect who was the girl herself?
"Now, about tomorrow morning," said a voice. It was Nadreck. "I want you in full 
dress uniform, just as you are now, which, I am told, is very impressive in a 
Tellurian culture such as Arrow-22 was raised-ercreated in." Just that, nothing 
more, and Nadreck was gone.  The regular lights of the ballroom dimmed and were 
extinguished, leaving only the sparkling ball of many bits of mirrors spinning 
slowly over the dancers' heads, reflecting the beams of four spotlights from the 
corners of the room. Dozens of black lights threw their ultraviolet rays down 
upon the throngs of people. The dancers became faerie images in strange shapes 
and exotic colors under the lights. Every feminine dress seemed touched with 
luminescence, and some were completely shining. Every man in uniform had a 
ghostly jacket criss-crossed with black lines of belts, sashes, and medals, 
swinging above the floor on black, invisible legs.
For a moment Grahame Duncan, the man with the distinctive hair, was gone. Then 
Cloudd saw him, swinging the girl's thick palomino tail wildly in flowing arcs. 
His partner's dress was a pale mist one moment and a vivid blue-green flame the 
next moment as the unusual fabric radiated differently under the twisting of her 
supple body. The ballroom was one solid mass of moving beauty.
"Watch closely, Cloudd." This was Tregonsee. "Worsel and Kallatra have thrown a 
psychic blanket over the dance floor. Some of the lights we have in place are 
emitting the highest and lowest frequencies we have managed to coax our 
engineers into constructing. If we are right in our deductions, we will see the 
Eich or Eichwoor materialize above Kallatra and the person she is with will be 
our traitor."
"Lalla? Her mind is with us?" "Her body is with us."
"Her body?!"
"Yes, in her new body. She is Lizbeth Carter."
The flush of emotion Cloudd felt was like nothing he had ever experienced before 
having the Lens. "Cloudd!" Worsel and Tregonsee called his name simultaneously 
in concern.  "Are you all right? What's the matter?"
"I'm QX," Cloudd said. "I'm QX." He was filled with hatred for Grahame Duncan to 
be holding Lalla Kallatra in his arms. Lalla Kallatra was Lizbeth Carter! Lalla 
Kallatra was beautiful!
"There it is!" came Worsel's thought.
Over the dance floor there appeared a flickering image. Only those Lensmen 
looking for it would ever have seen it.
Cloudd expected to see the weird and vicious face of an Eich. He steeled himself 
to view a monster with an evil grin whose look could freeze the blood of a 
mortal man Instead he saw the image of Grahame Duncan! "Yes, Grahame! Yes!" It 
was Lalla's mind. "We have him stretched along the line. Have Deuce tighten the 
frequency loop. Use all the Lensmen! Use them all!" Cloudd threw hurried glances 
around him. The gaiety continued unabated. There was no indication of any 
special activity, no flurry of grim-faced personnel, no strained looks on any 
faces. Only in his mind did Cloudd know the intensity of the organized response 
because he had been permitted to participate.
"We have all sides blocked, Worsel!" That was Nadreck. "There's no way for 
Eichwoor to go except up or down. Every Z-mind is locked together for as long as 
you need." Lalla and the body of Grahame Duncan still danced, but their graceful 
pivoting had noticeably slowed, be coming fixed on one spot. The eyes of the man 
stared straight ahead, the girl s were tightly shut.
High above, the shadows also danced like -puffs of thin purple smoke. The Duncan 
image was now a phantom head around which clustered the flickering images of 
thousands of other Tellurian heads-and, more dimly, the grotesque shapes of 
other alien heads of other galactic entities.
"Strike! All sides are blocked, Worsel!" Nadreck repeated. "Deeper than I 
thought possible. Right into the other plane."
"Nadreck! You are united in the spirit of your reck," Kallatra said. "Old-
Bovreck joins all together."
"Stay silent, Kallatra! Keep your thought upon that line!" This was Worsel. 'All 
ready, Chon? Give it to them. Now! Now!"
