20728	----	[Transcriber's note: This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact--Science Fiction November 1962, December 1962, January 1963, February 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.] [Illustration: SPACE VIKING A great new novel by H. Beam Piper] [Illustration][Illustration] Space Viking Vengeance is a strange human motivation-- it can drive a man to do things which he neither would nor could achieve without it ... and because of that it lies behind some of the greatest sagas of human literature! by H. Beam Piper Illustrated by Schoenherr They stood together at the parapet, their arms about each other's waists, her head against his cheek. Behind, the broad leaved shrubbery gossiped softly with the wind, and from the lower main terrace came music and laughing voices. The city of Wardshaven spread in front of them, white buildings rising from the wide spaces of green treetops, under a shimmer of sun-reflecting aircars above. Far away, the mountains were violet in the afternoon haze, and the huge red sun hung in a sky as yellow as a ripe peach. His eye caught a twinkle ten miles to the southwest, and for an instant he was puzzled. Then he frowned. The sunlight on the two thousand-foot globe of Duke Angus' new ship, the _Enterprise_, back at the Gorram shipyards after her final trial cruise. He didn't want to think about that, now. Instead, he pressed the girl closer and whispered her name, "Elaine," and then, caressing every syllable, "Lady Elaine Trask of Traskon." "Oh, no, Lucas!" Her protest was half joking and half apprehensive. "It's bad luck to be called by your married name before the wedding." "I've been calling you that in my mind since the night of the Duke's ball, when you were just home from school on Excalibur." She looked up from the corner of her eye. "That was when I started calling me that, too," she confessed. "There's a terrace to the west at Traskon New House," he told her. "Tomorrow, we'll have our dinner there, and watch the sunset together." "I know. I thought that was to be our sunset-watching place." "You have been peeking," he accused. "Traskon New House was to be your surprise." "I always was a present-peeker, New Year's and my birthdays. But I only saw it from the air. I'll be very surprised at everything inside," she promised. "And very delighted." And when she'd seen everything and Traskon New House wasn't a surprise any more, they'd take a long space trip. He hadn't mentioned that to her, yet. To some of the other Sword-Worlds--Excalibur, of course, and Morglay and Flamberge and Durendal. No, not Durendal; the war had started there again. But they'd have so much fun. And she would see clear blue skies again, and stars at night. The cloud-veil hid the stars from Gram, and Elaine had missed them, since coming home from Excalibur. The shadow of an aircar fell briefly upon them and they looked up and turned their heads, in time to see it sink with graceful dignity toward the landing-stage of Karval House, and he glimpsed its blazonry--sword and atom-symbol, the badge of the ducal house of Ward. He wondered if it were Duke Angus himself, or just some of his people come ahead of him. They should get back to their guests, he supposed. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her, and she responded ardently. It must have been all of five minutes since they'd done that before. * * * * * A slight cough behind them brought them apart and their heads around. It was Sesar Karvall, gray-haired and portly, the breast of his blue coat gleaming with orders and decorations and the sapphire in the pommel of his dress-dagger twinkling. "I thought I'd find you two here," Elaine's father smiled. "You'll have tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow together, but need I remind you that today we have guests, and more coming every minute." "Who came in the Ward car?" Elaine asked. "Rovard Grauffis. And Otto Harkaman; you never met him, did you, Lucas?" "No; not by introduction. I'd like to, before he spaces out." He had nothing against Harkaman personally; only against what he represented. "Is the Duke coming?" "Oh, surely. Lionel of Newhaven and the Lord of Northport are coming with him. They're at the Palace now." Karvall hesitated. "His nephew's back in town." Elaine was distressed; she started to say: "Oh, dear! I hope he doesn't--" "Has Dunnan been bothering Elaine again?" "Nothing to take notice of. He was here, yesterday, demanding to speak with her. We got him to leave without too much unpleasantness." "It'll be something for me to take notice of, if he keeps it up after tomorrow." For his seconds and Andray Dunnan's, that was; he hoped it wouldn't come to that. He didn't want to have to shoot a kinsman to the house of Ward, and a crazy man to boot. "I'm terribly sorry for him," Elaine was saying. "Father, you should have let me talk to him. I might have made him understand." Sesar Karvall was shocked. "Child, you couldn't have subjected yourself to that! The man is insane!" Then he saw her bare shoulders, and was even more shocked. "Elaine, your shawl!" Her hands went up and couldn't find it; she looked about in confused embarrassment. Amused, Lucas picked it from the shrub onto which she had tossed it and draped it over her shoulders, his hands lingering briefly. Then he gestured to the older man to precede them, and they entered the arbored walk. At the other end, in an open circle, a fountain played; white marble girls and boys bathing in the jade-green basin. Another piece of loot from one of the Old Federation planets; that was something he'd tried to avoid in furnishing Traskon New House. There'd be a lot of that coming to Gram, after Otto Harkaman took the _Enterprise_ to space. "I'll have to come back, some time, and visit them," Elaine whispered to him. "They'll miss me." "You'll find a lot of new friends at your new home," he whispered back. "You wait till tomorrow." "I'm going to put a word in the Duke's ear about that fellow," Sesar Karvall, still thinking of Dunnan, was saying. "If he speaks to him, maybe it'll do some good." "I doubt it. I don't think Duke Angus has any influence over him at all." Dunnan's mother had been the Duke's younger sister; from his father he had inherited what had originally been a prosperous barony. Now it was mortgaged to the top of the manor-house aerial-mast. The Duke had once assumed Dunnan's debts, and refused to do so again. Dunnan had gone to space a few times, as a junior officer on trade-and-raid voyages into the Old Federation. He was supposed to be a fair astrogator. He had expected his uncle to give him command of the _Enterprise_, which had been ridiculous. Disappointed in that, he had recruited a mercenary company and was seeking military employment: It was suspected that he was in correspondence with his uncle's worst enemy, Duke Omfray of Glaspyth. And he was obsessively in love with Elaine Karvall, a passion which seemed to nourish itself on its own hopelessness. Maybe it would be a good idea to take that space trip right away. There ought to be a ship leaving Bigglersport for one of the other Sword-Worlds, before long. * * * * * They paused at the head of the escalators; the garden below was thronged with guests, the bright shawls of the ladies and the coats of the men making shifting color-patterns among the flower-beds and on the lawns and under the trees. Serving-robots, flame-yellow and black in the Karvall colors, floated about playing soft music and offering refreshments. There was a continuous spiral of changing costume-color around the circular robo-table. Voices babbled happily like a mountain river. As they stood looking down, another aircar circled low; green and gold, lettered PANPLANET NEWS SERVICE. Sesar Karvall swore in irritation. "Didn't there use to be something they called privacy?" he asked. "It's a big story, Sesar." It was; more than the marriage of two people who happened to be in love with each other. It was the marriage of the farming and ranching barony of Traskon and the Karvall steel mills. More, it was public announcement that the wealth and fighting-men of both baronies were now aligned behind Duke Angus of Wardshaven. So it was a general holiday. Every industry had closed down at noon today, and would be closed until morning-after-next, and there would be dancing in every park and feasting in every tavern. To Sword-Worlders, any excuse for a holiday was better than none. "They're our people, Sesar; they have a right to have a good time with us. I know everybody at Traskon is watching this by screen." He raised his hand and waved to the news car, and when it swung its pickup around, he waved again. Then they went down the long escalator. Lady Lavina Karvall was the center of a cluster of matrons and dowagers, around which tomorrow's bridesmaids fluttered like many-colored butterflies. She took possession of her daughter and dragged her into the feminine circle. He saw Rovard Grauffis, small and saturnine, Duke Angus' henchman, and Burt Sandrasan, Lady Lavina's brother. They spoke, and then an upper-servant, his tabard blazoned with the yellow flame and black hammer of Karvall mills, approached his master with some tale of domestic crisis, and the two went away together. "You haven't met Captain Harkaman, Lucas," Rovard Grauffis said. "I wish you'd come over and say hello and have a drink with him. I know your attitude, but he's a good sort. Personally, I wish we had a few like him around here." That was his main objection. There were fewer and fewer men of that sort on any of the Sword-Worlds. II A dozen men clustered around the bartending robot--his cousin and family lawyer, Nikkolay Trask; Lothar Ffayle, the banker; Alex Gorram, the shipbuilder, and his son Basil; Baron Rathmore; more of the Wardshaven nobles whom he knew only distantly. And Otto Harkaman. Harkaman was a Space Viking. That would have set him apart, even if he hadn't topped the tallest of them by a head. He wore a short black jacket, heavily gold-braided, and black trousers inside ankle-boots; the dagger on his belt was no mere dress-ornament. His tousled red-brown hair was long enough to furnish extra padding in a combat-helmet, and his beard was cut square at the bottom. He had been fighting on Durendal, for one of the branches of the royal house contesting fratricidally for the throne. The wrong one; he had lost his ship, and most of his men and, almost, his own life. He had been a penniless refugee on Flamberge, owning only the clothes he stood in and his personal weapons and the loyalty of half a dozen adventurers as penniless as himself, when Duke Angus had invited him to Gram to command the _Enterprise_. "A pleasure, Lord Trask. I've met your lovely bride-to-be, and now that I meet you, let me congratulate both." Then, as they were having a drink together, he put his foot in it by asking: "You're not an investor in the Tanith Adventure, are you?" He said he wasn't, and would have let it go at that. Young Basil Gorram had to get his foot in, too. "Lord Trask does not approve of the Tanith Adventure," he said scornfully. "He thinks we should stay home and produce wealth, instead of exporting robbery and murder to the Old Federation for it." The smile remained on Otto Harkaman's face; only the friendliness was gone. He unobtrusively shifted his drink to his left hand. "Well, our operations are definable as robbery and murder," he agreed. "Space Vikings are professional robbers and murderers. And you object? Perhaps you find me personally objectionable?" "I wouldn't have shaken your hand or had a drink with you if I did. I don't care how many planets you raid or cities you sack, or how many innocents, if that's what they are, you massacre in the Old Federation. You couldn't possibly do anything worse than those people have been doing to one another for the past ten centuries. What I object to is the way you're raiding the Sword-Worlds." "You're crazy!" Basil Gorram exploded. "Young man," Harkaman reproved, "the conversation was between Lord Trask and myself. And when somebody makes a statement you don't understand, don't tell him he's crazy. Ask him what he means. What _do_ you mean, Lord Trask?" "You should know; you've just raided Gram for eight hundred of our best men. You raided me for close to forty vaqueros, farm-workers, lumbermen, machine-operators, and I doubt I'll be able to replace them with as good." He turned to the elder Gorram. "Alex, how many have you lost to Captain Harkaman?" Gorram tried to make it a dozen; pressed, he admitted to a score and a half. Roboticians, machine-supervisors, programmers, a couple of engineers, a foreman. There was grudging agreement from the others. Burt Sandrasan's engine-works had lost almost as many, of the same kind. Even Lothar Ffayle admitted to losing a computerman and a guard-sergeant. And after they were gone, the farms and ranches and factories would go on, almost but not quite as before. Nothing on Gram, nothing on any of the Sword-Worlds, was done as efficiently as three centuries ago. The whole level of Sword-World life was sinking, like the east coastline of this continent, so slowly as to be evident only from the records and monuments of the past. He said as much, and added: "And the genetic loss. The best Sword-World genes are literally escaping to space, like the atmosphere of a low-gravity planet, each generation begotten by fathers slightly inferior to the last. It wasn't so bad when the Space Vikings raided directly from the Sword-Worlds; they got home once in a while. Now they're conquering planets in the Old Federation for bases, and staying there." * * * * * Everybody had begun to relax; this wouldn't be a quarrel. Harkaman, who had shifted his drink back to his right hand, chuckled. "That's right. I've fathered my share of brats in the Old Federation, and I know Space Vikings whose fathers were born on Old Federation planets." He turned to Basil Gorram. "You see, the gentleman isn't crazy, at all. That's what happened to the Terran Federation, by the way. The good men all left to colonize, and the stuffed shirts and yes-men and herd-followers and safety-firsters stayed on Terra and tried to govern the galaxy." "Well, maybe this is all new to you, captain," Rovard Grauffis said sourly, "but Lucas Trask's dirge for the Decline and Fall of the Sword-Worlds is an old song to the rest of us. I have too much to do to stay here and argue." Lothar Ffayle evidently did intend to stay and argue. "All you're saying, Lucas, is that we're expanding. You want us to sit here and build up population pressure like Terra in the First Century?" "With three and a half billion people spread out on twelve planets? They had that many on Terra alone. And it took us eight centuries to reach that." That had been since the Ninth Century, Atomic Era, at the end of the Big War. Ten thousand men and women on Abigor, refusing to surrender, had taken the remnant of the System States Alliance navy to space, seeking a world the Federation had never heard of and wouldn't find for a long time. That had been the world they had called Excalibur. From it, their grandchildren had colonized Joyeuse and Durendal and Flamberge; Haulteclere had been colonized in the next generation from Joyeuse, and Gram from Haulteclere. "We're not expanding, Lothar; we're contracting. We stopped expanding three hundred and fifty years ago, when that ship came back to Morglay from the Old Federation and reported what had been happening out there since the Big War. Before that, we were discovering new planets and colonizing them. Since then, we've been picking the bones of the dead Terran Federation." * * * * * Something was going on by the escalators to the landing stage. People were moving excitedly in that direction, and the news cars were circling like vultures over a sick cow. Harkaman wondered, hopefully, if it mightn't be a fight. "Some drunk being bounced." Nikkolay, Lucas' cousin, commented. "Sesar's let all Wardshaven in here, today. But, Lucas, this Tanith adventure; we're not making any hit-and-run raid. We're taking over a whole planet; it'll be another Sword-World in forty or fifty years." [Illustration] "Inside another century, we'll conquer the whole Federation," Baron Rathmore declared. He was a politician and never let exaggeration worry him. "What I don't understand," Harkaman said, "is why you support Duke Angus, Lord Trask, if you think the Tanith adventure is doing Gram so much harm." [Illustration] "If Angus didn't do it, somebody else would. But Angus is going to make himself King of Gram, and I don't think anybody else could do that. This planet needs a single sovereignty. I don't know how much you've seen of it outside this duchy, but don't take Wardshaven as typical. Some of these duchies, like Glaspyth or Didreksburg, are literal snake pits. All the major barons are at each other's throats, and they can't even keep their own knights and petty-barons in order. Why, there's a miserable little war down in Southmain Continent that's been going on for over two centuries." "That's probably where Dunnan's going to take that army of his," a robot-manufacturing baron said. "I hope it gets wiped out, and Dunnan with it." "You don't have to go to Southmain; just go to Glaspyth," somebody else said. "Well, if we don't get a planetary monarchy to keep order, this planet will decivilize like anything in the Old Federation." "Oh, _come_, Lucas!" Alex Gorram protested. "That's pulling it out too far." "Yes, for one thing, we don't have the Neobarbarians," somebody said. "And if they ever came out here, we'd blow them to Em-See-Square in nothing flat. Might be a good thing if they did, too; it would stop us squabbling among ourselves." Harkaman looked at him in surprise. "Just who do you think the Neobarbarians are, anyhow?" he asked. "Some race of invading nomads; Attila's Huns in spaceships?" "Well, isn't that who they are?" Gorram asked. "Nifflheim, no! There aren't a dozen and a half planets in the Old Federation that still have hyperdrive, and they're all civilized. That's if 'civilized' is what Gilgamesh is," he added. "These are homemade barbarians. Workers and peasants who revolted to seize and divide the wealth and then found they'd smashed the means of production and killed off all the technical brains. Survivors on planets hit during the Interstellar Wars, from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries, who lost the machinery of civilization. Followers of political leaders on local-dictatorship planets. Companies of mercenaries thrown out of employment and living by pillage. Religious fanatics following self-anointed prophets." "You think we don't have plenty of Neobarbarian material here on Gram?" Trask demanded. "If you do, take a look around." Glaspyth, somebody said. "That collection of over-ripe gallows-fruit Andray Dunnan's recruited," Rathmore mentioned. Alex Gorram was grumbling that his shipyard was full of them; agitators stirring up trouble, trying to organize a strike to get rid of the robots. "Yes," Harkaman pounced on that last. "I know of at least forty instances, on a dozen and a half planets, in the last eight centuries, of anti-technological movements. They had them on Terra, back as far as the Second Century Pre-Atomic. And after Venus seceded from the First Federation, before the Second Federation was organized." "You're interested in history?" Rathmore asked. "A hobby. All spacemen have hobbies. There's very little work aboard ship in hyperspace; boredom is the worst enemy. My guns-and-missiles officer, Vann Larch, is a painter. Most of his work was lost with the _Corisande_ on Durendal, but he kept us from starving a few times on Flamberge by painting pictures and selling them. My hyperspatial astrogator, Guatt Kirbey, composes music; he tries to express the mathematics of hyperspatial theory in musical terms. I don't care much for it, myself," he admitted. "I study history. You know, it's odd; practically everything that's happened on any of the inhabited planets happened on Terra before the first spaceship." The garden immediately around them was quiet, now; everybody was over by the landing-stage escalators. Harkaman would have said more, but at that moment he saw half a dozen of Sesar Karvall's uniformed guardsmen run past. They were helmeted and in bullet-proofs; one of them had an auto-rifle, and the rest carried knobbed plastic truncheons. The Space Viking set down his drink. "Let's go," he said. "Our host is calling up his troops; I think the guests ought to find battle-stations, too." III The gaily-dressed crowd formed a semicircle facing the landing-stage escalators; everybody was staring in embarrassed curiosity, those behind craning over the shoulders of those in front. The ladies had drawn up their shawls in frigid formality; many had even covered their heads. There were four news-service cars hovering above; whatever was going on was getting a planetwide screen showing. The Karvall guardsmen were trying to get through; their sergeant was saying, over and over, "Please, ladies and gentlemen; your pardon, noble sir," and getting nowhere. Otto Harkaman swore disgustedly and shoved the sergeant aside. "Make way, here!" he bellowed. "Let these guards pass." With that, he almost hurled a gaily-dressed gentleman aside on either hand; they both turned to glare angrily, then got hastily out of his way. Meditating briefly on the uses of bad manners in an emergency, Trask followed, with the others; the big Space Viking plowed to the front, where Sesar Karvall and Rovard Grauffis and several others were standing. Facing them, four men in black cloaks stood with their backs to the escalators. Two were commonfolk retainers; hired gunmen, to be precise. They were at pains to keep their hands plainly in sight, and seemed to be wishing themselves elsewhere. The man in front wore a diamond sunburst jewel on his beret, and his cloak was lined with pale blue silk. His thin, pointed face was deeply lined about the mouth and penciled with a thin black mustache. His eyes showed white all around the irises, and now and then his mouth would twitch in an involuntary grimace. Andray Dunnan; Trask wondered briefly how soon he would have to look at him from twenty-five meters over the sights of a pistol. The face of the slightly taller man who stood at his shoulder was paper-white, expressionless, with a black beard. His name was Nevil Ormm, nobody was quite sure whence he had come, and he was Dunnan's henchman and constant companion. "You lie!" Dunnan was shouting. "You lie damnably, in your stinking teeth, all of you! You've intercepted every message she's tried to send me." "My daughter has sent you no messages, Lord Dunnan," Sesar Karvall said, with forced patience. "None but the one I just gave you, that she wants nothing whatever to do with you." "You think I believe that? You're holding her a prisoner; Satan only knows how you've been torturing her to force her into this abominable marriage--" There was a stir among the bystanders; that was more than well-mannered restraint could stand. Out of the murmur of incredulous voices, one woman's was quite audible: "Well, really! He actually _is_ crazy!" Dunnan, like everybody else, heard it. "Crazy, am I?" he blazed. "Because I can see through this hypocritical sham? Here's Lucas Trask, he wants an interest in Karvall mills, and here's Sesar Karvall, he wants access to iron deposits on Traskon land. And my loving uncle, he wants the help of both of them in stealing Omfray of Glaspyth's duchy. And here's this loan-shark of a Ffayle, trying to claw my lands away from me, and Rovard Grauffis, the fetchdog of my uncle who won't lift a finger to save his kinsman from ruin, and this foreigner Harkaman who's swindled me out of command of the _Enterprise_. You're all plotting against me--" "Sir Nevil," Grauffis said, "you can see that Lord Dunnan's not himself. If you're a good friend to him, you'll get him out of here before Duke Angus arrives." Ormm leaned forward and spoke urgently in Dunnan's ear. Dunnan pushed him angrily away. "Great Satan, are you against me, too?" he demanded. Ormm caught his arm. "You fool, do you want to ruin everything, now--" He lowered his voice; the rest was inaudible. "No, curse you, I won't go till I've spoken to her, face to face--" * * * * * There was another stir among the spectators; the crowd was parting, and Elaine was coming through, followed by her mother and Lady Sandrasan and five or six other matrons. They all had their shawls over their heads, right ends over left shoulders; they all stopped except Elaine, who took a few steps forward and confronted Andray Dunnan. He had never seen her look more beautiful, but it was the icy beauty of a honed dagger. "Lord Dunnan, what do you wish to say to me?" she asked. "Say it quickly and then go; you are not welcome here." "Elaine!" Dunnan cried, taking a step forward. "Why do you cover your head; why do you speak to me as a stranger? I am Andray, who loves you. Why are you letting them force you into this wicked marriage?" "No one is forcing me; I am marrying Lord Trask willingly and happily, because I love him. Now, please, go and make no more trouble at my wedding." "That's a lie! They're making you say that! You don't have to marry him; they can't make you. Come with me now. They won't dare stop you. I'll take you away from all these cruel, greedy people. You love me, you've always loved me. You've told me you loved me, again and again--" Yes, in his own private dream-world, a world of fantasy that had now become Andray Dunnan's reality, in which an Elaine Karvall whom his imagination had created existed only to love him. Confronted by the real Elaine, he simply rejected the reality. "I never loved you, Lord Dunnan, and I never told you so. I never hated you, either, but you are making it very hard for me not to. Now go, and never let me see you again." With that, she turned and started back through the crowd, which parted in front of her. Her mother and her aunt and the other ladies followed. "You lied to me!" Dunnan shrieked after her. "You lied all the time. You're as bad as the rest of them, all scheming and plotting against me, betraying me. I know what it's about; you all want to cheat me of my rights, and keep my usurping uncle on the ducal throne. And you, you false-hearted harlot, you're the worst of them all!" Sir Nevil Ormm caught his shoulder and spun him around, propelling him toward the escalators. Dunnan struggled, screaming inarticulately like a wounded wolf. Ormm was cursing furiously. "You two!" he shouted. "Help me, here. Get hold of him." Dunnan was still howling as they forced him onto the escalator, the backs of the two retainers' cloaks, badged with the Dunnan crescent, light blue on black, hiding him. After a little, an aircar with the blue crescent blazonry lifted and sped away. "Lucas, he's crazy," Sesar Karvall was insisting. "Elaine hasn't spoken fifty words to him since he came back from his last voyage--" He laughed and put a hand on Karvall's shoulder. "I know that, Sesar. You don't think, do you, that I need assurance of it?" "Crazy, I'll say he's crazy," Rovard Grauffis put in. "Did you hear what he said about his rights? Wait till his Grace hears about that." "Does he lay claim to the ducal throne, Sir Rovard?" Otto Harkaman asked, sharply and seriously. "Oh, he claims that his mother was born a year and a half before Duke Angus and the true date of her birth falsified to give Angus the succession. Why, his present Grace was three years old when she was born. I was old Duke Fergus' esquire; I carried Angus on my shoulder when Andray Dunnan's mother was presented to the lords and barons the day after she was born." "Of course he's crazy," Alex Gorram agreed. "I don't know why the Duke doesn't have him put under psychiatric treatment." "I'd put him under treatment," Harkaman said, drawing a finger across under his beard. "Crazy men who pretend to thrones are bombs that ought to be deactivated, before they blow things up." "We couldn't do that," Grauffis said. "After all, he's Duke Angus' nephew--" "I could do it," Harkaman said. "He only has three hundred men in this company of his. Why you people ever let him recruit them Satan only knows," he parenthesized. "I have eight hundred; five hundred ground-fighters. I'd like to see how they shape up in combat, before we space out. I can have them ready for action in two hours, and it'd be all over before midnight." "No, Captain Harkaman; his Grace would never permit it," Grauffis vetoed. "You have no idea of the political harm that would do among the independent lords on whom we're counting for support. You weren't here on Gram when Duke Ridgerd of Didreksburg had his sister Sancia's second husband poisoned--" IV They halted under the colonnade; beyond, the lower main terrace was crowded, and a medley of old love songs was wafting from the sound outlets, for the sixth or eighth time around. He looked at his watch; it was ninety seconds later than the last time he had done so. Give it fifteen more minutes to get started, and another fifteen to get away after the marriage toasts and the felicitations. And no marriage, however pompous, lasted more than half an hour. An hour, then, till he and Elaine would be in the aircar, bulleting toward Traskon. The love songs stopped abruptly; after a momentary silence, a trumpet, considerably amplified, blared; the "Ducal Salute." The crowd stopped shifting, the buzz of voices ceased. At the head of the landing-stage escalators there was a glow of color and the ducal party began moving down. A platoon of guards in red and yellow, with gilded helmets and tasseled halberds. An esquire bearing the Sword of State. Duke Angus, with his council, Otto Harkaman among them; the Duchess Flavia and her companion-ladies. The household gentlemen, and their ladies. More guardsmen. There was a great burst of cheering; the news-service aircars got into position above the procession. Cousin Nikkolay and a few others stepped out from between the pillars into the sunlight; there was a similar movement at the other side of the terrace. The ducal party reached the end of the central walkway, halted and deployed. "All right; let's shove off," Cousin Nikkolay said, stepping forward. Ten minutes since they had come outside; another five to get into position. Fifty minutes, now, till he and Elaine--Lady Elaine Trask of Traskon, for real and for always--would be going home. "Sure the car's ready?" he asked, for the hundredth time. His cousin assured him that it was. Figures in Karvall black and flame-yellow appeared across the terrace. The music began again, this time the stately "Nobles' Wedding March," arrogant and at the same time tender. Sesar Karvall's gentleman-secretary, and the Karvall lawyer; executives of the steel mills, the Karvall guard-captain. Sesar himself, with Elaine on his arm; she was wearing a shawl of black and yellow. He looked around in sudden fright; "For the love of Satan, where's our shawl?" he demanded, and then relaxed when one of his gentlemen exhibited it, green and tawny in Traskon colors. The bridesmaids, led by Lady Lavina Karvall. Finally they halted, ten yards apart, in front of the Duke. * * * * * "Who approaches us?" Duke Angus asked of his guard-captain. He had a thin, pointed face, almost femininely sensitive, and a small pointed beard. He was bareheaded except for the narrow golden circlet which he spent most of his waking time scheming to convert into a royal crown. The guard-captain repeated the question. "I am Sir Nikkolay Trask; I bring my cousin and liege-lord, Lucas, Lord Trask, Baron of Traskon. He comes to receive the Lady-Demoiselle Elaine, daughter of Lord Sesar Karvall, Baron of Karvall mills, and the sanction of your Grace to the marriage between them." Sir Maxamon Zhorgay, Sesar Karvall's henchman, named himself and his lord; they brought the Lady-Demoiselle Elaine to be wed to Lord Trask of Traskon. The Duke, satisfied that these were persons whom he could address directly, asked if the terms of the marriage-agreement had been reached; both parties affirmed this. Sir Maxamon passed a scroll to the Duke; Duke Angus began to read the stiff and precise legal phraseology. Marriages between noble houses were not matters to be left open to dispute; a great deal of spilled blood and burned powder had resulted from ambiguity on some point of succession or inheritance or dower rights. Lucas bore it patiently; he didn't want his great-grandchildren and Elaine's shooting it out over a matter of a misplaced comma. "And these persons here before us do enter into this marriage freely?" the Duke asked, when the reading had ended. He stepped forward as he spoke, and his esquire gave him the two-hand Sword of State, heavy enough to behead a bisonoid. Trask stepped forward; Sesar Karvall brought Elaine up. The lawyers and henchmen obliqued off to the sides. "How say you, Lord Trask?" he asked, almost conversationally. "With all my heart, your Grace." "And you, Lady-Demoiselle Elaine?" "It is my dearest wish, your Grace." The Duke took the sword by the blade and extended it; they laid their hands on the jeweled pommel. "And do you, and your houses, avow us, Angus, Duke of Wardshaven, to be your sovereign prince, and pledge fealty to us and to our legitimate and lawful successors?" "We do." Not only he and Elaine, but all around them, and all the throng in the gardens, answered, the spectators in shouts. Very clearly, above it all, somebody, with more enthusiasm than discretion, was bawling: "_Long live Angus the First of Gram!_" "And we, Angus, do confer upon you two, and your houses, the right to wear our badge as you see fit, and pledge ourself to maintain your rights against any and all who may presume to invade them. And we declare that this marriage between you two, and this agreement between your respective houses, does please us, and we avow you two, Lucas and Elaine, to be lawfully wed, and who so questions this marriage challenges us, in our teeth and to our despite." That wasn't exactly the wording used by a ducal lord on Gram. It was the formula employed by a planetary king, like Napolyon of Flamberge or Rodolf of Excalibur. And, now that he thought of it, Angus had consistently used the royal first-person plural. Maybe that fellow who had shouted about Angus the First of Gram had only been doing what he'd been paid to do. This was being telecast, and Omfray of Glaspyth and Ridgerd of Didreksburg would both be listening; as of now, they'd start hiring mercenaries. Maybe that would get rid of Dunnan for him. The Duke gave the two-hand sword back to his esquire. The young knight who was carrying the green and tawny shawl handed it to him, and Elaine dropped the black and yellow one from her shoulders, the only time a respectable woman ever did that in public, and her mother caught and folded it. He stepped forward and draped the Trask colors over her shoulders, and then took her in his arms. The cheering broke out again, and some of Sesar Karvall's guardsmen began firing a pom-pom somewhere. * * * * * It took a little longer than he had expected to finish with the toasts and shake hands with those who crowded around. Finally, the exit march started, down the long walkway to the landing stage, and the Duke and his party moved away to the rear to prepare for the wedding feast at which everybody but the bride and groom would celebrate. One of the bridesmaids gave Elaine a huge sheaf of flowers, which she was to toss back from the escalator; she held it in the crook of one arm and clung to his with the other. "Darling; we really made it!" she was whispering, as though it were too wonderful to believe. Well, wasn't it? One of the news cars--orange and blue, that was Westlands Telecast & Teleprint--had floated just ahead of them and was letting down toward the landing stage. For a moment, he was angry; that went beyond the outer-orbit limits of journalistic propriety, even for Westlands T & T. Then he laughed; today he was too happy for anger about anything. At the foot of the escalator, Elaine kicked off her gilded slippers--there was another pair in the car; he'd seen to that personally--and they stepped onto the escalator and turned about. The bridesmaids rushed forward, and began struggling for the slippers, to the damage and disarray of their gowns, and when they were half way up, Elaine heaved the bouquet and it burst apart among them like a bomb of colored fragrance, and the girls below snatched at the flowers, shrieking deliriously. Elaine stood, blowing kisses to everybody, and he was shaking his clasped hands over his head, until they were at the top. When they turned and stepped off, the orange and blue aircar had let down directly in front of them, blocking their way. Now he was really furious, and started forward with a curse. Then he saw who was in the car. Andray Dunnan, his thin face contorted and the narrow mustache writhing on his upper lip; he had a slit beside the window open and was tilting the barrel of a submachine gun up and out of it. He shouted, and at the same time tripped Elaine and flung her down. He was throwing himself forward to cover her when there was a blasting multiple report. Something sledged him in the chest; his right leg crumpled under him. He fell-- He fell and fell and fell, endlessly, through darkness, out of consciousness. V He was crucified, and crowned with a crown of thorns. Who had they done that to? Somebody long ago, on Terra. His arms were drawn out stiffly, and hurt; his feet and legs hurt, too, and he couldn't move them, and there was this prickling at his brow. And he was blind. [Illustration] No; his eyes were just closed. He opened them, and there was a white wall in front of him, patterned with a blue snow-crystal design, and he realized that it was a ceiling and that he was lying on his back. He couldn't move his head, but by shifting his eyes he saw that he was completely naked and surrounded by a tangle of tubes and wires, which puzzled him briefly. Then he knew that he was not on a bed, but on a robomedic, and the tubes would be for medication and wound drainage and intravenous feeding, and the wires would be to electrodes imbedded in his body for diagnosis, and the crown-of-thorns thing would be more electrodes for an encephalograph. He'd been on one of those robomedics before, when he had been gored by a bisonoid on the cattle range. [Illustration] That was what it was; he was still under treatment. But that seemed so long ago; so many things--he must have dreamed them--seemed to have happened. Then he remembered, and struggled futilely to rise. "Elaine!" he called. "Elaine, where are you?" There was a stir and somebody came into his limited view; his cousin, Nikkolay Trask. "Nikkolay; Andray Dunnan," he said. "What happened to Elaine?" Nikkolay winced, as though something he had expected to hurt had hurt worse than he had expected. "Lucas." He swallowed. "Elaine ... Elaine is dead." Elaine is dead. That didn't make sense. "She was killed instantly, Lucas. Hit six times; I don't think she even felt the first one. She didn't suffer at all." Somebody moaned, and then he realized that it had been himself. "You were hit twice," Nikkolay was telling him. "One in the leg; smashed the femur. And one in the chest. That one missed your heart by an inch." "Pity it did." He was beginning to remember clearly, now. "I threw her down, and tried to cover her. I must have thrown her straight into the burst and only caught the last of it myself." There was something else; oh, yes. "Dunnan. Did they get him?" Nikkolay shook his head. "He got away. Stole the _Enterprise_ and took her off-planet." "I want to get him myself." He started to rise again; Nikkolay nodded to someone out of sight. A cool hand touched his chin, and he smelled a woman's perfume, nothing at all like Elaine's. Something like a small insect bit him on the neck. The room grew dark. Elaine was dead. There was no more Elaine, nowhere at all. Why, that must mean there was no more world. So that was why it had gotten so dark. He woke again, fitfully, and it would be daylight and he could see the yellow sky through an open window or it would be night and the wall-lights would be on. There would always be somebody with him. Nikkolay's wife, Dame Cecelia; Rovard Grauffis; Lady Lavina Karvall--he must have slept a long time, for she was so much older than he remembered--and her brother, Burt Sandrasan. And a woman with dark hair, in a white smock with a gold caduceus on her breast. Once, Duchess Flavia, and once Duke Angus himself. He asked where he was, not much caring. They told him, at the Ducal Palace. He wished they'd all go away, and let him go wherever Elaine was. Then it would be dark, and he would be trying to find her, because there was something he wanted desperately to show her. Stars in the sky at night, that was it. But there were no stars, there was no Elaine, there was no anything, and he wished that there was no Lucas Trask, either. But there was an Andray Dunnan. He could see him standing black-cloaked on the terrace, the diamonds in his beret-jewel glittering evilly; he could see the mad face peering at him over the rising barrel of the submachine gun. And then he would hunt for him without finding him, through the cold darkness of space. The waking periods grew longer, and during them his mind was clear. They relieved him of his crown of electronic thorns. The feeding tubes came out, and they gave him cups of broth and fruit juice. He wanted to know why he had been brought to the Palace. "About the only thing we could do," Rovard Grauffis told him. "They had too much trouble at Karvall House as it was. You know, Sesar got shot, too." "No." So that was why Sesar hadn't come to see him. "Was he killed?" "Wounded; he's in worse shape than you are. When the shooting started, he went charging up the escalator. Didn't have anything but his dress-dagger. Dunnan gave him a quick burst; I think that was why he didn't have time to finish you off. By that time, the guards who'd been shooting blanks from that rapid-fire gun got in a clip of live rounds and fired at him. He got out of there as fast as he could. They have Sesar on a robomedic like yours. He isn't in any danger." The drainage tubes and medication tubes came out; the tangle of wires around him was removed, and the electrodes with them. They bandaged his wounds and dressed him in a loose robe and lifted him from the robomedic to a couch, where he could sit up when he wished; they began giving him solid food, and wine to drink, and allowed him to smoke. The woman doctor told him he'd had a bad time, as though he didn't know that. He wondered if she expected him to thank her for keeping him alive. "You'll be up and around in a few weeks," his cousin added. "I've seen to it that everything at Traskon New House will be ready for you by then." "I'll never enter that house as long as I live, and I wish that wouldn't be more than the next minute. That was to be Elaine's house. I won't go to it alone." * * * * * The dreams troubled his sleep less and less as he grew stronger. Visitors came often, bringing amusing little gifts, and he found that he enjoyed their company. He wanted to know what had really happened, and how Dunnan had gotten away. "He pirated the _Enterprise_," Rovard Grauffis told him. "He had that company of mercenaries of his, and he'd bribed some of the people at the Gorram shipyards. I thought Alex would kill his chief of security when he found out what had happened. We can't prove anything--we're trying hard enough to--but we're sure Omfray of Glaspyth furnished the money. He's been denying it just a shade too emphatically." "Then the whole thing was planned in advance." "Taking the ship was; he must have been planning that for months; before he started recruiting that company. I think he meant to do it the night before the wedding. Then he tried to persuade the Lady-Demoiselle Elaine to elope with him--he seems to have actually thought that was possible--and when she humiliated him, he decided to kill both of you first." He turned to Otto Harkaman, who had accompanied him. "As long as I live, I'll regret not taking you at your word and accepting your offer, then." "How did he get hold of that Westlands Telecast and Teleprint car?" "Oh. The morning of the wedding, he screened Westlands editorial office and told them he had the inside story on the marriage and why the Duke was sponsoring it. Made it sound as though there was some scandal; insisted that a reporter come to Dunnan House for a face-to-face interview. They sent a man, and that was the last they saw him alive; our people found his body at Dunnan House when we were searching the place afterward. We found the car at the shipyard; it had taken a couple of hits from the guns at Karvall House, but you know what these press cars are built to stand. He went directly to the shipyard, where his men already had the _Enterprise_; as soon as he arrived, she lifted out." He stared at the cigarette between his fingers. It was almost short enough to burn him. With an effort, he leaned forward to crush it out. "Rovard, how soon will that second ship be finished?" Grauffis laughed bitterly. "Building the _Enterprise_ took everything we had. The duchy's on the edge of bankruptcy now. We stopped work on the second ship six months ago because we didn't have enough money to keep on with her and still get the _Enterprise_ finished. We were expecting the _Enterprise_ to make enough in the Old Federation to finish the second one. Then, with two ships and a base on Tanith, the money would begin coming in instead of going out. But now--" "It leaves me where I was on Flamberge," Harkaman added. "Worse. King Napolyon was going to help the Elmersans, and I'd have gotten a command in that. It's too late for that now." He picked up his cane and used it to push himself to his feet. The broken leg had mended, but he was still weak. He took a few tottering steps, paused to lean on the cane, and then forced himself on to the open window and stood for a moment staring out. Then he turned. "Captain Harkaman, it might be that you could still get a command, here on Gram. That's if you don't mind commanding under me as owner-aboard. I am going hunting for Andray Dunnan." They both looked at him. After a moment, Harkaman said: "I'd count it an honor, Lord Trask. But where will you get a ship?" "She's half finished now. You already have a crew for her. Duke Angus can finish her for me, and pay for it by pledging his new barony of Traskon." He had known Rovard Grauffis all his life; until this moment, he had never seen Duke Angus' henchman show surprise. "You mean, you'll trade Traskon for that ship?" he demanded. "Finished, equipped and ready for space, yes." "The Duke will agree to that," Grauffis said promptly. "But, Lucas; Traskon is all you own." "If I have a ship, I won't need them. I am turning Space Viking." That brought Harkaman to his feet with a roar of approval. Grauffis looked at him, his mouth slightly open. "Lucas Trask--Space Viking," he said. "Now I've heard everything." Well, why not? He had deplored the effects of Viking raiding on the Sword-Worlds, because Gram was a Sword-World, and Traskon was on Gram, and Traskon was to have been the home where he and Elaine would live and where their children and children's children would be born and live. Now the little point on which all of it had rested was gone. "That was another Lucas Trask, Rovard. He's dead, now." VI Grauffis excused himself to make a screen call and then returned to excuse himself again. Evidently Duke Angus had dropped whatever he was doing as soon as he heard what his henchman had to tell him. Harkaman was silent until after he was out of the room, then said: "Lord Trask, this is a wonderful thing for me. It's not been pleasant to be a shipless captain living on strangers' bounty. I'd hate, though, to have you think, some time, that I'd advanced my own fortunes at the expense of yours." "Don't worry about that. If anybody's being taken advantage of, you are. I need a space-captain, and your misfortune is my own good luck." Harkaman started to pack tobacco into his pipe. "Have you ever been off Gram, at all?" he asked. "A few years at the University of Camelot, on Excalibur. Otherwise, no." "Well, have you any conception of the sort of thing you're setting yourself to?" The Space Viking snapped his lighter and puffed. "You know, of course, how big the Old Federation is. You know the figures, that is, but do they mean anything to you? I know they don't to a good many spacemen, even. We talk glibly about ten to the hundredth power, but emotionally we still count, 'One, Two, Three, Many.' A ship in hyperspace logs about a light-year an hour. You can go from here to Excalibur in thirty hours. But you could send a radio message announcing the birth of a son, and he'd be a father before it was received. The Old Federation, where you're going to hunt Dunnan, occupies a space-volume of two hundred billion cubic light-years. And you're hunting for one ship and one man in that. How are you going to do it, Lord Trask?" "I haven't started thinking about how; all I know is that I have to do it. There are planets in the Old Federation where Space Vikings come and go; raid-and-trade bases, like the one Duke Angus planned to establish on Tanith. At one or another of them, I'll pick up word of Dunnan, sooner or later." "We'll hear where he was a year ago, and by the time we get there, he'll be gone for a year and a half to two years. We've been raiding the Old Federation for over three hundred years, Lord Trask. At present, I'd say there are at least two hundred Space Viking ships in operation. Why haven't we raided it bare long ago? Well, that's the answer: distance and voyage-time. You know, Dunnan could die of old age--which is not a usual cause of death among Space Vikings--before you caught up with him. And your youngest ship's-boy could die of old age before he found out about it." "Well, I can go on hunting for him till I die, then. There's nothing else that means anything to me." "I thought it was something like that. I won't be with you, all your life. I want a ship of my own, like the _Corisande_, that I lost on Durendal. Some day, I'll have one. But till you can command your own ship, I'll command her for you. That's a promise." Some note of ceremony seemed indicated. Summoning a robot, he had it pour wine for them, and they pledged each other. Rovard Grauffis had recovered his aplomb by the time he returned accompanied by the Duke. If Angus had ever lost his, he gave no indication of it. The effect on everybody else was literally seismic. The generally accepted view was that Lord Trask's reason had been unhinged by his tragic loss; there might, he conceded, be more than a crumb of truth in that. At first, his cousin Nikkolay raged at him for alienating the barony from the family, and then he learned that Duke Angus was appointing him vicar-baron and giving him Traskon New House for his residence. Immediately he began acting like one at the death-bed of a rich grandmother. The Wardshaven financial and industrial barons, whom he had known only distantly, on the other hand, came flocking around him, offering assistance and hailing him as the savior of the duchy. Duke Angus' credit, almost obliterated by the loss of the _Enterprise_, was firmly re-established, and theirs with it. There were conferences at which lawyers and bankers argued interminably; he attended a few at first, found himself completely uninterested, and told everybody so. All he wanted was a ship; the best ship possible, as soon as possible. Alex Gorram had been the first to be notified; he had commenced work on the unfinished sister-ship of the _Enterprise_ immediately. Until he was strong enough to go to the shipyard himself, he watched the work on the two-thousand-foot globular skeleton by screen, and conferred either in person or by screen with engineers and shipyard executives. His rooms at the ducal palace were converted, almost overnight, from sickrooms to offices. The doctors, who had recently been urging him to find new interests and activities, were now warning of the dangers of overexertion. Harkaman finally added his voice to theirs. "You take it easy, Lucas." They had dropped formality and were on a first-name basis now. "You got hulled pretty badly; you let damage-control work on you, and don't strain the machinery till it's fixed. We have plenty of time. We're not going to get anywhere chasing Dunnan. The only way we can catch him is by interception. The longer he moves around in the Old Federation before he hears we're after him, the more of a trail he'll leave. Once we can