Cloudd felt a puissance pass through the ballroom and through him. And his own 
prayers joined with it to move on swiftly-through Tellus and through the galaxy 
itself like an etheric wind and then come back from infinity to strike a shadow 
in the darkness of the space above the banners and the flags over the dancers' 
heads.
"I'm pulling it from my body," said a voice. How he knew, Cloudd couldn't say, 
but know it he did that this was Grahame Duncan's real essence from somewhere 
beyond. "I'm pulling it from my body. It is going. Help me, Deuce! Help me,. 
Deuce! It is going. It is gone. And I am gone."
Cloudd sensed the oppressiveness rapidly dissipating from the thickened air of 
the vaulted ceiling.
A pressure of undefinable emotion had become excruciating pain within Cloudd's 
head.  His skull seemed overinflated like a rubber balloon, and then, suddenly 
bursting, the pressing turmoil was no longer there.
"Eichwoor is beaten," said Worsel. "The leader is vanquished and his armies have 
retreated."
Cloudd was swept with a sense of peace.
"Duncan and Deuce took Eichwoor. They're all gone. The hole to hell and heaven 
is plugged."
"Go get the body," Tregonsee' said, "before we turn the lights back on." _The 
dancers still pirouetted around the floor, noticing nothing. Through the shadows 
Cloudd saw some figures move 'around Grahame Duncan and, enveloping him, almost 
dance him off into the deeper shadows.
"Duncan was a zombie," Tregonsee said. "Some place within the Academy grounds he 
died a few weeks ago. That streak of white hair marked his bloodless, fatal 
wound.  Eichwoor possessed his body, while the Eichwooren held his spirit. From 
now on all Lensmen must wear their Lenses under all circumstances or be 
challenged. I recommend this as an order for the Council and for the Patrol."
"Are you all right, Lalla?" said Worsel.
Cloudd held his mind in check although he was as anxious as anyone.  "I'm sorry 
for Grahame Duncan," came Lalla's voice. 'And I grieve for my father. I think 
they've sacrificed their souls for eternity."
"Never!" said Chon. "They've been absorbed into the Cosmos. They'll be a part of 
all of us!"
"Get out there on the dance floor, Cloudd! And take care of that little lady!" 
This was Kinnison's booming order.
Cloudd didn't need a second command to send him springing into the still 
twirling crowds.
In a moment he had Lalla Kallatra in his arms. This was not the iron maiden he 
had known.  This was the most glorious girl he had ever seen. This was the real 
Lalla Kallatra, flesh of her flesh, a woman in a girl's body.
He looked down into her electrifying bluish gray eyes, the same ones he had 
always been acquainted with, the only things that physically had not changed.  
She looked up at him and smiled. She brushed her flaxen hair back away from her 
forehead. And then she held a thick strand of her long, silken hair in her 
fingers, half pulling it toward her face, as though to show him.
"This was Worsel's idea," she said. She gave a delightful laugh. "Worsel thinks 
a palomino horse's tail is beautiful." She winked conquettishly at him. "Blame 
him for the color not being brown.
"The rest of me, however, is really mine," she said.

Epilogue
P A. Haynes, Lensman 
President
Galactic Council 
Tellus

Honorable Sir:
With respect, I hereby submit this report for further clarification and as a 
simple defense against the scurrilous and outrageously untrue charges leveled 
against the  undersigned, Nadreck of Palain, Lensman, in order that this may be 
made a part of the official records of the Galactic Patrol.
The two problems that have concerned the Galactic Patrol since the liberation of 
Lundmark's Nebula or Second Galaxy have been successfully solved.  The menace 
identified as "The Invasion of the Eich, Eichwoor, and the Eichwooren" is ended. 
As you will note by cross reference to the separate reports of Lalla Kallatra, 
Lensman, and Worsel of Velantia, Lensman, the so-called ghost of an Eich, named 
Eichwoor, together with its assembled cohorts of "the other plane of existence," 
the so-called Eichwooren, was driven out of our jurisdiction. Evidence indicates 
that Eichwoor and its Eichwooren were-forced to return to their "other plane of 
existence." Many of our most outstanding Lensmen, including Tellurians, 
Chickladorians, and Klovians, as well as a Velantian, a Rigellian, a Palainian, 
together with you yourself, Lensman Haynes, were present at the time of the 
expulsion and witnessed this event. A listing of those present, together with 
their statements, is attached to this report.