establish a predictable pattern, we'll have a chance. Then, some time, he'll come out of hyperspace somewhere and find us waiting for him." "Do you think he went to Tanith?" Harkaman heaved himself out of his chair and prowled about the room for a few minutes, then came back and sat down again. "No. That was Duke Angus' idea, not his. He couldn't put in a base on Tanith, anyhow. You know the kind of a crew he has." There had been an extensive inquiry into Dunnan's associates and accomplices; Duke Angus was still hoping for positive proof to implicate Omfray of Glaspyth in the piracy. Dunnan had with him a dozen and a half employees of the Gorram shipyards whom he had corrupted. There was some technical ability among them, but for the most part they were agitators and trouble-makers and incompetent workmen. Even under the circumstances, Alex Gorram was glad to see the last of them. As for Dunnan's own mercenary company, there were about a score of former spacemen among them; the rest graded down from bandits through thugs and sneak-thieves to barroom bums. Dunnan himself was an astrogator, not an engineer. "That gang aren't even good enough for routine raiding," Harkaman said. "They'd never under any circumstances be able to put in a base on Tanith. Unless Dunnan's completely crazy, which I doubt, he's gone to some regular Viking base planet, like Hoth or Nergal or Dagon or Xochitl, to recruit officers and engineers and able spacemen." "All that machinery and robotic equipment and so on that was going to Tanith--was that aboard when he took the ship?" "Yes, and that's another reason why he'd go to some planet like Hoth or Nergal or Xochitl. On a Viking-occupied planet in the Old Federation, that stuff's almost worth its weight in gold." "What's Tanith like?" "Almost completely Terra-type, third of a Class-G sun. Very much like Haulteclere or Flamberge. It was one of the last planets the Federation colonized before the Big War. Nobody knows what happened, exactly. There wasn't any interstellar war; at least, you don't find any big slag-puddles where cities used to be. They probably did a lot of fighting among themselves, after they got out of the Federation. There's still some traces of combat-damage around. Then they started to decivilize, down to the pre-mechanical level--wind and water power and animal power. They have draft-animals that look like introduced Terran carabaos, and a few small sailboats and big canoes and bateaux on the rivers. They have gunpowder, which seems to be the last thing any people lose. "I was there, five years ago. I liked Tanith for a base. There's one moon, almost solid nickel iron, and fissionable-ore deposits. Then, like a fool, I hired out to the Elmersans on Durendal and lost my ship. When I came here, your Duke was thinking about Xipototec. I convinced him that Tanith was a better planet for his purpose." "Dunnan might go there, at that. He might think he was scoring one on Duke Angus. After all, he has all that equipment." "And nobody to use it. If I were Dunnan, I'd go to Nergal, or Xochitl. There are always a couple of thousand Space Vikings on either, spending their loot and taking it easy between raids. He could sign on a full crew on either. I suggest we go to Xochitl, first. We might pick up news of him, if nothing else." * * * * * All right, they'd try Xochitl first. Harkaman knew the planet, and was friendly with the Haulteclere noble who ruled it. The work went on at the Gorram shipyard; it had taken a year to build the _Enterprise_, but the steel-mills and engine-works were over the preparatory work of tooling up, and material and equipment was flowing in a steady stream. Lucas let them persuade him to take more rest, and day by day grew stronger. Soon he was spending most of his time at the shipyard, watching the engines go in--Abbot lift-and-drive for normal space, Dillingham hyperdrive, power-converters, pseudograv, all at the center of the globular ship. Living quarters and workshops went in next, all armored in collapsium-plated steel. Then the ship lifted out to an orbit a thousand miles off-planet, followed by swarms of armored work-craft and cargo-lighters; the rest of the work was more easily done in space. At the same time, the four two-hundred-foot pinnaces that would be carried aboard were being finished. Each of them had its own hyperdrive engines, and could travel as far and as fast as the ship herself. Otto Harkaman was beginning to be distressed because the ship still lacked a name. He didn't like having to speak of her as "her," or "the ship," and there were many things soon to go on that should be name-marked. _Elaine_, Trask thought, at once, and almost at once rejected it. He didn't want her name associated with the things that ship would do in the Old Federation. _Revenge_, _Avenger_, _Retribution_, _Vendetta_; none appealed to him. A news-commentator, turgidly eloquent about the nemesis which the criminal Dunnan had invoked against himself, supplied it, _Nemesis_ it was. Now he was studying his new profession of interstellar robbery and murder against which he had once inveighed. Otto Harkaman's handful of followers became his teachers. Vann Larch, guns-and-missiles, who was also a painter; Guatt Kirbey, sour and pessimistic, the hyperspatial astrogator who tried to express his science in music; Sharll Renner, the normal-space astrogator. Alvyn Karffard, the exec, who had been with Harkaman longest of all. And Sir Paytrik Morland, a local recruit, formerly guard-captain to Count Lionel of Newhaven, who commanded the ground-fighters and the combat contragravity. They were using the farms and villages of Traskon for drill and practice, and he noticed that while the _Nemesis_ would carry only five hundred ground and air fighters, over a thousand were being trained. He commented to Rovard Grauffis. "Yes. Don't mention it outside," the Duke's henchman said. "You and Sir Paytrik and Captain Harkaman will pick the five hundred best. The Duke will take the rest into his service. Some of these days, Omfray of Glaspyth will find out what a Space Viking raid is really like." And Duke Angus would tax his new subjects of Glaspyth to redeem the pledges on his new barony of Traskon. Some old Pre-Atomic writer Harkaman was fond of quoting had said, "Gold will not always get you good soldiers, but good soldiers can get you gold." * * * * * The _Nemesis_ came back to the Gorram yards and settled onto her curved landing legs like a monstrous spider. The _Enterprise_ had borne the Ward sword and atom-symbol; the _Nemesis_ should bear his own badge, but the bisonoid head, tawny on green, of Traskon, was no longer his. He chose a skull impaled on an upright sword, and it was blazoned on the ship when he and Harkaman took her out for her shakedown cruise. When they landed again at the Gorram yards, two hundred hours later, they learned that a tramp freighter from Morglay had come into Bigglersport in their absence with news of Andray Dunnan. Her captain had come to Wardshaven at Duke Angus' urgent invitation and was waiting for them at the Ducal Palace. They sat, a dozen of them, around a table in the Duke's private apartments. The freighter captain, a small, precise man with a graying beard, alternately puffed at a cigarette and sipped from a beaker of brandy. "I spaced out from Morglay two hundred hours ago," he was saying. "I'd been there twelve local days, three hundred Galactic Standard hours, and the run from Curtana was three hundred and twenty. This ship, the _Enterprise_, spaced out from there several days before I did. I'd say she's twelve hundred hours out of Windsor, on Curtana, now." The room was still. The breeze fluttered curtains at the open windows; from the garden below, winged night-things twittered. [Illustration] "I never expected it," Harkaman said. "I thought he'd take the ship out to the Old Federation at once." He poured wine for himself. "Of course, Dunnan's crazy. A crazy man has an advantage, sometimes, like a left-handed knife-fighter. He does unexpected things." "That wasn't such a crazy move," Rovard Grauffis said. "We have very little direct trade with Curtana. It's only an accident we heard about this when we did." The freighter captain's beaker was half empty. He filled it to the brim from the decanter. "She was the first Gram ship there for years," he agreed. "That attracted notice, of course. And his having the blazonry changed, from the sword and atom-symbol to the blue crescent. And the ill-feeling on the part of other captains and planet-side employers about the men he'd lured away from them." "How many men and what kind?" The man with the gray beard shrugged. "I was too busy getting a cargo together for Morglay, to pay much attention. Almost a full spaceship complement, officers and spacemen of every kind. And a lot of industrial engineers and technicians." "Then he is going to use that equipment that was aboard, and put in a base somewhere," somebody said. [Illustration] "If he left Curtana twelve hundred hours ago, he's still in hyperspace," Guatt Kirbey said. "It's over two thousand from Curtana to the nearest Old Federation planet." "How far to Tanith?" Duke Angus asked. "I'm sure that's where he's gone. He'd expect me to finish the other ship and equip her like the _Enterprise_ and send her out; he'd want to get there first." "I'd thought that Tanith would be the last place he'd go," Harkaman said, "but this changes the whole outlook. He could have gone to Tanith." "He's crazy, and you're trying to apply sane logic to him," Guatt Kirbey said. "You're figuring what you'd do, and you aren't crazy. Of course, I've had my doubts, at times, but--" "Yes, he's crazy, and Captain Harkaman's allowing for that," Rovard Grauffis said. "Dunnan hates all of us. He hates his Grace, here. He hates Lord Lucas, and Sesar Karvall; of course, he may think he killed both of them. He hates Captain Harkaman. So how could he score all of us off at once? By taking Tanith." "You say he was buying supplies and ammunition?" "That's right. Gun ammunition, ship's missiles, and a lot of ground-defense missiles." "What was he buying them with? Trading machinery?" "No. Gold." "Yes. Lothar Ffayle found out that a lot of gold was transferred to Dunnan from banks in Glaspyth and Didreksburg," Grauffis said. "He got that aboard when he took the ship, evidently." "All right," Trask said. "We can't be sure of anything, but we have some reasons for thinking he went to Tanith, and that's more than we have for any other planet in the Old Federation. I won't try to estimate the odds against our finding him there, but they're a good deal bigger anywhere else. We'll go there, first." VII The outside viewscreen, which had been vacantly gray for over three thousand hours, was now a vertiginous swirl of color, the indescribable color of a collapsing hyperspatial field. No two observers ever saw it alike, and no imagination could vision the actuality. Trask found that he was holding his breath. So, he noticed, was Otto Harkaman, beside him. It was something, evidently, that nobody got used to. Even Guatt Kirbey, the astrogator, was sitting with his pipe clenched in his mouth, staring at the screen. Then, in an instant, the stars, which had literally not been there before, filled the screen with a blaze of splendor against the black velvet backdrop of normal space. Dead in the center, brighter than all the rest, Ertado's Star, the sun of Tanith, burned yellowly. The light from it was ten hours old. "Pretty good, Guatt," Harkaman said, picking up his cup. "Good, Gehenna; it was perfect," somebody else said. Kirbey was relighting his pipe. "Oh, I suppose it'll have to do," he grudged, around the stem. He had gray hair and an untidy mustache, and nothing was ever quite good enough to satisfy him. "I could have made it a little closer. Need three microjumps, now, and I'll have to cut the last one pretty fine. Now don't bother me." He began punching buttons for data and fiddling with setscrews and verniers. For a moment, in the screen, Trask could see the face of Andray Dunnan. He blinked it away and reached for his cigarettes, and put one in his mouth wrong-end-to. When he reversed it and snapped his lighter, he saw that his hand was trembling. Otto Harkaman must have seen that, too. "Take it easy, Lucas," he whispered. "Keep your optimism under control. We only think he might be here." "I'm sure he is. He has to be." No; that was the way Dunnan, himself, thought. Let's be sane about this. "We have to assume he is. If we do, and he isn't it's a disappointment. If we don't, and he is, it's a disaster." Others, it seemed, thought the same way. The battle-stations board was a solid blaze of red light for full combat readiness. "All right," Kirbey said. "Jumping." Then he twisted the red handle to the right and shoved it in viciously. Again the screen boiled with colored turbulence; again dark and mighty forces stalked through the ship like demons in a sorcerer's tower. The screen turned featureless gray as the pickups stared blindly into some dimensionless noplace. Then it convulsed with color again, and this time Ertado's Star, still in the center, was a coin-sized disk, with the little sparks of its seven planets scattered around it. Tanith was the third--the inhabitable planet of a G-class system usually was. It had a single moon, barely visible in the telescopic screen, five hundred miles in diameter and fifty thousand off-planet. "You know," Kirbey said, as though he was afraid to admit it, "that wasn't too bad. I think we can make it in one more microjump." Some time, Trask supposed, he'd be able to use the expression "micro-" about a distance of fifty-five million miles, too. "What do you think about it?" Harkaman asked him, as deferentially as though seeking expert guidance instead of examining his apprentice. "Where should Guatt put us?" "As close as possible, of course." That would be a light-second at the least; if the _Nemesis_ came out of hyperspace any closer to anything the size of Tanith, the collapsing field itself would kick her back. "We have to assume Dunnan's been there at least nine hundred hours. By that time, he could have put in a detection-station, and maybe missile-launchers, on the moon. The _Enterprise_ carries four pinnaces, the same as the _Nemesis_; in his place, I'd have at least two of them on off-planet patrol. So let's accept it that we'll be detected as soon as we come out of the last jump, and come out with the moon directly between us and the planet. If it's occupied, we can knock it off on the way in." "A lot of captains would try to come out with the moon masked off by the planet," Harkaman said. "Would you?" The big man shook his tousled head. "No. If they have launchers on the moon, they could launch at us in a curve around the planet, by data relayed from the other side, and we'd be at a disadvantage replying. Just go straight in. You hearing this, Guatt?" "Yeah. It makes sense. Sort of. Now, stop pestering me. Sharll, look here a minute." The normal-space astrogator conferred with him; Alvyn Karffard, the executive officer, joined them. Finally Kirbey pulled out the big red handle, twisted it, and said, "All right, jumping." He shoved it in. "I suppose I cut it too fine; now we'll get kicked back half a million miles." The screen convulsed again; when it cleared the third planet was directly in the center; its small moon, looking almost as large, was a little above and to the right, sunlit on one side and planetlit on the other. Kirbey locked the red handle, gathered up his tobacco and lighter and things from the ledge, and pulled down the cover of the instrument-console, locking it. "All yours, Sharll," he told Renner. "Eight hours to atmosphere," Renner said. "That's if we don't have to waste a lot of time shooting up Junior, there." Vann Larch was looking at the moon in the six hundred power screen. "I don't see anything to shoot. Five hundred miles; one planetbuster, or four or five thermonuclears," he said. * * * * * It wasn't right, Trask thought indignantly. Minutes ago, Tanith had been six and a half billion miles away. Seconds ago, fifty-odd million. And now, a quarter of a million, and looking close enough to touch in the screen, it would take them eight hours to reach it. Why, on hyperdrive you could go forty-eight trillion miles in that time. Well, it took a man just as long to walk across a room today as it had taken Pharaoh the First, or Homo Sap. In the telescopic screen Tanith looked like any picture of any Terra-type planet from space, with cloud-blurred contours of seas and continents and a vague mottling of gray and brown and green, topped at the pole by an icecap. None of the surface features, not even the major mountain ranges or rivers, were yet distinguishable, but Harkaman and Sharll Renner and Alvyn Karffard and the other old hands seemed to recognize it. Karffard was talking by phone to Paul Koreff, the signals-and-detection officer, who could detect nothing from the moon and nothing that was getting through the Van Allen belt from the planet. Maybe they'd guessed wrong, at that. Maybe Dunnan hadn't gone to Tanith at all. Harkaman, who had the knack of putting himself to sleep at will, with some sixth or _n_-th sense posted as a sentry, leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Trask wished he could, too. It would be hours before anything happened, and until then he needed all the rest he could get. He drank more coffee, chain-smoked cigarettes; he rose and prowled about the command room, looking at screens. Signals-and-detection was getting a lot of routine stuff--Van Allen count, micrometeor count, surface temperature, gravitation-field strength, radar and scanner echoes. He went back to his chair and sat down, staring at the screen-image. The planet didn't seem to be getting any closer at all, and it ought to; they were approaching it at better than escape velocity. He sat and stared at it. He woke with a start. The screen-image was much larger, now. River courses and the shadow lines of mountains were clearly visible. It must be early autumn in the northern hemisphere; there was snow down to the sixtieth parallel and a belt of brown was pushing south against the green. Harkaman was sitting up, eating lunch. By the clock, it was four hours later. "Have a good nap?" he asked. "We're picking up some stuff, now. Radio and screen signals. Not much, but some. The locals wouldn't have learned enough for that in the five years since I was here. We didn't stay long enough, for one thing." On decivilized planets that were visited by Space Vikings, the locals picked up bits and scraps of technology very quickly. In the four months of idleness and long conversations while they were in hyperspace he had heard many stories confirming that. But from the level to which Tanith had sunk, radio and screen communication in five years was a little too much of a jump. "You didn't lose any men, did you?" That happened frequently--men who took up with local women, men who had made themselves unpopular with their shipmates, men who just liked the planet and wanted to stay. They were always welcomed by the locals for what they could do and teach. "No, we weren't there long enough for that. Only three hundred and fifty hours. This we're getting is outside stuff; somebody's there beside the locals." Dunnan. He looked again at the battle-stations board; it was still uniformly red-lighted. Everything was on full combat ready. He summoned a mess-robot, selected a couple of dishes, and began to eat. After the first mouthful, he called to Alvyn Karffard: "Is Paul getting anything new?" he asked. Karffard checked. A little contragravity-field distortion effect. It was still too far to be sure. He went back to his lunch. He had finished it and was lighting a cigarette over his coffee when a red light flashed and a voice from one of the speakers shouted. "Detection! Detection from planet! Radar, and microray!" Karffard began talking rapidly into a hand-phone; Harkaman unhooked one beside him and listened. "Coming from a definite point, about twenty-fifth north parallel," he said, aside. "Could be from a ship hiding against the planet. There's nothing at all on the moon." * * * * * They seemed to be approaching the planet more and more rapidly. Actually, they weren't, the ship was decelerating to get into an orbit, but the decreasing distance created the illusion of increasing speed. The red lights flashed once more. "_Ship detected!_ Just outside atmosphere, coming around the planet from the west." "Is she the _Enterprise_?" "Can't tell, yet," Karffard said, and then cried: "There she is, in the screen! That spark, about thirty degrees north, just off the west side." Aboard her, too, voices from speakers would be shouting, "Ship detected!" and the battle station board would be blazing red. And Andray Dunnan, at the command-desk-- "She's calling us." That was Paul Koreff's voice, out of the squawk-box on the desk. "Standard Sword-World impulse-code. Interrogative: What ship are you? Informative: her screen combination. Request: Please communicate." "All right," Harkaman said. "Let's be polite and communicate. What's her screen-combination?" Koreff's voice gave it, and Harkaman punched it out. The communication screen in front of them lit at once; Trask shoved over his chair beside Harkaman's, his hands tightening on the arms. Would it be Dunnan himself, and what would his face show when he saw who confronted him out of his own screen? It took him an instant to realize that the other ship was not the _Enterprise_ at all. The _Enterprise_ was the _Nemesis'_ twin; her command room was identical with his own. This one was different in arrangements and fittings. The _Enterprise_ was a new ship; this one was old, and had suffered for years at the hands of a slack captain and a slovenly crew. And the man who sat facing him in the screen was not Andray Dunnan, or any man he had ever seen before. A dark-faced man, with an old scar that ran down one cheek from a little below the eye; he had curly black hair, on his head and on a V of chest exposed by an open shirt. There was an ashtray in front of him, and a thin curl of smoke rose from a cigar in it, and coffee steamed in an ornate but battered silver cup beside it. He was grinning gleefully. "Well! Captain Harkaman, of the _Enterprise_, I believe! Welcome to Tanith. Who's the gentleman with you? He isn't the Duke of Wardshaven, is he?" VIII He glanced quickly at the showback over the screen, to assure himself that his face was not betraying him. Beside him, Otto Harkaman was laughing. "Why, Captain Valkanhayn; this is an unexpected pleasure. That's the _Space Scourge_ you're in, I take it? What are you doing here on Tanith?" A voice from one of the speakers shouted that a second ship had been detected coming over the north pole. The dark-faced man in the screen smirked quite complacently. "That's Garvan Spasso, in the _Lamia_," he said. "And what we're doing here, we've taken this planet over. We intend keeping it, too." "Well! So you and Garvan have teamed up. You two were just made for one another. And you have a little planet, all your very own. I'm so happy for both of you. What are you getting out of it--beside poultry?" The other's self-assurance started to slip. He slapped it back into place. "Don't kid me; we know why you're here. Well, we got here first. Tanith is our planet. You think you can take it away from us?" "I know we could, and so do you," Harkaman told him. "We outgun you and Spasso together; why, a couple of our pinnaces could knock the _Lamia_ apart. The only question is, do we want to bother?" By now, he had recovered from his surprise, but not from his disappointment. If this fellow thought the _Nemesis_ was the _Enterprise_--Before he could check himself, he had finished the thought aloud. "Then the _Enterprise_ didn't come here at all!" The man in the screen started. "Isn't that the _Enterprise_ you're in?" "Oh, no. Pardon my remissness, Captain Valkanhayn," Harkaman apologized. "This is the _Nemesis_. The gentleman with me, Lord Lucas Trask, is owner-aboard, for whom I am commanding. Lord Trask, Captain Boake Valkanhayn, of the _Space Scourge_. Captain Valkanhayn is a Space Viking." He said that as though expecting it to be disputed. "So, I am told, is his associate, Captain Spasso, whose ship is approaching. You mean to tell me that the _Enterprise_ hasn't been here?" Valkanhayn was puzzled, slightly apprehensive. "You mean the Duke of Wardshaven has two ships?" "As far as I know, the Duke of Wardshaven hasn't any ships," Harkaman replied. "This ship is the property and private adventure of Lord Trask. The _Enterprise_, for which we are looking, is owned and commanded by one Andray Dunnan." The man with the scarred face and hairy chest had picked up his cigar and was puffing on it mechanically. Now he took it out of his mouth as though he wondered how it had gotten there in the first place. "But isn't the Duke of Wardshaven sending a ship here to establish a base? That was what we'd heard. We heard you'd gone from Flamberge to Gram to command for him." "Where did you hear this? And when?" "On Hoth. That'd be about two thousand hours ago; a Gilgamesher brought the news from Xochitl." "Well, considering it was fifth or sixth hand, your information was good enough, when it was fresh. It was a year and a half old when you got it, though. How long have you been here on Tanith?" "About a thousand hours." Harkaman clucked sadly at that. "Pity you wasted all that time. Well, it was nice talking to you, Boake. Say hello to Garvan for me when he comes up." "You mean you're not staying?" Valkanhayn was horrified, an odd reaction for a man who had just been expecting a bitter battle to drive them away. "You're just spacing right out again?" Harkaman shrugged. "Do we want to waste time here, Lord Trask? The _Enterprise_ has obviously gone somewhere else. She was still in hyperspace when Captain Valkanhayn and his accomplice arrived here." "Is there anything worth staying for?" That seemed to be the reply Harkaman was expecting. "Beside poultry, that is?" Harkaman shook his head. "This is Captain Valkanhayn's planet; his and Captain Spasso's. Let them be stuck with it." "But, look; this is a good planet. There's a big local city, maybe ten or twenty thousand people; temples and palaces and everything. Then, there are a couple of old Federation cities. The one we're at is in good shape, and there's a big spaceport. We've been doing a lot of work on it. And the locals won't give you any trouble. All they have is spears and a few crossbows and matchlocks--" "I know. I've been here." "Well, couldn't we make some kind of a deal?" Valkanhayn asked. A mendicant whine was beginning to creep into his voice. "I can get Garvan on screen and switch him over to your ship--" "Well, we have a lot of Sword-World merchandise aboard," Harkaman said. "We could make you good prices on some of it. How are you fixed for robotic equipment?" "But aren't you going to stay here?" Valkanhayn was almost in a panic. "Listen, suppose I talk to Garvan, and we all get together on this. Just excuse me for a minute--" As soon as he had blanked out, Harkaman threw back his head and guffawed as though he had just heard the funniest and bawdiest joke in the galaxy. Trask, himself, didn't feel like laughing. "The humor escapes me," he admitted. "We came here on a fools' errand." "I'm sorry, Lucas." Harkaman was still shaking with mirth. "I know it's a letdown, but that pair of chiseling chicken thieves! I could almost pity them, if it weren't so funny." He laughed again. "You know what their idea was?" Trask shook his head. "Who are they?" "What I called them, a couple of chicken thieves. They raid planets like Set and Hertha and Melkarth, where the locals haven't anything to fight with--or anything worth fighting for. I didn't know they'd teamed up, but that figures. Nobody else would team up with either of them. What must have happened, this story of Duke Angus' Tanith adventure must have filtered out to them, and they thought that if they got here first, I'd think it was cheaper to take them in than run them out. I probably would have, too. They do have ships, of a sort, and they do raid, after a fashion. But now, there isn't going to be any Tanith base, and they have a no-good planet and they're stuck with it." "Can't they make anything out of it themselves?" "Like what?" Harkaman hooted. "They have no equipment, and they have no men. Not for a job like that. The only thing they can do is space out and forget it." "We could sell them equipment." "We could if they had anything to use for money. They haven't. One thing, we do want to let down and give the men a chance to walk on ground and look at a sky for a while. The girls here aren't too bad, either," Harkaman said. "As I remember, some of them even take a bath, now and then." "That's the kind of news of Dunnan we're going to get. By the time we'd get to where he's been reported, he'd be a couple of thousand light-years away," he said disgustedly. "I agree; we ought to give the men a chance to get off the ship, here. We can stall this pair along for a while and we won't have any trouble with them." * * * * * The three ships were slowly converging toward a point fifteen thousand miles off-planet and over the sunset line. The _Space Scourge_ bore the device of a mailed fist clutching a comet by the head; it looked more like a whisk broom than a scourge. The _Lamia_ bore a coiled snake with the head, arms and bust of a woman. Valkanhayn and Spasso were taking their time about screening back, and he began to wonder if they weren't maneuvering the _Nemesis_ into a cross-fire position. He mentioned this to Harkaman and Alvyn Karffard; they both laughed. [Illustration] "Just holding ship's meetings," Karffard said. "They'll be yakking back and forth for a couple of hours, yet." "Yes; Valkanhayn and Spasso don't own their ships," Harkaman explained. "They've gone in debt to their crews for supplies and maintenance till everybody owns everything in common. The ships look like it, too. They don't even command, really; they just preside over elected command-councils." Finally, they had both of the more or less commanders on screen. Valkanhayn had zipped up his shirt and put on a jacket. Garvan Spasso was a small man, partly bald. His eyes were a shade too close together, and his thin mouth had a bitterly crafty twist. He began speaking at once: "Captain, Boake tells me you say you're not here in the service of the Duke of Wardshaven at all." He said it aggrievedly. "That's correct," Harkaman said. "We came here because Lord Trask thought another Gram ship, the _Enterprise_, would be here. Since she isn't, there's no point in our being here. We do hope, though, that you won't make any difficulty about our letting down and giving our men a couple of hundred hours' liberty. They've been in hyperspace for three thousand hours." "See!" Spasso clamored. "He wants to trick us into letting him land--" [Illustration] "Captain Spasso," Trask cut in. "Will you please stop insulting everybody's intelligence, your own included." Spasso glared at him, belligerently but hopefully. "I understand what you thought you were going to do here. You expected Captain Harkaman here to establish a base for the Duke of Wardshaven, and you thought, if you were here ahead of him and in a posture of defense, that he'd take you into the Duke's service rather than waste ammunition and risk damage and casualties wiping you out. Well, I'm very sorry, gentlemen. Captain Harkaman is in my service, and I'm not in the least interested in establishing a base on Tanith." Valkanhayn and Spasso looked at each other. At least, in the two side-by-side screens, their eyes shifted, each to the other's screen on his own ship. "I get it!" Spasso cried suddenly. "There's two ships, the _Enterprise_ and this one. The Duke of Wardshaven fitted out the _Enterprise_, and somebody else fitted out this one. They both want to put in a base here!" That opened a glorious vista. Instead of merely capitalizing on their nuisance-value, they might find themselves holding the balance of power in a struggle for the planet. All sorts of profitable perfidies were possible. "Why, sure you can land, Otto," Valkanhayn said. "I know what it's like to be three thousand hours in hyper, myself." "You're at this old city with the two tall tower-buildings, aren't you?" Harkaman asked. He looked up at the viewscreen. "Ought to be about midnight there now. How's the spaceport? When I was here, it was pretty bad." "Oh, we've been fixing it up. We got a big gang of locals working for us--" * * * * * The city was familiar, from Otto Harkaman's descriptions and from the pictures Vann Larch had painted during the long jump from Gram. As they came in, it looked impressive, spreading for miles around the twin buildings that spired almost three thousand feet above it, with a great spaceport like an eight-pointed star at one side. Whoever had built it, in the sunset splendor of the old Terran Federation, must have done so confident that it would become the metropolis of a populous and prospering world. Then the sun of the Federation had gone down. Nobody knew what had happened on Tanith after that, but evidently none of it had been good. At first, the two towers seemed as sound as when they had been built; gradually it became apparent that one was broken at the top. For the most part, the smaller buildings scattered widely around them were standing, though here and there mounds of brush-grown rubble showed where some had fallen in. The spaceport looked good--a central octagon mass of buildings, the landing-berths, and, beyond, the triangular areas of airship docks and warehouses. The central building was outwardly intact, and the ship-berths seemed clear of wreckage and rubble. By the time the _Nemesis_ was following the _Space Scourge_ and the _Lamia_ down, towed by her own pinnaces, the illusion that they were approaching a living city had vanished. The interspaces between the buildings were choked with forest-growth, broken by a few small fields and garden-plots. At one time, there had been three of the high buildings, literally vertical cities in themselves. Where the third had stood was a glazed crater, with a ridge of fallen rubble lying away from it. Somebody must have landed a medium missile, about twenty kilotons, against its base. Something of the same sort had scored on the far edge of the spaceport, and one of the eight arrowheads of docks and warehouses was an indistinguishable slag-pile. The rest of the city seemed to have died of neglect rather than violence. It certainly hadn't been bombed out. Harkaman thought most of the fighting had been done with subneutron bombs or Omega-ray bombs, that killed the people without damaging the real estate. Or bio-weapons; a man-made plague that had gotten out of control and all but depopulated the planet. "It takes an awful lot of people, working together at an awful lot of jobs, to keep a civilization running. Smash the installations and kill the top technicians and scientists, and the masses don't know how to rebuild and go back to stone hatchets. Kill off enough of the masses and even if the planet and the know-how is left, there's nobody to do the work. I've seen planets that decivilized both ways. Tanith, I think, is one of the latter." That had been during one of the long after-dinner bull sessions on the way out from Gram. Somebody, one of the noble gentlemen-adventurers who had joined the company after the piracy of the _Enterprise_ and the murder, had asked: "But some of them survived. Don't they know what happened?" "_'In the old times, there were sorcerers. They built the old buildings by wizard arts. Then the sorcerers fought among themselves and went away,'_" Harkaman said. "That's all they know about it." You could make any kind of an explanation out of that. As the pinnaces pulled and nudged the _Nemesis_ down to her berth, he could see people, far down on the spaceport floor, at work. Either Valkanhayn and Spasso had more men than the size of their ships indicated, or they had gotten a lot of locals to work for them. More than the population of the moribund city, at least as Harkaman remembered it. There had been about five hundred in all; they lived by mining the old buildings for metal, and trading metalwork for food and textiles and powder and other things made elsewhere. It was accessible only by oxcarts traveling a hundred miles across the plains; it had been built by a contragravity-using people with utter disregard for natural travel and transportation routes. "I don't envy the poor buggers," Harkaman said, looking down at the antlike figures on the spaceport floor. "Boake Valkanhayn and Garvan Spasso have probably made slaves of the lot of them. If I was really going to put in a base here, I wouldn't thank that pair for the kind of public-relations work they've been doing among the locals." IX That was just about the situation. Spasso and Valkanhayn and some of their officers met them on the landing stage of the big building in the middle of the spaceport, where they had established quarters. Entering and going down a long hallway, they passed a dozen men and women gathering up rubbish from the floor with shovels and with their hands and putting it into a lifter-skid. Both sexes wore shapeless garments of coarse cloth, like ponchos, and flat-soled sandals. Watching them was another local in a kilt, buskins and a leather jerkin; he wore a short sword on his belt and carried a wickedly thonged whip. He also wore a Space Viking combat helmet, painted with the device of Spasso's _Lamia_. He bowed as they approached, putting a hand to his forehead. After they had passed, they could hear him shouting at the others, and the sound of whip-blows. You make slaves out of people, and some will always be slave-drivers; they will bow to you, and then take it out on the others. Harkaman's nose was twitching as though he had a bit of rotten fish caught in his mustache. "We have about eight hundred of them. There were only three hundred that were any good for work here; we gathered the rest up at villages along the big river," Spasso was saying. "How do you get food for them?" Harkaman asked. "Or don't you bother?" "Oh, we gather that up all over," Valkanhayn told him. "We send parties out with landing craft. They'll let down on a village, run the locals out, gather up what's around and bring it here. Once in a while they put up a fight, but the best they have is a few crossbows and some muzzle-loading muskets. When they do, we burn the village and machine-gun everybody we see." "That's the stuff," Harkaman approved. "If the cow doesn't want to be milked, just shoot her. Of course, you don't get much milk out of her again, but--" The room to which their hosts guided them was at the far end of the hall. It had probably been a conference room or something of the sort, and originally it had been paneled, but the paneling had long ago vanished. Holes had been dug here and there in the walls, and he remembered having noticed that the door was gone and the metal groove in which it had slid had been pried out. There was a big table in the middle, and chairs and couches covered with colored spreads. All the furniture was handmade, cunningly pegged together and highly polished. On the walls hung trophies of weapons--thrusting-spears and throwing-spears, crossbows and quarrels, and a number of heavy guns, crude things, but carefully made. "Pick all this stuff up off the locals?" Harkaman asked. "Yes, we got most of it at a big town down at the forks of the river," Valkanhayn said. "We shook it down a couple of times. That's where we recruited the fellows we're using to boss the workers." Then he picked up a stick with a leather-covered knob and beat on a gong, bawling for wine. A voice, somewhere, replied, "Yes, master; I come!" and in a few moments a woman entered carrying a jug in either hand. She was wearing a blue bathrobe several sizes too large for her, instead of the poncho things the slaves in the hallway wore. She had dark brown hair and gray eyes; if she had not been so obviously frightened she would have been beautiful. She set the jugs on the table and brought silver cups from a chest against the wall: when Spasso dismissed her, she went out hastily. "I suppose it's silly to ask if you're paying these people anything for the work they do or for the things you take from them," Harkaman said. From the way the _Space Scourge_ and _Lamia_ people laughed, it evidently was. Harkaman shrugged. "Well, it's your planet. Make any kind of a mess out of it you want to." "You think we _ought_ to pay them?" Spasso was incredulous. "Damn bunch of savages!" "They aren't as savage as the Xochitl locals were when Haulteclere took it over. You've been there; you've seen what Prince Viktor does with them now." "We haven't got the men or equipment they have on Xochitl," Valkanhayn said. "We can't afford to coddle the locals." "You can't afford not to," Harkaman told him. "You have two ships, here. You can only use one for raiding; the other will have to stay here to hold the planet. If you take them both away, the locals, whom you have been studiously antagonizing, will swamp whoever you leave behind. And if you don't leave anybody behind, what's the use of having a planetary base?" "Well, why don't you join us," Spasso finally came out with it. "With our three ships we could have a real thing, here." Harkaman looked at him inquiringly. "The gentlemen," Trask said, "are putting this wrongly. They mean, why don't we let them join us?" "Well, if you want to put it like that," Valkanhayn conceded. "We'll admit, your _Nemesis_ would be the big end of it. But why not? Three ships, we could have a real base here. Nikky Gratham's father only had two when he started on Jagannath, and look what the Grathams got there now." "Are we interested?" Harkaman asked. "Not very, I'm afraid. Of course, we've just landed; Tanith may have great possibilities. Suppose we reserve decision for a while and look around a little." * * * * * There were stars in the sky, and, for good measure, a sliver of moon on the western horizon. It was only a small moon, but it was close. He walked to the edge of the landing stage, and Elaine was walking with him. The noise from inside, where the _Nemesis_ crew were feasting with those of the _Lamia_ and _Space Scourge_, grew fainter. To the south, a star moved; one of the pinnaces they had left on off-planet watch. There was firelight far below, and he could hear singing. Suddenly he realized that it was the poor devils of locals whom Valkanhayn and Spasso had enslaved. Elaine went away quickly. "Have your fill of Space Viking glamour, Lucas?" He turned. It was Baron Rathmore, who had come along to serve for a year or so and then hitch a ride home from some base planet and cash in politically on having been with Lucas Trask. "For the moment. I'm told that this lot aren't typical." "I hope not. They're a pack of sadistic brutes, and piggish along with it." "Well, brutality and bad manners I can condone, but Spasso and Valkanhayn are a pair of ignominious little crooks, and stupid along with it. If Andray Dunnan had gotten here ahead of us, he might have done one good thing in his wretched life. I can't understand why he didn't come here." "I think he still will," Rathmore said. "I knew him and I knew Nevil Ormm. Ormm's ambitious, and Dunnan is insanely vindictive--" He broke off with a sour laugh. "I'm telling _you_ that!" "Why didn't he come here directly, then?" "Maybe he doesn't want a base on Tanith. That would be something constructive; Dunnan's a destroyer. I think he took that cargo of equipment somewhere and sold it. I think he'll wait till he's fairly sure the other ship is finished. Then he'll come in and shoot the place up, the way--" He bit that off abruptly. "The way he did my wedding; I think of it all the time." * * * * * The next morning, he and Harkaman took an aircar and went to look at the city at the forks of the river. It was completely new, in the sense that it had been built since the collapse of Federation civilization and the loss of civilized technologies. It was huddled on a long, irregularly triangular mound, evidently to raise it above flood-level. Generations of labor must have gone into it. To the eyes of a civilization using contragravity and powered equipment it wasn't at all impressive. Fifty to a hundred men with adequate equipment could have gotten the thing up in a summer. It was only by forcing himself to think in terms of spadeful after spadeful of earth, cartload after cartload creaking behind straining beasts, timber after timber cut with axes and dressed with adzes, stone after stone and brick after brick, that he could appreciate it. They even had it walled, with a palisade of tree-trunks behind which earth and rocks had been banked, and along the river were docks, at which boats were moored. The locals simply called it Tradetown. As they approached, a big gong began booming, and a white puff of smoke was followed by the thud of a signal-gun. The boats, long canoe-like craft and round-bowed, many-oared barges, put out hastily into the river; through binoculars they could see people scattering from the surrounding fields, driving cattle ahead of them. By the time they were over the city, nobody was in sight. They seemed to have developed a pretty fair air-raid warning system in the nine-hundred-odd hours in which they had been exposed to the figurative mercies of Boake Valkanhayn and Garvan Spasso. It hadn't saved them entirely; a section of the city had been burned, and there were evidences of shelling. Light chemical-explosive stuff; this city was too good a cow for even those two to kill before the milking was over. They circled slowly over it at a thousand feet. When they turned away, black smoke began rising from what might have been pottery works or brick-kilns on the outskirts; something resinous had evidently been fed to the fires. Other columns of black smoke began rising across the countryside on both sides of the river. "You know, these people are civilized, if you don't limit the term to contragravity and nuclear energy," Harkaman said. "They have gunpowder, for one thing, and I can think of some rather impressive Old Terran civilizations that didn't have that much. They have an organized society, and anybody who has that is starting toward civilization." "I hate to think of what'll happen to this planet if Spasso and Valkanhayn stay here long." "Might be a good thing, in the long run. Good things in the long run are often tough while they're happening. I know what'll happen to Spasso and Valkanhayn, though. They'll start decivilizing, themselves. They'll stay here for a while, and when they need something they can't take from the locals they'll go chicken-stealing after it, but most of the time they'll stay here lording it over their slaves, and finally their ships will wear out and they won't be able to fix them. Then, some time, the locals'll jump them when they aren't watching and wipe them out. But in the meantime, the locals'll learn a lot from them." They turned the aircar west again along the river. They looked at a few villages. One or two dated from the Federation period; they had been plantations before whatever it was had happened. More had been built within the past five centuries. A couple had recently been destroyed, in punishment for the crime of self-defense. "You know," he said, at length, "I'm going to do everybody a favor. I'm going to let Spasso and Valkanhayn persuade me to take this planet away from them." Harkaman, who was piloting, turned sharply. "You crazy or something?" "'When somebody makes a statement you don't understand, don't tell him he's crazy. Ask him what he means.' Who said that?" "On target," Harkaman grinned. "'What _do_ you mean, Lord Trask?'" "I can't catch Dunnan by pursuit; I'll have to get him by interception. You know the source of that quotation, too. This looks to me like a good place to intercept him. When he learns I have a base here, he'll hit it, sooner or later. And even if he doesn't, we can pick up more information on him, when ships start coming in here, than we would batting around all over the Old Federation." Harkaman considered for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, if we could set up a base like Nergal or Xochitl," he agreed. "There'll be four or five ships, Space Vikings, traders, Gilgameshers and so on, on either of those planets all the time. If we had the cargo Dunnan took to space in the _Enterprise_, we could start a base like that. But we haven't anything near what we need, and you know what Spasso and Valkanhayn have." "We can get it from Gram. As it stands, the investors in the Tanith Adventure, from Duke Angus down, lost everything they put into it. If they're willing to throw some good money after bad, they can get it back, and a handsome profit to boot. And there ought to be planets above the rowboat and ox-cart level not too far away that could be raided for a lot of things we'd need." "That's right; I know of half a dozen within five hundred light-years. They won't be the kind Spasso and Valkanhayn are in the habit of raiding, though. And besides machinery, we can get gold, and valuable merchandise that could be sold on Gram. And if we could make a go of it, you'd go farther hunting Dunnan by sitting here on Tanith than by going looking for him. That was the way we used to hunt marsh pigs on Colada, when I was a kid; just find a good place and sit down and wait." [Illustration] * * * * * They had Valkanhayn and Spasso aboard the _Nemesis_ for dinner; it didn't take much guiding to keep the conversation on the subject of Tanith and its resources, advantages and possibilities. Finally, when they had reached brandy and coffee, Trask said idly: "I believe, together, we could really make something out of this planet." "That's what we've been telling you, all along," Spasso broke in eagerly. "This is a wonderful planet--" "It could be. All it has now is possibilities. We'd need a spaceport, for one thing." "Well, what's this, here?" Valkanhayn wanted to know. "It was a spaceport," Harkaman told him. "It could be one again. And we'd need a shipyard, capable of any kind of heavy repair work. Capable of building a complete ship, in fact. I never saw a ship come into a Viking base planet with any kind of a cargo worth dickering over that hadn't taken some damage getting it. Prince Viktor of Xochitl makes a good half of his money on ship repairs, and so do Nikky Gratham on Jagannath and the Everrards on Hoth." "And engine works, hyperdrive, normal space and pseudograv," Trask added. "And a steel mill, and a collapsed-matter plant. And robotic-equipment works, and--" "Oh, that's out of all reason!" Valkanhayn cried. "It would take twenty trips with a ship the size of this one to get all that stuff here, and how'd we ever be able to pay for it?" "That's the sort of base Duke Angus of Wardshaven planned. The _Enterprise_, practically a duplicate of the _Nemesis_, carried everything that would be needed to get it started, when she was pirated." "When she was--?" "Now you're going to have to tell the gentlemen the truth," Harkaman chuckled. "I intend to." He laid his cigar down, sipped some of his brandy, and explained about Duke Angus' Tanith adventure. "It was part of a larger plan; Angus wanted to gain economic supremacy for Wardshaven to forward his political ambitions. It was, however, an entirely practical business proposition. I was opposed to it, because I thought it would be too good a proposition for Tanith and work to the disadvantage of the home planet in the end." He told them about the _Enterprise_, and the cargo of industrial and construction equipment she carried, and then told them how Andray Dunnan had pirated her. "That wouldn't have annoyed me at all; I had no money invested in the project. What did annoy me, to put it mildly, was that just before he took the ship out, Dunnan shot up my wedding, wounded me and my father-in-law, and killed the lady to whom I had been married for less than half an hour. I fitted out this ship at my own expense, took on Captain Harkaman, who had been left without a command when the _Enterprise_ was pirated, and came out here to hunt Dunnan down and kill him. I believe that I can do that best by establishing a base on Tanith myself. The base will have to be operated at a profit, or it can't be operated at all." He picked up the cigar again and puffed slowly. "I am inviting you gentlemen to join me as partners." "Well, you still haven't told us how we're going to get the money to