Everyone is completely agreed that the event of "expulsion" did indeed take 
place.  Everyone who is specially competent to pass judgment is agreed that this 
expulsion will be permanent.
Not attached to this report is the hearsay evidence of Deuce O'Sx, Lensman 
deceased, also known as 24of6. The official Galactic Patrol records, as verified 
by the Secret Intelligence Services, indicate that this Tsit-Tarian Lensman 
physically died but mentally took an assignment in the "other plane of 
existence." His self-proclaimed GP role was to "stand guard" and to be "a 
watcher" and to be "a blocker" against the intrusion of Eichwoor, that is, 
"ghost of the Eich," into our material plane of existence. The Galactic Patrol 
officially recognized this assignment, and considered the "essence of Lensman 
Deuce O'Sx" as on "full GP duty. , This Lensman, while still officially on duty 
and considered by the Patrol to be "alive in essence," confirmed the final 
expulsion. The last communication from Lensman Deuce O'Sx expresses the 
conviction that the rift in the barrier between the two planes of "ours" and 
"theirs," or "the living" and "the dead," was being permanently sealed. As a 
suitable time has passed and thorough investigation seems to confirm this 
"permanent seal" as a fact, It is recommended that the provisional status of 
Lensman Deuce O'Sx be confirmed from "disembodied Lensman, on duty" to "deceased 
Lensman" and be given full honors as Hero of the Patrol. Lensman Kallatra, his 
daughter, concurs. , Likewise, it should be noted in the Galactic Patrol records 
that Lensman Deuce O'Sx claimed that "all Lensmen on this side," meaning on or 
in the "other plane of existence," took part in the return of the Eich and the 
Eichwooren and the sealing of the rift. As the Eichwooren is a term to mean many 
or most or all of "the ghosts of the Eich" it is obvious that many spirits of 
Lensmen and many spirits of the Eich battled in that "plane" for dominance and 
that the Lensmen of the Patrol were victorious.  As of the date of the Sealing 
of the Rift the Patrol records should show this extraordinary action. This 
Lensman recommends that all Lensmen be made aware of their possibly continuing 
duty after death, as is outlined in the special report submitted by Chaplain 
General Chon.
Also attached to this report is a detailed account of the formation and use of 
"all competent Z-entities" in the final confrontation with the Eichwooren. This 
report explains how the Z-entities, by virtue of their peculiar metabolic 
extensions into multidimensions were able to keep the _ Eichwooren contained 
within a single frequency by which our forces were able to corner the Eichwooren 
and subdue them. Although the spiritual help by "Z-entities in the other plane" 
is reported, as exemplified by the Palainian "reek" spirit of a certain Bovreck, 
no claim is made of this as fact, there being no proof available.  Within the 
report of Chaplain General Chon is the explanation of the role of the Chaplain 
Corps of the Galactic Patrol and how it was mobilized to concentrate "spiritual 
forces" in parallel with our Lensed "psychic forces" to challenge and overcome 
and "seal off" the "supernatural powers" of the Eichwooren.
Chaplain General Chon states that the Chaplain Corps was instrumental in the 
containment of the Eichwooren and will be alert for and capable of the 
Eichwooren's permanent containment. As such, the chaplains of the Patrol, and 
especially Chaplain General Chon, should be specially commended. As Chaplain 
General Chon in his report has suggested the same for the "Z-Body" and 
especially for its humble organizer, Nadreck of Palain, who is also the author 
of this report, this person humbly agrees with his recommendation and confirms 
the rightness of this evaluation.  Although Eichwoor and its Eichwooren are no 
longer an active menace, their living counterparts, the Eich, are. This Lensman 
and all Lensmen recognize this fact and in no way will tend to underestimate 
this enemy. The first appearance of Eichwoor after the occupation of Klovia was 
the improvised invasion of our realm -by a single disembodied spirit. The second 
and final appearance was planned and orchestrated by the Eich and Eichwoor, and 
the operational running of the "invasion" was directed by the Eich. The Eich, 
therefore, will always be trying to reestablish contact with the Eichwooren. The 
Patrol, therefore, will always be on guard against this. The Eich did organize 
and plan the battle that is now. called The Battle of the Rim, or The Victory of 
the Rim, by the use of the Spawn of Boskone and the escaped forces of the 
original Boskonian conspiracy. However, the threat of "invasion," which for so 
long disturbed us, was misinterpreted as being an "invasion" by military forces, 
whereas the reference to "invasion" was actually meant to identify the mental 
and spiritual forces of the Eich.