finance it," Spasso insisted. "The Duke of Wardshaven, and the others who invested in the original Tanith adventure will put it up. It's the only way they can recover what they lost on the _Enterprise_." "But then, this Duke of Wardshaven will be running it, not us," Valkanhayn objected. "The Duke of Wardshaven," Harkaman reminded him, "is on Gram. We are here on Tanith. There are three thousand light-years between." That seemed a satisfactory answer. Spasso, however, wanted to know who would run things here on Tanith. "We'll have to hold a meeting of all three crews," he began. "We will do nothing of the kind," Trask told him. "I will be running things here on Tanith. You people may allow your orders to be debated and voted on, but I don't. You will inform your respective crews to that effect. Any orders you give them in my name will be obeyed without argument." "I don't know how the men'll take that," Valkanhayn said. "I know how they'll take it if they're smart," Harkaman told him. "And I know what'll happen if they aren't. I know how you've been running your ships, or how your ships' crews have been running you. Well, we don't do it that way. Lucas Trask is owner, and I'm captain. I obey his orders on what's to be done, and everybody else obeys mine on how to do it." Spasso looked at Valkanhayn, then shrugged. "That's how the man wants it, Boake. You want to give him an argument? I don't." "The first order," Trask said, "is that these people you have working here are to be paid. They are not to be beaten by these plug-uglies you have guarding them. If any of them want to leave, they may do so; they will be given presents and furnished transportation home. Those who wish to stay will be issued rations, furnished with clothing and bedding and so on as they need it, and paid wages. We'll work out some kind of a pay-token system and set up a commissary where they can buy things." Disks of plastic or titanium or something, stamped and uncounterfeitable. Get Alvyn Karffard to see about that. Organize work-gangs, and promote the best and most intelligent to foremen. And those guards could be taken in hand by some ground-fighter sergeant and given Sword-World weapons and tactical training; use them to train others; they'd need a sepoy army of some sort. Even the best of good will is no substitute for armed force, conspicuously displayed and unhesitatingly used when necessary. "And there'll be no more of this raiding villages for food or anything else. We will pay for anything we get from any of the locals." "We'll have trouble about that," Valkanhayn predicted. "Our men think anything a local has belongs to anybody who can take it." "So do I," Harkaman said. "On a planet I'm raiding. This is our planet, and our locals. We don't raid our own planet or our own people. You'll just have to teach them that." X It took Valkanhayn and Spasso more time and argument to convince their crews than Trask thought necessary. Harkaman seemed satisfied, and so was Baron Rathmore, the Wardshaven politician. "It's like talking a lot of uncommitted small landholders into taking somebody's livery-and-maintenance," the latter said. "You can't use too much pressure; make them think it's their own idea." There were meetings of both crews, with heated arguments; Baron Rathmore made frequent speeches, while Lord Trask of Tanith and Admiral Harkaman--the titles were Rathmore's suggestion--remained loftily aloof. On both ships, everybody owned everything in common, which meant that nobody owned anything. They had taken over Tanith on the same basis of diffused ownership, and nobody in either crew was quite stupid enough to think that they could do anything with the planet by themselves. By joining the _Nemesis_, it appeared that they were getting something for nothing. In the end, they voted to place themselves under the authority of Lord Trask and Admiral Harkaman. After all, Tanith would be a feudal lordship, and the three ships together a fleet. Admiral Harkaman's first act of authority was to order a general inspection of fleet units. He wasn't shocked by the condition of the two ships, but that was only because he had expected much worse. They were spaceworthy; after all, they had gotten here from Hoth under their own power. They were only combat-worthy if the combat weren't too severe. His original estimate that the _Nemesis_ could have knocked both of them to pieces was, if anything, over-conservative. The engines were only in fair shape, and the armament was bad. "We aren't going to spend our time sitting here on Tanith," he told the two captains. "This planet is a raiding base, and 'raiding' is the operative word. And we are not going to raid easy planets. A planet that can be raided with impunity isn't worth the time it takes getting to it. We are going to have to fight on every planet we hit, and I am not going to jeopardize the lives of the men under me, which includes your crews as well as mine, because of under-powered and under-armed ships." Spasso tried to argue. "We've been getting along." Harkaman cursed. "Yes. I know how you've been getting along; chicken-stealing on planets like Set and Xipototec and Melkarth. Not making enough to cover maintenance expenses; that's why your ship's in the shape she is. Well, those days are over. Both ships ought to have a full overhaul, but we'll have to skip that till we have a shipyard of our own. But I will insist, at least, that your guns and launchers are in order. And your detection equipment; you didn't get a fix on the _Nemesis_ till we were less than twenty thousand miles off-planet." "We had better get the _Lamia_ in condition first," Trask said. "We can put her on off-planet watch, instead of that pair of pinnaces." * * * * * Work on the _Lamia_ started the next day, and considerable friction-heat was generated between her officers and the engineers sent over from the _Nemesis_. Baron Rathmore went aboard, and came back laughing. "You know how that ship's run?" he asked. "There's a sort of soviet of officers; chief engineer, exec, guns-and-missiles, astrogator and so on. Spasso's just an animated ventriloquist's dummy. I talked to all of them. None of them can pin me down to anything, but they think we're going to heave Spasso out of command and appoint one of them, and each one thinks he'll be it. I don't know how long that'll last, it's a string-and-tape job like the one we're having to do on the ship. It'll hold till we get something better." "We'll have to get rid of Spasso," Harkaman agreed. "I think we'll put one of our own people in his place. Valkanhayn can stay in command of the _Space Scourge_; he's a spaceman. But Spasso's no good for anything." The local problem was complicated, too. The locals spoke Lingua Terra of a sort, like every descendant of the race that had gone out from the Sol system in the Third Century, but it was a barely comprehensible sort. On civilized planets, the language had been frozen unalterably in microbooks and voice tapes. But microbooks can only be read and sound tapes heard with the aid of electricity, and Tanith had lost that long ago. Most of the people Spasso and Valkanhayn had kidnaped and enslaved came from villages within a radius of five hundred miles. About half of them wanted to be repatriated; they were given gifts of knives, tools, blankets, and bits of metal which seemed to be the chief standard of value and medium of exchange, and shipped home. Finding their proper villages was not easy. At each such village, the news was spread that the Space Vikings would hereafter pay for what they received. The _Lamia_ was overhauled as rapidly as possible. She was still far from being a good ship, but she was much closer to being one than before. She was fitted with the best detection equipment that could be assembled, and put on orbit; Alvyn Karffard took command of her, with some of Spasso's officers, some of Valkanhayn's, and a few from the _Nemesis_. Harkaman was intending to use her for retraining of all the _Lamia_ and _Space Scourge_ officers, and rotated them back and forth. [Illustration] The labor guards, a score in number, were relieved of their duties, issued Sword-World firearms, and given intensive training. The trade tokens, stamps of colored plastic, were introduced, and a store was set up where they could be exchanged for Sword-World items. After a while, it dawned on the locals that the tokens could also be used for trading among themselves; money seemed to have been one of the adjuncts of civilization that had been lost along Tanith's downward path. A few of them were able to use contragravity hand-lifters and hand-towed lifter-skids; several were even learning to operate things like bulldozers, at least to the extent of knowing which lever or button did what. Give them a little time, Trask thought, watching a gang at work down on the spaceport floor. It won't be many years before half of them will be piloting aircars. * * * * * As soon as the _Lamia_ was on orbital watch, the _Space Scourge_ was set down at the spaceport and work started on her. It was decided that Valkanhayn would take her to Gram; enough _Nemesis_ people would go along to insure good faith on his part, and to talk to Duke Angus and the Tanith investors. Baron Rathmore, and Paytrik Morland, and several other Wardshaven gentlemen-adventurers for the latter function; Alvyn Karffard to act as Valkanhayn's exec, with private orders to supersede him in command if necessary, and Guatt Kirbey to do the astrogating. "We'll have to take the _Nemesis_ and the _Space Scourge_ out, first, and make a big raid," Harkaman said. "We can't send the _Space Scourge_ back to Gram empty. When Baron Rathmore and Lord Valpry and the rest of them talk to Duke Angus and the Tanith investors, they'll have to have a lot more than some travel films of Tanith. They'll have to be able to show that Tanith is producing. We ought to have a little money of our own to invest, too." "But, Otto; both ships?" That worried Trask. "Suppose Dunnan comes and finds nobody here but Spasso and the _Lamia_?" "Chance we'll have to take. Personally, I think we have a year to a year and a half before Dunnan shows up here. I know, we were fooled trying to guess what he'd do before. But the sort of raid I have in mind, we'll need two ships, and in any case, I don't want to leave both those ships here while we're gone, even if you do." "When it comes to that, I don't think I do, either. But we can't trust Spasso here alone, can we?" "We'll leave enough of our people to make sure. We'll leave Alvyn--that'll mean a lot of work for me that he'd otherwise do, on the ship. And Baron Rathmore, and young Valpry, and the men who've been training our sepoys. We can shuffle things around and leave some of Valkanhayn's men in place of some of Spasso's. We might even talk Spasso into going along. That'll mean having to endure him at our table, but it would be wise." "Have you picked a place to raid?" "Three of them. First, Khepera. That's only thirty light-years from here. That won't amount to much; just chicken-stealing. It'll give our green hands some relatively safe combat-training, and it'll give us some idea of how Spasso's and Valkanhayn's people behave, and give them confidence for the next job." "And then?" "Amaterasu. My information about Amaterasu is about twenty years old. A lot of things can happen in twenty years. All I know of it--I was never there myself--is it's fairly civilized--about like Terra just before the beginning of the Atomic Era. No nuclear energy, they lost that, and of course nothing beyond it, but they have hydroelectric and solarelectric power, and nonnuclear jet aircraft, and some very good chemical-explosive weapons, which they use very freely on each other. It was last known to have been raided by a ship from Excalibur twenty years ago." "That sounds promising. And the third planet?" "Beowulf. We won't take enough damage on Amaterasu to make any difference there, but if we saved Amaterasu for last, we might be needing too many repairs." "It's like that?" "Yes. They have nuclear energy. I don't think it would be wise to mention Beowulf to Captains Spasso and Valkanhayn. Wait till we've hit Khepera and Amaterasu. They may be feeling like heroes, then." XI Khepera left a bad taste in Trask's mouth. He was still tasting it when the colored turbulence died out of the screen and left the gray nothingness of hyperspace. Garvan Spasso--they had had no trouble in inducing him to come along--was staring avidly at the screen as though he could still see the ravished planet they had left. "That was a good one; that was a good one!" he was crowing. He'd said that a dozen times since they had lifted out. "Three cities in five days, and all the stuff we gathered up around them. We took over two million stellars." And did ten times as much damage getting it, and there was no scale of values by which to compute the death and suffering. "Knock it off, Spasso. You said that before." There was a time when he wouldn't have spoken to the fellow, or anybody else, like that. Gresham's law, extended: Bad manners drive out good manners. Spasso turned on him indignantly. "Who do you think you are--?" "He thinks he's Lord Trask of Tanith," Harkaman said. "He's right, too; he is." He looked searchingly at Trask for a moment, then turned back to Spasso. "I'm just as tired as he is of hearing you pop your mouth about a lousy two million stellars. Nearer a million and a half, but two million's nothing to pop about. Maybe it would be for the _Lamia_, but we have a three-ship fleet and a planetary base to meet expenses on. Out of this raid, a ground-fighter or an able spaceman will get a hundred and fifty stellars. We'll get about a thousand, ourselves. How long do you think we can stay in business doing this kind of chicken-stealing." "You call this chicken-stealing?" "I call it chicken-stealing, and so'll you before we get back to Tanith. If you live that long." For a moment, Spasso was still affronted. Then, temporarily, his vulpine face showed avaricious hope, and then apprehension. Evidently he knew Otto Harkaman's reputation, and some of the things Harkaman had done weren't his idea of an easy way to make money. Khepera had been easy; the locals hadn't had anything to fight with. Small arms, and light cannon which hadn't been able to fire more than a few rounds. Wherever they had attempted resistance, the combat cars had swooped in, dropping bombs and firing machine guns and auto-cannon. Yet they had fought, bitterly and hopelessly--just as he would have, defending Traskon. Trask busied himself getting coffee and a cigarette from one of the robots. When he looked up, Spasso had gone away, and Harkaman was sitting on the edge of the desk, loading his short pipe. "Well, you saw the elephant, Lucas," Harkaman said. "You don't seem to have liked it." "Elephant?" "Old Terran expression I read somewhere. All I know is that an elephant was an animal about the size of one of your Gram megatheres. The expression means, experiencing something for the first time which makes a great impression. Elephants must have been something to see. This was your first Viking raid. You've seen it, now." He'd been in combat before; he'd led the fighting-men of Traskon during the boundary dispute with Baron Manniwel, and there were always bandits and cattle rustlers. He'd thought it would be like that. He remembered, five days, or was it five ages, ago, his excited anticipation as the city grew and spread in the screen and the _Nemesis_ came dropping down toward it. The pinnaces, his four and the two from the _Space Scourge_, had gone spiraling out a hundred miles beyond the city; the _Space Scourge_ had gone into a tighter circle twenty miles from its center; the _Nemesis_ had continued her relentless descent until she was ten miles from the ground, before she began spewing out landing craft, and combat cars, and the little egg-shaped one-man air-cavalry mounts. It had been thrilling. Everything had gone perfectly; not even Valkanhayn's gang had goofed. Then the screenviews had begun coming in. The brief and hopeless fight in the city. He could still see that silly little field gun, it must have been around seventy or eighty millimeter, on a high-wheeled carriage, drawn by six shaggy, bandy-legged beasts. They had gotten it unlimbered and were trying to get it on a target when a rocket from an aircar landed directly under the muzzle. Gun, caisson, crew, even the draft team fifty yards behind, had simply vanished. Or the little company, some of them women, trying to defend the top of a tall and half-ruinous building with rifles and pistols. One air-cavalryman wiped them all out with his machine guns. "They don't have a chance," he'd said, half-sick. "But they keep on fighting." "Yes; stupid of them, isn't it?" Harkaman, beside him, had said. "What would you do in their place?" "Fight. Try to kill as many Space Vikings as I could before they got me. Terro-humans are all stupid like that. That's why we're human." * * * * * If the taking of the city had been a massacre, the sack that had followed had been a man-made Hell. He had gone down, along with Harkaman, while the fighting, if it could be so called, was still going on. Harkaman had suggested that the men ought to see him moving about among them; for his own part, he had felt a compulsion to share their guilt. He and Sir Paytrik Morland had been on foot together in one of the big hollow buildings that had stood since Khepera had been a Member Republic of the Terran Federation. The air was acrid with smoke, powder smoke and the smoke of burning. It was surprising, how much would burn, in this city of concrete and vitrified stone. It was surprising, too, how well-kept everything was, at least on the ground level. These people had taken pride in their city. They found themselves alone, in a great empty hallway; the noise and horror of the sack had moved away from them, or they from it, and then, when they entered a side hall, they saw a man, one of the locals, squatting on the floor with the body of a woman cradled on his lap. She was dead, half her head had been blown off, but he was clasping her tightly, her blood staining his shirt, and sobbing heartbrokenly. A carbine lay forgotten on the floor beside him. "Poor devil," Morland said, and started forward. "No." Trask stopped him with his left hand. With his right, he drew his pistol and shot the man dead. Morland was horrified. "Great Satan, Lucas! Why did you do that?" "I wish Andray Dunnan had done that for me." He thumbed the safety on and holstered the pistol. "None of this would be happening if he had. How many more happinesses do you think we've smashed here today? And we don't even have Dunnan's excuse of madness." The next morning, with everything of value collected and sent aboard, they had started cross-country for five hundred miles to another city, the first hundred over a countryside asmoke from burning villages Valkanhayn's men had pillaged the night before. There was no warning; Khepera had lost electricity and radio and telegraph, and the spread of news was at the speed of one of the beasts the locals insisted on calling horses. By midafternoon, they had finished with that city. It had been as bad as the first one. One thing, it was the center of a considerable cattle country. The cattle were native to the planet, heavy-bodied unicorns the size of a Gram bisonoid or one of the slightly mutated Terran carabaos on Tanith, with long hair like a Terran yak. He had detailed a dozen of the _Nemesis_ ground-fighters who had been vaqueros on his Traskon ranches to collect a score of cows and four likely bulls, with enough fodder to last them on the voyage. The odds were strongly against any of them living to acclimate themselves to Tanith, but if they did, they might prove to be one of the most valuable pieces of loot from Khepera. The third city was at the forks of a river, like Tradetown on Tanith. Unlike it, this was a real metropolis. They should have gone there first of all. They spent two days systematically pillaging it. The Kheperans carried on considerable river-traffic, with stern-wheel steamboats, and the waterfront was lined with warehouses crammed with every sort of merchandise. Even better, the Kheperans had money, and for the most part it was gold specie, and the bank vaults were full of it. Unfortunately, the city had been built since the fall of the Federation and the climb up from the barbarism that had followed, and a great deal of it was of wood. Fires started almost at once, and it was almost completely on fire by the end of the second day. It had been visible in the telescopic screen even after they were out of atmosphere, a black smear until the turning planet carried it into darkness and then a lurid glow. * * * * * "It was a filthy business." Harkaman nodded. "Robbery and murder always are. You don't have to ask me who said that Space Vikings are professional robbers and murderers, but who was it said that he didn't care how many planets were raided and how many innocents massacred in the Old Federation?" "A dead man. Lucas Trask of Traskon." "You wish, now, that you'd kept Traskon and stayed on Gram?" "No. If I had, I'd have spent every hour wishing I was doing what I'm doing now. I can get used to this, I suppose." "I think you will. At least, you kept your rations down. I didn't on my first raid, and had bad dreams about it for a year." He gave his coffee cup back to the robot and got to his feet. "Get a little rest, for a couple of hours. Then draw some alcodote-vitamin pills from the medic. As soon as things are secured, there'll be parties all over the ship, and we'll be expected to look in on every one of them, have a drink, and say 'Well done, boys.'" * * * * * Elaine came to him, while he was resting. She looked at him in horror, and he tried to hide his face from her, and then realized that he was trying to hide it from himself. XII They came straight down on Eglonsby, on Amaterasu, the _Nemesis_ and the _Space Scourge_ side by side. The radar had picked them up at point-five light-seconds; by this time the whole planet knew they were coming, and nobody was wondering why. Paul Koreff was monitoring at least twenty radio stations, assigning somebody to each one as it was identified. What was coming in was uniformly excited, some panicky, and all in fairly standard Lingua Terra. Garvan Spasso was perturbed. So, in the communication screen from the _Space Scourge_, was Boake Valkanhayn. "They got radio, and they got radar," he clamored. "Well, so what?" Harkaman asked. "They had radio and radar twenty years ago, when Rock Morgan was here in the _Coalsack_. But they don't have nuclear energy, do they?" "Well, no. I'm picking up a lot of industrial electrical discharge, but nothing nuclear." "All right. A man with a club can lick a man with his fists. A man with a gun can lick half a dozen with clubs. And two ships with nuclear weapons can lick a whole planet without them. Think it's time, Lucas?" He nodded. "Paul, can you cut in on that Eglonsby station yet?" "What are you going to do?" Valkanhayn wanted to know, against it in advance. "Summon them to surrender. If they don't, we will drop a hellburner, and then we will pick out another city and summon it to surrender. I don't think the second one will refuse. If we are going to be murderers, we'll do it right, this time." Valkanhayn was aghast, probably at the idea of burning an unlooted city. Spasso was sputtering something about, "... Teach the dirty Neobarbs a lesson--" Koreff told him he was switched on. He picked up a hand-phone. "Space Vikings _Nemesis_ and _Space Scourge_, calling the city of Eglonsby. Space Vikings...." He repeated it for over a minute; there was no reply. "Vann," he called Guns-and-Missiles. "A subcrit display job, about four miles over the city." He laid the phone down and looked to the underside viewscreen. A little later, a silvery shape dropped away from the ship's south pole. The telescopic screen went off, and the unmagnified screen darkened as the filters went on. Valkanhayn, aboard the other ship, was shouting a warning about his own screens. The only unfiltered screen aboard the _Nemesis_ was the one tuned to the falling missile. The city of Eglonsby rushed upward in it, and then it went suddenly dark. There was an orange-yellow blaze in the other screens. After a while, the filters went off and the telescopic screen went on again. He picked up the phone. "Space Vikings calling Eglonsby; this is your last warning. Communicate at once." Less than a minute later, a voice came out of one of the speakers: "Eglonsby calling Space Vikings. Your bomb has done great damage. Will you hold your fire until somebody in authority can communicate with you? This is the chief operator at the central State telecast station; I have no authority to say anything to you, or discuss anything." "Oh, good, that sounds like a dictatorship," Harkaman was saying. "Grab the dictator and shove a pistol in his face and you have everything." "There is nothing to discuss. Get somebody who has authority to surrender the city to us. If this is not done within the hour, the city and everybody in it will be obliterated." Only minutes later, a new voice said: "This is Gunsalis Jan, secretary to Pedrosan Pedro, President of the Council of Syndics. We will switch President Pedrosan over as soon as he can speak directly to the personage in supreme command of your ships." "That is myself; switch him to me at once." After a delay of less than fifteen seconds they had President Pedrosan Pedro. "We are prepared to resist, but we realize what this would cost in lives and destruction of property," he began. "You don't begin to. Do you know anything about nuclear weapons?" "From history; we have no nuclear power of any sort. We can find no fissionables on this planet." "The cost, as you put it, would be everything and everybody in Eglonsby and for a radius of almost a hundred miles. Are you still prepared to resist?" The President of the Council of Syndics wasn't and said so. Trask asked him how much authority his position gave him. "I have all powers in any emergency. I think," the voice added tonelessly, "that this is an emergency. The council will automatically ratify any decision I make." Harkaman depressed a button in front of him. "What I said; dictatorship, with parliamentary false front." "If he isn't a false-front dictator for some oligarchy." He motioned to Harkaman to take his thumb off the button. "How large is this Council?" "Sixteen, elected by the Syndicates they represent. There is the Syndicate of Labor, the Syndicate of Manufacturers, the Syndicate of Small Businesses, the...." "Corporate State, First Century Pre-Atomic on Terra. Benny the Moose," Harkaman said. "Let's all go down and talk to them." [Illustration] When they were sure that the public had been warned to make no resistance, the _Nemesis_ went down to two miles, bulking over the center of the city. The buildings were low by the standards of a contragravity-using people, the highest barely a thousand feet and few over five hundred, and they were more closely set than Sword-Worlders were accustomed to, with broad roadways between. In several places there were queer arrangements of crossed roadways, apparently leading nowhere. Harkaman laughed when he saw them. "Airstrips. I've seen them on other planets where they've lost contragravity. For winged aircraft powered by chemical fuel. I hope we have time for me to look around, here. I'll bet they even have railroads here." The "great damage" caused by the bomb was about equal to the effect of a medium hurricane; he had seen worse from high winds at Traskon. Mostly it had been moral, which had been the kind intended. They met President Pedrosan and the council of Syndics in a spacious and well-furnished chamber near the top of one of the medium-high buildings. Valkanhayn was surprised; in a loud aside he considered that these people must be almost civilized. They were introduced. Amaterasuan surnames preceded personal names, which hinted at a culture and a political organization making much use of registration by alphabetical list. They all wore garments which had the indefinable but unmistakable appearance of uniforms. When they had all seated themselves at a large oval table, Harkaman drew his pistol and used the butt for a gavel. [Illustration] "Lord Trask, will you deal with these people directly?" he asked, stiffly formal. "Certainly, Admiral." He spoke to the President, ignoring the others. "We want it understood that we control this city, and we expect complete submission. As long as you remain submissive to us, we will do no damage beyond removal of the things we wish to take from it, and there will be no violence to any of your people, or any indiscriminate vandalism. This visit we are paying you will cost you heavily, make no mistake about that, but whatever the cost, it will be a cheap price for avoiding what we might otherwise do." The President and the Syndics exchanged relieved glances. Let the taxpayers worry about the cost; they'd come out of it with whole skins. "You understand, we want maximum value and minimum bulk," he continued. "Jewels, objects of art, furs, the better grades of luxury goods of all kinds. Rare-element metals. And monetary metals, gold and platinum. You have a metallic-based currency, I suppose?" "Oh, no!" President Pedrosan was slightly scandalized. "Our currency is based on services to society. Our monetary unit is simply called a credit." Harkaman snorted impolitely. Evidently he'd seen economic systems like that before. Trask wanted to know if they used gold or platinum at all. "Gold, to some extent, for jewelry." Evidently they weren't complete economic puritans. "And platinum in industry, of course." "If they want gold, they should have raided Stolgoland," one of the Syndics said. "They have a gold-standard currency." From the way he said it, he might have been accusing them of eating with their fingers, and possibly of eating their own young. "I know, the maps we're using for this planet are a few centuries old; Stolgoland doesn't seem to appear on them." "I wish it didn't appear on ours, either." That was General Dagró Ector, Syndic for State Protection. "It would have been a good thing for this whole planet if you'd decided to raid them instead of us," somebody else said. "It isn't too late for these gentlemen to make that decision," Pedrosan said. "I gather that gold is a monetary metal among your people?" When Trask nodded, he continued: "It is also the basis of the Stolgonian currency. The actual currency is paper, theoretically redeemable in gold. In actuality, the circulation of gold has been prohibited, and the entire gold wealth of the nation is concentrated in vaults at three depositories. We know exactly where they are." "You begin to interest me, President Pedrosan." "I do? Well, you have two large spaceships and six smaller craft. You have nuclear weapons, something nobody on this planet has. You have contragravity, something that is hardly more than a legend here. On the other hand, we have a million and a half ground-troops, jet aircraft, armored ground-vehicles, and chemical weapons. If you will undertake to attack Stolgoland, we will place this entire force at your disposal; General Dagró will command them as you direct. All that we ask is that, when you have loaded the gold hoards of Stolgoland aboard your ships, you will leave our troops in possession of the country." * * * * * That was all there was to that meeting. There was a second one; only Trask, Harkaman and Sir Paytrik Morland represented the Space Vikings, and the Eglonsby government was represented by President Pedrosan and General Dagró. They met more intimately, in a smaller and more luxurious room in the same building. "If you're going to declare war on Stolgoland, you'd better get along with it," Morland advised. "What?" Pedrosan seemed to have only the vaguest idea of what he was talking about. "You mean, warn them? Certainly not. We will attack them by surprise. It will be nothing but plain self-defense," he added righteously. "The oligarchic capitalists of Stolgoland have been plotting to attack us for years." "Yes. If you had carried out your original intention of looting Eglonsby, they would have invaded us the moment your ships lifted out. It's exactly what I'd do in their place." "But you maintain nominally friendly relations with them?" "Of course. We are civilized. The peace-loving government and people of Eglonsby...." "Yes, Mr. President; I understand. And they have an embassy here?" "They call it that!" cried Dagró. "It is a nest of vipers, a plague-spot of espionage and subversion...!" "We'll grab that ourselves, right away," Harkaman said. "You won't be able to round up all their agents outside it, and if we tried to, it would cause suspicion. We'll have to put up a front to deceive them." "Yes. You will go on the air at once, calling on the people to collaborate with us, and you will specifically order your troops mobilized to assist us in collecting the tribute we are levying on Eglonsby," Trask said. "In that way, if any Stolgonian spies see your troops concentrated around our landing craft, they'll think it's to help us load our loot." "And we'll announce that a large part of the tribute will consist of military equipment," Dagró added. "That will explain why our guns and tanks are being loaded on your contragravity vehicles." * * * * * When the Stolgonian embassy was seized by the Space Vikings, the ambassador asked to be taken at once to their leader. He had a proposition: If the Space Vikings would completely disable the army of Eglonsby and admit Stolgonian troops when they were ready to leave, the invaders would bring with them ten thousand kilos of gold. Trask affected to be very hospitable to the offer. Stolgoland lay across a narrow and shallow sea from the State of Eglonsby; it was dotted with islands, and every one of them was, in turn, dotted with oil wells. Petroleum was what kept the aircraft and ground-vehicles of Amaterasu in operation; oil, rather than ideology, was at the root of the enmity between the two nations. Apparently the Stolgonian espionage in Eglonsby was completely deceived, and the reports Trask allowed the captive ambassador to make confirmed the deception. Hourly the Eglonsby radio stations poured out exhortations to the people to co-operate with the Space Vikings, with an occasional lamentation about the masses of war materials being taken. Eglonsby espionage in Stolgoland was similarly active. The Stolgonian armies were being massed at four seaports on the coast facing Eglonsby, and there was a frantic gathering of every sort of ship available. By this time, any sympathy that Trask might have felt for either party had evaporated. The invasion of Stolgoland started the fifth morning after their arrival over Eglonsby. Before dawn, the six pinnaces went in, making a wide sweep around the curvature of the planet and coming in from the north, two to each of the three gold-troves. They were detected by radar, eventually but too late for any effective resistance to be organized. Two were even taken without a shot; by mid-morning all three had been blown open and the ingots and specie were being removed. The four seaports from whence the Stolgonian invasion of Eglonsby was to have been launched were neutralized by nuclear bombing. Neutralized was a nice word, Trask thought; there was no echo in it of the screams of the still-living, maimed and burned and blinded, around the fringes of ground-zero. The _Nemesis_ and the _Space Scourge_, from landing craft and from the ships themselves, landed Eglonsby troops on Stolgonopolis. While they were sacking the city, with all the usual atrocities, the Space Vikings were loading the gold, and anything else that was of more than ordinary value, aboard the ships. * * * * * They were still at it the next morning when President Pedrosan arrived at the newly conquered capital, announcing his intention of putting the Stolgonian chief of state and his cabinet on trial as war criminals. Before sunset, they were back over Eglonsby. The loot might run as high as a half-billion Excalibur stellars. Boake Valkanhayn and Garvan Spasso were simply beyond astonishment and beyond words. The looting of Eglonsby then began. They gathered up machinery, and stocks of steel and light-metal alloys. The city was full of warehouses, and the warehouses were crammed with valuables. In spite of the socialistic and egalitarian verbiage behind which the government operated, there seemed to be a numerous elite class and if gold were not a monetary metal it was not despised for purposes of ostentation. There were several large art museums. Vann Larch, their nearest approach to an art specialist, took charge of culling the best from them. And there was a vast public library. Into this Otto Harkaman vanished, with half a dozen men and a contragravity scow. Its historical section would be much poorer in the future. President Pedrosan Pedro was on the radio from Stolgonopolis that night. "Is this how you Space Vikings keep faith?" he demanded indignantly. "You've abandoned me and my army here in Stolgoland, and you're sacking Eglonsby. You promised to leave Eglonsby alone if I helped you get the gold of Stolgoland." "I promised nothing of the kind. I promised to help you take Stolgoland. You've taken it," Trask told him. "I promised to avoid unnecessary damage or violence. I've already hanged a dozen of my own men for rape, murder and wanton vandalism. Now, we expect to be out of here in twenty-four hours. You'd better be back here before then. Your own people are starting to loot. We did not promise to control them for you." That was true. What few troops had been left behind, and the police, were unable to cope with the mobs that were pillaging in the wake of the Space Vikings. Everybody seemed to be trying to grab what he could and let the Vikings be blamed for it. He had been able to keep his own people in order. There had been at least a dozen cases of rape and wanton murder, and the offenders had been promptly hanged. None of their shipmates, not even the _Space Scourge_ company, seemed resentful. They felt the culprits had deserved what they'd gotten; not for what they'd done to the locals, but for disobeying orders. A few troops had been flown in from Stolgoland by the time they had gotten their vehicles stowed and were lifting out. They didn't seem to be making much headway. Harkaman, who had gotten his load of microbooks stowed and was at the command desk, laughed heartily. "I don't know what Pedrosan'll do. Gehenna, I don't even know what I'd do, if I'd gotten myself into a mess like that. He'll probably bring half his army back, leave the other half in Stolgoland, and lose both. Suppose we drop in, in about three or four years, just out of curiosity. If we make twenty per cent of what we did this time, the trip would pay for itself." After they went into hyperspace and had the ship secured, the parties lasted three Galactic standard days, and nobody was at all sober. Harkaman was drooling over the mass of historical material he had found. Spasso was jubilant. Nobody could call this chicken-stealing. He kept repeating that as long as he was able to say anything. Khepera, he conceded, had been. Lousy two or three million stellars; poo! XIII Beowulf was bad. Valkanhayn and Spasso had both been opposed to the raid. Nobody raided Beowulf; Beowulf was too tough. Beowulf had nuclear energy and nuclear weapons and contragravity and normal-space craft, they even had colonies on a couple of other planets of their system. They had everything but hyperdrive. Beowulf was a civilized planet, and you didn't raid civilized planets, not and get away with it. And beside, hadn't they gotten enough loot on Amaterasu? "No, we did not," Trask told them. "If we're going to make anything out of Tanith, we're going to need power, and I don't mean windmills and waterwheels. As you've remarked, Beowulf has nuclear energy. That's where we get our plutonium and our power units." So they went to Beowulf. They came out of hyperspace eight light-hours from the F-7 star of which Beowulf was the fourth planet, and twenty light-minutes apart. Guatt Kirbey made a microjump that brought the ships within practical communicating distance, and they began making plans in an intership screen conference. "There are, or were, three chief sources of fissionable ores," Harkaman said. "The last ship to raid here and get away was Stefan Kintour's _Princess of Lyonesse_, sixty years ago. He hit one on the Antarctic continent; according to his account, everything there was fairly new. He didn't mess things up too badly, and it ought to be still operating. We'll go in from the south pole, and we'll have to go in fast." They shifted personnel and equipment. They would go in bunched, the pinnaces ahead; they and the _Space Scourge_ would go down to the ground, while the better-armed _Nemesis_ would hover above to fight off local contragravity, shoot down missiles, and generally provide overhead cover. Trask transferred to the _Space Scourge_, taking with him Morland and two hundred of the _Nemesis_ ground-fighters. Most of the single-mounts, landing craft and manipulators and heavy-duty lifters went with him, jamming the decks around the vehicle ports of Valkanhayn's ship. They jumped in to six light-minutes, and while Valkanhayn's astrogator was still fiddling with his controls they began sensing radar and microray detection. When they came out again, they were two light-seconds off the south pole, and half a dozen ships were either in orbit or coming up from the planet. All normal-space craft, of course, but some were almost as big as the _Nemesis_. From there on, it was a nightmare. Ships pounded at them with guns, and they pounded back. Missiles went out, and counter-missiles stopped them in rapidly expanding and quickly vanishing globes of light. Red lights flashed on the damage board, and sirens howled and klaxons squawked. In the outside-view screens, they saw the _Nemesis_ vanish in a blaze of radiance, and then, while their hearts were still in their throats, come out of it again. Red lights went off on the board as damage-control crews and their robots sealed the breaches in the hull and pumped air back into evacuated areas, and then more red lights came on. Occasionally, he would glance toward Boake Valkanhayn, who sat motionless in his chair, chewing a cigar that had gone out long ago. He wasn't enjoying it, but he wasn't showing fear. Once a Beowulfer vanished in a supernova flash, and when the ball of incandescence widened to nothing the ship was gone. All Valkanhayn said was: "Hope one of our boys did that." They fought their way in and down, toward the atmosphere. Another Beowulf ship blew up, a craft about the size of Spasso's _Lamia_. A moment later, another; Valkanhayn was pounding the desk in front of him with his fist and yelling: "That was one of ours! Find out who launched it; get his name!" Missiles were coming up from the planet, now. Valkanhayn's detection officer was trying to locate the source. While he was trying, a big melon-shaped thing fell away from the _Nemesis_, and in the jiggling, radiation-distorted intership screen Harkaman's image was laughing. "Hellburner just went off; target about 50° south, 25° east of the sunrise line. That's where those missiles are coming from." Counter-missiles sped toward the big metal melon; defense missiles, robot-launched, met them. The hellburner's track was marked first by expanding red and orange globes in airless space and then by fire-puffs after it entered atmosphere. It vanished into the darkness beyond the sunset, and then made sunlight of its own. It _was_ sunlight; a Bethe solar-phoenix reaction, and it would sustain itself for hours. He hoped it hadn't landed within a thousand miles of their objective. * * * * * The ground operation was a nightmare of a different sort. He went down in a command car, with Paytrik Morland and a couple of others. There were missiles and gun batteries. There were darting patterns of flights of combat vehicles, blazing gunfire, and single vehicles that shot past or blew up in front of them. Robots on contragravity--military robots, with missiles to launch, and working robots with only their own mass to hurl, flung themselves mindlessly at them. Screens that went crazy from radiation; speakers that jabbered contradictory orders. Finally, the battle, which had raged in the air over two thousand square miles of mines and refineries and reaction plants, became two distinct and concentrated battles, one at the packing plant and storage vaults and one at the power-unit cartridge factory. Three pinnaces came down to form a triangle over each; the _Space Scourge_ hung midway between, poured out a swarm of vehicles and big claw-armed manipulators; armored lighters and landing craft shuttled back and forth. The command car looped and dodged from one target to the other; at one, keg-like canisters of plutonium, collapsium-plated and weighing tons apiece, were coming out of the vaults, and at the other lifters were bringing out loads of nuclear-electric power-unit cartridges, some as big as a ten liter jar, to power a spaceship engine, and some small as a round of pistol ammunition, for things like flashlights. Every hour or so, he looked at his watch, and it would be three or four minutes later. At last, when he was completely convinced that he had really been killed, and was damned and would spend all eternity in this fire-riven chaos, the _Nemesis_ began firing red flares and the speakers in all the vehicles were signaling recall. He got aboard the _Space Scourge_ somehow, after assuring himself that nobody who was alive was left behind. There were twenty-odd who weren't, and the sick bay was full of wounded who had gone up with cargo, and more were being helped off the vehicles as they were berthed. The car in which he had been riding had been hit several times, and one of the gunners was bleeding under his helmet and didn't seem aware of it. When he got to the command room, he found Boake Valkanhayn, his face drawn and weary, getting coffee from a robot and lacing it with brandy. "That's it," he said, blowing on the steaming cup. It was the battered silver one that had been in front of him when he had first appeared in the _Nemesis'_ screen. He nodded toward the damage screen; everything had been patched up, or the outer decks around breached portions of the hull sealed. "Ship secure." He set down the silver mug and lit a cigar. "To quote Garvan Spasso, 'Nobody can call that chicken-stealing.'" "No. Not even if you count Tizona giraffe-birds as chickens. That Gram gum-pear brandy you're putting in that coffee? I'll have the same. Just leave out the coffee." XIV The _Lamia_'s detection picked them up as soon as they were out of the last microjump; Trask's gnawing fear that Dunnan might attack in their absence had been groundless. Incredibly, he realized, they had been gone only thirty-odd Galactic Standard days, and in that time Alvyn Karffard had done an incredible amount of work. He had gotten the spaceport completely cleared of rubble and debris, and he had the woods cleared away from around it and the two tall buildings. The locals called the city Rivvin; a few inscriptions found here and there in it indicated that the original name had been Rivington. He had done considerable mapping, in some detail of the continent on which it was located and, in general, of the rest of the planet. And he had established friendly relations with the people of Tradetown and made friends with their king. Nobody, not even those who had collected it, quite believed their eyes when the loot was unloaded. The little herd of long haired unicorns--the Khepera locals had called them kreggs, probably a corruption of the name of some naturalist who had first studied them--had come through the voyage and even the Battle of Beowulf in good shape. Trask and a few of his former cattlemen from Traskon watched them anxiously, and the ship's doctor, acting veterinarian, made elaborate tests of vegetation they would be likely to eat. Three of the cows proved to be with calf; these were isolated and watched over with especial solicitude. [Illustration] The locals were inclined to take a poor view of the kreggs, at first. Cattle ought to have two horns, one on either side, curved back. It wasn't right for cattle to have only one horn, in the middle, slanting forward. Both ships had taken heavy damage. The _Nemesis_ had one pinnace berth knocked open, and everybody was glad the Beowulfers hadn't noticed that and gotten a missile inside. The _Space Scourge_ had taken a hit directly on her south pole while lifting out from the planet, and a good deal of the southern part of the ship was sealed off when she came in. The _Nemesis_ was repaired as far as possible and put on off-planet patrol, then they went to work on the _Space Scourge_, transferring much of her armament to ground defense, clearing out all the available cargo space, and repairing her hull as far as possible. To repair her completely was a job for a regular shipyard, like Alex Gorram's on Gram. And that was where the work would be done. Boake Valkanhayn would command her on the voyage to and from Gram. Since Beowulf, Trask had not only ceased to dislike the man, but was beginning to admire him. He had been a good man once, before ill fortune which had been only partly of his own making had overtaken him. He'd just let himself go and stopped caring. Now he had taken hold of himself again. It had started showing after they had landed on Amaterasu. He had begun to dress more neatly and speak more grammatically; to look and act more like a spaceman and less like a barfly. His men had begun to jump to obey when he gave an order. He had opposed the raid on Beowulf, but that had been the dying struggle of the chicken-thief he had been. He had been scared, going in; well, who hadn't been, except a few greenhorns brave with the valor of ignorance. But he had gone in, and fought his ship well, and had held his station over the fissionables plant in a hell of bombs and missile, and he had made sure everybody who had gone down and who was still alive was aboard before he lifted out. He was a Space Viking again. Garvan Spasso wasn't, and never would be. He was outraged when he heard that Valkanhayn would take his ship, loaded with much of the loot of the three planets, to Gram. He came to Trask, fairly spluttering about it. "You know what'll happen?" he demanded. "He'll space out with that cargo, and that'll be the last any of us'll hear of him again. He'll probably take it to Joyeuse or Excalibur and buy himself a lordship with it." "Oh, I doubt that, Garvan. A number of our people are going along--Guatt Kirbey will be the astrogator; you'd trust him, wouldn't you? And Sir Paytrik Morland, and Baron Rathmore, and Lord Valpry, and Rolve Hemmerding...." He was silent for a moment, struck by an idea. "Would you be willing to make the trip in the _Space Scourge_, too?" Spasso would, very decidedly. Trask nodded. "Good. Then we'll be sure nothing crooked is pulled," he said seriously. After Spasso was gone, he got in touch with Baron Rathmore. "See to it that he gets as much money that's due him as possible, when you get to Gram. And ask Duke Angus, as a favor to give him some meaningless position with a suitably impressive title, Lord Chamberlain of the Ducal Washroom, or something. Then he can prime him with misinformation and give him an opportunity to sell it to Omfray of Glaspyth. Then, of course, he could be contacted to sell Omfray out to Angus. A couple of times around and somebody'll stick a knife in him, and then we'll be rid of him for good." * * * * * They loaded the _Space Scourge_ with gold from Stolgoland, and paintings and statues from the art museums and fabrics and furs and jewels and porcelains and plate from the markets of Eglonsby. They loaded sacks and kegs of specie from Khepera. Most of the Khepera loot wasn't worth hauling to Gram, but it was far enough in advance of their own technologies to be priceless to the Tanith locals. Some of these were learning simple machine operations, and a few were able to handle contragravity vehicles that had been fitted with adequate safety devices. The former slave guards had all become sergeants and lieutenants in an infantry regiment that had been formed, and the King of Tradetown borrowed some to train his own army. Some genius in the machine shop altered a matchlock musket to flintlock and showed the local gunsmiths how to do it. The kreggs continued to thrive, after the _Space Scourge_ departed. Several calves were born, and seemed to be doing well; the biochemistry of Tanith and Khepera were safely alike. Trask had hopes for them. Every Viking ship had its own carniculture vats, but men tired of carniculture meat, and fresh meat was always in demand. Some day, he hoped, kregg-beef would be an item of sale to ships putting in on Tanith, and the long-haired hides might even find a market in the Sword-Worlds. They had contragravity scows plying between Rivington and Tradetown regularly, now, and air-lorries were linking the villages. The boatmen of Tradetown rioted occasionally against this unfair competition. And in Rivington itself, bulldozers and power shovels and manipulators labored, and there was always a rising cloud of dust over the city. There was so much to do, and only a trifle under twenty-five Galactic Standard hours in a day to do it. There were whole days in which he never thought once of Andray Dunnan. A hundred and twenty-five days to Gram, and a hundred and twenty-five days back. They had long ago passed. Of course, there would be the work of repairing the _Space Scourge_, the conferences with the investors in the original Tanith Adventure, the business of gathering the needed equipment for the new base. Even so, he was beginning to worry a little. Worry about something as far out of his control as the _Space Scourge_ was useless, he knew. He couldn't help it, though. Even Harkaman, usually imperturbable, began to be fretful, after two hundred and seventy days had passed. They were relaxing in the living quarters they had fitted out at the top of the spaceport building before retiring, both sprawled wearily in chairs that had come from one of the better hotels of Eglonsby, their drinks between them on a low table, the top of which was inlaid with something that looked like ivory but wasn't. On the floor beside it lay the plans for a reaction-plant and mass-energy converter they would build as soon as the _Space Scourge_ returned with equipment for producing collapsium-plated shielding. "Of course, we could go ahead with it, now," Harkaman said. "We could tear enough armor off the _Lamia_ to shield any kind of a reaction plant." That was the first time either of them had gotten close to the possibility that the ship mightn't return. Trask laid his cigar in the ashtray--it had come from President Pedrosan Pedro's private office--and splashed a little more brandy into his glass. "She'll be coming before long. We have enough of our people aboard to make sure nobody else tries to take the ship. And I really believe, now, that Valkanhayn can be trusted." "I do, too. I'm not worried about what might happen on the ship. But we don't know what's been happening on Gram. Glaspyth and Didreksburg could have teamed up and jumped Wardshaven before Duke Angus was ready to invade Glaspyth. Boake might be landing the ship in a trap at Wardshaven." "Be a sorry looking trap after it closed on him. That would be the first time in history that a Sword-World was raided by Space Vikings." Harkaman looked at his half-empty glass, then filled it to the top. It was the same drink he had started with, just as a regiment that has been decimated and recruited up to strength a few times is still the same regiment. The buzz of the communication screen--one of the few things in the room that hadn't been looted somewhere--interrupted him. They both rose; Harkaman, still carrying his drink, went to put it on. It was a man on duty in the control room, overhead, reporting that two emergences had just been detected at twenty light-minutes due north of the planet. Harkaman gulped his drink and set down the empty glass. "All right. You put out a general alert? Switch anything that comes in over to this screen." He got out his pipe and was packing tobacco into it mechanically. "They'll be out of the last microjump and about two light-seconds away in a few minutes." Trask sat down again, saw that his cigarette had burned almost to the tip, and lit a fresh one from it, wishing he could be as calm about it as Harkaman. Three minutes later, the control tower picked up two emergences at a light-second and a half, a thousand or so miles apart. Then the screen flickered, and Boake Valkanhayn was looking out of it, from the desk in the newly refurbished command room of the _Space Scourge_. He was a newly refurbished Boake Valkanhayn, too. His heavily braided captain's jacket looked like the work of one of the better tailors on Gram, and on the breast was a large and ornate knight's star, of unfamiliar design, bearing, among other things, the sword and atom-symbol of the house of Ward. "Prince Trask; Count Harkaman," he greeted. "_Space Scourge_, Tanith; thirty-two hundred hours out of Wardshaven on Gram, Baron Valkanhayn commanding, accompanied by chartered freighter _Rozinante_, Durendal, Captain Morbes. Requesting permission and instructions to orbit in." "Baron Valkanhayn?" Harkaman asked. "That's right," Valkanhayn grinned. "And I have a vellum scroll the size of a blanket to prove it. I have a whole cargo of scrolls. One says you're Otto, Count Harkaman, and another says you're Admiral of the Royal Navy of Gram." "He did it!" Trask cried. "He made himself King of Gram!" "That's right. And you're his trusty and well-loved Lucas, Prince Trask, and Viceroy of his Majesty's Realm of Tanith." Harkaman bristled at that. "The Gehenna you say. This is _our_ Realm of Tanith." "Is his Majesty making it worth while to accept his sovereignty?" Trask asked. "That is, beside vellum scrolls?" Valkanhayn was still grinning. "Wait till we start sending cargo down. And wait till you see what's crammed into the other ship." "Did Spasso come back with you?" Harkaman asked. "Oh, no. Sir Garvan Spasso entered the service of his Majesty, King Angus. He is Chief of Police at Glaspyth, now, and nobody can call what he's doing there chicken-stealing, either. Any chickens he steals, he steals the whole farm to get them." That didn't sound good. Spasso could make King Angus' name stink all over Glaspyth. Or maybe he'd allow Spasso to crush the adherents of Omfray, and then hang him for his oppression of the people. He'd read about somebody who'd done something like that, in one of Harkaman's Old Terran history books. * * * * * Baron Rathmore had stayed on Gram; so had Rolve Hemmerding. The rest of the gentlemen-adventurers, all with shiny new titles of nobility, had returned. From them, as the two ships were getting into orbit, he learned what had happened on Gram since the _Nemesis_ had spaced out. Duke Angus had announced his intention of carrying on with the Tanith Adventure, and had started construction of a new ship at the Gorram yards. This had served plausibly to explain all the activities of preparation for the invasion of Glaspyth, and had deceived Duke Omfray completely. Omfray had already started a ship of his own; the entire resources of his duchy were thrown into an effort to get her finished and to space ahead of the one Angus was building. Work was going on frantically on her when the Wardshaven invaders hit Glaspyth; she was now nearing completion as a unit of the Royal Navy. Duke Omfray had managed to escape to Didreksburg; when Angus' troops moved in on the latter duchy, he had escaped again, this time off-planet. He was now eating the bitter bread of exile at the court of his wife's uncle, the King of Haulteclere. The Count of Newhaven, the Duke of Bigglersport, and the Lord of Northport, all of whom had favored the establishment of a planetary monarchy, had immediately acknowledged Angus as their sovereign. So, with a knife at his throat, had the Duke of Didreksburg. Many other feudal magnates had refused to surrender their sovereignty. That might mean fighting, but Paytrik, now Baron, Morland, doubted it. "The _Space Scourge_ stopped that," he said. "When they heard about the base here, and saw what we'd shipped to Gram, they started changing their minds. Only subjects of King Angus will be allowed to invest in the Tanith Adventure." As for accepting King Angus' annexation of Tanith and accepting his sovereignty, that would also be advisable. They would need a Sword World outlet for the loot they took or obtained by barter from other Space Vikings, and until they had adequate industries of their own, they would be dependent on Gram for many things which could not be gotten by raiding. "I suppose the King knows I'm not out here for my health, or his profit?" he asked Lord Valpry, during one of the screen conversations as the _Space Scourge_ was getting into orbit. "My business out here is Andray Dunnan." "Oh, yes," the Wardshaven noble replied. "In fact, he told me, in so many words, that he would be most happy if you sent him his nephew's head in a block of lucite. What Dunnan did touched his honor, too. Sovereign princes never see any humor in things like that." "I suppose he knows that sooner or later Dunnan will try to attack Tanith?" "If he doesn't, it isn't because I didn't tell him often enough. When you see the defense armament we're bringing, you'll think he does." It was impressive, but nothing to the engineering and industrial equipment. Mining robots for use on the iron Moon of Tanith, and normal-space transports for the fifty thousand mile run between planet and satellite. A collapsed-matter producer; now they could collapsium-plate their own shielding. A small, fully robotic, steel mill that could be set up and operated on the satellite. Industrial robots, and machinery to make machinery. And, best of all, two hundred engineers and highly skilled technicians. Quite a few industrial baronies on Gram would realize, before long, what they had lost in those men. He wondered what Lord Trask of Traskon would have thought about that. The Prince of Tanith was no longer interested in what happened to Gram. Maybe, if things prospered for the next century or so, his successors would be ruling Gram by viceroy from Tanith. XV As soon as the _Space Scourge_ was unloaded, she was put on off-planet watch; Harkaman immediately spaced out in the _Nemesis_, while Trask remained behind. They began unloading the _Rozinante_, after setting her down at Rivington Spaceport. After that was done, her officers and crew took a holiday which lasted a month, until the _Nemesis_ returned. Harkaman must have made quick raids on half a dozen planets. None of the cargo he brought back was spectacularly valuable, and he dismissed the whole thing as chicken-stealing, but he had lost some men and the ship showed a few fresh scars. A good deal of what was transshipped to the _Rozinante_ was manufactured goods which would compete with merchandise produced on Gram. "That load will be a come-down, after what the _Space Scourge_ took back, but we didn't want to send the _Rozinante_ back empty," he said. "One thing, I had time to do a little reading, between stops." "The books from the Eglonsby library?" "Yes. I learned a curious thing about Amaterasu. Do you know why that planet was so extensively colonized by the Federation, when there don't seem to be any fissionable ores? The planet produced gadolinium." Gadolinium was essential to hyperdrive engines; the engines of a ship the size of the _Nemesis_ required fifty pounds of it. On the Sword-Worlds, it was worth several times its weight in gold. If they still mined it, Amaterasu would repay a second visit. When he mentioned it, Harkaman shrugged. "Why should they mine it? There's only one thing it's good for, and you can't run a spaceship on Diesel oil. I suppose the mines could be reopened, and new refineries built, but...." "We could trade plutonium for gadolinium. They have none of their own. We could charge our own prices for it, and we wouldn't need to tell them what gadolinium sells for on the Sword-Worlds." "We could, if we could do business with anybody there, after what we did to Eglonsby and Stolgoland. Where would we get plutonium?" "Why do you think the Beowulfers don't have hyperships, when they have everything else?" Harkaman snapped his fingers. "By Satan, that's it!" Then he looked at Trask in alarm. "Hey, you're not thinking of selling Amaterasu plutonium and Beowulf gadolinium, are you?" "Why not? We could make a big profit on both ends of the deal." "You know what would happen next, don't you? There'd be ships from both planets all over the place in a few years. We want that like we want a hole in the head." He couldn't see the objection. Tanith and Amaterasu and Beowulf could work up a very good triangular trade; all three would profit. It wouldn't cost men and ship-damage and ammunition, either. Maybe a mutual defense alliance, too. Think about it later; there was too much to do here on Tanith at present. There had been mines on the Moon of Tanith before the collapse of the Federation; they had been stripped of their equipment afterward, while Tanith was still fighting a rearguard battle against barbarism, but the underground chambers and man-made caverns could still be used, and in time the mines were reopened and the steel mill put in, and eventually ingots of finished steel were coming down by shuttle-craft. In the meantime, the shipyard had been laid out and was taking shape. The Gram ship _Queen Flavia_--she had been the one found unfinished at Glaspyth--came in three months after the _Rozinante_ started back; she must have been finished while Valkanhayn was still in hyperspace. She carried considerable cargo, some of it superfluous but all of it useful; everybody was investing in the Tanith Adventure now, and the money had to be spent for something. Better, she brought close to a thousand men and women; the leakage of brains and ability from the Sword-Worlds was turning into a flood. Among them was Basil Gorram. Trask remembered him as an insufferable young twerp, but he seemed to be a good shipyard man. He very frankly predicted that in a few years his father's yards at Wardshaven would be idle and all the Tanith ships would be Tanith-built. A junior partner of Lothar Ffayle's also came out, to establish a branch of the Bank of Wardshaven at Rivington. As soon as the _Queen Flavia_ had discharged her cargo and passengers, she took on five hundred ground-fighters from the _Lamia_, _Nemesis_ and _Space Scourge_ companies and spaced out on a raiding voyage. While she was gone, the second ship, the one Duke Angus had started at Wardshaven and King Angus had finished, the _Black Star_, came in. Trask was slightly incredulous at realizing that she had spaced out from Gram almost exactly two years after the _Nemesis_ had departed. He still hadn't any idea where Andray Dunnan was, or what he was doing, or how to find him. The news of the Gram base on Tanith spread slowly, first by the scheduled liners and tramp freighters that linked the Sword-Worlds, and then by trading ships and outbound Space Vikings to the Old Federation. Two years and six months after the _Nemesis_ had come out of hyperspace to find Boake Valkanhayn and Garvan Spasso on Tanith, the first independent Space Viking came in, to sell a cargo and get repairs. They bought his loot--he had been raiding some planet rather above the level of Khepera and below that of Amaterasu--and healed the wounds his ship had taken getting it. He had been dealing with the Everrard family on Hoth, and professed himself much more satisfied with the bargains he had gotten on Tanith and swore to return. He had never even heard of Andray Dunnan or the _Enterprise_. It was a Gilgamesher that brought the first news. He had first heard of Gilgameshers--the word was used indiscriminately for a native of or a ship from Gilgamesh--on Gram, from Harkaman and Karffard and Vann Larch and the others. Since coming to Tanith, he had heard about them from every Space Viking, never in complimentary and rarely in printable terms. Gilgamesh was rated, with reservations, as a civilized planet though not on a level with Odin or Isis or Baldur or Marduk or Aton or any of the other worlds which had maintained the culture of the Terran Federation uninterruptedly. Perhaps Gilgamesh deserved more credit; its people had undergone two centuries of darkness and pulled themselves out of it by their bootstraps. They had recovered all the old techniques, up to and including the hyperdrive. They didn't raid; they traded. They had religious objections to violence, though they kept these within sensible limits, and were able and willing to fight with fanatical ferocity in defense of their home planet. About a century before, there had been a five-ship Viking raid on Gilgamesh; one ship had returned and had been sold for scrap after reaching a friendly base. Their ships went everywhere to trade, and wherever they traded a few of them usually settled, and where they settled they made money, sending most of it home. Their society seemed to be a loose theo-socialism, and their religion an absurd potpourri of most of the major monotheisms of the Federation period, plus doctrinal and ritualistic innovations of their own. Aside from their propensity for sharp trading, their bigoted refusal to regard anybody not of their creed as more than half human, and the maze of dietary and other taboos in which they hid from social contact with others, made them generally disliked. After their ship had gotten into orbit, three of them came down to do business. The captain and his exec wore long coats, almost knee-length, buttoned to the throat, and small white caps like forage caps; the third, one of their priests, wore a robe with a cowl, and the symbol of their religion, a blue triangle in a white circle, on his breast. They all wore beards that hung down from their cheeks, with their chins and upper lips shaved. They all had the same righteous, disapproving faces, they all refused refreshments of any sort, and they sat uneasily as though fearing contamination from the heathens who had sat in their chairs before them. They had a mixed cargo of general merchandise picked up here and there on subcivilized planets, in which nobody on Tanith was interested. They also had some good stuff--vegetable-amber and flame-bird plumes from Irminsul; ivory or something very like it from somewhere else; diamonds and Uller organic opals and Zarathustra sunstones. They also had some platinum. They wanted machinery, especially contragravity engines and robots. [Illustration] The trouble was, they wanted to haggle. Haggling, it seemed, was the Gilgamesh planetary sport. "Have you ever heard of a Space Viking ship named the _Enterprise_?" he asked them, at the seventh or eighth impasse in the bargaining. "She bears a crescent, light blue on black. Her captain's name is Andray Dunnan." "A ship so named, with such a device, raided Chermosh more than a year ago," the priest-supercargo said. "Some of our people tarry on Chermosh to trade. This ship sacked the city in which they were; some of them lost heavily in world's goods." "That's a pity." The Gilgamesh priest shrugged. "It is as Yah the Almighty wills," he said, then brightened slightly. "The Chermoshers are heathens and worshipers of false gods. The Space Vikings looted their temple and destroyed it utterly; they carried away the graven images and abominations. Our people bore witness that there was much wailing and lamentation among the idolators." * * * * * So that was the first entry on the Big Board. It covered, optimistically, the whole of one wall in his office, and for some time that one chalked note about the raid on Chermosh, and the date, as nearly as it could be approximated, looked very lonely on it. The captain of the _Black Star_ brought back material for a couple more. He had put in on several planets known to be temporarily occupied by Space Vikings, to barter loot, give his men some time off-ship, and make inquiries, and he had names for a couple of planets raided by the blue crescent ship. One was only six months old. The way news filtered about in the Old Federation, that was practically hot off the stove. The owner-captain of the _Alborak_ had something to add, when he brought his ship in six months later. He sipped his drink slowly, as though he had limited himself to one and wanted to make it last as long as possible. "Almost two years ago, on Jagannath," he said. "The _Enterprise_ was on orbit there, getting some light repairs. I met the man a few times. Looks just like those pictures, but he's wearing a small pointed beard, now. He'd sold a lot of loot. General merchandise, precious and semiprecious stones, a lot of carved and inlaid furniture that looked as though it had come from some Neobarb king's palace, and some temple stuff. Buddhist; there were a couple of big gold Dai-Butsus. His crew were standing drinks for all comers. Some of them were pretty dark above the collar, as though they'd been on a hot-star planet not too long before. And he had a lot of Imhotep furs to sell, simply fabulous stuff." "What kind of repairs? Combat damage?" "That was my impression. He spaced out a little over a hundred hours after I came in, in company with another ship. The _Starhopper_, Captain Teodor Vaghn. The talk was that they were making a two-ship raid somewhere." The captain of the _Alborak_ thought for a moment. "One other thing. He was buying ammunition, everything from pistol cartridges to hellburners. And he was buying all the air-and-water recycling equipment, and all the carniculture and hydroponic equipment, he could get." That was something to know. He thanked the Space Viking, and then asked: "Did he know, at the time, that I'm out here hunting for him?" "If he did, nobody else on Jagannath did. I didn't hear about it, myself, till six months afterward." That evening, he played off the recording he had made of the conversation for Harkaman and Valkanhayn and Karffard and some of the others. Somebody instantly said: "That temple stuff came from Chermosh. They're Buddhists, there. That checks with the Gilgamesher's story." "He got the furs on Imhotep; he traded for them," Harkaman said. "Nobody gets anything off Imhotep by raiding. The planet's in the middle of a glaciation, the land surface down to the fiftieth parallel is iced over solid. There is one city, ten or fifteen thousand, and the rest of the population is scattered around in settlements of a couple of hundred all along the face of the glaciers. They're all hunters and trappers. They have some contragravity, and when a ship comes in, they spread the news by radio and everybody brings his furs to town. They use telescope sights, and everybody over ten years old can hit a man in the head at five hundred yards. And big weapons are no good; they're too well dispersed. So the only way to get anything out of them is to trade for it." "I think I know where he was," Alvyn Karffard said. "On Imhotep, silver is a monetary metal. On Agni, they use silver for sewer-pipe. Agni is a hot-star planet, class B-3 sun. And on Agni they are tough, and they have good weapons. That could be where the _Enterprise_ took that combat damage." That started an argument as to whether he'd gone to Chermosh first. It was sure that he had gone to Agni and then Imhotep. Guatt Kirbey tried to figure both courses. "It doesn't tell us anything, either way," he said at length. "Chermosh is away off to the side from Agni and Imhotep in either case." "Well, he does have a base, somewhere, and it's not on any Terra-type planet," Valkanhayn said. "Otherwise, what would he want with all that air-and-water and hydroponic and carniculture stuff?" The Old Federation area was full of non-Terra-type planets, and why should anybody bother going to any of them? Any planet that wasn't oxygen-atmosphere, six to eight thousand miles in diameter, and within a narrow surface-temperature range, wasn't worth wasting time on. But a planet like that, if one had the survival equipment, would make a wonderful hideout. "What sort of a captain is this Teodor Vaghn?" he asked. "A good one," Harkaman said promptly. "He has a nasty streak--sadistic--but he knows his business and he has a good ship and a well-trained crew. You think he and Dunnan have teamed up?" "Don't you? I think, now that he has a base, Dunnan is getting a fleet together." "He'll know we're after him by now," Vann Larch said. "And he knows where we are, and that puts him one up on us." XVI So Andray Dunnan was haunting him again. Tiny bits of information came in--Dunnan's ship had been on Hoth, on Nergal, selling loot. Now he sold for gold or platinum, and bought little, usually arms and ammunition. Apparently his base, wherever it was, was fully self-sufficient. It was certain, too, that Dunnan knew he was being hunted. One Space Viking who had talked with him quoted him as saying: "I don't want any trouble with Trask, and if he's smart he won't look for any with me." This made him all the more positive that somewhere Dunnan was building strength for an attack on Tanith. He made it a rule that there should always be at least two ships in orbit off Tanith in addition to the _Lamia_, which was on permanent patrol, and he installed more missile-launching stations both on the moon and on the planet. There were three ships bearing the Ward swords and atom-symbol, and a fourth building on Gram. Count Lionel of Newhaven was building one of his own, and three big freighters shuttled across the three thousand light-years between Tanith and Gram. Sesar Karvall, who had never recovered from his wounds, had died; Lady Lavina had turned the barony and the business over to her brother, Burt Sandrasan, and gone to live on Excalibur. The shipyard at Rivington was finished, and now they had built the landing-legs of Harkaman's _Corisande II_, and were putting up the skeleton. And they were trading with Amaterasu, now. Pedrosan Pedro had been overthrown and put to death by General Dagró Ector during the disorders following the looting of Eglonsby; the troops left behind in Stolgoland had mutinied and made common cause with their late enemies. The two nations were in an uneasy alliance, with several other nations combining against them, when the _Nemesis_ and the _Space Scourge_ returned and declared peace against the whole planet. There was no fighting; everybody knew what had happened to Stolgoland and Eglonsby. In the end, all the governments of Amaterasu joined in a loose agreement to get the mines reopened and resume production of gadolinium, and to share in the fissionables being imported in exchange. It had been harder, and had taken a year longer, to do business with Beowulf. The Beowulfers had a single planetary government, and they were inclined to shoot first and negotiate afterward, a natural enough attitude in view of experiences of the past. However, they had enough old Federation-period textbooks still in microprint to know what could be done with gadolinium. They decided to write off the past as fair fight and no bad blood, and start over again. It would be some years before either planet had hyperships of their own. In the meantime, both were good customers, and rapidly becoming good friends. A number of young Amaterasuans and Beowulfers had come to Tanith to study various technologies. The Tanith locals were studying, too. In the first year, Trask had gathered the more intelligent boys of ten to twelve from each community and begun teaching them. In the past year, he had sent the most intelligent of them off to Gram to school. In another five years, they'd be coming home to teach; in the meantime, he was bringing teachers to Tanith from Gram. There was a school at Tradetown, and others in some of the larger villages, and at Rivington there was something that could almost be called a college. In another ten years or so, Tanith would be able to pretend to the status of civilization. * * * * * If only Andray Dunnan and his ships didn't come too soon. They would be beaten off, he was confident of that; but the damage Tanith would take, in the defense, would set back his work for years. He knew all too well what Space Viking ships could do to a planet. He'd have to find Dunnan's base, smash it, destroy his ships, kill the man himself, first. Not to avenge that murder six years ago on Gram; that was long ago and far away, and Elaine was vanished, and so was the Lucas Trask who had loved and lost her. What mattered now was planting and nurturing civilization on Tanith. But where would he find Dunnan, in two hundred billion cubic light-years? Dunnan had no such problem. He knew where his enemy was. And Dunnan was gathering strength. The _Yo-Yo_, Captain Vann Humfort; she had been reported twice, once in company with the _Starhopper_, and once with the _Enterprise_. She bore a blazon of a feminine hand dangling a planet by a string from one finger; a good ship, and an able, ruthless captain. The _Bolide_; she and the _Enterprise_ had made a raid on Ithunn. The Gilgameshers had settled there and one of their ships had brought that story in. And he recruited two ships at once on Melkarth, and there was a good deal of mirth about that among the Tanith Space Vikings. Melkarth was strictly a poultry planet. Its people had sunk to the village-peasant level; they had no wealth worth taking or carrying away. It was, however, a place where a ship could be set down, and there were women, and the locals had not lost the art of distillation, and made potent liquors. A crew could have fun there, much less expensively than on a regular Viking base planet, and for the last eight years a Captain Nial Burrik, of the _Fortuna_, had been occupying it, taking his ship out for occasional quick raids and spending most of the time living from day to day almost on the local level. Once in a while, a Gilgamesher would come in to see if he had anything to trade. It was a Gilgamesher who brought the story to Tanith, and it was almost two years old when he told it. "We heard it from the people of the planet, the ones who live where Burrik had his base. First, there was a trading ship came in. You may have heard of her; she is the one called the _Honest Horris_." Trask laughed at that. Her captain, Horris Sasstroff, called himself "Honest Horris," a misnomer which he had also bestowed on his ship. He was a trader of sorts. Even the Gilgameshers despised him, and not even a Gilgamesher would have taken a wretched craft like the _Honest Horris_ to space. "He had been to Melkarth before," the Gilgamesher said. "He and Burrik are friends." He pronounced that like a final and damning judgment of both of them. "The story the locals told our brethren of the _Fairdealer_ was that the _Honest Horris_ was landed beside Burrik's ship for ten days, when two other ships came in. They said one had the blue crescent badge, and the other bore a green monster leaping from one star to another." The _Enterprise_ and the _Starhopper_. He wondered why they'd gone to a planet like Melkarth. Maybe they knew in advance whom they'd find there. "The locals thought there would be fighting, but there was not. There was a great feast, of all four crews. Then everything of value was loaded aboard the _Fortuna_, and all four ships lifted and spaced out together. They said Burrik left nothing of any worth whatever behind; they were much disappointed at that." "Have any of them been back since?" All three Gilgameshers, captain, exec, and priest, shook their heads. "Captain Gurrash of the _Fairdealer_ said it had been over a year before his ship put in there. He could still see where the landing legs of the ships had pressed into the ground, but the locals said they had not been back." That made two more ships about which inquiries must be made. He wondered, for a moment, why in Gehenna Dunnan would want ships like that; they must make the _Space Scourge_ and the _Lamia_ as he had first seen them look like units of the Royal Navy of Excalibur. Then he became frightened, with an irrational retrospective fright at what might have happened. It could have, too, at any time in the last year and a half; either or both of those ships could have come in on Tanith completely unsuspected. It was only by the sheerest accident that he had found out, even now, about them. Everybody else thought it was a huge joke. They thought it would be a bigger joke if Dunnan sent those ships to Tanith now, when they were warned and ready for them. There were other things to worry about. One was the altering attitude of his Majesty Angus I. When the _Space Scourge_ returned, the newly-titled Baron Valkanhayn brought with him, along with the princely title and the commission as Viceroy of Tanith, a most cordial personal audiovisual greeting, warm and friendly. Angus had made it seated at his desk, bare headed and smoking a cigarette. The one which had come on the next ship out was just as cordial, but the King was not smoking and wore a small gold-circled cap-of-maintenance. By the time they had three ships in service on scheduled three-month arrivals, a year and a half later, he was speaking from his throne, wearing his crown and employing the first person plural for himself and finally the third person singular for Trask. By the end of the fourth year, there was no audiovisual message from him in person, and a stiff complaint from Rovard Grauffis to the effect that His Majesty felt it unseemly for a subject to address his sovereign while seated, even by audiovisual. This was accompanied by a rather apologetic personal message from Grauffis--now Prime Minister--to the effect that His Majesty felt compelled to stand on his royal dignity at all times, and that, after all, there was a difference between the position and dignity of the Duke of Wardshaven and that of the Planetary King of Gram. Prince Trask of Tanith couldn't quite see it. The King was simply the first nobleman of the planet. Even kings like Rodolf of Excalibur or Napolyon of Flamberge didn't try to be anything more. Thereafter, he addressed his greetings and reports to the Prime Minister, always with a personal message, to which Grauffis replied in kind. Not only the form but also the content of the messages from Gram underwent change. His Majesty was most dissatisfied. His Majesty was deeply disappointed. His Majesty felt that His Majesty's colonial realm of Tanith was not contributing sufficiently to the Royal Exchequer. And his Majesty felt that Prince Trask was placing entirely too much emphasis upon trade and not enough upon raiding; after all, why barter with barbarians when it was possible to take what you wanted from them by force? And there was the matter of the _Blue Comet_, Count Lionel of Newhaven's ship. His Majesty was most displeased that the Count of Newhaven was trading with Tanith from his own spaceport. All goods from Tanith should pass through the Wardshaven spaceport. "Look, Rovard," he told the audiovisual camera which was recording his reply to Grauffis. "You saw the _Space Scourge_ when she came in, didn't you? That's what happens to a ship that raids a planet where there's anything worth taking. Beowulf is lousy with fissionables; they'll give us all the plutonium we can load, in exchange for gadolinium, which we sell them at about twice Sword-World prices. We trade plutonium on Amaterasu for gadolinium, and get it for about half Sword-World prices." He pressed the stop-button, until he could remember the ancient formula. "You may quote me as saying that whoever has advised His Majesty that that isn't good business is no friend to His Majesty or to the Realm. "As for the complaint about the _Blue Comet_; as long as she is owned and operated by the Count of Newhaven, who is a stockholder in the Tanith Adventure, she has every right to trade here." He wondered why His Majesty didn't stop Lionel of Newhaven from sending the _Blue Comet_ out from Gram. He found out from her skipper, the next time she came in. * * * * * "He doesn't dare, that's why. He's King as long as the great lords like Count Lionel and Joris of Bigglersport and Alan of Northport want him to be. Count Lionel has more men and more guns and contragravity than he has, now, and that's without the help he'd get from everybody else. Everything's quiet on Gram now, even the war on Southmain Continent's stopped. Everybody wants to keep it that way. Even King Angus isn't crazy enough to do anything to start a war. Not yet, anyhow." "Not _yet_?" The captain of the _Blue Comet_, who was one of Count Lionel's vassal barons, was silent for a moment. "You ought to know, Prince Trask," he said. "Andray Dunnan's grandmother was the King's mother. Her father was old Baron Zarvas of Blackcliffe. He was what was called an invalid, the last twenty years of his life. He was always attended by two male nurses about the size of Otto Harkaman. He was also said to be slightly eccentric." The unfortunate grandfather of Duke Angus had always been a subject nice people avoided. The unfortunate grandfather of King Angus was probably a subject everybody who valued their necks avoided. Lothar Ffayle had also come out on the _Blue Comet_. He was just as outspoken. "I'm not going back. I'm transferring most of the funds of the Bank of Wardshaven out here; from now on, it'll be a branch of the Bank of Tanith. This is where the business is being done. It's getting impossible to do business at all in Wardshaven. What little business there is to do." "Just what's been happening?" "Well, taxation, first. It seems the more money came in from here, the higher taxes got on Gram. Discriminatory taxes, too; pinched the small landholding and industrial barons and favored a few big ones. Baron Spasso and his crowd." "Baron Spasso, now?" Ffayle nodded. "Of about half of Glaspyth. A lot of the Glaspyth barons lost their baronies--some of them their heads--after Duke Omfray was run out. It seems there was a plot against the life of His Majesty. It was exposed by the zeal and vigilance of Sir Garvan Spasso, who was elevated to the peerage and rewarded with the lands of the conspirators." "You said business was bad, as business?" Ffayle nodded again. "The big Tanith boom has busted. It got oversold; everybody wanted in on it. And they should never have built those two last ships, the _Speedwell_ and the _Goodhope_; the return on them didn't justify it. Then, you're creating your own industries and building your own equipment and armament here; that's caused a slump in industry on Gram. I'm glad Lavina Karvall has enough money invested to live on. And finally, the consumers' goods market is getting flooded with stuff that's coming in from here and competing with Gram industry." Well, that was understandable. One of the ships that made the shuttle-trip to Gram would carry enough in her strong rooms, in gold and jewels and the like, to pay a handsome profit on the voyage. The bulk-goods that went into the cargo holds was practically taking a free ride, so anything on hand, stuff that nobody would ordinarily think of shipping in interstellar trade, went aboard. A two thousand foot freighter had a great deal of cargo space. Baron Trask of Traskon hadn't even begun to realise what Tanith base was going to cost Gram. [Illustration][Illustration] XVII As might be expected, the Beowulfers finished their hypership first. They had started with everything but a little know-how which had been quickly learned. Amaterasu had had to begin by creating the industry they needed to create the industry they needed to build a ship. The Beowulf ship--she was named _Viking's Gift_--came in on Tanith five and a half years after the _Nemesis_ and the _Space Scourge_ had raided Beowulf; her skipper had fought a normal-drive ship in that battle. Beside plutonium and radioactive isotopes, she carried a general cargo of the sort of luxury-goods unique to Beowulf which could always find a market in interstellar trade. After selling the cargo and depositing the money in the Bank of Tanith, the skipper of the _Viking's Gift_ wanted to know where he could find a good planet to raid. They gave him a list, none too tough but all slightly above the chicken-stealing level, and another list of planets he was _not_ to raid; planets with which Tanith was trading. Six months later they learned that he had showed up on Khepera, with which they were now trading, and had flooded the market there with plundered textiles, hardware, ceramics and plastics. He had bought kregg-meat and hides. "You see what you did, now?" Harkaman clamored. "You thought you were making a customer; what you made was a competitor." "What I made was an ally. If we ever do find Dunnan's planet, we'll need a fleet to take it. A couple of Beowulf ships would help. You know them; you fought them, too." Harkaman had other worries. While cruising in _Corisande II_, he had come in on Vitharr, one of the planets where Tanith ships traded, to find it being raided by a Space Viking ship based on Xochitl. He had fought a short but furious ship-action, battering the invader until he was glad to hyper out. Then he had gone directly to Xochitl, arriving on the heels of the ship he had beaten, and had had it out both with the captain and Prince Viktor, serving them with an ultimatum to leave Tanith trade-planets alone in the future. "How did they take it?" Trask asked, when he returned to report. "Just about the way you would have. Viktor said his people were Space Vikings, not Gilgameshers. I told him we weren't Gilgameshers, either, as he'd find out on Xochitl the next time one of his ships raided one of our planets. Are you going to back me up? Of course, you can always send Prince Viktor my head, and an apology--" "If I have to send him anything, I'll send him a sky full of ships and a planet full of hellburners. You did perfectly right, Otto; exactly what I'd have done in your place." There the matter rested. There were no more raids by Xochitl ships on any of their trade-planets. No mention of the incident was made in any of the reports sent back to Gram. The Gram situation was deteriorating rapidly enough. Finally, there was an audiovisual message from Angus himself; he was seated on his throne, wearing his crown, and he began speaking from the screen abruptly: "We, Angus, King of Gram and Tanith, are highly displeased with our subject, Lucas, Prince and Viceroy of Tanith; we consider ourselves very badly served by Prince Trask. We therefore command him to return to Gram, and render to us account of his administration of our colony and realm of Tanith." After some hasty preparations, Trask recorded a reply. He was sitting on a throne, himself, and he wore a crown just as ornate as King Angus', and robes of white and black Imhotep furs. "We, Lucas, Prince of Tanith," he began, "are quite willing to acknowledge the suzerainty of the King of Gram, formerly Duke of Wardshaven. It is our earnest desire, if possible, to remain at peace and friendship with the King of Gram, and to carry on trade relations with him and with his subjects. "We must, however, reject absolutely any efforts on his part to dictate the internal policies of our realm of Tanith. It is our earnest hope,"--dammit, he'd said "earnest," he should have thought of some other word--"that no act on the part of his Majesty the King of Gram will create any breach in the friendship existing between his realm and ours." * * * * * Three months later, the next ship, which had left Gram while King Angus' summons was still in hyperspace, brought Baron Rathmore. Shaking hands with him as he left the landing craft, Trask wanted to know if he'd been sent out as the new Viceroy. Rathmore started to laugh and ended by cursing vilely. "No. I've come out to offer my sword to the King of Tanith," he said. "Prince of Tanith, for the time being," Trask corrected. "The sword, however, is most acceptable. I take it you've had all of our blessed sovereign you can stomach?" "Lucas, you have enough ships and men here to take Gram," Rathmore said. "Proclaim yourself King of Tanith and then lay claim to the throne of Gram and the whole planet would rise for you." Rathmore had lowered his voice, but even so the open landing stage was no place for this sort of talk. He said so, ordered a couple of the locals to collect Rathmore's luggage, and got him into a hall-car, taking him down to his living quarters. After they were in private, Rathmore began again: "It's more than anybody can stand! There isn't one of the old great nobility he hasn't alienated, or one of the minor barons, the landholders and industrialists, the people who were always the backbone of Gram. And it goes from them down to the commonfolk. Assessments on the lords, taxes on the people, inflation to meet the taxes, high prices, debased coinage. Everybody's being beggared except this rabble of new lords he has around him, and that slut of a wife and her greedy kinfolk...." Trask stiffened. "You're not speaking of Queen Flavia, are you?" he asked softly. Rathmore's mouth opened slightly. "Great Satan, don't you know? No, of course not; the news would have come on the same ship I did. Why, Angus divorced Flavia. He claimed that she was incapable of giving him an heir to the throne. He remarried immediately." The girl's name meant nothing to Trask; he did know of her father, a Baron Valdiva. He was lord of a small estate south of the Ward lands and west of Newhaven. Most of his people were out-and-out bandits and cattle-rustlers, and he was as close to being one himself as he could get. "Nice family he's married into. A credit to the dignity of the throne." "Yes. You wouldn't know this Lady-Demoiselle Evita; she was only seventeen when you left Gram, and hadn't begun to acquire a reputation outside her father's lands. She's made up for lost time since, though. And she has enough uncles and aunts and cousins and ex-lovers and what-not to fill out an infantry regiment, and every one of them's at court with both hands out to grab everything they can." "How does Duke Joris like this?" The Duke of Bigglersport was Queen Flavia's brother. "I daresay he's less than delighted." "He's hiring mercenaries, is what he's doing, and buying combat contragravity. Lucas, why don't you come back? You have no idea what a reputation you have on Gram, now. Everybody would rally to you." He shook his head, "I have a throne, here on Tanith. On Gram I want nothing. I'm sorry for the way Angus turned out, I thought he'd make a good King. But since he's made an intolerable King, the lords and people of Gram will have to get rid of him for themselves. I have my own tasks, here." Rathmore shrugged. "I was afraid that would be it," he said. "Well, I offered my sword; I won't take it back. I can help you in what you're doing on Tanith." * * * * * The captain of the free Space Viking _Damnthing_ was named Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan, which meant that he was some Sword-Worlder's acknowledged bastard by a woman of one of the Old Federation planets. His mother's people could have been Nergalers; he had coarse black hair, a mahogany-brown skin, and red-brown, almost maroon, eyes. He tasted the wine the robot poured for him and expressed appreciation, then began unwrapping the parcel he had brought in. "Something I found while raiding on Tetragrammaton," he said. "I thought you might like to have it. It was made on Gram." It was an automatic pistol, with a belt and holster. The leather was bisonoid-hide; the buckle of the belt was an oval enameled with a crescent, pale blue on black. The pistol was a plain 10-mm military model with grooved plastic grips; on the receiver it bore the stamp of the House of Hoylbar, the firearms manufacturers of Glaspyth. Evidently it was one of the arms Duke Omfray had provided for Andray Dunnan's original mercenary company. "Tetragrammaton?" He glanced over to the Big Board; there was no previous report from that planet. "How long ago?" "I'd say about three hundred hours. I came from there directly, less than two hundred and fifty hours. Dunnan's ships had left the planet three days before I got there." That was practically sizzling hot. Well, something like that had to happen, sooner or later. The Space Viking was asking him if he knew what sort of a place Tetragrammaton was. Neobarbarian, trying to recivilize in a crude way. Small population, concentrated on one continent; farming and fisheries. A little heavy industry, in a small way, at a couple of towns. They had some nuclear power, introduced a century or so ago by traders from Marduk, one of the really civilized planets. They still depended on Marduk for fissionables; their export product was an abominably-smelling vegetable oil which furnished the base for delicate perfumes, and which nobody was ever able to synthesize properly. "I heard they had steel mills in operation, now," the half-breed Space Viking said. "It seems that somebody on Rimmon has just re-invented the railroad, and they need more steel than they can produce for themselves. I thought I'd raid Tetragrammaton for steel and trade it on Rimmon for a load of heaven-tea. When I got there, though, the whole planet was in a mess; not raiding, but plain wanton destruction. The locals were just digging themselves out of it when I landed. Some of them, who didn't think they had anything at all left to lose, gave me a fight. I captured a few of them, to find out what had happened. One of them had that pistol; he said he'd taken it off a Space Viking he'd killed. The ships that raided them were the _Enterprise_ and the _Yo-Yo_. I knew you'd want to hear about it. I got some of the locals' stories on tape." "Well, thank you. I'll want to hear those tapes. Now, you say you want steel?" "Well, I haven't any money. That's why I was going to raid Tetragrammaton." "Nifflheim with the money; your cargo's paid for already. This," he said, touching the pistol, "and whatever's on the tapes." * * * * * They played off the tapes that evening. They weren't particularly informative. The locals who had been interrogated hadn't been in actual contact with Dunnan's people except in combat. The man who had been carrying the 10-mm Hoylbar was the best witness of the lot, and he knew little. He had caught one of them alone, shot him from behind with a shotgun, taken his pistol, and then gotten away as quickly as he could. They had sent down landing craft, it seemed, and said they wanted to trade; then something must have happened, nobody knew what, and they had begun a massacre and sacked the town. After returning to their ships, they had opened fire with nuclear missiles. "Sounds like Dunnan," Hugh Rathmore said in disgust. "He just went kill-crazy. The bad blood of Blackcliffe." "There are funny things about this," Boake Valkanhayn said. "I'd say it was a terror-raid, but who in Gehenna was he trying to terrorize?" "I wondered about that, too." Harkaman frowned. "This town where he landed seems, such as it was, to have been the planetary capital. They just landed, pretending friendship, which I can't see why they needed to pretend, and then began looting and massacring. There wasn't anything of real value there; all they took was what the men could carry themselves or stuff into their landing craft, and they did that because they have what amounts to a religious taboo against landing anywhere and leaving without stealing something. The real loot was at these two other towns; a steel mill and big stocks of steel at one, and all that skunk-apple oil at the other. So what did they do? They dropped a five-megaton bomb on each one, and blew both of them to Em-See-Square. That was a terror-raid pure and simple, but as Boake inquires, just who were they terrorizing? If there were big cities somewhere else on the planet, it would figure. But there aren't. They blew out the two biggest cities, and all the loot in them." [Illustration] "Then they wanted to terrorize somebody off the planet." "But nobody'd hear about it off-planet," somebody protested. "The Mardukans would; they trade with Tetragrammaton," the acknowledged bastard of somebody named Morvill said. "They have a couple of ships a year there." "That's right," Trask agreed. "Marduk." "You mean, you think Dunnan's trying to terrorize _Marduk_?" Valkanhayn demanded. "Great Satan, even he isn't crazy enough for that!" Baron Rathmore started to say something about what Andray Dunnan was crazy enough to do, and what his uncle was crazy enough to do. It was just one of the cracks he had been making since he'd come to Tanith and didn't have to look over his shoulder while he was making them. "I think he is, too," Trask said. "I think that is exactly what he is doing. Don't ask me why; as Otto is fond of remarking, he's crazy and we aren't, and that gives him an advantage. But what have we gotten, since those Gilgameshers told us about his picking up Burrik's ship and the _Honest Horris_? Until today, we've heard nothing from any other Space Viking. What we have gotten was stories from Gilgameshers about raids on planets where they trade, and every one of them is also a planet where Marduk ships trade. And in every case, there has been little or nothing reported about valuable loot taken. The stories are all about wanton and murderous bombings. I think Andray Dunnan is making war on Marduk." "Then he's crazier than his grandfather and his uncle both!" Rathmore cried. "You mean, he's making a string of terror-raids on their trade planets, hoping to pull the Mardukan space-navy away from the home planet?" Harkaman had stopped being incredulous. "And when he gets them all lured away, he'll make a fast raid?" "That's what I think. Remember our fundamental postulate: Dunnan is crazy. Remember how he convinced himself that he was the rightful heir to the ducal crown of Wardshaven?" And remember his insane passion for Elaine; he pushed that thought hastily from him. "Now, he's convinced that he's the greatest Space Viking in history. He has to do something worthy of that distinction. When was the last time anybody attacked a civilized planet? I don't mean Gilgamesh, I mean a planet like Marduk." "A hundred and twenty years ago; Prince Havilgar of Haulteclere, six ships, against Aton. Two ships got back. He didn't. Nobody's tried it since," Harkaman said. "So Dunnan the Great will do it. I hope he tries," he surprised himself by adding. "That's provided I find out what happened. Then I could stop thinking about him." There was a time when he had dreaded the possibility that somebody else might kill Dunnan before he could. XVIII Seshat, Obidicut, Lugaluru, Audhumla. The young man elevated by his father's death in the Dunnan raid to the post of hereditary President of the democratic Republic of Tetragrammaton had been sure that the Marduk ships which came to his planet traded also on those. There had been some difficulty about making contact, and the first face-to-face meeting had begun in an atmosphere of bitter distrust on his part. They had met out of doors; around them, spread wrecked and burned buildings, and hastily constructed huts and shelters, and wide spaces of charred and slagged rubble. "They blew up the steel mill here, and the oil-refinery at Jannsboro. They bombed and strafed the little farm-towns and villages. They scattered radioactives that killed as many as the bombing. And after they had gone away, this other ship came." "The _Damnthing_? She bore the head of a beast with three very big horns?" "That's the one. They did a little damage, at first. When the captain found out what had happened to us, he left some food and medicines for us." Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan hadn't mentioned that. "Well, we'd like to help you, if we can. Do you have nuclear power? We can give you a little equipment. Just remember it of us, when you're back on your feet; we'll be back to trade later. But don't think you owe us anything. The man who did this to you is my enemy. Now, I want to talk to every one of your people who can tell me anything at all...." Seshat was the closest; they went there first. They were too late. Seshat had had it already, and on the evidence of the radioactivity counters, not too long ago. Four hundred hours at most. There had been two hellburners; the cities on which they had fallen were still-smoking pits literally burned into the ground and the bedrock below, at the center of five hundred mile radii of slag and lava and scorched earth and burned forests. There had been a planetbuster; it had started a major earthquake. And half a dozen thermonuclears. There were probably quite a few survivors--a human planetary population is extremely hard to exterminate completely--but within a century they'd be back to the loincloth and the stone hatchet. "We don't even know Dunnan did it, personally," Paytrik Morland said. "For all we know, he's down in an air-tight cave city on some planet nobody ever heard of, sitting on a golden throne, surrounded by a harem." He had begun to suspect that Dunnan was doing something of just the sort. The Greatest Space Viking of History would naturally found a Space Viking empire. "An emperor goes out to look his empire over, now and then; I don't spend all my time on Tanith. Say we try Audhumla next. It's the farthest away. We might get there while he's still shooting up Obidicut and Lugaluru. Guatt, figure us a jump for it." When the colored turbulence washed away and the screen cleared, Audhumla looked like Tanith or Khepera or Amaterasu or any other Terra-type planet, a big disk brilliant with reflected sunlight and glowing with starlit and moonlit atmosphere on the other. There was a single rather large moon, and, in the telescopic screen, the usual markings of seas and continents and rivers and mountain-ranges. But there was nothing to show.... Oh, yes; lights on the darkened side, and from the size they must be vast cities. All the available data for Audhumla was long out of date; a considerable civilization must have developed in the last half dozen centuries. Another light appeared, a hard blue-white spark that spread into a larger, less brilliant yellow light. At the same time, all the alarm-devices in the command-room went into a pandemonium of jangling and flashing and squawking and howling and shouting. Radiation. Energy-release. Contragravity distortion effects. Infra-red output. A welter of indecipherable radio and communication-screen signals. Radar and scanner-ray beams from the planet. Trask's fist began hurting; he found that he had been pounding the desk in front of him with it. He stopped it. "We caught him, we caught him!" he was yelling hoarsely. "Full speed in, continuous acceleration, as much as we can stand. We'll worry about decelerating when we're in shooting distance." The planet grew steadily larger; Karffard was taking him at his word about continuous acceleration. There'd be a Gehenna of a bill to pay when they started decelerating. On the planet, more bombs were going off just outside atmosphere beyond the sunset line. "Ship observed. Altitude about a hundred to five hundred miles--hundreds, not thousands--35° North Latitude, 15° west of the sunset line. Ship is under fire, bomb explosions near her," a voice whooped. Somebody else was yelling that the city lights were really burning cities, or burning forests. The first voice, having stopped, broke in again: "Ship is visible in telescopic screen, just at the sunset line. And there's another ship detected but not visible, somewhere around the equator, and a third one somewhere out of sight, we can just get the fringe of her contragravity field around the planet." That meant there were two sides, and a fight. Unless Dunnan had picked up a third ship, somewhere. The telescopic view shifted; for a moment the planet was completely off-screen, and then its curvature came into the screen against a star-scattered background. They were almost in to two thousand miles now; Karffard was yelling to stop acceleration and trying to put the ship into a spiral orbit. Suddenly they caught a glimpse of one of the ships. "She's in trouble." That was Paul Koreff's voice. "She's leaking air and water vapor like crazy." "Well, is she a good guy or a bad guy?" Morland was yelling back, as though Koreff's spectroscopes could distinguish. Koreff ignored that. "Another ship making signal," he said. "She's the one coming up over the equator. Sword-World impulse code; her communication-screen combination, and an identify-yourself." Karffard punched out the combination as Koreff furnished it. While Trask was desperately willing his face into immobility, the screen lighted. It wasn't Andray Dunnan; that was a disappointment. It was almost as good, though. His henchman, Sir Nevil Ormm. "Well, Sir Nevil! A pleasant surprise," he heard himself saying. "We last met on the terrace at Karvall House, did we not?" For once, the paper-white face of Andray Dunnan's _âme damnée_ showed expression, but whether it was fear, surprise, shock, hatred, anger, or what combination of them, Trask could no more than guess. "Trask! Satan curse you...!" Then the screen went blank. In the telescopic screen, the other ship came on unfalteringly. Paul Koreff, who had gotten more data on mass, engine energy-output and dimensions, was identifying her as the _Enterprise_. "Well, go for her! Give her everything!" * * * * * They didn't need the order; Vann Larch was speaking rapidly into his hand-phone, and Alvyn Karffard was hurling his voice all over the _Nemesis_, warning of sudden deceleration and direction change, and while he was speaking, things in the command room began sliding. In the telescopic screen, the other ship was plainly visible; he could see the oval patch of black with the blue crescent, and in his screen Dunnan would be seeing the sword-impaled skull of the _Nemesis_. If only he could be sure Dunnan was there to see it. If it had only been Dunnan's face, instead of Ormm's, that he had seen in the screen. As it was, he couldn't be sure, and if one of the missiles that were already going out made a lucky hit, he might never be sure. He didn't care who killed Dunnan, or how. All he wanted was to know that Dunnan's death had set him free from a self-assumed obligation that was now meaningless to him. The _Enterprise_ launched counter-missiles; so did the _Nemesis_. There were momentarily unbearable flashes of pure energy and from them globes of incandescence spread and vanished. Something must have gotten through; red lights flashed on the damage board. It had been something heavy enough even to jolt the huge mass of the _Nemesis_. At the same time, the other ship took a hit from something that would have vaporized her had she not been armored in collapsium. Then, as they passed close together, guns hammered back and forth along with missiles, and then the _Enterprise_ was out of sight around the horizon. Another ship, the size of Otto Harkaman's _Corisande II_, was approaching; she bore a tapering, red-nailed feminine hand dangling a planet by a string. They rushed toward each other, planting a garden of evanescent fire-flowers between them; they pounded one another with guns, and then they sped apart. At the same time, Paul Koreff was picking up an impulse-code signal from the third, crippled, ship; a screen combination. Trask punched it out as he received it. A man in space armor was looking out of the screen. That was bad, if they had to suit up in the command room. They still had air; his helmet was off, but it was attached and hinged back. On his breastplate was a device of a dragonlike beast perched with its tail around a planet, and a crown above. He had a thin, high-cheeked face, with a vertical wrinkle between his eyes, and a clipped blond mustache. "Who are you, stranger. You're fighting my enemies; does that make you a friend." "I'm a friend of anybody who owns Andray Dunnan his enemy. Sword-World ship _Nemesis_; I'm Prince Lucas Trask of Tanith, commanding." "Royal Mardukan ship _Victrix_." The thin-faced man gave a wry laugh. "Not been living up to her name so well. I'm Prince Simon Bentrik, commanding." "Are you still battle-worthy?" "We can fire about half our guns; we still have a few missiles left. Seventy per cent of the ship's sealed off, and we've been holed in a dozen places. We have power enough for lift and some steering-way. We can't make lateral way except at the expense of lift." Which made the _Victrix_ practically a stationary target. He yelled over his shoulder at Karffard to cut speed all he could without tearing things apart. "When that cripple comes into view, start circling around her. Get into a tight circle above her." He turned back to the man in the screen. "If we can get ourselves slowed down enough, we'll do all we can to cover you." "All you can is all you can; thank you, Prince Trask." "Here comes the _Enterprise_!" Karffard shouted, with obscenely blasphemous embellishments. "She hairpinned on us." "Well, do something about her!" * * * * * Vann Larch was already doing it. The _Enterprise_ had taken damage in the last exchange; Koreff's spectroscopes showed her halo-ed with air and water vapor. Her instruments would be getting the same story from the _Nemesis_; wedge-shaped segments extending six to eight decks in were sealed off in several places. Then the only thing that could be seen with certainty was the blaze of mutually destroying missiles between. The short-range gun duel began and ended as they passed. In the screen, he had seen a fat round-nosed thing come up from the _Victrix_, curving far out ahead of the passing _Enterprise_. She was almost out of sight around the planet when she ran head-on into it, and vanished in an awesome blaze. For a moment, he thought she had been destroyed, then she lurched into sight and went around the curvature of Audhumla. Trask and the Mardukan were shaking hands with themselves at each other in their screens; everybody in the _Nemesis_ command room was screaming: "Well shot, _Victrix_! Well shot!" Then the _Yo-Yo_ was coming around again, and Vann Larch was saying, "Gehenna with this fooling around! I'll fix the expurgated unprintability!" He yelled orders--a jumble of code letters and numbers--and things began going out. Most of them blew up in space. Then the _Yo-Yo_ blew up, very quietly, as things do where there is no air to carry shock- and sound-waves, but very brilliantly. There was brief daylight all over the night side of the planet. "That was our planetbuster," Larch said. "I don't know what we'll use on Dunnan." "I didn't know we had one," Trask admitted. "Otto had a couple built on Beowulf. The Beowulfers are good nuclear weaponeers." The _Enterprise_ came back, hastily, to see what had blown up. Larch put off another entertainment of small stuff, with a fifty megaton thermonuclear, viewscreen-piloted, among them. It had its own arsenal of small missiles, and it got through. In the telescopic screen, a jagged hole was visible just below the equator of the _Enterprise_, the edges curling outward. Something, possibly a heavy missile in an open tube, ready for launching, had gone off inside her. What the inside of the ship was like, or how many of her company were still alive, was hard to guess. There were some, and her launchers were still spewing out missiles. They were intercepted and blew up. The hull of the _Enterprise_ bulked huge in the guidance-screen of the missile and filled it; the jagged crater that had obliterated the bottom of Dunnan's blue crescent blazon spread to fill the whole screen. The screen went milky white as the pickup went off. All the other screens blazed briefly, until their filters went on. Even afterward, they glared like the cloud-veiled sun of Gram at high noon. Finally, when the light-intensity had dropped and the filters went off, there was nothing left of the _Enterprise_ but an orange haze. Somebody--Paytrik, Baron Morland, he saw--was pounding him on the back and screaming inarticulately in his ear. A dozen space-armored officers with planet-perched dragons on their breasts were crowding beside Prince Bentrik in the screen from the _Victrix_, whooping like drunken bisonoid-herders on payday night. "I wonder," he said, almost inaudibly, "if I'll ever know if Andray Dunnan was on that ship." XIX Prince Trask of Tanith and Prince Simon Bentrik were dining together on an upper terrace of what had originally been the mansion house of a Federation period plantation. It had been a number of other things since; now it was the municipal building of a town that had grown around it, which had, somehow, escaped undamaged from the Dunnan blitz. Normally about five or ten thousand, the place was now jammed with almost fifty thousand homeless refugees from half a dozen other towns that had been destroyed, overflowing the buildings and crowding into a sprawling camp of hastily built huts and shelters, and already permanent buildings were going up to accommodate them. Everybody, locals, Mardukans and Space Vikings, had been busy with the work of relief and reconstruction; this was the first meal the two commanders had been able to share in any leisure at all. Prince Bentrik's enjoyment of it was somewhat impaired by the fact that from where he sat he could see, in the distance, the sphere of his disabled ship. "I doubt we can get her off-planet again, let alone into hyperspace." "Well, we'll get you and your crew to Marduk in the _Nemesis_, then." They were both speaking loudly, above the clank and clatter of machinery below. "I hope you didn't think I'd leave you stranded here." "I don't know how either of us will be received. Space Vikings haven't been exactly popular on Marduk, lately. They may thank you for bringing me back to stand trial," Bentrik said bitterly. "Why, I'd have anybody shot who let his ship get caught as I did mine. Those two were down in atmosphere before I knew they'd come out of hyperspace." "I think they were down on the planet before your ship arrived." "Oh, that's ridiculous, Prince Trask!" the Mardukan cried. "You can't hide a ship on a planet. Not from the kind of instruments we have in the Royal Navy." "We have pretty fair detection ourselves," Trask reminded him. "There's one place where you can do it. At the bottom of an ocean, with a thousand or so feet of water over her. That's where I was going to hide the _Nemesis_, if I got here ahead of Dunnan." Prince Bentrik's fork stopped half way to his mouth. He lowered it slowly to his plate. That was a theory he'd like to accept, if he could. "But the locals. They didn't know about it." "They wouldn't. They have no off-planet detection of their own. Come in directly over the ocean, out of the sun, and nobody'd see the ship." "Is that a regular Space Viking trick?" "No. I invented it myself, on the way from Seshat. But if Dunnan wanted to ambush your ship, he'd have thought of it, too. It's the only practical way to do it." Dunnan, or Nevil Ormm; he wished he knew, and was afraid he would go on wishing all his life. Bentrik started to pick up his fork again, changed his mind, and sipped from his wineglass instead. "You may find you're quite welcome on Marduk, at that," he said. "These raids have only been a serious problem in the last four years. I believe, as you do, that this enemy of yours is responsible for all of them. We have half the Royal Navy out now, patrolling our trade-planets. Even if he wasn't aboard the _Enterprise_ when you blew her up, you've put a name on him and can tell us a good deal about him." He set down the wineglass. "Why, if it weren't so utterly ridiculous, one might even think he was making war on Marduk." From Trask's viewpoint, it wasn't ridiculous at all. He merely mentioned that Andray Dunnan was psychotic and let it go at that. * * * * * The _Victrix_ was not completely unrepairable, although quite beyond the resources at hand. A fully equipped engineer-ship from Marduk could patch her hull and replace her Dillinghams and her Abbot lift-and-drive engines and make her temporarily spaceworthy, until she could be gotten to a shipyard. They concentrated on repairing the _Nemesis_, and in another two weeks she was ready for the voyage. The six hundred hour trip to Marduk passed pleasantly enough. The Mardukan officers were good company, and found their Space Viking opposite numbers equally so. The two crews had become used to working together on Audhumla, and mingled amicably off watch, interesting themselves in each other's hobbies and listening avidly to tales of each other's home planets. The Space Vikings were surprised and disappointed at the somewhat lower intellectual level of the Mardukans. They couldn't understand that; Marduk was supposed to be a civilized planet, wasn't it? The Mardukans were just as surprised, and inclined to be resentful, that the Space Vikings all acted and talked like officers. Hearing of it, Prince Bentrik was also puzzled. Fo'c'sle hands on a Mardukan ship belonged definitely to the lower orders. "There's still too much free land and free opportunity on the Sword-Worlds," Trask explained. "Nobody does much bowing and scraping to the class above him; he's too busy trying to shove himself up into it. And the men who ship out as Space Vikings are the least class-conscious of the lot. Think my men may have trouble on Marduk about that? They'll all insist on doing their drinking in the swankiest places in town." [Illustration] "No. I don't think so. Everybody will be so amazed that Space Vikings aren't twelve feet tall, with three horns like a Zarathustra damnthing and a spiked tail like a Fafnir mantichore that they won't even notice anything less. Might do some good, in the long run. Crown Prince Edvard will like your Space Vikings. He's much opposed to class distinctions and caste prejudices. Says they have to be eliminated before we can make democracy really work." The Mardukans talked a lot about democracy. They thought well of it; their government was a representative democracy. It was also a hereditary monarchy, if that made any kind of sense. Trask's efforts to explain the political and social structure of the Sword-Worlds met the same incomprehension from Bentrik. "Why, it sounds like feudalism to me!" "That's right; that's what it is. A king owes his position to the support of his great nobles; they owe theirs to their barons and landholding knights; they owe theirs to their people. There are limits beyond which none of them can go; after that, their vassals turn on them." "Well, suppose the people of some barony rebel? Won't the king send troops to support the baron?" "What troops? Outside a personal guard and enough men to police the royal city and hold the crown lands, the king has no troops. If he wants troops, he has to get them from his great nobles; they have to get them from their vassal barons, who raise them by calling out their people." That was another source of dissatisfaction with King Angus of Gram; he had been augmenting his forces by hiring off-planet mercenaries. "And the people won't help some other baron oppress his people; it might be their turn next." * * * * * "You mean, the people are armed?" Prince Bentrik was incredulous. "Great Satan, aren't yours?" Prince Trask was equally surprised. "Then your democracy's a farce, and the people are only free on sufferance. If their ballots aren't secured by arms, they're worthless. Who has the arms on your planet?" "Why, the Government." "You mean the King?" Prince Bentrik was shocked. Certainly not; horrid idea. That would be ... why, it would be _despotism_! Besides, the King wasn't the Government, at all; the Government ruled in the King's name. There was the Assembly; the Chamber of Representatives, and the Chamber of Delegates. The people elected the Representatives, and the Representatives elected the Delegates, and the Delegates elected the Chancellor. Then, there was the Prime Minister; he was appointed by the King, but the King had to appoint him from the party holding the most seats in the Chamber of Representatives, and he appointed the Ministers, who handled the executive work of the Government, only their subordinates in the different Ministries were career-officials who were selected by competitive examination for the bottom jobs and promoted up the bureaucratic ladder from there. This left Trask wondering if the Mardukan constitution hadn't been devised by Goldberg, the legendary Old Terran inventor who always did everything the hard way. It also left him wondering just how in Gehenna the Government of Marduk ever got anything done. Maybe it didn't. Maybe that was what saved Marduk from having a real despotism. "Well, what prevents the Government from enslaving the people? The people can't; you just told me that they aren't armed, and the Government is." He continued, pausing now and then for breath, to catalogue every tyranny he had ever heard of, from those practiced by the Terran Federation before the Big War to those practiced at Eglonsby on Amaterasu by Pedrosan Pedro. A few of the very mildest were pushing the nobles and people of Gram to revolt against Angus I. "And in the end," he finished, "the Government would be the only property owner and the only employer on the planet, and everybody else would be slaves, working at assigned tasks, wearing Government-issued clothing and eating Government food, their children educated as the Government prescribes and trained for jobs selected for them by the Government, never reading a book or seeing a play or thinking a thought that the Government had not approved...." Most of the Mardukans were laughing, now. Some of them were accusing him of being just too utterly ridiculous. "Why, the people _are_ the Government. The people would not legislate themselves into slavery." He wished Otto Harkaman were there. All he knew of history was the little he had gotten from reading some of Harkaman's books, and the long, rambling conversations aboard ship in hyperspace or in the evenings at Rivington. But Harkaman, he was sure, could have furnished hundreds of instances, on scores of planets and over ten centuries of time, in which people had done exactly that and hadn't known what they were doing, even after it was too late. * * * * * "They have something about like that on Aton," one of the Mardukan officers said. "Oh, Aton; that's a dictatorship, pure and simple. That Planetary Nationalist gang got into control fifty years ago, during the crisis after the war with Baldur...." "They were voted into power by the people, weren't they?" "Yes; they were," Prince Bentrik said gravely. "It was an emergency measure, and they were given emergency powers. Once they were in, they made the emergency permanent." "That couldn't happen on Marduk!" a young nobleman declared. "It could if Zaspar Makann's party wins control of the Assembly at the next election," somebody else said. "Oh, then Marduk's safe! The sun'll go nova first," one of the junior Royal Navy officers said. After that, they began talking about women, a subject any spaceman will drop any other subject to discuss. Trask made a mental note of the name of Zaspar Makann, and took occasion to bring it up in conversation with his shipboard guests. Every time he talked about Makann to two or more Mardukans, he heard at least three or more opinions about the man. He was a political demagogue; on that everybody agreed. After that, opinions diverged. Makann was a raving lunatic, and all the followers he had were a handful of lunatics like him. He might be a lunatic, but he had a dangerously large following. Well, not so large; maybe they'd pick up a seat or so in the Assembly, but that was doubtful--not enough of them in any representative district to elect an Assemblyman. He was just a smart crook, milking a lot of half-witted plebeians for all he could get out of them. Not just plebes, either; a lot of industrialists were secretly financing him, in hope that he would help them break up the labor unions. You're nuts; everybody knew the labor unions were backing him, hoping he'd scare the employers into granting concessions. You're both nuts; he was backed by the mercantile interests; they were hoping he'd run the Gilgameshers off the planet. Well, that was one thing you had to give him credit for. He wanted to run out the Gilgameshers. Everybody was in favor of that. Now, Trask could remember something he'd gotten from Harkaman. There had been Hitler, back at the end of the First Century Pre-Atomic; hadn't he gotten into power because everybody was in favor of running out the Christians, or the Moslems, or the Albigensians, or somebody? XX Marduk had three moons; a big one, fifteen hundred miles in diameter, and two insignificant twenty-mile chunks of rock. The big one was fortified, and a couple of ships were in orbit around it. The _Nemesis_ was challenged as she emerged from her last hyperjump; both ships broke orbit and came out to meet her, and several more were detected lifting away from the planet. Prince Bentrik took the communication screen, and immediately encountered difficulties. The commandant, even after the situation had been explained twice to him, couldn't understand. A Royal Navy fleet unit knocked out in a battle with Space Vikings was bad enough, but being rescued and brought to Marduk by another Space Viking simply didn't make sense. He then screened the Royal Palace at Malverton, on the planet; first he was icily polite to somebody several echelons below him in the peerage, and then respectfully polite to somebody he addressed as Prince Vandarvant. Finally, after some minutes' wait, a frail, white-haired man in a little black cap-of-maintenance appeared in the screen. Prince Bentrik instantly sprang to his feet. So did all the other Mardukans in the command room. "Your Majesty! I am most deeply honored!" "Are you all right, Simon?" the old gentleman asked solicitously. "They haven't done anything to you, have they?" "Saved my life, and my men's, and treated me like a friend and a comrade, Your Majesty. Have I your permission to present, informally, their commander, Prince Trask of Tanith?" "Indeed you may, Simon. I owe the gentleman my deepest thanks." "His Majesty, Mikhyl the Eighth, Planetary King of Marduk," Prince Bentrik said. "His Highness, Lucas, Prince Trask, Planetary Viceroy of Tanith for his Majesty Angus the First of Gram." The elderly monarch bowed his head slightly; Trask bowed a little more deeply, from the waist. "I am very happy, Prince Trask, first, I confess, at the safe return of my kinsman Prince Bentrik, and then at the honor of meeting one in the confidence of my fellow sovereign King Angus of Gram. I will never be ungrateful for what you did for my cousin and for his officers and men. You must stay at the Palace while you are on this planet; I am giving orders for your reception, and I wish you to be formally presented to me this evening." He hesitated briefly. "Gram; that is one of the Sword-Worlds, is it not?" Another brief hesitation. "Are you really a Space Viking, Prince Trask?" Maybe he'd expected Space Vikings to have three horns and a spiked tail and stand twelve feet tall, himself. It took several hours for the _Nemesis_ to get into orbit. Bentrik spent most of them in a screen-booth, and emerged visibly relieved. "Nobody's going to be sticky about what happened on Audhumla," he told Trask. "There will be a Board of Inquiry. I'm afraid I had to mix you up in that. It's not only about the action on Audhumla; everybody from the Space Minister down wants to hear what you know about this fellow Dunnan. Like yourself, we all hope he went to Em-See-Square along with his flagship, but we can't take it for granted. We have over a dozen trade-planets to protect, and he's hit more than half of them already." The process of getting into orbit took them around the planet several times, and it was a more impressive spectacle at each circuit. Of course, Marduk had a population of almost two billion, and had been civilized, with no hiatus of Neobarbarism, since it had first been colonized in the Fourth Century. Even so, the Space Vikings were amazed--and stubbornly refusing to show it--at what they saw in the telescopic screens. "Look at that city!" Paytrik Morland whispered. "We talk about the civilized planets, but I never realized they were anything like this. Why, this makes Excalibur look like Tanith!" * * * * * The city was Malverton, the capital; like any city of a contragravity-using people, it lay in a rough circle of buildings towering out of green interspaces, surrounded by the smaller circles of spaceports and industrial suburbs. The difference was that any of these were as large as Camelot on Excalibur or four Wardshavens on Gram, and Malverton itself was almost half the size of the whole barony of Traskon. "They aren't any more civilized that we are, Paytrik. There are just more of them. If there were two billion people on Gram--which I hope there never will be--Gram would have cities like this, too." One thing; the government of a planet like Marduk would have to be something more elaborate than the loose feudalism of the Sword-Worlds. Maybe this Goldberg-ocracy of theirs had been forced upon them by the sheer complexity of the population and its problems. Alvyn Karffard took a quick look around him to make sure none of the Mardukans were in earshot. "I don't care how many people they have," he said. "Marduk can be had. A wolf never cares how many sheep there are in a flock. With twenty ships, we could take this planet like we took Eglonsby. There'd be losses coming in, sure, but after we were in and down, we'd have it." "Where would we get twenty ships?" Tanith, at a pinch, could muster five or six, counting the free Space Vikings who used the base facilities; they would have to leave a couple to hold the planet. Beowulf had one, and another almost completed, and now there was an Amaterasu ship. But to assemble a Space Viking armada of twenty.... He shook his head. The real reason why Space Vikings had never raided a civilized planet successfully had always been their inability to combine under one command in sufficient strength. Besides, he didn't want to raid Marduk. A raid, if successful, would yield immense treasures, but cause a hundred, even a thousand, times as much destruction, and he didn't want to destroy anything civilized. The landing stages of the palace were crowded when he and Prince Bentrik landed, and, at a discreet distance, swarms of air-vehicles circled, creating a control problem for the police. Parting from Bentrik, he was escorted to the suite prepared for him; it was luxurious in the extreme but scarcely above Sword-World standards. There were a surprising number of human servants, groveling and fawning and getting underfoot and doing work robots could have been doing better. What robots there were were inefficient, and much work and ingenuity had been lavished on efforts to copy human form to the detriment of function. After getting rid of most of the superfluous servants, he put on a screen and began sampling the newscasts. There were telescopic views of the _Nemesis_ from some craft on orbit nearby, and he watched the officers and men of the _Victrix_ being disembarked; there were other views of their landing at some naval installation on the ground, and he could see reporters being chevied away by Navy ground-police. And there was a wide range of commentary opinion. The Government had already denied that, (1) Prince Bentrik had captured the _Nemesis_ and brought her in as a prize, and, (2) the Space Vikings had captured Prince Bentrik and were holding him for ransom. Beyond that, the Government was trying to sit on the whole story, and the Opposition was hinting darkly at corrupt deals and sinister plots. Prince Bentrik arrived in the midst of an impassioned tirade against pusillanimous traitors surrounding his Majesty who were betraying Marduk to the Space Vikings. "Why doesn't your Government publish the facts and put a stop to that nonsense?" Trask asked. "Oh, let them rave," Bentrik replied. "The longer the Government waits, the more they'll be ridiculed when the facts are published." Or, the more people will be convinced that the Government had something to hush up, and had to take time to construct a plausible story. He kept the thought to himself. It was their government; how they mismanaged it was their own business. He found that there was no bartending robot; he had to have a human servant bring drinks. He made up his mind to have a few of the _Nemesis_ robots sent down to him. * * * * * The formal presentation would be in the evening; there would be a dinner first, and because Trask had not yet been formally presented, he couldn't dine with the King, but because he was, or claimed to be, Viceroy of Tanith, he ranked as a chief of state and would dine with the Crown Prince, to whom there would be an informal introduction first. This took place in a small ante-chamber off the banquet hall; the Crown Prince and Crown Princess and Princess Bentrik were there when they arrived. The Crown Prince was a man of middle age, graying at the temples, with the glassy stare that betrayed contact lenses. The resemblance between him and his father was apparent; both had the same studious and impractical expression, and might have been professors on the same university faculty. He shook hands with Trask, assuring him of the gratitude of the Court and Royal Family. "You know, Simon is next in succession, after myself and my little daughter," he said. "That's too close to take chances with him." He turned to Bentrik. "I'm afraid this is your last space adventure, Simon. You'll have to be a spaceport spaceman from now on." "I shan't be sorry," Princess Bentrik said. "And if anybody owes Prince Trask gratitude, I do." She pressed his hands warmly. "Prince Trask, my son wants to meet you, very badly. He's ten years old, and he thinks Space Vikings are romantic heroes." "He should be one, for a while." He should just see a planet Space Vikings had raided. Most of the people at the upper end of the table were diplomats--ambassadors from Odin and Baldur and Isis and Ishtar and Aton and the other civilized worlds. No doubt they hadn't actually expected horns and a spiked tail, or even tattooing and a nose ring, but after all, Space Vikings were just some sort of Neobarbarians, weren't they? On the other hand, they had all seen views and gotten descriptions of the _Nemesis_, and had heard about the ship-action on Audhumla, and this Prince Trask--a Space Viking prince; that sounded civilized enough--had saved a life with only three other lives, one almost at an end, between it and the throne. And they had heard about the screen conversation with King Mikhyl. So they were courteous through the meal, and tried to get as close as possible to him in the procession to the throne room. King Mikhyl wore a golden crown topped by the planetary emblem, which must have weighed twice as much as a combat helmet, and fur-edged robes that would weigh more than a suit of space armor. They weren't nearly as ornate, though, as the regalia of King Angus I of Gram. He rose to clasp Prince Bentrik's hand, calling him "dear cousin," and congratulating him on his gallant fight and fortunate escape. That knocks any court-martial talk on the head, Trask thought. He remained standing to shake hands with Trask, calling him "valued friend to me and my house." First person singular; that must be causing some lifted eyebrows. Then the King sat down, and the rest of the roomful filed up onto the dais to be received, and finally it was over and the king rose and proceeded, followed by his immediate suite between the bowing and curtsying court and out the wide doors. After a decent interval, Crown Prince Edvard escorted him and Prince Bentrik down the same route, the others falling in behind, and across the hall to the ballroom, where there was soft music and refreshments. It wasn't too unlike a court reception on Excalibur, except that the drinks and canapes were being dispensed by human servants. He was wondering what sort of court functions Angus the First of Gram was holding by now. After half an hour, a posse of court functionaries approached and informed him that it had pleased his Majesty to command Prince Trask to attend him in his private chambers. There was an audible gasp at this; both Prince Bentrik and the Crown Prince were trying not to grin too broadly. Evidently this didn't happen too often. He followed the functionaries from the ballroom, and the eyes of everybody else followed him. * * * * * Old King Mikhyl received him alone, in a small, comfortably shabby room behind vast ones of incredible splendor. He wore fur-lined slippers and a loose robe with a fur collar, and his little black cap-of-maintenance. He was standing when Trask entered; when the guards closed the door and left them alone, he beckoned Trask to a couple of chairs, with a low table, on which were decanters and glasses and cigars, between. "It's a presumption on royal authority to summon you from the ballroom," he began, after they had seated themselves and filled glasses. "You are quite the cynosure, you know." "I'm grateful to Your Majesty. It's both comfortable and quiet here, and I can sit down. Your Majesty was the center of attention in the throne room, yet I seemed to detect a look of relief as you left it." "I try to hide it, as much as possible." The old King took off the little gold-circled cap and hung it on the back of his chair. "Majesty can be rather wearying, you know." So he could come here and put it off. Trask felt that some gesture should be made on his own part. He unfastened the dress-dagger from his belt and laid it on the table. The King nodded. "Now, we can be a couple of honest tradesmen, our shops closed for the evening, relaxing over our wine and tobacco," he said. "Eh, Goodman Lucas?" It seemed like an initiation into a secret society whose ritual he must guess at step by step. "Right, Goodman Mikhyl." They lifted their glasses to each other and drank; Goodman Mikhyl offered cigars, and Goodman Lucas held a light for him. "I hear a few hard things about your trade, Goodman Lucas." "All true, and mostly understated. We're professional murderers and robbers, as one of my fellow tradesmen says. The worst of it is that robbery and murder become just that: a trade, like servicing robots or selling groceries." "Yet you fought two other Space Vikings to cover my cousin's crippled _Victrix_. Why?" So he must tell his tale, so worn and smooth, again. King Mikhyl's cigar went out while he listened. "And you have been hunting him ever since? And now, you can't be sure whether you killed him or not?" "I'm afraid I didn't. The man in the screen is the only man Dunnan can really trust. One or the other would stay wherever he has his base all the time." "And when you do kill him; what then?" "I'll go on trying to make a civilized planet of Tanith. Sooner or later, I'll have one quarrel too many with King Angus, and then we will be our Majesty Lucas the First of Tanith, and we will sit on a throne and receive our subjects. And I'll be glad when I can get my crown off and talk to a few men who call me 'shipmate,' instead of 'Your Majesty.'" * * * * * [Illustration] "Well, it would violate professional ethics for me to advise a subject to renounce his sovereign, of course, but that might be an excellent thing. You met the ambassador from Ithavoll at dinner, did you not? Three centuries ago, Ithavoll was a colony of Marduk--it seems we can't afford colonies, any more--and it seceded from us. Ithavoll was then a planet like your Tanith seems to be. Today, it is a civilized world, and one of Marduk's best friends. You know, sometimes I think a few lights are coming on again, here and there in the Old Federation. If so, you Space Vikings are helping to light them." "You mean the planets we use as bases, and the things we teach the locals?" "That, too, of course. Civilization needs civilized technologies. But they have to be used for civilized ends. Do you know anything about a Space Viking raid on Aton, over a century ago?" "Six ships from Haulteclere; four destroyed, the other two returned damaged and without booty." The King of Marduk nodded. "That raid saved civilization on Aton. There were four great nations; the two greatest were at the brink of war, and the others were waiting to pounce on the exhausted victor and then fight each other for the spoils. The Space Vikings forced them to unite. Out of that temporary alliance came the League for Common Defense, and from that the Planetary Republic. The Republic's a dictatorship, now, and just between Goodman Mikhyl and Goodman Lucas it's a nasty one and our Majesty's Government doesn't like it at all. It will be smashed sooner or later, but they'll never go back to divided sovereignty and nationalism again. The Space Vikings frightened them out of that when the dangers inherent in it couldn't. Maybe this man Dunnan will do the same for us on Marduk." "You have troubles?" "You've seen decivilized planets. How does it happen?" "I know how it's happened on a good many: War. Destruction of cities and industries. Survivors among ruins, too busy keeping their own bodies alive to try to keep civilization alive. Then they lose all knowledge of how to be civilized." "That's catastrophic decivilization. There is also decivilization by erosion, and while it's going on, nobody notices it. Everybody is proud of their civilization, their wealth and culture. But trade is falling off; fewer ships come in each year. So there is boastful talk about planetary self-sufficiency; who needs off-planet trade anyhow? Everybody seems to have money, but the government is always broke. Deficit spending--and always the vital social services for which the government has to spend money. The most vital one, of course, is buying votes to keep the government in power. And it gets harder for the government to get anything done. "The soldiers are sloppier at drill, and their uniforms and weapons aren't taken care of. The noncoms are insolent. And more and more parts of the city are dangerous at night, and then even in the daytime. And it's been years since a new building went up, and the old ones aren't being repaired any more." Trask closed his eyes. Again, he could feel the mellow sun of Gram on his back, and hear the laughing voices on the lower terrace, and he was talking to Lothar Ffayle and Rovard Grauffis and Alex Gorram and Cousin Nikkolay and Otto Harkaman. He said: "And finally, nobody bothers fixing anything up. And the power-reactors stop, and nobody seems to be able to get them started again. It hasn't quite gotten that far on the Sword-Worlds yet." "It hasn't here, either. Yet." Goodman Mikhyl slipped away; King Mikhyl VIII looked across the low table at his guest. "Prince Trask, have you heard of a man named Zaspar Makann?" "Occasionally. Nothing good about him." "He is the most dangerous man on this planet," the King said. "And I can make nobody believe it. Not even my son." XXI Prince Bentrik's ten-year-old son, Count Steven of Ravary, wore the uniform of an ensign of the Royal Navy; he was accompanied by his tutor, an elderly Navy captain. They both stopped in the doorway of Trask's suite, and the boy saluted smartly. "Permission to come aboard, sir?" he asked. "Welcome aboard, count; captain. Belay the ceremony and find seats; you're just in time for second breakfast." As they sat down, he aimed his ultraviolet light-pencil at a serving robot. Unlike Mardukan robots, which looked like surrealist conceptions of Pre-Atomic armored knights, it was a smooth ovoid floating a few inches from the floor on its own contragravity; as it approached, its top opened like a bursting beetle shell and hinged trays of food swung out. The boy looked at it in fascination. "Is that a Sword-World robot, sir, or did you capture it somewhere?" "It's one of our own." He was pardonably proud; it had been built on Tanith a year before. "Has an ultrasonic dishwasher underneath, and it does some cooking on top, at the back." The elderly captain was, if anything, even more impressed than his young charge. He knew what went into it, and he had some conception of the society that would develop things like that. "I take it you don't use many human servants, with robots like that," he said. "Not many. We're all low-population planets, and nobody wants to be a servant." "We have too many people on Marduk, and all of them want soft jobs as nobles' servants," the captain said. "Those that want any kind of jobs." "You need all your people for fighting men, don't you?" the boy count asked. "Well, we need a good many. The smallest of our ships will carry five hundred men; most of them around eight hundred." The captain lifted an eyebrow. The complement of the _Victrix_ had been three hundred, and she'd been a big ship. Then he nodded. "Of course. Most of them are ground-fighters." That started Count Steven off. Questions, about battles and raids and booty and the planets Trask had seen. "I wish I were a Space Viking!" "Well, you can't be, Count Ravary. You're an officer of the Royal Navy. You're supposed to fight Space Vikings." "I won't fight you." "You'd have to, if the King commanded," the old captain told him. "No. Prince Trask is my friend. He saved my father's life." "And I won't fight you, either, count. We'll make a lot of fireworks, and then we'll each go home and claim victory. How would that be?" "I've heard of things like that," the captain said. "We had a war with Odin, seventy years ago, that was mostly that sort of battles." "Besides, the King is Prince Trask's friend, too," the boy insisted. "Father and Mummy heard him say so, right on the Throne. Kings don't lie when they're on the Throne, do they?" "Good Kings don't," Trask told him. "Ours is a good King," the young Count of Ravary declared proudly. "I would do anything my King commanded. Except fight Prince Trask. My house owes Prince Trask a debt." Trask nodded approvingly. "That's the way a Sword-World noble would talk, Count Steven," he said. * * * * * The Board of Inquiry, that afternoon, was more like a small and very sedate cocktail party. An Admiral Shefter, who seemed to be very high high-brass, presided while carefully avoiding the appearance of doing so. Alvyn Karffard and Vann Larch and Paytrik Morland were there from the _Nemesis_, and Bentrik and several of the officers from the _Victrix_, and there were a couple of Naval Intelligence officers, and somebody from Operational Planning, and from Ship Construction and Research & Development. They chatted pleasantly and in a deceptively random manner for a while. Then Shefter said: "Well, there's no blame or censure of any sort for the way Commodore Prince Bentrik was surprised. That couldn't have been avoided, at the time." He looked at the Research & Development officer. "It shouldn't be allowed to happen many more times, though." "Not many more, sir. I'd say it'll take my people a month, and then the time it'll take to get all the ships equipped as they come in." Ship Construction didn't think that would take too long. "We'll see to it that you get full information on the new submarine detection system, Prince Trask," the admiral said. "You gentlemen understand you'll have to keep it under your helmets, though," one of the Intelligence men added. "If it got out that we were informing Space Vikings about our technical secrets...." He felt the back of his neck in a way that made Trask suspect that beheadment was the customary form of execution on Marduk. "We'll have to find out where the fellow has his base," Operational Planning said. "I take it, Prince Trask, that you're not going to assume that he was on his flagship when you blew it, and just put paid to him and forget him?" "Oh, no. I'm assuming that he wasn't. I don't believe he and Ormm went anywhere on the same ship, after he came out here and established a base. I think one of them would stay home all the time." "Well, we'll give you everything we have on them," Shefter promised. "Most of that is classified and you'll have to keep quiet about it, too. I just skimmed over the summary of what you gave us; I daresay we'll both get a lot of new information. Have you any idea at all where he might be based, Prince Trask?" "Only that we think it's a non-Terra-type planet." He told them about Dunnan's heavy purchases of air-and-water recycling equipment and carniculture and hydroponic material. "That, of course, helps a great deal." "Yes; there are only about five million planets in the former Federation space-volume that are inhabitable in artificial environment. Including a few completely covered by seas, where you could put in underwater dome cities if you had the time and material." One of the Intelligence officers had been nursing a glass with a tiny remnant of cocktail in it. He downed it suddenly, filled the glass again, and glowered at it in silence for a while. Then he drank it briskly and refilled it. "What I should like to know," he said, "is how this double obscenity of a Dunnan knew we'd have a ship on Audhumla just when we did," he said. "Your talking about underwater dome-cities reminded me of it. I don't think he just pulled that planet out of a hat and then went there prepared to sit on the bottom of the ocean for a year and a half waiting for something to turn up. I think he knew the _Victrix_ was coming to Audhumla, and just about when." "I don't like that, commodore," Shefter said. "You think I do, sir?" the Intelligence officer countered. "There it is, though. We all have to face it." "We do," Shefter agreed. "Get on it, commodore, and I don't need to caution you to screen everybody you put onto it very carefully." He looked at his own glass; it had a bare thimbleful in the bottom. He replenished it slowly and carefully. "It's been a long time since the Navy's had anything like