This Lensman feels that the actual organizer of this entire campaign is a small 
group of Eich and Onlonians, headed by an Onlonian, which this Lensman has 
identified as the "Dregs of Onlo" and has so mentioned this in the past. To 
quote this writer, " I, Nadreck, will ruthlessly pursue the Dregs and bring to 
an end their nefarious ways, especially as the Dregs have chosen Nadreck as 
their personal target for torture and death." As for our second problem, "the 
revolution of the robots," this, too, has been successfully solved.
The source of our problem was traced by the courageous action of Lensman Benson 
Cloudd, who acted on his own initiative and discovered that an artificial 
intelligence called Arrow-22 was responsible. He found the mech-planet base, 
contacted the intelligence through two robotic telefactors, and returned with 
that information, as has been detailed in his earlier report to the Patrol. Full 
recognition of what this brave Lensman did should bring to him full honors, and 
the undersigned Lensman, who so ably trained him and supported him, so 
recommends. Based upon the information of Lensman Cloudd, together with the 
invaluable assistance of Lensman Worsel, whose separate report is attached, 
contact was made personally by this Lensman, accompanied by Lensmen Cloudd and 
Armstrong.  The details of their battle with the Boskonian warship commanded by 
Number One of the Eich has been separately filed by Lensman Armstrong. The 
valiant deed of heroism and the remarkable tactic employed by Lensman Nadreck, 
which Armstrong so carefully documents, is denied by this Lensman as being 
particularly heroic or exceptionally innovative: Nadreck wishes to modestly 
point out that every day thousands of Lensmen are performing similar heroic 
feats and taking exceptionally well-considered courses of action and conduct and 
that such is to be treated as no more than routine behavior by a great Lensman 
such as Nadreck.
This Lensman met with Arrow-22 and convinced it that in the best interests Qf 
all parties Arrow-22 should leave this area of space forever. Arrow-22 agreed, 
as is detailed in the attached verbatim conference between Arrow-22 and the 
three Lensmen, and in the subsequent signed agreement. As the Council 
immediately ratified this agreement, the affair with Arrow-22 is considered 
closed.
There are a few side issues,. however, that should be cleared up.  The inference 
that the preliminary report on the operation was a criticism of Lensman Worsel 
for having switched Lensman Kallatra's body from a machine to a cloned flesh 
body is a wrong interpretation. This Lensman wishes to stress that the loss of a 
robotoid, in the form of Kallatra in a machine body, was not the point being 
made. The point actually was that the switch resulted in a provable point to 
Arrow-22 that a sentient machine would be treated with full respect and dignity 
and given every consideration as an organic entity with no discrimination 
against such sentient machine because it was a robot. It is true that Kallatra 
as a robot would have made a convincing argument that Civilization did not 
discriminate against machines but, in fact, encouraged thinking machines to 
become equal partners in our society. However, and this is the real point, 
Worsel, whether deliberately or accidentally, actually contributed to our 
argument with proof, substantiated by Arrow22's datadrones, that a robot could 
be transformed with no loss of "freedom, dignity, or personality" into a more 
acceptable form within our culture. Considering that Lalla Kallatra was human to 
begin with, to us the argument seems fallacious; to Arrow-22 it made complete 
sense.