this to worry about." He turned to Trask. "I suppose I can get in touch with you at the Palace whenever I must?" "Well, Prince Trask and I have been invited as house-guests at Prince Edvard's, I mean Baron Cragdale's, hunting lodge," Bentrik said. "We'll be going there directly from here." "Ah." Admiral Shefter smiled slightly. Beside not having three horns and a spiked tail, this Space Viking was definitely _persona grata_ with the Royal Family. "Well, we'll keep in contact, Prince Trask." * * * * * The hunting lodge where Crown Prince Edvard was simple Baron Cragdale lay at the head of a sharply-sloping mountain valley down which a river tumbled. Mountains rose on either side in high scarps, some topped with perpetual snow, glaciers curling down from them. The lower ranges were forested, as was the valley between, and there was a red-mauve alpenglow on the great peak that rose from the head of the valley. For the first time in over a year, Elaine was with him, silently clinging to him to see the beauty of it through his eyes. He had thought that she had gone from him forever. The hunting lodge itself was not quite what a Sword-Worlder would expect a hunting lodge to be. At first sight, from the air, it looked like a sundial, a slender tower rising like a gnomen above a circle of low buildings and formal gardens. The boat landed at the foot of it, and he and Prince and Princess Bentrik and the young Count of Ravary and his tutor descended. Immediately, they were beset by a flurry of servants; the second boat, with the Bentrik servants and their luggage, was circling in to land. Elaine, he discovered, wasn't with him any more, and then he was separated from the Bentriks and was being floated up an inside shaft in a lifter-car. More servants installed him in his rooms, unpacked his cases, drew his bath and even tried to help him take it, and fussed over him while he dressed. There were over a score for dinner. Bentrik had warned him that he'd find some odd types; maybe he meant that they wouldn't all be nobles. Among the commoners there were some professors, mostly social sciences, a labor leader, a couple of Representatives and a member of the Chamber of Delegates, and a couple of social workers, whatever that meant. His own table companion was a Lady Valerie Alvarath. She was beautiful--black hair, and almost startlingly blue eyes, a combination unusual in the Sword-Worlds--and she was intelligent, or at least cleverly articulate. She was introduced as the lady-companion of the Crown Prince's daughter. When he asked where the daughter was, she laughed. "She won't be helping entertain visiting Space Vikings for a long time, Prince Trask. She is precisely eight years old; I saw her getting ready for bed before I came down here. I'll look in on her after dinner." Then the Crown Princess Melanie, on his other hand, asked him some question about Sword-World court etiquette. He stuck to generalities, and what he could remember from a presentation at the court of Excalibur during his student days. These people had a monarchy since before Gram had been colonized; he wasn't going to admit that Gram's had been established since he went off-planet. The table was small enough for everybody to hear what he was saying and to feed questions to him. It lasted all through the meal, and continued when they adjourned for coffee in the library. "But what about your form of government, your social structure, that sort of thing?" somebody, impatient with the artificialities of the court, wanted to know. "Well, we don't use the word government very much," he replied. "We talk a lot about authority and sovereignty, and I'm afraid we burn entirely too much powder over it, but government always seems to us like sovereignty interfering in matters that don't concern it. As long as sovereignty maintains a reasonable semblance of good public order and makes the more serious forms of crime fairly hazardous for the criminals, we're satisfied." "But that's just negative. Doesn't the government do anything positive for the people?" He tried to explain the Sword-World feudal system to them. It was hard, he found, to explain something you have taken for granted all your life to somebody who is quite unfamiliar with it. * * * * * "But the government--the sovereignty, since you don't like the other word--doesn't do anything for the people!" one of the professors objected. "It leaves all the social services to the whim of the individual lord or baron." "And the people have no voice at all; why, that's tyranny," a professor Assemblyman added. He tried to explain that the people had a very distinct and commanding voice, and that barons and lords who wanted to stay alive listened attentively to it. The Assemblyman changed his mind; that wasn't tyranny, it was anarchy. And the professor was still insistent about who performed the social services. "If you mean schools and hospitals and keeping the city clean, the people do that for themselves. The government, if you want to think of it as that, just sees to it that nobody's shooting at them while they're doing it." "That isn't what Professor Pullwell means, Lucas. He means old-age pensions," Prince Bentrik said. "Like this thing Zaspar Makann's whooping for." He'd heard about that, on the voyage from Audhumla. Every person on Marduk would be retired on an adequate pension after thirty years regular employment or at the age of sixty. When he had wanted to know where the money would come from, he had been told that there would be a sales tax, and that the pensions must all be spent within thirty days, which would stimulate business, and the increased business would provide tax money to pay the pensions. "We have a joke about three Gilgameshers space-wrecked on an uninhabited planet," he said. "Ten years later, when they were rescued, all three were immensely wealthy, from trading hats with each other. That's about the way this thing will work." One of the lady social workers bristled; it wasn't right to make derogatory jokes about racial groups. One of the professors harrumphed; wasn't a parallel at all, the Self-Sustaining Rotary Pension Plan was perfectly feasible. With a shock, Trask recalled that he was a professor of economics. Alvyn Karffard wouldn't need any twenty ships to loot Marduk. Just infiltrate it with about a hundred smart confidence men and inside a year they'd own everything on it. That started them all off on Zaspar Makann, though. Some of them thought he had a few good ideas, but was damaging his own case by extremism. One of the wealthier nobles said that he was a reproach to the ruling class; it was their fault that people like Makann could gain a following. One old gentleman said that maybe the Gilgameshers were to blame, themselves, for some of the animosity toward them. He was immediately set upon by all the others and verbally torn to pieces on the spot. Trask didn't feel it proper to quote Goodman Mikhyl to this crowd. He took the responsibility upon himself for saying: "From what I've heard of him, I think he's the most serious threat to civilized society on Marduk." They didn't call him crazy, after all he was a guest, but they didn't ask him what he meant, either. They merely told him that Makann was a crackpot with a contemptible following of half-wits, and just wait till the election and see what happened. "I'm inclined to agree with Prince Trask," Bentrik said soberly. "And I'm afraid the election results will be a shock to us, not to Makann." He hadn't talked that way on the ship. Maybe he'd been looking around and doing some thinking, since he got back. He might have been talking to Goodman Mikhyl, too. There was a screen in the room. He nodded toward it. "He's speaking at a rally of the People's Welfare Party at Drepplin, now," he said. "May I put it on, to show you what I mean?" When the Crown Prince assented, he snapped on the screen and twiddled at the selector. * * * * * A face looked out of it. The features weren't Andray Dunnan's--the mouth was wider, the cheekbones broader, the chin more rounded. But his eyes were Dunnan's, as Trask had seen them on the terrace of Karvall House. Mad eyes. His high-pitched voice screamed: "Our beloved sovereign is a prisoner! He is surrounded by traitors! The Ministries are full of them! They are all traitors! The bloodthirsty reactionaries of the falsely so-called Crown Loyalist Party! The grasping conspiracy of the interstellar bankers! The dirty Gilgameshers! They are all leagued together in an unholy conspiracy! And now this Space Viking, this bloody-handed monster from the Sword-Worlds...." "Shut the horrible man off," somebody was yelling, in competition with the hypnotic scream of the speaker. The trouble was, they couldn't. They could turn off the screen, but Zaspar Makann would go on screaming, and millions all over the planet would still hear him. Bentrik twiddled the selector. The voice stuttered briefly, and then came echoing out of the speaker, but this time the pickup was somewhere several hundred feet above a great open park. It was densely packed with people, most of them wearing clothes a farm tramp on Gram wouldn't be found dead in, but here and there among them were blocks of men in what was almost but not quite military uniform, each with a short and thick swagger-stick with a knobbed head. Across the park, in the distance, the head and shoulders of Zaspar Makann loomed a hundred feet high in a huge screen. Whenever he stopped for breath, a shout would go up, beginning with the blocks of uniformed men: "_Makann! Makann! Makann the Leader! Makann to Power!_" "You even let him have a private army?" he asked the Crown Prince. "Oh, those silly buffoons and their musical-comedy uniforms," the Crown Prince shrugged. "They aren't armed." "Not visibly," he granted. "Not yet." "I don't know where they'd get arms." "No, Your Highness," Prince Bentrik said. "Neither do I. That's what I'm worried about." XXII He succeeded, the next morning, in convincing everybody that he wanted to be alone for a while, and was sitting in a garden, watching the rainbows in the midst of a big waterfall across the valley. Elaine would have liked that, but she wasn't with him, now. Then he realized that somebody was speaking to him, in a small, bashful voice. He turned, and saw a little girl in shorts and a sleeveless jacket, holding in her arms a long-haired blond puppy with big ears and appealing eyes. "Hello, both of you," he said. The puppy wriggled and tried to lick the girl's face. "Don't, Mopsy. We want to talk to this gentleman," she said. "Are you really and truly the Space Viking?" "Really and truly. And who are you two?" "I'm Myrna. And this is Mopsy." "Hello, Myrna. Hello, Mopsy." Hearing his name, the puppy wriggled again and dropped from the child's arms; after a brief hesitation, he came over and jumped onto Trask's lap, licking his face. While he petted the dog, the girl came over and sat on the bench beside him. [Illustration] "Mopsy likes you," she said. After a moment, she added: "I like you, too." "And I like you," he said. "Would you want to be my girl? You know, a Space Viking has to have a girl on every planet. How would you like to be my girl on Marduk?" Myrna thought that over carefully. "I'd like to, but I couldn't. You see, I'm going to have to be Queen, some day." "Oh?" "Yes. Grandpa is King now, and when he's through being King, Pappa will have to be King, and then when he's through being King, I can't be King because I'm a girl, so I'll have to be Queen. And I can't be anybody's girl, because I'm going to have to marry somebody I don't know, for reasons of state." She thought some more, and lowered her voice. "I'll tell you a secret. I am a Queen now." "Oh, you are?" She nodded. "We are Queen, in our own right, of our Royal Bedroom, our Royal Playroom, and our Royal Bathroom. And Mopsy is our faithful subject." "Is Your Majesty absolute ruler of these domains?" "No," she said disgustedly. "We must at all times defer to our Royal Ministers, just like Grandpa has to. That means, I have to do just what they tell me to. That's Lady Valerie, and Margot, and Dame Eunice, and Sir Thomas. But Grandpa says they are good and wise ministers. Are you really a Prince? I didn't know Space Vikings were Princes." "Well, my King says I am. And I am ruler of my planet, and I'll tell you a secret. I don't have to do what anybody tells me." "Gee! Are you a tyrant? You're awfully big and strong. I'll bet you've slain just hundreds of cruel and wicked enemies." "Thousands, Your Majesty." He wished that weren't literally true; he didn't know how many of them had been little girls like Myrna and little dogs like Mopsy. He found that he was holding both of them tightly. The girl was saying: "But you feel bad about it." These children must be telepaths! "A Space Viking who is also a Prince must do many things he doesn't want to do." "I know. So does a Queen. I hope Grandpa and Pappa don't get through being King for just years and years." She looked over his shoulder. "Oh! And now I suppose I've got to do something else I don't want to. Lessons, I bet." He followed her eyes. The girl who had been his dinner companion was approaching; she wore a wide sunshade hat, and a gown that trailed filmy gauze like sunset-colored mist. There was another woman, in the garb of an upper servant, with her. "Lady Valerie and who else?" he whispered. "Margot. She's my nurse. She's awful strict, but she's nice." "Prince Trask, has Her Highness been bothering you?" Lady Valerie asked. "Oh, far from it." He rose, still holding the funny little dog. "But you should say, Her Majesty. She has informed me that she is sovereign of three princely domains. And of one dear loving subject." He gave the subject back to the sovereign. "You should not have told Prince Trask that," Lady Valerie chided. "When Your Majesty is outside her domains, Your Majesty must remain incognito. Now, Your Majesty must go with the Minister of the Bedchamber; the Minister of Education awaits an audience." "Arithmetic, I bet. Well, good-by, Prince Trask. I hope I can see you again. Say good-by, Mopsy." She went away with her nurse, the little dog looking back over her shoulder. "I came out to enjoy the gardens alone," he said, "and now I find I'd rather enjoy them in company. If your Ministerial duties do not forbid, could you be the company?" "But gladly, Prince Trask. Her Majesty will be occupied with serious affairs of state. Square root. Have you seen the grottoes? They're down this way." * * * * * That afternoon, one of the gentlemen-attendants caught up with him; Baron Cragdale would be gratified if Prince Trask could find time to talk with him privately. Before they had talked more than a few minutes, however, Baron Cragdale abruptly became Crown Prince Edvard. "Prince Trask, Admiral Shefter tells me that you and he are having informal discussions about co-operation against this mutual enemy of ours, Dunnan. This is fine; it has my approval, and the approval of Prince Vandarvant, the Prime Minister, and, I might add, that of Goodman Mikhyl. I think it ought to go further, though. A formal treaty between Tanith and Marduk would be greatly to the advantage of both." "I'd be inclined to think so, Prince Edvard. But aren't you proposing marriage on rather short acquaintance? It's only been fifty hours since the _Nemesis_ orbited in here." "Well, we know a bit about you and your planet beforehand. There's a large Gilgamesher colony here. You have a few on Tanith, haven't you? Well, anything one Gilgamesher knows, they all find out, and ours are co-operative with Naval intelligence." That would be why Andray Dunnan was having no dealings with Gilgameshers. It would also be what Zaspar Makann meant when he ranted about the Gilgamesh Interstellar Conspiracy. "I can see where an arrangement like that would be mutually advantageous. I'd be quite in favor of it. Co-operation against Dunnan, of course, and reciprocal trade-rights on each other's trade-planets, and direct trade between Marduk and Tanith. And Beowulf and Amaterasu would come into it, too. Does this also have the approval of the Prime Minister and the King?" "Goodman Mikhyl's in favor of it; there's a distinction between him and the King, as you'll have noticed. The King can't be in favor of anything till the Assembly or the Chancellor express an opinion. Prince Vandarvant favors it personally; as Prime Minister, he is reserving his opinion. We'll have to get the support of the Crown Loyalist Party before he can take an unequivocal position." "Well, Baron Cragdale; speaking as Baron Trask of Traskon, suppose we just work out a rough outline of what this treaty ought to be, and then consult, unofficially, with a few people whom you can trust, and see what can be done about presenting it to the proper government officials...." * * * * * The Prime Minister came to Cragdale that evening, heavily incognito and accompanied by several leaders of the Crown Loyalist Party. In principle, they all favored a treaty with Tanith. Politically, they had doubts. Not before the election; too controversial a subject. "Controversial," it appeared, was the dirtiest dirty-name anything could be called on Marduk. It would alienate the labor vote; they'd think increased imports would threaten employment in Mardukan industries. Some of the interstellar trading companies would like a chance at the Tanith planets; others would resent Tanith ships being given access to theirs. And Zaspar Makann's party were already shrieking protests about the _Nemesis_ being repaired by the Royal Navy. And a couple of professors who inclined toward Makann had introduced a resolution calling for the court-martial of Prince Bentrik and an investigation of the loyalty of Admiral Shefter. And somebody else, probably a stooge of Makann's, was claiming that Bentrik had sold the _Victrix_ to the Space Vikings and that the films of the battle of Audhumla were fakes, photographed in miniature at the Navy Moon Base. Admiral Shefter, when Trask flew in to see him the next day, was contemptuous about this last. "Ignore the whole bloody thing; we get something like that before every general election. On this planet, you can always kick the Gilgameshers and the Armed Forces with impunity, neither have votes and neither can kick back. The whole thing'll be forgotten the day after the election. It always is." "That's if Makann doesn't win the election," Trask qualified. "That's no matter who wins the election. They can't any of them get along without the Navy, and they bloody well know it." Trask wanted to know if Intelligence had been getting anything. "Not on how Dunnan found out the _Victrix_ had been ordered to Audhumla, no," Shefter said. "There wasn't any secrecy about it; at least a thousand people, from myself down to the shoeshine boys, could have known about it as soon as the order was taped. "As for the list of ships you gave me, yes. One of them puts in to this planet regularly; she spaced out from here only yesterday morning. The _Honest Horris_." "Well, great Satan, haven't you done anything?" "I don't know if there's anything we can do. Oh, we're investigating, but.... You see, this ship first showed up here four years ago, commanded by some kind of a Neobarb, not a Gilgamesher, named Horris Sasstroff. He claimed to be from Skathi; the locals there have a few ships, the Space Vikings had a base on Skathi about a hundred or so years ago. Naturally, the ship had no papers. Tramp trading among the Neobarbs, it might be years before you'd put in on a planet where they'd ever heard of ship's papers. "The ship seems to have been in bad shape, probably abandoned on Skathi as junk a century ago and tinkered up by the locals. She was in here twice, according to the commercial shipping records, and the second time she was in too bad shape to be moved out, and Sasstroff couldn't pay to have her rebuilt, so she was libeled for spaceport charges and sold. Some one-lung trading company bought her and fixed her up a little; they went bankrupt in a year or so, and she was bought by another small company, Startraders, Ltd., and they've been using her on a milk-run to and from Gimli. They seem to be a legitimate outfit, but we're looking into them. We're looking for Sasstroff, too, but we haven't been able to find him." "If you have a ship out Gimli way, you might find out if anybody there knows anything about her. You may discover that she hasn't been going there at all." "We might, at that," Shefter agreed. "We'll just find out." * * * * * Everybody at Cragdale knew about the projected treaty with Tanith by the morning after Trask's first conversation with Prince Edvard on the subject. The Queen of the Royal Bedroom, the Royal Playroom and the Royal Bathroom was insisting that her domains should have a treaty with Tanith, too. It was beginning to look to Trask as though that would be the only treaty he'd sign on Marduk, and he was having his doubts about that. "Do you think it would be wise?" he asked Lady Valerie Alvarath. The Queen of three rooms and one four-footed subject had already decreed that Lady Valerie should be the Space Viking Prince's girl on the planet of Marduk. "If it got out, these People's Welfare lunatics would pick it up and twist it into evidence of some kind of a sinister plot." "Oh, I believe Her Majesty could sign a treaty with Prince Trask," Her Majesty's Prime Minister decided. "But it would have to be kept very secret." "Gee!" Myrna's eyes widened. "A real secret treaty; just like the wicked rulers of the old dictatorship!" She hugged her subject ecstatically. "I'll bet Grandpa doesn't even have any secret treaties!" * * * * * In a few days, everybody on Marduk knew that a treaty with Tanith was being discussed. If they didn't, it was no fault of Zaspar Makann's party, who seemed to command a disconcertingly large number of telecast stations, and who drenched the ether with horror stories of Space Viking atrocities and denunciations of carefully unnamed traitors surrounding the King and the Crown Prince who were about to betray Marduk to rapine and plunder. The leak evidently did not come from Cragdale, for it was generally believed that Trask was still at the Royal Palace in Malverton. At least, that was where the Makannists were demonstrating against him. He watched such a demonstration by screen; the pickup was evidently on one of the landing stages of the palace, overlooking the wide parks surrounding it. They were packed almost solid with people, surging forward toward the thin cordon of police. The front of the mob looked like a checkerboard--a block in civilian dress, then a block in the curiously effeminate-looking uniforms of Zaspar Makann's People's Watchmen, then more in ordinary garb, and more People's Watchmen. Over the heads of the crowds, at intervals, floated small contragravity lifters on which were mounted the amplifiers that were bellowing: "SPACE VI-KING--GO HOME! SPACE VI-KING--GO HOME!" The police stood motionless, at parade rest; the mob surged closer. When they were fifty yards away, the blocks of People's Watchmen ran forward, then spread out until they formed a line six deep across the entire front; other blocks, from the rear, pushed the ordinary demonstrators aside and took their place. Hating them more every second, Trask grudged approval of a smart and disciplined maneuver. How long, he wondered, had they been drilling in that sort of tactics? Without stopping, they continued their advance on the police, who had now shifted their stance. "SPACE VI-KING--GO HOME! SPACE VI-KING--GO HOME!" "Fire!" he heard himself yelling. "Don't let them get any closer, fire now!" They had nothing to fire with; they had only truncheons, no better weapons than the knobbed swagger-sticks of the People's Watchmen. They simply disappeared, after a brief flurry of blows, and the Makann storm-troopers continued their advance. And that was that. The gates of the Palace were shut; the mob, behind a front of Makann People's Watchmen, surged up to them and stopped. The loud-speakers bellowed on, reiterating their four-word chant. "Those police were murdered," he said. "They were murdered by the man who ordered them out there unarmed." "That would be Count Naydnayr, the Minister of Security," somebody said. "Then he's the one you want to hang for it." "What else would you have done?" Crown Prince Edvard challenged. "Put up about fifty combat cars. Drawn a deadline, and opened machine-gun fire as soon as the mob crossed it, and kept on firing till the survivors turned tail and ran. Then sent out more cars, and shot everybody wearing a People's Watchmen uniform, all over town. Inside forty-eight hours, there'd be no People's Welfare party, and no Zaspar Makann either." The Crown Prince's face stiffened. "That may be the way you do things in the Sword-Worlds, Prince Trask. It's not the way we do things here on Marduk. Our government does not propose to be guilty of shedding the blood of its people." He had it on the tip of his tongue to retort that if they didn't, the people would end by shedding theirs. Instead, he said softly: "I'm sorry, Prince Edvard. You had a wonderful civilization here on Marduk. You could have made almost anything of it. But it's too late now. You've torn down the gates; the barbarians are in." [Illustration][Illustration] XXIII The colored turbulence faded into the gray of hyperspace; five hundred hours to Tanith. Guatt Kirbey was securing his control-panel, happy to return to his music. And Vann Larch would go back to his paints and brushes, and Alvyn Karffard to the working model of whatever it was he had left unfinished when the _Nemesis_ had emerged at the end of the jump from Audhumla. Trask went to the index of the ship's library and punched for _History, Old Terran_. There was plenty of that, thanks to Otto Harkaman. Then he punched for _Hitler, Adolf_. Harkaman was right; anything that could happen in a human society had already happened, in one form or another, somewhere and at some time. Hitler could help him understand Zaspar Makann. By the time the ship came out, with the yellow sun of Tanith in the middle of the screen, he knew a great deal about Hitler, occasionally referred to as Schicklgruber, and he understood, with sorrow, how the lights of civilization on Marduk were going out. Beside the _Lamia_, stripped of her Dillinghams and crammed with heavy armament and detection instruments, the _Space Scourge_ and the _Queen Flavia_ were on off-planet watch. There were half a dozen other ships on orbit just above atmosphere; a Gilgamesher, one of the Gram-Tanith freighters, a couple of free-lance Space Vikings, and a new and unfamiliar ship. When he asked the moonbase who she was, he was told that she was the _Sun Goddess_, Amaterasu. That was, by almost a year, better than he had expected of them. Otto Harkaman was out in the _Corisande_, raiding and visiting the trade-planets. He found his cousin, Nikkolay Trask, at Rivington; when he inquired about Traskon, Nikkolay cursed. "I don't know anything about Traskon; I haven't anything to do with Traskon, any more. Traskon is now the personal property of our well loved--very well loved--Queen Evita. The Trasks don't own enough land on Gram now for a family cemetery. You see what you did?" he added bitterly. "You needn't rub it in, Nikkolay. If I'd stayed on Gram, I'd have helped put Angus on the throne, and it would have been about the same in the end." "It could be a lot different," Nikkolay said. "You could bring your ships and men back to Gram and put yourself on the throne." "No; I'll never go back to Gram. Tanith's my planet, now. But I will renounce my allegiance to Angus. I can trade on Morglay or Joyeuse or Flamberge just as easily." "You won't have to; you can trade with Newhaven and Bigglersport. Count Lionel and Duke Joris are both defying Angus; they've refused to furnish him men, they've driven out his tax collectors, those they haven't hanged, and they're building ships of their own. Angus is building ships, too. I don't know whether he's going to use them to fight Bigglersport and Newhaven, or attack you, but there's going to be a war before another year's out." The _Goodhope_ and the _Speedwell_, he found, had gone back to Gram. They were commanded by men who had come into favor at the court of King Angus recently. The _Black Star_ and the _Queen Flavia_--whose captain had contemptuously ignored an order from Gram to re-christen her _Queen Evita_--had remained. They were his ships, not King Angus'. The captain of the merchantman from Wardshaven now on orbit refused to take a cargo to Newhaven; he had been chartered by King Angus, and would take orders from no one else. "All right," Trask told him. "This is your last voyage here. You bring that ship back under Angus of Wardshaven's charter and we'll fire on her." Then he had the regalia he had worn in his last audiovisual to Angus dusted off. At first, he had decided to proclaim himself King of Tanith. Lord Valpry, Baron Rathmore and his cousin all advised against it. "Just call yourself Prince of Tanith," Valpry said. "The title won't make any difference in your authority here, and if you do lay claim to the throne of Gram, nobody can say you're a foreign king trying to annex the planet." He had no intention of doing anything of the kind, but Valpry was quite in earnest. So he sat on his throne, as sovereign Prince of Tanith, and renounced his allegiance to "Angus, Duke of Wardshaven, self-styled King of Gram." They sent it back on the otherwise empty freighter. Another copy went to the Count of Newhaven, along with a cargo in the _Sun Goddess_, the first non-Space-Viking ship into Gram from the Old Federation. * * * * * Seven hundred and fifty hours after the return of the _Nemesis_, the _Corisande II_ emerged from her last microjump, and immediately Harkaman began hearing of the Battle of Audhumla and the destruction of the _Yo-Yo_ and the _Enterprise_. At first, he merely reported a successful raiding voyage, from which he was bringing rich booty. Oddly varigated booty, it was remarked, when he began itemizing it. "Why, yes," he replied. "Secondhand booty. I raided Dagon for it." Dagon was a Space Viking base planet, occupied by a character named Fedrig Barragon. A number of ships operated from it, including a couple commanded by Barragon's half-breed sons. "Barragon's ships were raiding one of our planets," Harkaman said. "Ganpat. They looted a couple of cities, destroyed one, killed a lot of the locals. I found out about it from Captain Ravallo of the _Black Star_, on Indra; he'd just been from Ganpat. Beowulf wasn't too far out of the way, so we put in there, and found the _Grendelsbane_ just ready to space out." The _Grendelsbane_ was the second of Beowulf's ships, sister to the _Viking's Gift_. "So she joined us, and the three of us went to Dagon. We blew up one of Barragon's ships, and put the other one down out of commission, and then we sacked his base. There was a Gilgamesher colony there; we didn't bother them. They'll tell what we did, and why." "That should furnish Prince Viktor of Xochitl something to ponder," Trask said. "Where are the other ships, now?" "The _Grendelsbane_ went back to Beowulf; she'll stop at Amaterasu to do a little trading on the way. The _Black Star_ went to Xochitl. Just a friendly visit, to say hello to Prince Viktor for you. Ravallo has a lot of audiovisuals we made during the Dagon Operation. Then she's going to Jagannath to visit Nikky Gratham." * * * * * Harkaman approved his attitude and actions with regard to King Angus. "We don't need to do business with the Sword-Worlds at all. We have our own industries, we can produce what we need, and we can trade with Beowulf and Amaterasu, and with Xochitl and Jagannath and Hoth, if we can make any sort of agreement with them; everybody agrees to let everybody else's trade-planets alone. It's too bad you couldn't get some kind of an agreement with Marduk." Harkaman regretted that for a few seconds, and then shrugged. "Our grandchildren, if any, will probably be raiding Marduk." "You think it'll be like that?" "Don't you? You were there; you saw what's happening. The barbarians are rising; they have a leader, and they're uniting. Every society rests on a barbarian base. The people who don't understand civilization, and wouldn't like it if they did. The hitchhikers. The people who create nothing, and who don't appreciate what others have created for them, and who think civilization is something that just exists and that all they need to do is enjoy what they can understand of it--luxuries, a high living standard, and easy work for high pay. Responsibilities? Phooey! What do they have a government for?" Trask nodded. "And now, the hitchhikers think they know more about the car than the people who designed it, so they're going to grab the controls. Zaspar Makann says they can, and he's the Leader." He poured a drink from a decanter that had been looted on Pushan; there was a planet where a republic had been overthrown in favor of a dictatorship four centuries ago, and the planetary dictatorship had fissioned into a dozen regional dictatorships, and now they were down to the peasant-village and handcraft-industry level. "I don't understand it, though. I was reading about Hitler, on the way home. I wouldn't be surprised if Zaspar Makann had been reading about Hitler, too. He's using all Hitler's tricks. But Hitler came to power in a country which had been impoverished by a military defeat. Marduk hasn't fought a war in almost two generations, and that one was a farce." "It wasn't the war that put Hitler into power. It was the fact that the ruling class of his nation, the people who kept things running, were discredited. The masses, the homemade barbarians, didn't have anybody to take their responsibilities for them. What they have on Marduk is a ruling class that has been discrediting itself. A ruling class that's ashamed of its privileges and shirks its duties. A ruling class that has begun to believe that the masses are just as good as they are, which they manifestly are not. And a ruling class that won't use force to maintain its position. And they have a democracy, and they are letting the enemies of democracy shelter themselves behind democratic safeguards." "We don't have any of this democracy in the Sword-Worlds, if that's the word for it," he said. "And our ruling class aren't ashamed of their power, and our people aren't hitchhikers, and as long as they get decent treatment they don't try to run things. And we're not doing so well." The Morglay dynastic war of a couple of centuries ago, still sputtering and smoking. The Oskarsan-Elmersan War on Durendal, into which Flamberge and now Joyeuse had intruded. And the situation on Gram, fast approaching critical mass. Harkaman nodded agreement. "You know why? Our rulers are the barbarians among us. There isn't one of them--Napolyon of Flamberge, Rodolf of Excalibur, or Angus of about half of Gram--who is devoted to civilization or anything else outside himself, and that's the mark of the barbarian." "What are you devoted to, Otto?" "You. You are my chieftain. That's another mark of the barbarian." * * * * * Before he had left Marduk, Admiral Shefter had ordered a ship to Gimli to check on the _Honest Horris_; a few men and a pinnace would be left behind to contact any ship from Tanith. He sent Boake Valkanhayn off in the _Space Scourge_. Lionel of Newhaven's _Blue Comet_ came in from Gram with a cargo of general merchandise. Her captain wanted fissionables and gadolinium; Count Lionel was building more ships. There was a rumor that Omfray of Glaspyth was laying claim to the throne of Gram, in the right of his great-grandmother's sister, who had been married to the great-grandfather of Duke Angus. It was a completely trivial and irrelevant claim, but the story was that it would be supported by King Konrad of Haulteclere. [Illustration] Immediately, Baron Rathmore, Lord Valpry, Lothar Ffayle and the other Gram people began clamoring that he should go back with a fleet and seize the throne for himself. Harkaman, Valkanhayn, Karffard and the other Space Vikings were as vehement against it. Harkaman had the loss of the other _Corisande_ on Durendal to remember, and the others wanted no part in Sword-World squabbles, and there was renewed agitation that he should start calling himself King of Tanith. He refused to do either, which left both parties dissatisfied. So partisan politics had finally come to Tanith. Maybe that was another milestone of progress. And there was the Treaty of Khepera, between the Princely State of Tanith, the Commonwealth of Beowulf, and the Planetary League of Amaterasu. The Kheperans agreed to allow bases on their planet, to furnish workers, and to send students to school on all three planets. Tanith, Beowulf and Amaterasu obligated themselves to joint defense of Khepera, to free trade among themselves, and to render one another armed assistance. That _was_ a milestone of progress, and no argument about it. * * * * * The _Space Scourge_ returned from Gimli, and Valkanhayn reported that nobody on the planet had ever seen or heard of the _Honest Horris_. They had found a Mardukan Navy ship's pinnace there, manned entirely by officers, some of them Navy Intelligence. According to them, the investigation into the activities of that ship had come to an impasse. The ostensible owners claimed, and had papers to prove it, that they had chartered her to a private trader, and he claimed, and had papers to prove it, that he was a citizen of the Planetary Republic of Aton, and as soon as they began questioning him, he was rescued by the Atonian ambassador, who lodged a vehement protest with the Mardukan Foreign Ministry. Immediately, the People's Welfare Party had leaped into the incident and branded the investigation as an unwarranted persecution of a national of a friendly power at the instigation of corrupt tools of the Gilgamesh Interstellar Conspiracy. "So that's it," Valkanhayn finished. "It seems they're having an election and they're afraid to antagonize anybody who might have a vote. So the Navy had to drop the investigation. Everybody on Marduk's scared of this Makann. You think there might be some tie-up between him and Dunnan?" "The idea's occurred to me. Have there been any more raids on Marduk trade-planets since the Battle of Audhumla?" "A couple. The _Bolide_ was on Audhumla a while ago. There were a couple of Mardukan ships there, and they had the _Victrix_ fixed up enough to do some fighting. They ran the _Bolide_ out." A study of the time between the destruction of the _Enterprise_ and _Yo-Yo_ and the appearance of the _Bolide_ could give them a limiting radius around Audhumla. It did; seven hundred light-years, which also included Tanith. So he sent Harkaman in the _Corisande_ and Ravallo in the _Black Star_ to visit the planets Marduk traded with, looking for Dunnan ships and exchanging information and assistance with the Royal Mardukan Navy. Almost at once, he regretted it; the next Gilgamesher into orbit on Tanith brought a story that Prince Viktor was collecting a fleet on Xochitl. He sent warnings off to Amaterasu and Beowulf and Khepera. A ship came in from Bigglersport, a heavily armed chartered freighter. There was sporadic fighting in a dozen places on Gram, now--resistance to efforts on the part of King Angus to collect taxes, and raids by unidentified persons on estates confiscated from alleged traitors and given to Garvan Spasso, who had now been promoted from Baron to Count. And Rovard Grauffis was dead; poisoned, everybody said, either by Spasso or Queen Evita or both. Even with the threat from Xochitl, some of the former Wardshaven nobles began talking about sending ships to Gram. Less than a thousand hours after he had left, Ravallo was back in the _Black Star_. "I went to Gimli, and I wasn't there fifty hours before a Mardukan Navy ship came in. They were glad to see me; it saved them sending off a pinnace for Tanith. They had news for you, and a couple of passengers." "Passengers?" "Yes. You'll see who they are when they come down. And don't let anybody with side-whiskers and buttoned-up coats see them," Ravallo said. "What those people know gets all over the place before long." * * * * * The visitors were Lucile, Princess Bentrik, and her son, the young Count of Ravary. They dined with Trask; only Captain Ravallo was also present. "I didn't want to leave my husband, and I didn't want to come here and impose myself and Steven on you, Prince Trask," she began, "but he insisted. We spent the whole voyage to Gimli concealed in the captain's quarters; only a few of the officers knew we were aboard." "Makann won the election. Is that it?" he asked. "And Prince Bentrik doesn't want to risk you and Steven being used as hostages?" "That's it," she said. "He didn't really win the election, but he might as well have. Nobody has a majority of seats in the Chamber of Representatives but he's formed a coalition with several of the splinter parties, and I'm ashamed to say that a number of Crown Loyalist members--Crowd of Disloyalists, I call them--are voting with him, now. They've coined some ridiculous phrase about the 'wave of the future,' whatever that means." "If you can't lick them, join them," Trask said. "If you can't lick them, lick their boots," the Count of Ravary put in. "My son is a trifle bitter," Princess Bentrik said. "I must confess to a trace of bitterness, too." "Well, that's the Representatives," Trask said. "What about the rest of the government?" "With the splinter-party and Disloyalist support, they got a majority of seats in the Delegates. Most of them would have indignantly denied, a month before, having any connection with Makann, but a hundred out of a hundred and twenty are his supporters. Makann, of course, is Chancellor." "And who is Prime Minister?" he asked. "Andray Dunnan?" She looked slightly baffled for an instant then said, "Oh. No. The Prime Minister is Crown Prince Edvard. No; Baron Cragdale. That isn't a royal title, so by some kind of a fiction I can't pretend to understand he is not Prime Minister as a member of the Royal Family." "If you can't ..." the boy started. "Steven! I forbid you to say that about ... Baron Cragdale. He believes, very sincerely, that the election was an expression of the will of the people, and that it is his duty to bow to it." He wished Otto Harkaman were there. He could probably name, without stopping for breath, a hundred great nations that went down into rubble because their rulers believed that they should bow instead of rule, and couldn't bring themselves to shed the blood of their people. Edvard would have been a fine and admirable man, as a little country baron. Where he was, he was a disaster. He asked if the People's Watchman had dragged their guns out from under the bed and started carrying them in public yet. "Oh, yes. You were quite right; they were armed, all the time. Not just small arms; combat vehicles and heavy weapons. As soon as the new government was formed, they were given status as a part of the Planetary Armed Forces. They have taken over every police station on the planet." "And the King?" "Oh, he carries on, and shrugs and says, 'I just reign here.' What else can he do? We've been whittling down and filching away the powers of the Throne for the last three centuries." "What is Prince Bentrik doing, and why did he think there was danger that you two would be used as hostages?" "He's going to fight," she said. "Don't ask me how, or what with. Maybe as a guerrilla in the mountains, I don't know. But if he can't lick them, he won't join them. I wanted to stay with him and help him; he told me I could help him best by placing myself and Steven where he wouldn't worry about us." "I wanted to stay," the boy said. "I could have fought with him. But he said that I must take care of Mother. And if he were killed, I must be able to avenge him." "You talk like a Sword-Worlder; I told you that once before." He hesitated, then turned again to Princess Bentrik. "How is little Princess Myrna?" he asked, and then, trying to be casual, added, "and Lady Valerie?" She seemed so clearly real and present to him, blue eyes and space-black hair, more real than Elaine had been to him for years. "They're at Cragdale; they'll be safe there. I hope." XXIV Attempting to conceal the presence on Tanith of Prince Bentrik's wife and son was pushing caution beyond necessity. Admitted that the news would leak back to Marduk via Gilgamesh, it was over seven hundred light-years to the latter and almost a thousand from there to the former. Better that Princess Lucile should enjoy Rivington society, such as it was, and escape, for a moment now and then, from anxiety about her husband. At ten--no, almost twelve; it had been a year and a half since Trask had left Marduk--the boy Count of Ravary was more easily diverted. At last, he was among real Space Vikings, on a Space Viking planet, and he was trying to be everywhere and see everything at once. No doubt he would be imagining himself a Space Viking, returning to Marduk with a vast armada to rescue his father and the King from Zaspar Makann. Trask was satisfied with that; as a host he left much to be desired. He had his worries, too, and all of them bore the same name: Prince Viktor of Xochitl. He went over with Manfred Ravallo everything the captain of the _Black Star_ could tell him. He had talked once with Viktor; the lord of Xochitl had been coldly polite and noncommittal. His subordinates had been frankly hostile. There had been five ships on orbit or landed at Viktor's spaceport beside the usual Gilgameshers and itinerant traders, two of them Viktor's own, and a big armed freighter had come in from Haulteclere as the _Black Star_ was leaving. There was considerable activity at the shipyards and around the spaceport, as though in preparation for something on a large scale. Xochitl was a thousand light-years from Tanith. He rejected immediately the idea of launching a preventative attack; his ships might reach Xochitl to find it undefended, and then return to find Tanith devastated. Things like that had happened in space-war. The only thing to do was sit tight, defend Tanith when Viktor attacked, and then counterattack if he had any ships left by that time. Prince Viktor was probably reasoning in the same way. He had no time to think about Andray Dunnan, except, now and then, to wish that Otto Harkaman would stop thinking about him and bring the _Corisande_ home. He needed that ship on Tanith, and the wits and courage of her commander. More news--Gilgamesh sources--came in from Xochitl. There were only two ships, both armed merchantmen, on the planet. Prince Viktor had spaced out with the rest an estimated two thousand hours before the story reached him. That was twice as long as it would take the Xochitl armada to reach Tanith. He hadn't gone to Beowulf; that was only sixty-five hours from Tanith and they would have heard about it long ago. Or Amaterasu, or Khepera. How many ships he had was a question; not fewer than five, and possibly more. He could have slipped into the Tanith system and hidden his ships on one of the outer uninhabitable planets. He sent Valkanhayn and Ravallo microjumping their ships from one to another to check. They returned to report in the negative. At least, Viktor of Xochitl wasn't camped inside their own system, waiting for them to leave Tanith open to attack. But he was somewhere, and up to nothing even resembling good, and there was no possible way of guessing when his ships would be emerging on Tanith. The only thing to do was wait for him. When he did, Trask was confident that he would emerge from hyperspace into serious trouble. He had the _Nemesis_, the _Space Scourge_, the _Black Star_ and _Queen Flavia_, the strongly rebuilt _Lamia_, and several independent Space Viking ships, among them the _Damnthing_ of his friend Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan, who had volunteered to stay and help in the defense. This, of course, was not pure altruism. If Viktor attacked and had his fleet blown to Em-See-Square, Xochitl would lie open and unprotected, and there was enough loot on Xochitl to cram everybody's ships. Everybody's ships who had ships when the Battle of Tanith was over, of course. He was apologetic to Princess Bentrik: "I'm very sorry you jumped out of Zaspar Makann's frying pan into Prince Viktor's fire," he began. She laughed at that. "I'll take my chances on the fire. I seem to see a lot of good firemen around. If there is a battle you will see that Steven's in a safe place, won't you?" "In a space attack, there are no safe places. I'll keep him with me." The young Count of Ravary wanted to know which ship he would serve on when the attack came. "Well, you won't be on any ship, Count. You'll be on my staff." * * * * * Two days later, the _Corisande_ came out of hyperspace. Harkaman was guardedly noncommittal by screen. Trask took a landing craft and went out to meet the ship. "Marduk doesn't like us, any more," Harkaman told him. "They have ships on all their trade-planets, and they all have orders to fire on any, repeat any, Space Vikings, including the ships of the self-styled Prince of Tanith. I got this from Captain Garravay of the _Vindex_. After we were through talking, we fought a nice little ship-to-ship action for him to make films of. I don't think anybody could see anything wrong with it." "This order came from Makann?" "From the Admiral commanding. He isn't your friend Shefter; Shefter retired on account of quote ill-health unquote. He is now in a quote hospital unquote." "Where's Prince Bentrik?" "Nobody knows. Charges of high treason were brought against him, and he just vanished. Gone underground, or secretly arrested and executed; take your choice." He wondered just what he'd tell Princess Lucile and Count Steven. "They have ships on all the planets they trade with. Fourteen of them. That isn't to catch Dunnan. That's to disperse the Navy away from Marduk. They don't trust the Navy. Is Prince Edvard still Prime Minister?" "Yes, as of Garravay's last information. It seems Makann is behaving in a scrupulously legal manner, outside of making his People's Watchmen part of the armed forces. Protesting his devotion to the King every time he opens his mouth." "When will the fire be, I wonder?" "Huh? Oh yes, you were reading up on Hitler. That I don't know. Probably happened by now." He just told Princess Lucile that her husband had gone into hiding; he couldn't be sure whether she was relieved or more worried. The boy was sure that he was doing something highly romantic and heroic. Some of the volunteers tired of waiting, after another thousand hours, and spaced out. The _Viking's Gift_ of Beowulf came in with a cargo, and went on orbit after discharging it to join the watch. A Gilgamesher came in from Amaterasu and reported everything quiet there; as soon as her captain had sold his cargo, with a minimum of haggling, he spaced out again. His behavior convinced everybody that the attack would come in a matter of hours. It didn't. * * * * * Three thousand hours had passed since the first warning had reached Tanith, that made five thousand since Viktor's ships were supposed to have left Xochitl. There were those, Boake Valkanhayn among them, who doubted, now, if he ever had. "The whole thing's just a big Gilgamesher lie," he was declaring. "Somebody--Nikky Gratham, or the Everrards, or maybe Viktor himself--paid them to tell us that, to pin our ships down here. Or they made it up themselves, so they could make hay on our trade-planets." "Let's go down to the Ghetto and clean out the whole gang," somebody else took up. "Anything one of them's in, they're all in together." "Nifflheim with that; let's all space out for Xochitl," Manfred Ravallo proposed. "We have enough ships to lick them on Tanith, we have enough to lick them on their own planet." He managed to talk them out of both courses of action--what was he, anyhow; sovereign Prince of Tanith, or the non-ruling King of Marduk, or just the chieftain of a disciplineless gang of barbarians? One of the independents spaced out in disgust. The next day, two others came in, loaded with booty from a raid on Braggi, and decided to stay around for a while and see what happened. And four days after that, a five-hundred-foot hyperspace yacht, bearing the daggers and chevrons of Bigglersport, came in. As soon as she was out of the last microjump, she began calling by screen. Trask didn't know the man who was screening, but Hugh Rathmore did; Duke Joris' confidential secretary. "Prince Trask; I must speak to you as soon as possible," he began, almost stuttering. Whatever the urgency of his mission, one