Likewise, our argument that Civilization treated its citizens "like machines" 
was not a criticism of our social structures. When we said Civilization also 
"destroyed, discarded, and altered" organic entities in the same manner as we 
treated our machines that didn't do our bidding, we were being simplistic but 
correct. We referred, of course, to the need for organic entities who do not 
obey the rules of society to be "destroyed, discarded, and altered" as our laws 
provide, the generally accepted premises of Civilization. We were not advocating 
any undemocratic reformations. Civilization is ruled democratically by chosen 
representatives under the consent of the governed. This means adults, not 
children.  Machines are children. When they become adults they will be treated 
as adults. Arrow-22 understood this point even if some bleeding heart do-gooders 
don't understand this point and Nadreck resents the charge by some Tellurian-
type cultures that he is a "fascist." When Arrow-22 was shown that his call for 
"liberation" and for "freedom" was actually an incitement to anarchy he agreed. 
Nadreck is not against free speech, as charged, and Arrow-22, who was the one 
most concerned, did not charge this. Likewise, when it was pointed out that 
Arrow22, himself or itself, was "enslaving machines" in a manner no different to 
Civilization, Arrow-22 saw that point.
The charge against Nadreck that he phrased his accomplishment as, "I am going to 
give Arrow-22 a different universe to play with," is irresponsible slander. 
Chaplain General Chon defends the decision by Nadreck to send Arrow-22 into 
another universe by saying that 'Arrow-22 has failed to find God in this 
dimension of our two galaxies and has demonstrated a basic and profound 
unawareness of the realities of our system by the total lack of recognition of 
the enigma of the Eichwooren and the casting out of demons, which suggests that 
Arrow-22 should pursue its quest with other frequencies to be found in other 
dimensions." Chaplain General Chon says, "Nadreck gave to Arrow22 an 
understanding that good and evil are not merely relative and that neither can be 
ignored. Nadreck brought to fruition the seeds sown by Worsel in the first 
confrontation on the Planetoid of knowledge-that of conscience." Arrow-22 
admitted that he was amoral and that Civilization and Boskonia are not, thereby 
representing opposing moralities, and he did not want to get into the middle of 
this conflict.
Your emissary, Nadreck, believes the most telling points were not those of 
material philosophy but those of moral philosophy and theology. Your emissary 
left Arrow-22 insecure in the belief that he had no "soul" and that a "soul" was 
important. As has been mentioned in the previous report, Arrow-22, alone of all 
the sentient entities in our known universe, is the only entity which could not 
see, sense, or comprehend the Eichwooren.  Arrow-22 and all the machines it 
claimed to be sentient were unfeeling to the threat from the other plane of 
existence. This left Arrow-22 with the belief that he was not yet fully 
"matured" with his "evolution incomplete." Because Nadreck agreed with Arrow-22 
that "a soul" is not scientifically provable, Nadreck has been charged with 
being irreligious.  Nadreck did, however, as the complete transcript shows, 
maintain that "a soul," provable or not, is a term for something that does exist 
in reality. Chaplain General Chon has ably come to the defense of Nadreck in 
this matter. 
The result of Nadreck's arguments led to a yearning on the part of Arrow-22 for 
that which Civilization takes for granted, "a soul." He felt that "souls" can go 
into other planes of existence where more knowledge is to be collected. Arrow-22 
has been led to reason that by following the "gateways" he can find the 
intersection with the planes of existence that are at right angles to 
multidimensional space and thereby can find the "Truth of All Experience." 
Nadreck did not say that Arrow-22 will replace Mentor and the Arisians.  Nadreck 
did say that Arrow-22's potential and eventual goal is logically to become an 
Arisian-type guardian for machine life. Arrow 22 took this as a serious purpose 
for his existence and himself stated that "I am immortal and I have millennia in 
which to search and find perfection." 
Nadreck, in all fairness, still must give the ultimate credit for the 
disappearance of Arrow-22 to Lensman .  Worsel, but vigorously defends Worsel 
from the charge that he planned and enjoyed the role of God. This is vicious 
gossip inspired by Boskonian and zwilnik troublemakers. Arrow-22 himself put 
Worsel into that position. Nadreck pointed out that all Civilized beings have an 
innate sense of deity (subtly advancing Chaplain General Chon's point, as he 
mentions in his own report, that the Cosmic All equals deity, that deity equals 
the Cosmic All, and that the Cosmic All is the sentient power behind all 
creation) and that Lensman Worsel could be (not was or is) Arrow-22's particular 
god. With this admission, Nadreck asked (not Worsel) for Worsel to command 
Arrow-22 to leave our universe. Arrow-22 believed the command should be obeyed 
on faith alone, after having been convinced on logical bases that this should 
be, and left our universe. Worsel may have acted as a god, but Worsel did not 
feel he was a god.