would have thought that a three-thousand-hour voyage would have taken some of the edge from it. "It is of the first importance." "You are speaking to me. This screen is reasonably secure. And if it's of the first importance, the sooner you tell me about it...." "Prince Trask, you must come to Gram, with every man and every ship you can command. Satan only knows what's happening there now, but three thousand hours ago, when the Duke sent me off, Omfray of Glaspyth was landing on Wardshaven. He has a fleet of eight ships, furnished to him by his wife's kinsman, the King of Haulteclere. They are commanded by King Konrad's Space Viking cousin, the Prince of Xochitl." Then a look of shocked surprise came into the face of the man in the screen, and Trask wondered why, until he realized that he had leaned back in his chair and was laughing uproariously. Before he could apologize, the man in the screen had found his voice. "I know, Prince Trask; you have no reason to think kindly of King Angus--the former King Angus, or maybe even the late King Angus, I suppose he is now--but a murderer like Omfray of Glaspyth...." * * * * * It took a little time to explain to the confidential secretary of the Duke of Bigglersport the humor of the situation. There were others at Rivington to whom it was not immediately evident. The professional Space Vikings, men like Valkanhayn and Ravallo and Alvyn Karffard, were disgusted. Here they'd been sitting, on combat alert, all these months, and, if they'd only known, they could have gone to Xochitl and looted it clean long ago. The Gram party were outraged. Angus of Wardshaven had been bad enough, with the hereditary taint of the Mad Baron of Blackcliffe, and Queen Evita and her rapacious family, but even he was preferable to a murderous villain--some even called him a fiend in human shape--like Omfray of Glaspyth. Both parties, of course, were positive as to where their Prince's duty lay. The former insisted that everything on Tanith that could be put into hyperspace should be dispatched at once to Xochitl, to haul back from it everything except a few absolutely immovable natural features of the planet. The latter clamored, just as loudly and passionately, that everybody on Tanith who could pull a trigger should be embarked at once on a crusade for the deliverance of Gram. [Illustration] "You don't want to do either, do you?" Harkaman asked him, when they were alone after the second day of acrimony. "Nifflheim, no! This crowd that wants an attack on Xochitl; you know what would happen if we did that?" Harkaman was silent, waiting for him to continue. "Inside a year, four or five of these small planet-holders like Gratham and the Everrards would combine against us and make a slag-pile out of Tanith." Harkaman nodded agreement. "Since we warned him the first time, Viktor's kept his ships away from our planets. If we attacked Xochitl now, without provocation, nobody'd know what to expect from us. People like Nikky Gratham and Tobbin of Nergal and the Everrards of Hoth get nervous around unpredictable dangers, and when they get nervous they get trigger-happy." He puffed slowly on his pipe and then said: "Then you'll be going back to Gram." "That doesn't follow; just because Valkanhayn and Ravallo and that crowd are wrong doesn't make Valpry and Rathmore and Ffayle right. You heard what I was telling those very people at Karvall House, the day I met you. And you've seen what's been happening on Gram since we came out here. Otto, the Sword-Worlds are finished; they're half decivilized now. Civilization is alive and growing here on Tanith. I want to stay here and help it grow." "Look, Lucas," Harkaman said. "You're Prince of Tanith, and I'm only the Admiral. But I'm telling you; you'll have to do something, or this whole setup of yours will fall apart. As it stands, you can attack Xochitl and the Back-To-Gram party would go along, or you can decide on this crusade against Omfray of Glaspyth and the Raid-Xochitl-Now party would go along. But if you let this go on much longer, you won't have any influence over either party." "And then I will be finished. And in a few years, Tanith will be finished." He rose and paced across the room and back. "Well, I won't raid Xochitl; I told you why, and you agreed. And I won't spend the men and ships and wealth of Tanith in any Sword-World dynastic squabble. Great Satan, Otto; you were in the Durendal War. This is the same thing, and it'll go on for another half a century." "Then what will you do?" "I came out here after Andray Dunnan, didn't I?" he asked. "I'm afraid Ravallo and Valpry, or even Valkanhayn and Morland, won't be as interested in Dunnan as you are." "Then I will interest them in him. Remember, I was reading up on Hitler, coming in from Marduk? I will tell them all a big lie. Such a big lie that nobody will dare to disbelieve it." XXV "Do you think I was afraid of Viktor of Xochitl?" he demanded. "Half a dozen ships; we could make a new Van Allen belt around Tanith of them, with what we have here. Our real enemy is on Marduk, not Xochitl; his name's Zaspar Makann. Zaspar Makann, and Andray Dunnan, the man I came out from Gram to hunt; they're in alliance, and I believe Dunnan is on Marduk, himself, now." The delegation who had come out from Gram in the yacht of the Duke of Bigglersport were unimpressed. Marduk was only a name to them, one of the fabulous civilized Old Federation planets no Sword-Worlder had ever seen. Zaspar Makann wasn't even that. And so much had happened on Gram since the murder of Elaine Karvall and the piracy of the _Enterprise_ that they had completely forgotten Andray Dunnan. That put them at a disadvantage. All the people whom they were trying to convince, the half-hundred members of the new nobility of Tanith, spoke a language they didn't understand. They didn't even understand the proposition, and couldn't argue against it. Paytrik Morland, who was Gram-born and had been speaking for a return in force to fight against Omfray of Glaspyth and his supporters, defected from them at once. He had been on Marduk and knew who Zaspar Makann was; he had made friends with the Royal Navy officers, and had been shocked to hear that they were now enemies. Manfred Ravallo and Boake Valkanhayn, among the more articulate of the Raid-Xochitl-Now party, snatched up the idea and seemed convinced that they'd thought of it themselves all along. Valkanhayn had been on Gimli and talked to Mardukan naval officers; Ravallo had brought Princess Bentrik to Tanith and heard her stories on the voyage. They began adducing arguments in support of Trask's thesis. Of course Dunnan and Makann were in collusion. Who tipped Dunnan off that the _Victrix_ would be on Audhumla? Makann; his spies in the Navy tipped him. What about the _Honest Horris_; wasn't Makann blocking any investigation about her? Why was Admiral Shefter retired as soon as Makann got into power? "Well, here; we don't know anything about this Zaspar Makann," the confidential secretary and spokesman of the Duke of Bigglersport began. "No, you don't," Otto Harkaman told him. "I suggest you keep quiet and listen, till you find out a little about him." "Why, I wouldn't be surprised if Dunnan was on Marduk all the time we were hunting for him," Valkanhayn said. Trask began to wonder. What would Hitler have done if he'd told one of his big lies, and then found it turning into the truth? Maybe Makann had been on Marduk.... No; he couldn't have hidden half a dozen ships on a civilized planet. Not even at the bottom of an ocean. "I wouldn't be surprised," Alvyn Karffard was shouting, "if Andray Dunnan _was_ Zaspar Makann. I know he doesn't look like Dunnan, we all saw him on screen, but there's such a thing as plastic surgery." That was making the big lie just a trifle too big. Zaspar Makann was six inches shorter than Dunnan; there are some things no plastic surgery could do. Paytrik Morland, who had known Dunnan and had seen Makann on screen, ought to have known that too, but he either didn't think of it or didn't want to weaken a case he had completely accepted. "As far as I can find out, nobody even heard of Makann till about five years ago. That would be about the time Dunnan would have arrived on Marduk," he said. By this time, the big room in which they were meeting had become a babel of voices, everybody trying to convince everybody else that they'd known it all along. Then the Back-To-Gram party received its _coup-de-grace_; Lothar Ffayle, to whom the emissaries of Duke Joris had looked for their strongest support, went over. "You people want us to abandon a planet we've built up from nothing, and all the time and money we've invested in it, to go back to Gram and pull your chestnuts out of the fire? Gehenna with you! We're staying here and defending our own planet. If you're smart, you'll stay here with us." * * * * * The Bigglersport delegation was still on Tanith, trying to recruit mercenaries from the King of Tradetown and dickering with a Gilgamesher to transport them to Gram, when the big lie turned into something like the truth. The observation post on the Moon of Tanith picked up an emergence at twenty light-minutes due north of the planet. Half an hour later, there was another one at five light-minutes; a very small one, and then a third at two light-seconds, and this was detectable by radar and microray as a ship's pinnace. He wondered if something had happened on Amaterasu or Beowulf; somebody like Gratham or the Everrards might have decided to take advantage of the defensive mobilization on Tanith. Then they switched the call from the pinnace over to his screen, and Prince Simon Bentrik was looking out of it. "I'm glad to see you! Your wife and son are here, worried about you, but safe and well." He turned to shout to somebody to find young Count Steven of Ravary and tell him to tell his mother. "How are you?" "I had a broken leg when I left Moonbase, but that's mended on the way," Bentrik said. "I have little Princess Myrna aboard with me. For all I know, she's Queen of Marduk, now." He gulped slightly. "Prince Trask, we've come as beggars. We're begging help for our planet." "You've come as honored guests, and you'll get all the help we can give you." He blessed the Xochitl invasion scare, and the big lie which was rapidly ceasing to be a lie; Tanith had the ships and men and the will to act. "What happened? Makann deposed the King and took over?" It came to that, Bentrik told him. It had started even before the election. The People's Watchmen had possessed weapons that had been made openly and legally on Marduk for trade to the Neobarbarian planets and then clandestinely diverted to secret People's Welfare arsenals. Some of the police had gone over to Makann; the rest had been terrorized into inaction. There had been riots fomented in working-class districts of all the cities as pretexts for further terrorization. The election had been a farce of bribery and intimidation. Even so, Makann's party had failed of a complete majority in the Chamber of Representatives, and had been compelled to patch up a shady coalition in order to elect a favorable Chamber of Delegates. "And, of course, they elected Makann Chancellor; that did it," Bentrik said. "All the opposition leaders in the Chamber of Representatives have been arrested, on all kinds of ridiculous charges--sex-crimes, receiving bribes, being in the pay of foreign powers, nothing too absurd. Then they rammed through a law empowering the Chancellor to fill vacancies in the Chamber of Representatives by appointment." "Why did the Crown Prince lend himself to a thing like that?" "He hoped that he could exercise some control. The Royal Family is an almost holy symbol to the people. Even Makann was forced to pretend loyalty to the King and the Crown Prince...." "It didn't work; he played right into Makann's hands. What happened?" The Crown Prince had been assassinated. The assassin, an unknown man believed to be a Gilgamesher, had been shot to death by People's Watchmen guarding Prince Edvard at once. Immediately Makann had seized the Royal Palace to protect the King, and immediately there had been massacres by People's Watchmen everywhere. The Mardukan Planetary Army had ceased to exist; Makann's story was that there had been a military plot against the King and the government. Scattered over the planet in small detachments, the army had been wiped out in two nights and a day. Now Makann was recruiting it up again, exclusively from the People's Welfare Party. "You weren't just sitting on your hands, were you?" "Oh, no," Bentrik replied. "I was doing something I wouldn't have thought myself capable of, a few years ago. Organizing a mutineering conspiracy in the Royal Mardukan Navy. After Admiral Shefter was forcibly retired and shut up in an insane asylum, I disappeared and turned into a civilian contragravity-lifter operator at the Malverton Navy Yard. Finally, when I was suspected, one of the officers--he was arrested and tortured to death later--managed to smuggle me onto a lighter for the Moonbase. I was an orderly in the hospital there. The day the Crown Prince was murdered, we had a mutiny of our own. We killed everybody we even suspected of being a Makannist. The Moonbase has been under attack from the planet ever since." There was a stir behind him; turning, he saw Princess Bentrik and the boy enter the room. He rose. "We'll talk about this later. There are some people here...." He motioned them forward and turned away, shoo-ing everybody else out of the room. * * * * * The news was all over Rivington, and then all over Tanith, while the pinnace was still coming down. There was a crowd at the spaceport, staring as the little craft, with its blazon of the crowned and planet-throned dragon, settled onto its landing legs, and reporters of the Tanith News Service with their screen pickups. He met Prince Bentrik, a little in advance of the others, and managed to whisper to him hastily: "While you're talking to anybody here, always remember that Andray Dunnan is working with Zaspar Makann, and as soon as Makann consolidates his position he's sending an expedition against Tanith." "How in blazes did you find that out, here?" Bentrik demanded. "From the Gilgameshers?" Then Harkaman and Rathmore and Valkanhayn and Lothar Ffayle and the others were crowding up behind, and more people were coming off the pinnace, and Prince Bentrik was trying to embrace both his wife and his son at the same time. "Prince Trask." He started at the voice, and was looking into deep blue eyes under coal-black hair. His pulse gave a sudden jump, and he said, "Valerie!" and then, "Lady Alvarath; I'm most happy to see you here." Then he saw who was beside her, and squatted on his heels to bring himself down to a convenient size. "And Princess Myrna. Welcome to Tanith, Your Highness!" The child flung her arms around his neck. "Oh, Prince Lucas! I'm so glad to see you. There's been such awful things happened!" "There won't be anything awful happen here, Princess Myrna. You are among friends; friends with whom you have a treaty. Remember?" The child began to cry, bitterly. "That was when I was just a play-Queen. And now I know what they meant when they talked about when Grandpa and Pappa would be through being King. Pappa didn't even get to be King!" Something big and warm and soft was trying to push between them; a dog with long blond hair and floppy ears. In a year and a half, puppies can grow surprisingly. Mopsy was trying to lick his face. He took the dog by the collar and straightened. "Lady Valerie, will you come with us?" he asked. "I'm going to find quarters for Princess Myrna." * * * * * "Is it Princess Myrna, or is it Queen Myrna?" he asked. Prince Bentrik shook his head. "We don't know. The King was alive when we left Moonbase, but that was five hundred hours ago. We don't know anything about her mother, either. She was at the Palace when Prince Edvard was murdered; we've heard absolutely nothing about her. The King made a few screen appearances, parroting things Makann wanted him to say. Under hypnosis. That was probably the very least of what they did to him. They've turned him into a zombi." "Well, how did Myrna get to Moonbase?" "That was Lady Valerie, as much as anybody else. She and Sir Thomas Kobbly, and Captain Rainer. They armed the servants at Cragdale with hunting rifles and everything else they could scrape up, captured Prince Edvard's space-yacht, and took off in her. Took a couple of hits from ground batteries getting off, and from ships around Moonbase getting in. Ships of the Royal Mardukan Navy!" he added furiously. The pinnace in which they had made the trip to Tanith had taken a few hits, too, running the blockade. Not many; her captain had thrown her into hyperspace almost at once. "They sent the yacht off to Gimli," Bentrik said. "From there, they'll try to rally as many of the Royal Navy units as haven't gone over to Makann. They're to assemble on Gimli and await my return. If I don't return in fifteen hundred hours from the time I left Moonbase, they're to use their own judgment. I'd expect that they'd move in on Marduk and attack." "That's sixty-odd days," Otto Harkaman said. "That's an awfully long time to expect that lunar base to hold out, against a whole planet." "It's a strong base. It was built four hundred years ago, when Marduk was fighting a combination of six other planets. It held out against continuous attack, once, for almost a year. It's been constantly strengthened ever since." "And what have they to throw at it?" Harkaman persisted. "When I left, six ships of the former Royal Navy, that had gone over to Makann. Four fifteen-hundred-footers, same class as the _Victrix_, and two thousand-footers. Then, there were four of Andray Dunnan's ships--" "You mean, he really is on Marduk?" "I thought you knew that, and I was wondering how you'd found out. Yes: _Fortuna_, _Bolide_, and two armed merchantmen, a Baldurbuilt ship called the _Reliable_, and your friend _Honest Horris_." "You didn't really believe Dunnan was on Marduk?" Boake Valkanhayn asked. "Actually, I didn't. I had to have some kind of a story, to talk those people out of that crusade against Omfray of Glaspyth." He left unmentioned Valkanhayn's own insistence on a plundering expedition against Xochitl. "Now that it turns out to be true, I'm not surprised. We decided, long ago, that Dunnan was planning to raid Marduk. It appears that we underestimated him. Maybe he was reading about Hitler, too. He wasn't planning any raid; he was planning conquest, in the only way a great civilization can be conquered--by subversion." "Yes," Harkaman put in. "Five years ago, when Dunnan started this programme, who was this Makann, anyhow?" "Nobody," Bentrik said. "A crackpot agitator in Drepplin; he had a coven of fellow-crackpots, who met in the back room of a saloon and had their office in a cigar box. The next year, he had a suite of offices and was buying time on a couple of telecasts. The year after that, he had three telecast stations of his own, and was holding rallies and meetings of thousands of people. And so on, upward." "Yes. Dunnan financed him, and moved in behind him, the same way Makann moved in behind the King. And Dunnan will have him shot the way he had Prince Edvard shot, and use the murder as a pretext to liquidate his personal followers." "And then he'll own Marduk. And we'll have the Mardukan navy coming out of hyperspace on Tanith," Valkanhayn added. "So we go to Marduk and smash him now, while he's still little enough to smash." There had been a few who had wanted to do that about Hitler, and a great many, later, who had regretted that it hadn't been done. "The _Nemesis_, the _Corisande_, and the _Space Scourge_ for sure?" he asked. Harkaman and Valkanhayn agreed; Valkanhayn thought the _Viking's Gift_ of Beowulf would go along, and Harkaman was almost sure of the _Black Star_ and _Queen Flavia_. He turned to Bentrik. "Start that pinnace off for Gimli at once; within the hour if possible. We don't know how many ships will be gathered there, but we don't want them wasted in detail-attacks. Tell whoever's in command there that ships from Tanith are on the way, and to wait for them." Fifteen hundred hours, less the five hundred Bentrik was in space from Marduk. He hadn't time to estimate voyage-time to Gimli from the other Mardukan trade-planets, and nobody could estimate how many ships would respond. "It may take us a little time to get an effective fleet together. Even after we get through arguing about it. Argument," he told Bentrik, "is not exclusively a feature of democracies." * * * * * Actually, there was very little argument, and most of that among the Mardukans. Prince Bentrik insisted that Crown Princess Myrna would have to be taken along; King Mikhyl would be either dead or brainwashed into imbecility by now, and they would have to have somebody to take the throne. Lady Valerie Alvarath, Sir Thomas Kobbly, the tutor, and the nurse Margot refused to be separated from her. Prince Bentrik was equally firm, with less success, on leaving his wife and son on Tanith. In the end, it was agreed that the entire Mardukan party would space out on the _Nemesis_. The leader of the Bigglersport delegation attempted an impassioned tirade about going to the aid of strangers while their own planet was being enslaved. He was booed down by everybody else and informed that Tanith was being defended where a planet ought to be, on somebody else's real estate. When the Bigglersporters emerged from the meeting, they found that their own space-yacht had been commandeered and sent off to Amaterasu and Beowulf for assistance, that the regiment of local infantry they had enlisted from the King of Tradetown had been taken over by the Rivington authorities, and that the Gilgamesh freighter they had chartered to transport them to Gram would now take them to Marduk. The problem broke into two halves: the purely naval action that would be fought to relieve the Moon of Marduk, if it still held out, and to destroy the Dunnan and Makann ships, and the ground-fighting problem of wiping out Makann's supporters and restoring the Mardukan monarchy. A great many of the people of Marduk would be glad of a chance to turn on Makann, once they had arms and were properly supported. Combat weapons were almost unknown among the people, however, and even sporting arms uncommon. All the small arms and light artillery and auto-weapons available were gathered up. The _Grendelsbane_ came in from Beowulf, and the _Sun Goddess_ from Amaterasu. Three independent Space Viking ships were still in orbit on Tanith; they joined the expedition. There would be trouble with them on Marduk; they'd want to loot. Let the Mardukans worry about that. They could charge it off as part of the price for letting Zaspar Makann get into power in the first place. * * * * * There were twelve spacecraft in line outside the Moon of Tanith, counting the three independents and the forcibly chartered Gilgamesher troop-transport; that was the biggest fleet Space Vikings had ever assembled in their history. Alvyn Karffard said as much while they were checking the formation by screen. "It isn't a Space Viking fleet," Prince Bentrik differed. "There are only three Space Vikings in it. The rest are the ships of three civilized planets. Tanith, Beowulf and Amaterasu." Karffard was surprised. "You mean _we're_ civilized planets? Like Marduk, or Baldur or Odin, or...?" "Well, aren't you?" Trask smiled. He'd begun to suspect something of the sort a couple of years ago. He hadn't really been sure until now. His most junior staff officer, Count Steven of Ravary, didn't seem to appreciate the compliment. "We _are_ Space Vikings!" he insisted. "And we are going to battle with the Neobarbarians of Zaspar Makann." "Well, I won't argue the last half of it, Steven," his father told him. "Are you people done yakking about who's civilized and who isn't?" Guatt Kirbey asked. "Then give the signal. All the other ships are ready to jump." Trask pressed the button on the desk in front of him. A light went on over Kirbey's control panel as one would on each of the other ships. He said, "Jumping," around the stem of his pipe, and twisted the red handle and shoved it in. * * * * * [Illustration] Four hundred and fifty hours, in the private universe that was the _Nemesis_; outside, nothing else existed, and inside there was nothing to do but wait, as each hour carried them six trillion miles nearer to Gimli. At first, the ruthless and terrible Space Viking, Steven, Count of Ravary, was wildly excited, but before long he found that there was nothing exciting going on; it was just a spaceship, and he'd been on ships before. Her Highness the Crown Princess, or maybe her Majesty the Queen of Marduk, stopped being excited about the same time, and she and Steven and Mopsy played together. Of course, Myrna was only a girl, and two years younger than Steven, but she was, or at least might be, his sovereign, and beside, she had been in a space action, if you call what lies between a planet and its satellite space and if you call being shot at without being able to shoot back an action, and Relentless Ravary, the Interstellar Terror, had not. This rather made up for being a girl and a mere baby of going-on-ten. One thing, there were no lessons. Sir Thomas Kobbly fancied himself as a landscape-painter and spent most of his time arguing techniques with Vann Larch, and Steven's tutor, Captain Rainer was a normal-space astrogator and found a kindred spirit in Sharll Renner. This left Lady Valerie Alvarath at a loose end. There were plenty of volunteers to help her fill in the time, but Rank Hath Its Privileges; Trask undertook to see to it that she did not suffer excessively from shipboard ennui. Sharll Renner and Captain Rainer approached him, during the cocktail hour before dinner, some hundred hours short of emergence. "We think we've figured out where Dunnan's base is," Renner said. "Oh, good!" Everybody else had, on a different planet. "Where's yours?" "Abaddon," the Count of Ravary's tutor said. When he saw that the name meant nothing to Trask, he added, "The ninth, outer, planet of the Marduk system." He said it disgustedly. "Yes; remember how you had Boake and Manfred out with their ships, checking our outside planets to see if Prince Viktor might be hiding on one of them? Well, what with the time element, and the way the _Honest Horris_ was shuttling back and forth from Marduk to some place that wasn't Gimli, and the way Dunnan was able to bring his ships in as soon as the shooting started on Marduk, we thought he must be on an uninhabited outer planet of the Marduk system." "I don't know why we never thought of that, ourselves," Rainer put in. "I suppose because nobody ever thinks of Abaddon for any reason. It's only a small planet, about four thousand miles in diameter, and it's three and a half billion miles from primary. It's frozen solid. It would take almost a year to get to it on Abbot drive, and if your ship has Dillinghams, why not take a little longer and go to a good planet? So nobody bothered with Abaddon." But for Dunnan's purpose, it would be perfect. He called Prince Bentrik and Alvyn Karffard to him; they found the idea instantly convincing. They talked about it through dinner, and held a general discussion afterward. Even Guatt Kirbey, the ship's pessimist, could find no objection to it. Trask and Bentrik began at once making battle plans. Karffard wondered if they hadn't better wait till they got to Gimli and discuss it with the others. "No," Trask told him. "This is the flagship; here's where the strategy is decided." "Well, how about the Mardukan Navy?" Captain Rainer asked. "I think Fleet Admiral Bargham's in command at Gimli." Prince Simon Bentrik was silent for a moment, as though he realized, with reluctance, that the big decision was no longer avoidable. "He may be, at present, but he won't be when I get there. I will be." "But ... Your Highness, he's a fleet admiral; you're just a commodore." "I am not just a commodore. The King is a prisoner, and for all we know dead. The Crown Prince is dead. The Princess Myrna is a child. I am assuming the position of Regent and Prince-Protector of the Realm." XXVI There was a little difficulty on Gimli with Fleet Admiral Bargham. Commodores didn't give orders to fleet admirals. Well, maybe regents did, but who gave Prince Bentrik authority to call himself regent? Regents were elected by the Chamber of Delegates, on nomination of the Chancellor. "That's Zaspar Makann and his stooges you're talking about?" Bentrik laughed. "Well, the Constitution...." He thought better of that, before somebody asked him what Constitution. "Well, a Regent has to be chosen by election. Even members of the Royal Family can't just make themselves Regent by saying they are." "I can. I just have. And I don't think there are going to be many more elections, at least for the present. Not till we make sure the people of Marduk can be trusted with the control of the government." "Well, the pinnace from Moonbase reported that there were six Royal navy battleships and four other craft attacking them," Bargham objected. "I only have four ships here; I sent for the ones on the other trade-planets, but I haven't heard from any of them. We can't go there with only four ships." "Sixteen ships," Bentrik corrected. "No, fifteen and one Gilgamesher we're using for a troopship. I think that's enough. You'll remain here on Gimli, in any case, admiral; as soon as the other ships come in, you'll follow to Marduk with them. I am now holding a meeting aboard the Tanith flagship _Nemesis_. I want your four ship-commanders aboard immediately. I am not including you because you're remaining here to bring up the late comers and as soon as this meeting is over we are spacing out." Actually, they spaced out sooner; the meeting lasted the whole three hundred and fifty hours to Abaddon. A ship's captain, if he has a good exec, as all of them had, needs only sit at his command-desk and look important while the ship is going into and emerging from a long jump; the rest of the time he can study ancient history or whatever his shipboard hobby is. Rather than waste three hundred and fifty hours of precious time, each captain turned his ship over to his exec and remained aboard the _Nemesis_; even on so spacious a craft the officers' country north of the engine rooms was crowded like a tourist hotel in mid-season. One of the four Mardukans was the Captain Garravay who had smuggled Bentrik's wife and son off Marduk, and the other three were just as pro-Bentrik, pro-Tanith, and anti-Makann. They were, on general principles, also anti-Bargham. There must be something wrong with any fleet admiral who remained in his command after Zaspar Makann came to power. So, as soon as they spaced out, there was a party. After that, they settled down to planning the Battle of Abaddon. * * * * * There was no Battle of Abaddon. It was a dead planet, one side in night and the other in dim twilight from the little speck of a sun three and a half billion miles away, jagged mountains rising out of the snow that covered it from pole to pole. The snow on top would be frozen CO_2; according to the thermocouples, the surface temperature was well below minus-100 Centigrade. No ships on orbit circled it; there was a little faint radiation, which could have been from naturally radioactive minerals; there was no electrical discharge detectable. There was considerable bad language in the command room of the _Nemesis_. The captains of the other ships were screening in, wanting to know what to do. "Go on in," Trask told them. "Englobe the planet, and go down to within a mile if necessary. They could be hiding somewhere on it." "Well, they're not hiding at the bottom of any ocean, that's for sure," somebody said. It was one of those feeble jokes at which everybody laughs because nothing else is laughable about the situation. Finally, they found it, at the north pole, which was no colder than anywhere else on the planet. First radiation leakage, the sort that would come from a closed-down nuclear power plant. Then a modicum of electrical discharge. Finally the telescopic screens picked up the spaceport, a huge oval amphitheater excavated out of a valley between two jagged mountain ranges. The language in the command room was just as bad, but the tone had changed. It was surprising what a wide range of emotions could be expressed by a few simple blasphemies and obscenities. Everybody who had been deriding Sharll Renner were now acclaiming him. But it was lifeless. The ships came crowding in; air-locked landing-craft full of space-armored ground-fighters went down. Screens in the command room lit as they transmitted in views. Depressions in the carbon-dioxide snow where the hundred-foot pad-feet of ships' landing-legs had pressed down. Ranks of cargo-lighters that had plied to and from other ships or orbit. And, all around the cliff-walled perimeter, air-locked doors to caverns and tunnels. A great many men, with a great deal of equipment, had been working here in the estimated five or six years since Andray Dunnan--or somebody--had constructed this base. Andray Dunnan. They found his badge, the crescent, blue on black, on things. They found equipment that Harkaman recognized as having been part of the original cargo stolen with the _Enterprise_. They even found, in his living quarters, a blown-up photoprint picture of Nevil Ormm, draped in black. But what they did not find was a single vehicle small enough to be taken aboard a ship, or a single scrap of combat equipment, not even a pistol or a hand grenade. Dunnan had gone, but they knew whither, and where to find him. The conquest of Marduk had moved into its final phase. * * * * * Marduk was on the other side of the sun from Abaddon with ninety-five million miles--close, but not inconveniently so, Trask thought--to spare. Guatt Kirbey and the Mardukan astrogator who was helping him made it within a light-minute. The Mardukan thought that was fine; Kirbey didn't. The last microjump was aimed at the Moon of Marduk, which was plainly visible in the telescopic screen. They came out within a light-second and a half, which Kirbey admitted was reasonably close. As soon as the screens cleared, they saw that they weren't too late. The Moon of Marduk was under fire and firing back. They'd have detection, and he knew what they were detecting--a clump of sixteen rending distortions of the fabric of space-time, as sixteen ships came into sudden existence in the normal continuum. Beside him, Bentrik had a screen on; it was still milky-white, and he was speaking into a radio hand-phone. "Simon Bentrik, Prince-Protector of Marduk, calling Moonbase." Then, slowly, he repeated his screen-combination twice. "Come in, Moonbase; this is Simon Bentrik, Prince-Protector, speaking." He waited ten seconds, and was about to start again, when the screen flickered. The man who appeared in it wore the insignia of a Mardukan navy commodore. He needed a shave, but he was grinning happily. Bentrik greeted him by name. "Hello, Simon; glad to see you. Your Highness, I mean; what is this Prince-Protector thing?" "Somebody had to do it. Is the King still alive?" The grin slid off the commodore's face, starting with his eyes. "We don't know. At first, Makann had him speaking by screen--you know what it was like--urging everybody to obey and co-operate with 'our trusted Chancellor.' Makann always appeared on the screen with him." Bentrik nodded. "I remember." "Before you left, Makann kept quiet, and let the King make the speech. After a while, the King wasn't able to speak coherently; he'd stammer, and repeat. So then Makann did all the talking; they couldn't even depend on him to parrot what they were giving him with an earplug phone. Then he stopped appearing entirely. I suppose there were physical symptoms they couldn't allow to be seen." Bentrik was cursing horribly under his breath; the officer at Moonbase nodded. "I hope for his sake that he is dead." Poor Goodman Mikhyl. Bentrik was saying, "So do I." Trask agreed, mentally. The commodore at Moonbase was still talking: "We got two more renegade RMN ships, within a hundred hours after you left." He named them. "And we got one of the Dunnan ships, the _Fortuna_. We blew out the Malverton Navy Yard. They're still using the Antarctic Naval Base, but we've knocked out a good deal of that. We got the _Honest Horris_. They made two attempts to land on us and lost a couple of ships. Eight hundred hours ago, they were joined by the rest of Dunnan's fleet, five ships. They made a landing on Malverton while it was turned away from us. Makann announced that they were RMN units from the trade-planets that had joined him. I suppose the planet-side public swallowed that. He also announced that their commander, Admiral Dunnan, was in command of the People's Armed Forces." Dunnan's ground-fighters would be in control of Malverton. By now, the odds were that Makann was as much his prisoner as King Mikhyl VIII had been Makann's. "So Dunnan has conquered Marduk. All he has to do, now, is make it stick," he said. "I see four ships off Moonbase; how many more have they?" "These are _Bolide_ and _Eclipse_, Dunnan's ships, and former Royal Mardukan Navy ships _Champion_ and _Guardian_. There are five orbiting off the planet: Ex-RMNS _Paladin_, and Dunnan ships _Starhopper_, _Banshee_, _Reliable_ and _Exporter_. The last two are listed as merchantmen, but they're performing like regulation battlecraft." The four that had been circling Moonbase broke orbit and started toward the relieving fleet; one took a hit from a Moonbase missile, which staggered her but did no evident damage. Two ships which had been orbiting the planet also changed course and started out. The command room was silent except for a subdued chuckling from a computer which was estimating enemy intentions by observed data and Games Theory. Three more came hurrying out from the planet, and the two in the lead slowed to let them catch up. He wanted to be able to engage the four from off the satellite before the five from the planet joined them, but Karffard's computers said it couldn't be done. "All right, we have to take all our bad eggs in one basket," he said. "Try to hit them as soon after they join as possible." * * * * * The computers began chuckling again. The serving-robots were doing a rush business in hot coffee. Prince Bentrik's son, sitting beside his father, had stopped being Ruthless Ravary the Demon of the Spaceways and was a very young officer going into his first space battle, more scared and at the same time happier than he had ever been in his short life. Captain Garravay of the _Vindex_ was making signal to the other ships from Gimli: "_Royal Navy; smash the traitors first!_" He could understand and sympathize, even if he couldn't approve of putting personal ahead of tactical considerations, and made a quick sealed-beam call to Harkaman to be prepared to plug any holes they left in formation if they broke away in search of vengeance. He also ordered the _Black Star_ and the _Sun Goddess_ to shepherd the lightly armed and troop-crammed Gilgamesh freighter out of danger. The two clumps of Dunnan-Makann ships were converging rapidly, and Alvyn Karffard was screaming into a phone to somebody to get more speed. At a thousand miles, the missiles started going out, and the two groups of ships, four and five, were equidistant from each other and from the allied fleet, at the points of a triangle that was growing smaller by the second. The first fire-globes of intercepted missiles spread from their seeds of brief white light. A red light flashed on the damage-board. An enemy ship took a hit. The captain of the _Queen Flavia_ was on a screen, saying that his ship was heavily damaged. Three ships bearing the Mardukan dragon-and-planet circled madly around each other at what looked, in the screen, like just over pistol-range, two of them firing into the third, which was replying desperately. The third one blew up, and somebody was yelling out of a screenspeaker, "Scratch one traitor!" Another ship blew up somewhere, and then another. He heard somebody say, "There went one of ours," and wondered which one it was. Not the _Corisande_, he hoped; no, it wasn't, he could see her rushing after two other ships which were, in turn, speeding toward the _Black Star_, the _Sun Goddess_ and the Gilgamesh freighter. Then the _Nemesis_ and the _Starhopper_ were within gun-range, pounding each other savagely. The battle had tied itself into a ball of gyrating, fire-spitting ships that went rolling toward the planet, which was swinging in and out of the main viewscreen and growing rapidly larger. By the time they were down to the inner edge of the exosphere, the ball had started to unwind, ship after ship dropping out of it and going into orbit, some badly damaged and some going to attack damaged enemies. Some of them were completely around the planet, hidden by it. He saw three ships approaching _Corisande_, _Sun Goddess_, and the Gilgamesher. He got Harkaman on the screen. "Where's the _Black Star_?" he asked. "Gone to Em-See-Square," Harkaman replied. "We got the two Dunnan-Makanns. _Bolide_ and _Reliable_." Then young Steven of Ravary, who had been monitoring one of the intership screens, had a call from Captain Gompertz of the _Grendelsbane_, and at the same moment somebody else was yelling, "Here comes the _Starhopper_ again!" "Tell him to wait a moment; we have troubles," he said. _Nemesis_ and _Starhopper_ sledge-hammered each other and parried with counter-missiles, and then, quite unexpectedly, the _Starhopper_ went to Em-See-Square. There was an awful lot of Em being converted to Ee off Marduk, today. Including Manfred Ravallo; that grieved him. Manfred was a good man, and a good friend. He had a girl in Rivington.... Nifflheim, there were eight hundred good men aboard the _Black Star_, and most of them had girls who'd wait in vain for them on Tanith. Well, what had Otto Harkaman said, so long ago, on Gram? Something about old age not being a usual cause of death among Space Vikings, wasn't it? Then he remembered that Gompertz of the _Grendelsbane_ was trying to get him. He told young Count Steven to switch him over. "We just lost one of our Mardukans," Gompertz told him, in his staccato Beowulf accent. "I think she was the _Challenger_. The ship that got her looks like the _Banshee_; I'm turning to engage her." "Which way; west around the planet? Be right with you, captain." XXVII It was like finishing a word puzzle. You sit staring at it, looking for more spaces to print letters into, and suddenly you realize that there are no more, that the puzzle is done. That was how the space-battle of Marduk, the Battle _off_ Marduk, ended. Suddenly there were no more colored fire-globes opening and fading, no more missiles coming, no more enemy ships to throw missiles at. Now it was time to take a count of his own ships, and then begin thinking about the Battle _on_ Marduk. The _Black Star_ was gone. So was RMNS _Challenger_, and RMNS _Conquistador_. _Space Scourge_ was badly hammered; worse than after the Beowulf raid, Boake Valkanhayn said. The _Viking's Gift_ was heavily damaged, too, and so was the _Corisande_, and so, from the looks of the damage board, was the _Nemesis_. And three ships were missing--the three independent Space Vikings, _Harpy_, _Curse of Cagn_, and Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan's _Damnthing_. Prince Bentrik frowned over that. "I can't think that all three of those ships would have been destroyed, without anybody seeing it happen." "Neither can I. But I can think that all those ships broke out of the battle together and headed in for the planet. They didn't come here to help liberate Marduk, they came here to fill their cargo holds. I only hope the people they're robbing all voted the Makann ticket in the last election." A crumb of comfort occurred to him, and he passed it on. "The only people who are armed to resist them will be Makann's storm-troops and Dunnan's pirates; they'll be the ones to get killed." "We don't want any more killing than...." Prince Simon broke off suddenly. "I'm beginning to talk like his late Highness Crown Prince Edvard," he said. "He didn't want bloodshed, either, and look whose blood was shed. If they're doing what you think they are, I'm afraid we'll have to kill a few of your Space Vikings, too." "They aren't my Space Vikings." He was a little surprised to find that, after almost eight years of bearing the name himself, he was using it as an other-people label. Well, why not? He was the ruler of the civilized planet of Tanith, wasn't he? "But let's not start fighting them till the main war's over. Those three shiploads are no worse than a bad cold; Makann and Dunnan are the plague." It would still take four hours to get down, in a spiral of deceleration. They started the telecasts which had been filmed and taped on the voyage from Gimli. The Prince-Protector Simon Bentrik spoke: The illegal rule of the traitor Makann was ended. His deluded followers were advised to return to their allegiance to the Crown. The People's Watchmen were ordered to surrender their arms and disband; in localities where they refused, the loyal people were called upon to co-operate with the legitimate armed forces of the Crown in exterminating them, and would be furnished arms as soon as possible. Little Princess Myrna spoke: "If my grandfather is still alive, he is your King; if he is not, I am your Queen, and until I am old enough to rule in my own right, I accept Prince Simon as Regent and Protector of the Realm, and I call on all of you to obey him as I will." "You didn't say anything about representative government, or democracy, or the constitution," Trask mentioned. "And I noticed the use of the word 'rule,' instead of 'reign.'" "That's right," the self-proclaimed Prince-Protector said. "There's something wrong with democracy. If there weren't, it couldn't be overthrown by people like Makann, attacking it from within by democratic procedures. I don't think it's fundamentally unworkable. I think it just has a few of what engineers call bugs. It's not safe to run a defective machine till you learn the defects and remedy them." "Well, I hope you don't think our Sword-World feudalism doesn't have bugs." He gave examples, and then quoted Otto Harkaman about barbarism spreading downward from the top instead of upward from the bottom. "It may just be," he added, "that there is something fundamentally unworkable about government itself. As long as _Homo sapiens terra_ is a wild animal, which he has always been and always will be until he evolves into something different in a million or so years, maybe a workable system of government is a political science impossibility, just as transmutation of elements was a physical-science impossibility as long as they tried to do it by chemical means." [Illustration] "Then we'll just have to make it work the best way we can, and when it breaks down, hope the next try will work a little better, for a little longer," Bentrik said. * * * * * Malverton grew in the telescopic screens as they came down. The Navy Spaceport, where Trask had landed almost two years before, was in wreckage, sprinkled with damaged ships that had been blasted on the ground, and slagged by thermonuclear fires. There was fighting in the air all over the city proper, on building-tops, on the ground, and in the air. That would be the _Damnthing_-_Harpy_-_Curse of Cagn_ Space Vikings. The Royal Palace was the center of one of half a dozen swirls of battle that had condensed out of the general skirmishing. Paytrik Morland started for it with the first wave of ground-fighters from the _Nemesis_. The Gilgamesh freighter, like most of her ilk, had huge cargo ports all around; these began opening and disgorging a swarm of everything from landing-craft and hundred-foot airboats to one man air-cavalry single-mounts. The top landing-stages and terraces of the palace were almost obscured by the flashes of auto-cannon shells and the smoke and dust of projectiles. Then the first vehicles landed, the firing from the air stopped, and men fanned out as skirmishers, occasionally firing with small arms. Trask and Bentrik were in the armory off the vehicle-bay, putting on combat equipment, when the twelve-year-old Count of Ravary joined them and began rummaging for weapons and a helmet. "You're not going," his father told him. "I'll have enough to worry about taking care of myself...." That was the wrong approach. Trask interrupted: "You're to stay aboard, Count," he said. "As soon as things stabilize, Princess Myrna will have to come down. You'll act as her personal escort. And don't think you're being shoved into the background. She's Crown Princess, and if she isn't Queen now, she will be in a few years. Escorting her now will be the foundation of your naval career. There isn't a young officer in the Royal Navy who wouldn't trade places with you." "That was the right way to handle him, Lucas," Bentrik approved, after the boy had gone away, proud of his opportunity and his responsibility. "It'll do just what I said for him." He stopped for a moment, to play with an idea that had just struck him. "You know, the girl will be Queen in a few years, if she isn't now. Queens need Prince Consorts. Your son's a good boy; I liked him the first moment I saw him, and I've liked him better ever since. He'd be a good man on the throne beside Queen Myrna." "Oh, that's out of the question. Not the matter of consanguinity, they're about a sixteenth cousin. But people would say I was abusing the Protectorship to marry my son onto the Throne." "Simon, speaking as one sovereign prince to another, you have a lot to learn. You've learned one important lesson already, that a ruler must be willing to use force and shed blood to enforce his rule. You have to learn, too, that a ruler cannot afford to be guided by his fears of what people will say about him. Not even what history will say about him. A ruler's only judge is himself." Bentrik slid the transpex visor of his helmet up and down experimentally, checked the chambers of his pistol and carbine. "All that matters to me is the peace and well-being of Marduk. I'll have to talk it over with ... with my only judge. Well, let's go." * * * * * The top terraces were secure when their car landed. More vehicles were coming down and discharging men; a swarm of landing craft were sinking past the building toward the ground two thousand feet below. Auto-weapons and small arms and light cannon banged, and bombs and recoilless-rifle shells crashed, on the lower terraces. They put the car down one of the shaftways until they ran into heavy fire from below, at the limit of the advance, and then turned into a broad hallway, floating high enough to clear the heads of the men on foot. It looked like the part of the Palace where he had lodged when he had been a guest there but it probably wasn't. They came to hastily constructed barricades of furniture and statuary and furnishings, behind which Makann's People's Watchmen and Andray Dunnan's Space Vikings were making resistance. They entered rooms dusty with powdered plaster and acrid with powder fumes, littered with corpses. They passed lifter-skids being towed out with wounded. They went through rooms crowded with their own men--"_Keep your fingers off things; this isn't a looting expedition!_" "_You stupid cretin, how did you know there wasn't a man hiding behind that?