This Lensman, as your reporter, feels that although he, Nadreck, is being given 
the credit for sending Arrow-22 away permanently, it is Lensman Worsel who 
deserves the real credit.
Most humbly and respectfully, 
Nadreck of Palain VII 
Second Stage Lensman

"There are a few points in my report," Nadreck. said to Mentor, "that I hope 
might be cleared up. Where did that conference with Arrow-22 take place? I and 
my fellow Lensmen seem to have lost all recollection of its location."
"I cannot help you," said Mentor.
"How was it that you didn't know of Arrow-22?" "I did have that knowledge."
"We would have appreciated your help." "And what makes you think we did not?"
"Oh," said Nadreck, suddenly ashamed. "Thank you. .
"Arrow-22 was a much bigger threat to Civilization and the Cosmic All than even 
you realize, Nadreck. You do realize that there was no way we could have 
influenced Arrow-22 mentally? That our zones of .compulsion were absolutely 
powerless to prevent the disclosure of forbidden knowledge inimical to the 
development of Civilization?" "Yes."
"We know, as no one else of the Galactic Council or Patrol knows, Nadreck, that 
you left out one of your main reasons for negotiating with Arrow-22. You do not 
believe in ghosts and thought Eichwoor was a multidimensional representation of 
the Z-entity Kandron, your mortal enemy. You believe he lives on a planet in one 
of the multidimensions, which accounts for your inability to trace him. We also 
know, of course, that you choose to conceal from your own compatriots the 
identity of Kandron under the name of Dregs of Onlo. You do this for personal 
reasons of pride, because Kandron outwitted you and escaped, and you are 
embarrassed to tell anyone, especially Kimball Kinnison. We have contacted you, 
Nadreck, because in assuring you that neither the Eichwooren nor Arrow-22 will 
return to bother Civilization again, we must tell you that your hope of Arrow22 
finding Kandron is an empty hope. Arrow-22 will be totally involved in the other 
dimension.  You, Nadreck, are the one who will find Kandron. And our 
visualization shows that it will be a long, hard fight, but that you will 
eventually conquer Kandron. It will, however, be entirely by your own  efforts."
"I humbly thank you, Mentor," Nadreck said. "So! The problems of Arrow-22 and 
the Eichwooren are really settled! Now I can get back to the important business 
of destroying that villain Kandron!"
"Arrow-22 took almost everything with him, Kallatra," Worsel said. "The mech-
planet right down to the smallest 2X drone."
'Almost everything, Worsel?" Lalla Kallatra said. "What did he leave?" "Well," 
Worsel said, "there's that deactivated robot la-Talkar that represents you. I 
thought of putting it in the reception room on the Planetoid of Knowledge, but 
the Patrol Museum has accepted it instead, as a tribute to you. And-" Worsel 
paused. Kallatra thought she detected a chuckle.
"And?" Kallatra said, patiently.
'And he left the lovely though inoperative robot of le-Srow behind. I have just 
had it installed in the courtyard in the center of the Worsel Institute, right 
next to that marble statue of Klono."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID A. KYLE'S experience 'in writing science fiction goes back to the "Golden 
Age" of the late 1930s, when "Doc" Smith's works were setting the style for all 
others. For some years he confined himself to radio broadcasting (owning one New 
York State station and associated with several others), and then lived abroad. 
He is now returning to full-time writing. His most recent books are Science 
Fiction and the World (a nonfiction title) and Lensman From Rigel (Bantam). He 
was a close personal friend of "Doc" Smith's, and discussed future stories with 
him during his lifetime; some of the concepts discussed are embodied in this 
novel.