_" In one huge room, ballroom or concert room or something, there were prisoners herded, and men from the _Nemesis_ were setting up polyencephalographic veridicators, sturdy chairs with wires and adjustable helmets and translucent globes mounted over them. A couple of Morland's men were hustling a People's Watchman to one and strapping him into a chair. "You know what this is, don't you?" one of them was saying. "This is a veridicator. That globe'll light blue; the moment you try to lie to us, it'll turn red. And the moment it turns red, I'm going to hammer your teeth down your throat with the butt of this pistol." "Have you found anything out about the King, yet?" Bentrik asked him. He turned. "No. Nobody we've questioned so far knows anything later than a month ago about him. He just disappeared." He was going to say something else, saw Bentrik's face, and changed his mind. "He's dead," Bentrik said dully. "They tortured him and brainwashed him and used him as a ventriloquist's dummy on the screen as long as they could; when they couldn't let the people see him any more, they stuffed him into a converter." They did find Zaspar Makann, hours later. Maybe he could have told them something, if he had been alive, but he and a few of his fanatical followers had barricaded themselves in the Throne room and died trying to defend it. They found Makann on the Throne, the top of his head blown away, a pistol death-gripped in his hand, and the Great Crown lying on the floor, the velvet inner cap bullet-pierced and splattered with blood and brain tissue. Prince Bentrik picked it up and looked at it disgustedly. "We'll have to have something done about that," he said. "I really didn't think he'd do just this. I thought he wanted to abolish the Throne, not sit on it." Except for one chandelier smashed and several corpses that had to be dragged out, the Ministerial Council room was intact. They set up headquarters there. Boake Valkanhayn and several other ship-captains joined them. There was fighting going on in several places inside the Palace, and the city was still in a turmoil. Somebody managed to get in touch with the captains of the _Damnthing_, the _Harpy_ and the _Curse of Cagn_ and bring them to the Palace. Trask attempted to reason with them, to no avail. "Prince Trask, you're my friend, and you've always dealt fairly with me," Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan said. "But you know just how far any Space Viking captain can control his crew. These men didn't come here to correct the political mistakes of Marduk. They came here for what they could haul away. I could get myself killed trying to stop them now...." "I wouldn't even try," the captain of the _Curse of Cagn_ put in. "I came here for what I could make out of this planet, myself." "You can try to stop them," said the captain of the _Harpy_. "You'll find it even harder than what you're doing now." Trask looked at some of the reports that had come in from elsewhere on the planet. Harkaman had landed on one of the big cities to the east, and the people had risen against Makann's local bosses and were helping wipe out the People's Watchmen with arms they had been furnished. Valkanhayn's exec had landed on a large concentration camp where close to ten thousand of Makann's political enemies had been penned; he had distributed all his available weapons and was calling for more. Gompertz of the _Grendelsbane_ was at Drepplin; he reported just the reverse. The people there had risen in support of the Makann regime, and he wanted authorization to use nuclear weapons against them. "Could you talk your people into going to some other city?" Trask asked. "We have a city for you; big industrial center. It ought to be fine looting. Drepplin." "The people there are Mardukan subjects, too," Bentrik began. Then he shrugged. "It's not what we'd like to do, it's what we have to. By all means, gentlemen. Take your men to Drepplin, and nobody will object to anything you do." "And when you have that place looted out, try Abaddon. You were aground there, Captain Esthersan. You know what all Dunnan left there." * * * * * A couple of Space Vikings--no, Royal Army of Tanith men--brought in the old woman, dirty, in rags, almost exhausted. "She wants to talk to Prince Bentrik; won't talk to anybody else. Says she knows where the King is." Bentrik rose quickly, brought her to a chair, poured a glass of wine for her. "He's still alive, Your Highness. The Crown Princess Melanie and I ... I'm sorry, Your Highness; Dowager Crown Princess ... have been taking care of him, the best way we could. If you'll only come quickly...." Mikhyl VIII, Planetary King of Marduk, lay on a pallet of filthy bedding on the floor of a narrow room behind a mass-energy converter which disposed of the rubbish and sewage and generated power for some of the fixed equipment on one of the middle floors of the east wing of the palace. There was a bucket of water, and on a rough wooden bench lay a cloth-wrapped bundle of food. A woman, haggard and disheveled, wearing a suit of greasy mechanic's coveralls and nothing else, squatted beside him. The Crown Princess Melanie, whom Trask remembered as the charming and gracious hostess of Cragdale. She tried to rise, and staggered. "Prince Bentrik! And it's Prince Trask of Tanith!" she cried. "Just hurry; get him out of here and to where he can be taken care of. Please." Then she sat down again on the floor and fell over, unconscious. * * * * * They couldn't get the story. The Princess Melanie had collapsed completely. Her companion, another noblewoman of the court, could only ramble disconnectedly. And the King merely lay, bathed and fed in a clean bed, and looked up at them wonderingly, as though nothing he saw or heard conveyed any meaning to him. The doctors could do nothing. "He has no mind, no more mind than a new-born baby. We can keep him alive, I don't know how long. That's our professional duty. But it's no kindness to His Majesty." * * * * * The little pockets of resistance in the Palace were wiped out, through the next morning and afternoon. All but one, far underground, below the main power plant. They tried sleep-gas; the defenders had blowers and sent it back at them. They tried blasting; there was a limit to what the fabric of the building would stand. And nobody knew how long it would take to starve them out. On the third day, a man crawled out, pushing a white shirt tied to the barrel of a carbine ahead of him. "Is Prince Lucas Trask of Tanith here?" he asked. "I won't speak to anybody else." They brought Trask quickly. All that was visible of the other man was the carbine-barrel and the white shirt. When Trask called to him, he raised his head above the rubble behind which he was hiding. "Prince Trask, we have Andray Dunnan here; he was leading us, but now we've disarmed him and are holding him. If we turn him over to you, will you let us go?" "If you all come out unarmed, and bring Dunnan with you, I promise you, the rest of you will be let outside this building and allowed to go away unharmed." "All right. We'll be coming out in a minute." The man raised his voice. "It's agreed!" he called. "Bring him out." There were fewer than two score of them. Some wore the uniforms of high officers of the People's Watchmen or of People's Welfare Party functionaries; a few wore the heavily braided short jackets of Space Viking officers. Among them, they propelled a thin-faced man with a pointed beard, and Trask had to look twice at him before he recognized the face of Andray Dunnan. It looked more like the face of Duke Angus of Wardshaven as he last remembered it. Dunnan looked at him in incurious contempt. "Your dotard king couldn't rule without Zaspar Makann, and Makann couldn't rule without me, and neither can you," he said. "Shoot this gang of turncoats, and I'll rule Marduk for you." He looked at Trask again. "Who are you?" he demanded. "I don't know you." Trask slipped the pistol from his holster, thumbing off the safety. "I am Lucas Trask. You've heard that name before," he said. "Stand away from behind him, you people." "Oh, yes; the poor fool who thought he was going to marry Elaine Karvall. Well, you won't, Lord Trask of Traskon. She loves me, not you. She's waiting for me now, on Gram...." Trask shot him through the head. Dunnan's eyes widened in momentary incredulity; then his knees gave way, and he fell forward on his face. Trask thumbed on the safety and holstered the pistol, and looked at the body on the concrete. It hadn't made the least difference. It had been like shooting a snake, or one of the nasty scorpion-things that infested the old buildings in Rivington. Just no more Andray Dunnan. "Take that carrion and stuff it in a mass-energy converter," he said. "And I don't want anybody to mention the name of Andray Dunnan to me again." He didn't look at them haul Dunnan's body away on a lifter-skid; he watched the fifty-odd leaders of the overthrown misgovernment of Marduk shamble away to freedom, guarded by Paytrik Morland's riflemen. Now there was something to reproach himself for; he'd committed a separate and distinct crime against Marduk by letting each one of them live. Unless recognized and killed by somebody outside, every one of them would be at some villainy before next sunrise. Well, King Simon I could cope with that. He started when he realized how he had thought of his friend. Well, why not? Mikhyl's mind was dead; his body would not survive it more than a year. Then a child Queen, and a long regency, and long regencies were dangerous. Better a strong King, in name as well as power. And the succession could be safeguarded by marrying Steven and Myrna. Myrna had accepted, at eight, that she must some day marry for reasons of state; why not her playmate Steven? And Simon Bentrik would see the necessity. He was neither a fool nor a moral coward; he only needed to take some time to adjust to ideas. The rabble who had bought their lives with their leader's had gone, now. Slowly, he followed them, thinking. Don't press the idea on Simon too hard; just expose him to it and let him adopt it. And there would be the treaty--Tanith, Marduk, Beowulf, Amaterasu; eventually, treaties with the other civilized planets. Nebulously, the idea of a League of Civilized Worlds began to take shape in his mind. Be a good idea if he adopted the title of King of Tanith for himself. And cut loose from the Sword-Worlds; especially cut loose from Gram. Let Viktor of Xochitl have it. Or Garvan Spasso. Viktor wouldn't be the last Space Viking to take his ships back against the Sword-Worlds. Sooner or later, civilization in the Old Federation would drive them all home to loot the planets that had sent them out. Well, if he was going to be a king, shouldn't he have a queen? Kings usually did. He climbed into the little hall-car and started up a long shaft. There was Valerie Alvarath. They'd enjoyed each other's society on the _Nemesis_. He wondered if she would want to make it permanent, even on a throne.... Elaine was with him. He felt her beside him, almost tangibly. Her voice was whispering to him: _She loves you, Lucas. She'll say yes. Be good to her, and she'll make you happy._ Then she was gone, and he knew that she would never return. Good-by, Elaine. [Illustration: FIN] Notes: Inconsistent hyphenation; the former forms were all changed to the latter: Space-Scourge (7) vs. Space Scourge (41) Sun-Goddess (3) vs. Sun Goddess (3) Jaganath (2) vs. Jagannath (4) Amaterasun (1) vs. Amaterasuan[s] (1) handphone (1) vs. hand-phone (3) planetside (1) vs. planet-side (1) slagpile (1) vs. slag-pile (1) trade planets (3) vs. trade-planets (10) two hand (1) vs. two-hand (1) air cavalry (1) vs. air-cavalry (2) smallarms (1) vs. small arms (5) Thinkos: Admiral of the Royal Mardukan Navy." [Chap. XIV] was changed to Admiral of the Royal Navy of Gram." one of the Gram-Marduk freighters, [Chap. XXIII] was changed to one of the Gram-Tanith freighters, 
21051	----	Skylark Three _By_ Edward E. Smith, Ph. D. Sequel to "The Skylark of Space" +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | _"All set," he reported crisply, and barked a series of | | explosive syllables at Shiro, ending upon a rising note._ | | | | _The Tale of the Galactic Cruise Which Ushered in Universal | | Civilization_ | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ [Illustration] +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | _For two years readers of_ AMAZING STORIES _have literally | | clamored for a sequel to the famous story, "The Skylark of | | Space," which appeared exactly two years ago. Except that | | "Skylark Three" is more thrilling, more exciting and even | | more chockful of science than the other. Dr. Smith tells | | about the story in his author's note far better than we can | | do._ | | | | Illustrated by WESSO | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note | | | | This etext was produced from Amazing Stories August, | | September and October 1930. Extensive research did not | | uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this | | publication was renewed. | | | | Other Transcriber Notes and Errata are given at the end of | | the text. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ AUTHOR'S NOTE: To all profound thinkers in the realms of Science who may chance to read SKYLARK THREE, greetings: I have taken certain liberties with several more or less commonly accepted theories, but I assure you that those theories have not been violated altogether in ignorance. Some of them I myself believe sound, others I consider unsound, still others are out of my line, so that I am not well enough informed upon their basic mathematical foundations to have come to any definite conclusion, one way or the other. Whether or not I consider any theory sound, I did not hesitate to disregard it, if its literal application would have interfered with the logical development of the story. In "The Skylark of Space" Mrs. Garby and I decided, after some discussion, to allow two mathematical impossibilities to stand. One of these immediately became the target of critics from Maine to California and, while no astronomer has as yet called attention to the other, I would not be surprised to hear about it, even at this late date. While I do not wish it understood that I regard any of the major features of this story as likely to become facts in the near future--indeed, it has been my aim to portray the highly improbable--it is my belief that there is no mathematical or scientific impossibility to be found in "Skylark Three." In fact, even though I have repeatedly violated theories in which I myself believe, I have in every case taken great pains to make certain that the most rigid mathematical analysis of which I am capable has failed to show that I have violated any known and proven scientific fact. By "fact" I do not mean the kind of reasoning, based upon assumptions later shown to be fallacious, by which it was "proved" that the transatlantic cable and the airplane were scientifically impossible. I refer to definitely known phenomena which no possible future development can change--I refer to mathematical proofs whose fundamental equations and operations involve no assumptions and contain no second-degree uncertainties. Please bear in mind that we KNOW very little. It has been widely believed that the velocity of light is the limiting velocity, and many of our leading authorities hold this view--but it cannot be proved, and is by no means universally held. In this connection, it would appear that J. J. Thompson, in "Beyond the Electron" shows, to his own satisfaction at least, that velocities vastly greater than that of light are not only possible, but necessary to any comprehensive investigation into the nature of the electron. We do not know the nature of light. Neither the undulatory theory nor the quantum theory are adequate to explain all observed phenomena, and they seem to be mutually exclusive, since it would seem clear by definition that no one thing can be at the same time continuous and discontinuous. We know nothing of the ether--we do not even know whether or not it exists, save as a concept of our own extremely limited intelligence. We are in total ignorance of the ultimate structure of matter, and of the arrangement and significance of those larger aggregations of matter, the galaxies. We do not know nor understand, nor can we define, even such fundamental necessities as time and space. Why prate of "the impossible"? Edward Elmer Smith, Ph.D. CHAPTER I DuQuesne Goes Traveling In the innermost private office of Steel, Brookings and DuQuesne stared at each other across the massive desk. DuQuesne's voice was cold, his black brows were drawn together. "Get this, Brookings, and get it straight. I'm shoving off at twelve o'clock tonight. My advice to you is to lay off Richard Seaton, absolutely. Don't do a thing. _Nothing, hold everything._ Keep on holding it until I get back, no matter how long that may be," DuQuesne shot out in an icy tone. "I am very much surprised at your change of front, Doctor. You are the last man I would have expected to be scared off after one engagement." "Don't be any more of a fool than you have to, Brookings. There's a lot of difference between scared and knowing when you are simply wasting effort. As you remember, I tried to abduct Mrs. Seaton by picking her off with an attractor from a space-ship. I would have bet that nothing could have stopped me. Well, when they located me--probably with an automatic Osnomian ray-detector--and heated me red-hot while I was still better than two hundred miles up, I knew then and there that they had us stopped; that there was nothing we could do except go back to my plan, abandon the abduction idea, and eventually kill them all. Since my plan would take time, you objected to it, and sent an airplane to drop a five-hundred-pound bomb on them. Airplane, bomb, and all simply vanished. It didn't explode, you remember, just flashed into light and disappeared, with scarcely any noise. Then you pulled several more of your fool ideas, such as long-range bombardment, and so on. None of them worked. Still you've got the nerve to think that you can get them with ordinary gunmen! I've drawn you diagrams and shown you figures--I've told you in great detail and in one-syllable words exactly what we're up against. Now I tell you again that they've _got something_. If you had the brains of a pinhead, you would know that anything I can't do with a space-ship can't be done by a mob of ordinary gangsters. I'm telling you, Brookings, that you can't do it. My way is absolutely the only way that will work." "But five years, Doctor!" "I may be back in six months. But on a trip of this kind anything can happen, so I am planning on being gone five years. Even that may not be enough--I am carrying supplies for ten years, and that box of mine in the vault is not to be opened until ten years from today." "But surely we shall be able to remove the obstructions ourselves in a few weeks. We always have." "Oh, quit kidding yourself, Brookings! This is no time for idiocy! You stand just as much chance of killing Seaton----" "Please, Doctor, please don't talk like that!" "Still squeamish, eh? Your pussyfooting always did give me an acute pain. I'm for direct action, word and deed, first, last, and all the time. I repeat, you have exactly as much chance of killing Richard Seaton as a blind kitten has." "How do you arrive at that conclusion, Doctor? You seem very fond of belittling our abilities. Personally, I think that we shall be able to attain our objectives within a few weeks--certainly long before you can possibly return from such an extended trip as you have in mind. And since you are so fond of frankness, I will say that I think that Seaton has you buffaloed, as you call it. Nine-tenths of these wonderful Osnomian things, I am assured by competent authorities, are scientifically impossible, and I think that the other one-tenth exists only in your own imagination. Seaton was lucky in that the airplane bomb was defective and exploded prematurely; and your space-ship got hot because of your injudicious speed through the atmosphere. We shall have everything settled by the time you get back." "If you have, I'll make you a present of the controlling interest in Steel and buy myself a chair in some home for feeble-minded old women. Your ignorance and unwillingness to believe any new idea do not change the facts in any particular. Even before they went to Osnome, Seaton was hard to get, as you found out. On that trip he learned so much new stuff that it is now impossible to kill him by any ordinary means. You should realize that fact when he kills every gangster you send against him. At all events be very, _very_ careful not to kill his wife in any of your attacks, even by accident, until after you have killed him." "Such an event would be regrettable, certainly, in that it would remove all possibility of the abduction." "It would remove more than that. Remember the explosion in our laboratory, that blew an entire mountain into impalpable dust? Draw in your mind a nice, vivid picture of one ten times the size in each of our plants and in this building. I know that you are fool enough to go ahead with your own ideas, in spite of everything I've said; and, since I do not yet actually control Steel, I can't forbid you to, officially. But you should know that I know what I'm talking about, and I say again that you're going to make an utter fool of yourself; just because you won't believe anything possible, that hasn't been done every day for a hundred years. I wish that I could make you understand that Seaton and Crane have got something that we haven't--but for the good of our plants, and incidentally for your own, please remember one thing, anyway; for if you forget it, we won't have a plant left and you personally will be blown into a fine red mist. Whatever you start, kill Seaton first, and be absolutely certain that he is definitely, completely, finally and totally dead before you touch one of Dorothy Seaton's red hairs. As long as you only attack him personally he won't do anything but kill every man you send against him. If you kill her while he's still alive, though--Blooie!" and the saturnine scientist waved both hands in an expressive pantomime of wholesale destruction. "Probably you are right in that," Brookings paled slightly. "Yes, Seaton would do just that. We shall be very careful, until after we succeed in removing him." "Don't worry--you won't succeed. I shall attend to that detail myself, as soon as I get back. Seaton and Crane and their families, the directors and employees of their plants, the banks that by any possibility may harbor their notes or solutions--in short, every person and everything standing between me and a monopoly of 'X'--all shall disappear." "That is a terrible program, Doctor. Wouldn't the late Perkins' plan of an abduction, such as I have in mind, be better, safer and quicker?" "Yes--except for the fact that it will not work. I've talked until I'm blue in the face--I've proved to you over and over that you can't abduct her now without first killing him, and that you can't even touch him. My plan is the only one that will work. Seaton isn't the only one who learned anything--I learned a lot myself. I learned one thing in particular. Only four other inhabitants of either Earth or Osnome ever had even an inkling of it, and they died, with their brains disintegrated beyond reading. That thing is my ace in the hole. I'm going after it. When I get it, and not until then, will I be ready to take the offensive." "You intend starting open war upon your return?" "The war started when I tried to pick off the women with my attractor. That is why I am leaving at midnight. He always goes to bed at eleven-thirty, and I will be out of range of his object-compass before he wakes up. Seaton and I understand each other perfectly. We both know that the next time we meet one of us is going to be resolved into his component atoms, perhaps into electrons. He doesn't know that he's going to be the one, but I do. My final word to you is to lay off--if you don't, you and your 'competent authorities' are going to learn a lot." "You do not care to inform me more fully as to your destination or your plans?" "I do not. Goodbye." CHAPTER II Dunark Visits Earth Martin Crane reclined in a massive chair, the fingers of his right hand lightly touching those of his left, listening attentively. Richard Seaton strode up and down the room before his friend, his unruly brown hair on end, speaking savagely between teeth clenched upon the stem of his reeking, battered briar, brandishing a sheaf of papers. "Mart, we're stuck--stopped dead. If my head wasn't made of solid blue mush I'd have had a way figured out of this thing before now, but I can't. With that zone of force the Skylark would have everything imaginable--without it, we're exactly where we were before. That zone is immense, man--terrific--its possibilities are unthinkable--and I'm so cussed dumb that I can't find out how to use it intelligently--can't use it at all, for that matter. By its very nature it is impenetrable to any form of matter, however applied; and this calc here," slapping viciously the sheaf of papers containing his calculations, "shows that it must also be opaque to any wave whatever, propagated through air or through ether, clear down to cosmic rays. Behind it, we would be blind and helpless, so we can't use it at all. It drives me frantic! Think of a barrier of pure force, impalpable, immaterial, and exerted along a geometrical surface of no thickness whatever--and yet actual enough to stop even a Millikan ray that travels a hundred thousand light-years and then goes through twenty-seven feet of solid lead just like it was so much vacuum! That's what we're up against! However, I'm going to try out that model, Mart, right now. Come on, guy, snap into it! Let's get busy!" "You are getting idiotic again, Dick," Crane rejoined calmly, without moving. "You know, even better than I do, that you are playing with the most concentrated essence of energy that the world has ever seen. That zone of force probably can be generated----" "Probably, nothing!" barked Seaton. "It's just as evident a fact as that stool," kicking the unoffending bit of furniture half-way across the room as he spoke. "If you'd've let me, I'd've shown it to you yesterday!" "Undoubtedly, then. Grant that it is impenetrable to all matter and to all known waves. Suppose that it should prove impenetrable also to gravitation and to magnetism? Those phenomena probably depend upon the ether, but we know nothing fundamental of their nature, nor of that of the ether. Therefore your calculations, comprehensive though they are, cannot predict the effect upon them of your zone of force. Suppose that that zone actually does set up a barrier in the ether, so that it nullifies gravitation, magnetism, and all allied phenomena; so that the power-bars, the attractors and repellers, cannot work through it? Then what? As well as showing me the zone of force, you might well have shown me yourself flying off into space, unable to use your power and helpless if you released the zone. No, we must know more of the fundamentals before you try even a small-scale experiment." "Oh, bugs! You're carrying caution to extremes, Mart. What can happen? Even if gravitation should be nullified, I would rise only slowly, heading south the angle of our latitude--that's thirty-nine degrees--away from the perpendicular. I couldn't shoot off on a tangent, as some of these hot-heads have been claiming. Inertia would make me keep pace, approximately, with the earth in its rotation. I would rise slowly--only as fast as the tangent departs from the curvature of the earth's surface. I haven't figured out how fast that is, but it must be pretty slow." "Pretty slow?" Crane smiled. "Figure it out." "All right--but I'll bet it's slower than the rise of a toy balloon." Seaton threw down the papers and picked up his slide-rule, a twenty-inch trigonometrical duplex. "You'll concede that it is allowable to neglect the radial component of the orbital velocity of the earth for a first approximation, won't you--or shall I figure that in too?" "You may ignore that factor." "All right--let's see. Radius of rotation here in Washington would be cosine latitude times equatorial radius, approximately--call it thirty-two hundred miles. Angular velocity, fifteen degrees an hour. I want secant fifteen less one times thirty-two hundred. Right? Secant equals one over cosine--um-m-m-m--one point oh three five. Then point oh three five times thirty-two hundred. Hundred and twelve miles first hour. Velocity constant with respect to sun, accelerated respecting point of departure. Ouch! You win, Mart--I'd kinda step out! Well, how about this, then? I'll put on a vacuum suit and carry rations. Harness outside, with the same equipment I used in the test flights before we built _Skylark I--plus_ the new stuff and a coil. Then throw on the zone, and see what happens. There can't be any jar in taking off, and with that outfit I can get back O. K. if I go clear to Jupiter!" Crane sat in silence, his keen mind considering every aspect of the motions possible, of velocity, of acceleration, of inertia. He already knew well Seaton's resourcefulness in crises and his physical and mental strength. "As far as I can see, that might be safe," he admitted finally, "and we really should know something about it besides the theory." "Fine, Mart--let's get busy! I'll be ready in five minutes. Yell for the girls, will you? They'd break us off at the ankles if we pull anything new without letting them in on it." A few minutes later the "girls" strolled out into Crane Field, arms around each other--Dorothy Seaton, her gorgeous auburn hair framing violet eyes and vivid coloring; black-haired, dark-eyed Margaret Crane. "Br-r-r, it's cold!" Dorothy shivered, wrapping her coat more closely about her. "This must be the coldest day Washington has seen for years!" "It is cold," Margaret agreed. "I wonder what they are going to do out here, this kind of weather?" * * * * * As she spoke, the two men stepped out of the "testing shed"--the huge structure that housed their Osnomian-built space-cruiser, "Skylark II." Seaton waddled clumsily, wearing as he did a Crane vacuum-suit which, built of fur, canvas, metal and transparent silica, braced by steel netting and equipped with air-tanks and heaters, rendered its wearer independent of outside conditions of temperature and pressure. Outside this suit he wore a heavy harness of leather, buckled about his body, shoulders, and legs, attached to which were numerous knobs, switches, dials, bakelite cases, and other pieces of apparatus. Carried by a strong aluminum framework in turn supported by the harness, the universal bearing of a small power-bar rose directly above his grotesque-looking helmet. "What do you think you're going to do in that thing, Dickie?" Dorothy called. Then, knowing that he could not hear her voice, she turned to Crane. "What are you letting that precious husband of mine do now, Martin? He looks as though he were up to something." While she was speaking, Seaton had snapped the release of his face plate. "Nothing much, Dottie. Just going to show you-all the zone of force. Mart wouldn't let me turn it on, unless I got all cocked and primed for a year's journey into space." "Dot, what is that zone of force, anyway?" asked Margaret. "Oh, it's something Dick got into his head during that awful fight they had on Osnome. He hasn't thought of anything else since we got back. You know how the attractors and repellers work? Well, he found out something funny about the way everything acted while the Mardonalians were bombarding them with a certain kind of a wave-length. He finally figured out the exact ray that did it, and found out that if it is made strongly enough, it acts as if a repeller and attractor were working together--only so much stronger that nothing can get through the boundary, either way--in fact, it's so strong that it cuts anything in two that's in the way. And the funny thing is that there's nothing there at all, really; but Dick says that the forces meeting there, or something, make it act as though something really important were there. See?" "Uh-huh," assented Margaret, doubtfully, just as Crane finished the final adjustments and moved toward them. A safe distance away from Seaton, he turned and waved his hand. Instantly Seaton disappeared from view, and around the place where he had stood there appeared a shimmering globe some twenty feet in diameter--a globe apparently a perfect spherical mirror, which darted upward and toward the south. After a moment the globe disappeared and Seaton was again seen. He was now standing upon a hemispherical mass of earth. He darted back toward the group upon the ground, while the mass of earth fell with a crash a quarter of a mile away. High above their heads the mirror again encompassed Seaton, and again shot upward and southward. Five times this maneuver was repeated before Seaton came down, landing easily in front of them and opening his helmet. "It's just what we thought it was, only worse," he reported tersely. "Can't do a thing with it. Gravitation won't work through it--bars won't--nothing will. And dark? _Dark!_ Folks, you ain't never seen no darkness, nor heard no silence. It scared me stiff!" "Poor little boy--afraid of the dark!" exclaimed Dorothy. "We saw absolute blackness in space." "Not like this, you didn't. I just saw absolute darkness and heard absolute silence for the first time in my life. I never imagined anything like it--come on up with me and I'll show it to you." "No you won't!" his wife shrieked as she retreated toward Crane. "Some other time, perhaps." Seaton removed the harness and glanced at the spot from which he had taken off, where now appeared a hemispherical hole in the ground. "Let's see what kind of tracks I left, Mart," and the two men bent over the depression. They saw with astonishment that the cut surface was perfectly smooth, with not even the slightest roughness or irregularity visible. Even the smallest loose grains of sand had been sheared in two along a mathematically exact hemispherical surface by the inconceivable force of the disintegrating copper bar. "Well, that sure wins the----" An alarm bell sounded. Without a glance around, Seaton seized Dorothy and leaped into the testing shed. Dropping her unceremoniously to the floor he stared through the telescope sight of an enormous ray-generator which had automatically aligned itself upon the distant point of liberation of intra-atomic energy which had caused the alarm to sound. One hand upon the switch, his face was hard and merciless as he waited to make sure of the identity of the approaching space-ship, before he released the frightful power of his generator upon it. "I've been expecting DuQuesne to try it again," he gritted, striving to make out the visitor, yet more than two hundred miles distant. "He's out to get you, Dot--and this time I'm not just going to warm him up and scare him away, as I did last time. This time that misguided mutt's going to get frizzled right.... I can't locate him with this small telescope, Mart. Line him up in the big one and give me the word, will you?" "I see him, Dick, but it is not DuQuesne's ship. It is built of transparent arenak, like the 'Kondal.' Even though it seems impossible, I believe it is the 'Kondal'." "Maybe so, and again maybe DuQuesne built it--or stole it. On second thought, though, I don't believe that DuQuesne would be fool enough to tackle us again in the same way--but I'm taking no chances.... O. K., it is the 'Kondal,' I can see Dunark and Sitar myself, now." The transparent vessel soon neared the field and the four Terrestrials walked out to greet their Osnomian friends. Through the arenak walls they recognized Dunark, Kofedix of Kondal, at the controls, and saw Sitar, his beautiful young queen, lying in one of the seats near the wall. She attempted a friendly greeting, but her face was strained as though she were laboring under a burden too great for her to bear. As they watched, Dunark slipped a helmet over his head and one over Sitar's, pressed a button to open one of the doors, and supported her toward the opening. "They mustn't come out, Dick!" exclaimed Dorothy in dismay. "They'll freeze to death in five minutes without any clothes on!" "Yes, and Sitar can't stand up under our gravitation, either--I doubt if Dunark can, for long," and Seaton dashed toward the vessel, motioning the visitor back. But misunderstanding the signal, Dunark came on. As he clambered heavily through the door he staggered as though under an enormous weight, and Sitar collapsed upon the frozen ground. Trying to help her, half-kneeling over her, Dunark struggled, his green skin paling to a yellowish tinge at the touch of the bitter and unexpected cold. Seaton leaped forward and gathered Sitar up in his mighty arms as though she were a child. [Illustration: _Trying to help her, half kneeling over her, Dunark struggled, his green skin paling to a yellowish tinge at the touch of the bitter and unexpected cold._] "Help Dunark back in, Mart," he directed crisply. "Hop in, girls--we've got to take these folks back up where they can live." Seaton shut the door, and as everyone lay flat in the seats Crane, who had taken the controls, applied one notch of power and the huge vessel leaped upward. Miles of altitude were gained before Crane brought the cruiser to a stop and locked her in place with an anchoring attractor. "There," he remarked calmly, "gravitation here is approximately the same as it is upon Osnome." "Yes," put in Seaton, standing up and shedding clothing in all directions, "and I rise to remark that we'd better undress as far as the law allows--perhaps farther. I never did like Osnomian ideas of comfortable warmth, but we can endure it by peeling down to bedrock----" * * * * * Sitar jumped up happily, completely restored, and the three women threw their arms around each other. "What a horrible, terrible, frightful world!" exclaimed Sitar, her eyes widening as she thought of her first experience with our earth. "Much as I love you, I shall never dare try to visit you again. I have never been able to understand why you Terrestrials wear what you call 'clothes,' nor why you are so terribly, brutally strong. Now I really know--I will feel the utterly cold and savage embrace of that awful earth of yours as long as I live!" "Oh, it's not so bad, Sitar." Seaton, who was shaking both of Dunark's hands vigorously, assured her over his shoulder. "All depends on where you were raised. We like it that way, and Osnome gives us the pip. But you poor fish," turning again to Dunark, "with all my brains inside your skull, you should have known what you were letting yourself in for." "That's true, after a fashion," Dunark admitted, "but your brain told me that Washington was _hot_. If I'd have thought to recalculate your actual Fahrenheit degrees into our loro ... but that figures only forty-seven and, while very cold, we could have endured it--wait a minute, I'm getting it. You have what you call 'seasons.' This, then, must be your 'winter.' Right?" "Right the first time. That's the way your brain works behind my pan, too. I could figure anything out all right after it happened, but hardly ever beforehand--so I guess I can't blame you much, at that. But what I want to know is, how'd you get here? It would take more than my brains--you can't see our sun from anywhere near Osnome, even if you knew exactly where to look for it." "Easy. Remember those wrecked instruments you threw out of _Skylark I_ when we built _Skylark II_?" Having every minute detail of the configuration of Seaton's brain engraved upon his own, Dunark spoke English in Seaton's own characteristic careless fashion. Only when thinking deeply or discussing abstruse matter did Seaton employ the carefully selected and precise phrasing, which he knew so well how to use. "Well, none of them was beyond repair and the juice was still on most of them. One was an object-compass bearing on the Earth. We simply fixed the bearings, put on some minor improvements, and here we are." "Let us all sit down and be comfortable," he continued, changing into the Kondalian tongue without a break, "and I will explain why we have come. We are in most desperate need of two things which you alone can supply--salt, and that strange metal, 'X'. Salt I know you have in great abundance, but I know that you have very little of the metal. You have only the one compass upon that planet?" "That's all--one is all we set on it. However, we've got close to half a ton of the metal on hand--you can have all you want." "Even if I took it all, which I would not like to do, that would be less than half enough. We must have at least one of your tons, and two tons would be better." "Two tons! Holy cat! Are you going to plate a fleet of battle cruisers?" "More than that. We must plate an area of copper of some ten thousand square miles--in fact, the very life of our entire race depends upon it." "It's this way," he continued, as the four earth-beings stared at him in wonder. "Shortly after you left Osnome we were invaded by the inhabitants of the third planet of our fourteenth sun. Luckily for us they landed upon Mardonale, and in less than two days there was not a single Osnomian left alive upon that half of the planet. They wiped out our grand fleet in one brief engagement, and it was only the _Kondal_ and a few more like her that enabled us to keep them from crossing the ocean. Even with our full force of these vessels, we cannot defeat them. Our regular Kondalian weapons were useless. We shot explosive copper charges against them of such size as to cause earthquakes all over Osnome, without seriously crippling their defenses. Their offensive weapons are almost irresistible--they have generators that burn arenak as though it were so much paper, and a series of deadly frequencies against which only a copper-driven ray screen is effective, and even that does not stand up long." "How come you lasted till now, then?" asked Seaton. "They have nothing like the _Skylark_, and no knowledge of intra-atomic energy. Therefore their space-ships are of the rocket type, and for that reason they can cross only at the exact time of conjunction, or whatever you call it--no, not conjunction, exactly, either, since the two planets do not revolve around the same sun: but when they are closest together. Our solar system is so complex, you know, that unless the trips are timed exactly, to the hour, the vessels will not be able to land upon Osnome, but will be drawn aside and be lost, if not actually drawn into the vast central sun. Although it may not have occurred to you, a little reflection will show that the inhabitants of all the central planets, such as Osnome, must perforce be absolutely ignorant of astronomy, and of all the wonders of outer space. Before your coming we knew nothing beyond our own solar system, and very little of that. We knew of the existence of only such of the closest planets as were brilliant enough to be seen in our continuous sunlight, and they were few. Immediately after your coming I gave your knowledge of astronomy to a group of our foremost physicists and mathematicians, and they have been working ceaselessly from space-ships--close enough so that observations could be recalculated to Osnome, and yet far enough away to afford perfect 'seeing,' as you call it." "But I don't know any more about astronomy than a pig does about Sunday," protested Seaton. "Your knowledge of details is, of course, incomplete," conceded Dunark, "but the detailed knowledge of the best of your Earthly astronomers would not help us a great deal, since we are so far removed from you in space. You, however, have a very clear and solid knowledge of the fundamentals of the science, and that is what we need, above all things." "Well, maybe you're right, at that. I do know the general theory of the motions, and I studied some Celestial Mechanics. I'm awfully weak on advanced theory, though, as you'll find out when you get that far." "Perhaps--but since our enemies have no knowledge of astronomy whatever, it is not surprising that their rocket-ships can be launched only at one particularly favorable time; for there are many planets and satellites, of which they can know nothing, to throw their vessels off the course. "Some material essential to the operation of their war machinery apparently must come from their own planet, for they have ceased attacking, have dug in, and are simply holding their ground. It may be that they had not anticipated as much resistance as we could offer with space-ships and intra-atomic energy. At any rate, they have apparently saved enough of that material to enable them to hold out until the next conjunction--I cannot think of a better word for it--shall occur. Our forces are attacking constantly, with all the armament at our command, but it is certain that if the next conjunction is allowed to occur, it means the end of the entire Kondalian nation."' "What d'you mean 'if the next conjunction is _allowed_ to occur?'" interjected Seaton. "Nobody can stop it." "I am stopping it," Dunark stated quietly, grim purpose in every lineament. "That conjunction shall never occur. That is why I must have the vast quantities of salt and 'X'. We are building abutments of arenak upon the first satellite of our seventh planet, and upon our sixth planet itself. We shall cover them with plated active copper, and install chronometers to throw the switches at precisely the right moment. We have calculated the exact times, places, and magnitudes of the forces to be used. We shall throw the sixth planet some distance out of its orbit, and force the first satellite of the seventh planet clear out of that planet's influence. The two bodies whose motions we have thus changed will collide in such a way that the resultant body will meet the planet of our enemies in head-on collision, long before the next conjunction. The two bodies will be of almost equal masses, and will have opposite and approximately equal velocities; hence the resultant fused or gaseous mass will be practically without velocity and will fall directly into the fourteenth sun." "Wouldn't it be easier to destroy it with an explosive copper bomb?" "Easier, yes, but much more dangerous to the rest of our solar system. We cannot calculate exactly the effect of the collisions we are planning--but it is almost certain that an explosion of sufficient violence to destroy all life upon the planet would disturb its motion sufficiently to endanger the entire system. The way we have in mind will simply allow the planet and one satellite to drop out quietly--the other planets of the same sun will soon adjust themselves to the new conditions, and the system at large will be practically unaffected--at least, so we believe." Seaton's eyes narrowed as his thoughts turned to the quantities of copper and "X" required and to the engineering features of the project; Crane's first thought was of the mathematics involved in a computation of that magnitude and character; Dorothy's quick reaction was one of pure horror. "He can't, Dick! He mustn't! It would be too ghastly! It's outrageous--it's unthinkable--it's--it's--it's simply too horrible!" Her violet eyes flamed, and Margaret joined in: "That would be awful, Martin. Think of the destruction of a whole planet--of an entire world--with all its inhabitants! It makes me shudder, even to think of it." * * * * * Dunark leaped to his feet, ablaze. But before he could say a word, Seaton silenced him. "Shut up, Dunark! Pipe down! Don't say anything you'll be sorry for--let _me_ tell 'em! Close your mouth, I tell you!" as Dunark still tried to get a word in, "I tell you I'll tell 'em, and when I tell 'em they stay told! Now listen, you two girls--you're going off half-cocked and you're both full of little red ants. What do you think Dunark is up against? Sherman chirped it when he described war--and this is a real he-war; a brand totally unknown on our Earth. It isn't a question of whether or not to destroy a population--the only question is which population is to be destroyed. One of them's got to go. Remember those folks go into a war thoroughly, and there isn't a thought, even remotely resembling our conception of mercy in any of their minds on either side. If Dunark's plans go through the enemy nation will be wiped out. That is horrible, of course. But on the other hand, if we block him off from salt and 'X,' the entire Kondalian nation will be destroyed just as thoroughly and efficiently, and even more horribly--not one man, woman, or child would be spared. Which nation do you want saved? Play that over a couple of times on your adding machine, Dot, and let me know what you get." Dorothy, taken aback, opened and closed her mouth twice before she found her voice. "But, Dick, they couldn't possibly. Would they kill them all, Dick? Surely they wouldn't--they _couldn't_." "Surely they would--and could. They do--it's good technique in those parts of the Galaxy. Dunark has just told us of how they killed every member of the entire race of Mardonalians, in forty hours. Kondal would go the same way. Don't kid yourself, Dimples--don't be a child. War up there is _no_ species of pink tea, believe me--half of my brain has been through thirty years of Osnomian warfare, and I know precisely what I'm talking about. Let's take a vote. Personally, I'm in favor of Osnome. Mart?" "Osnome." "Dottie? Peggy?" Both remained silent for some time, then Dorothy turned to Margaret. "You tell him, Peggy--we both feel the same way." "Dick, you know that we wouldn't want the Kondalians destroyed--but the other is so--such a--well, such an utter _shrecklichkeit_--isn't there some other way out?" "I'm afraid not--but if there is any other possible way out, I'll do my da--to help find it," he promised. "The ayes have it. Dunark, we'll skip over to that 'X' planet and load you up." Dunark grasped Seaton's hand. "Thanks, Dick," he said, simply. "But before you help me farther, and lest I might be in some degree sailing under false colors, I must tell you that, wearer of the seven disks though you are, Overlord of Osnome though you are, my brain brother though you are; had you decided against me, nothing but my death could have kept me away from that salt and your 'X' compass." "Why sure," assented Seaton, in surprise. "Why not? Fair enough! Anybody would do the same--don't let that bother you." "How is your supply of platinum?" asked Dunark. "Mighty low. We had about decided to hop over there after some. I want some of your textbooks on electricity and so on, too. I see you brought a load of platinum with you." "Yes, a few hundred tons. We also brought along an assortment of books I knew you would be interested in, a box of radium, a few small bags of gems of various kinds, and some of our fabrics, Sitar thought your Karfediro would like to have. While we are here, I would like to get some books on chemistry and some other things." "We'll get you the Congressional Library, if you want it, and anything else you think you'd like. Well, gang, let's go places and do things! What to do, Mart?" "We had better drop back to Earth, have the laborers unload the platinum, and load on the salt, books, and other things. Then both ships will go to the 'X' planet, as we will each want compasses on it, for future use. While we are loading, I should like to begin remodeling our instruments; to make them something like these; with Dunark's permission. These instruments are wonders, Dick--vastly ahead of anything I have ever seen. Come and look at them, if you want to see something really beautiful." "Coming up. But say, Mart, while I think of it, we mustn't forget to install a zone-of-force apparatus on this boat, too. Even though we can't use it intelligently, it certainly would be a winner as a defense. We couldn't hurt anybody through it, of course, but if we should happen to be getting licked anywhere, all we'd have to do would be to wrap ourselves up in it. They couldn't touch us. Nothing in the ether spectrum is corkscrewy enough to get through it." "That's the second idea you've had since I've known you, Dicky," Dorothy smiled at Crane. "Do you think he should be allowed to run at large, Martin?" "That is a real idea. We may need it--you never can tell. Even if we never find any other use for the zone of force, that one is amply sufficient to justify its installation." "Yes, it would be, for you--and I'm getting to be a regular Safety-First Simon myself, since they opened up on us. What about those instruments?" * * * * * The three men gathered around the instrument-board and Dunark explained the changes he had made--and to such men as Seaton and Crane it was soon evident that they were examining an installation embodying sheer perfection of instrumental control--a system which only those wonder instrument-makers, the Osnomians, could have devised. The new object-compasses were housed in arenak cases after setting, and the housings were then exhausted to the highest attainable vacuum. Oscillation was set up by means of one carefully standardized electrical impulse, instead of by the clumsy finger-touch Seaton had used. The bearings, built of arenak and Osnomian jewels, were as strong as the axles of a truck and yet were almost perfectly frictionless. "I like them myself," admitted Dunark. "Without a load the needles will rotate freely more than a thousand hours on the primary impulse, as against a few minutes in the old type; and under load they are many thousands of times as sensitive." "You're a blinding flash and a deafening report, ace!" declared Seaton, enthusiastically. "That compass is as far ahead of my model as the _Skylark_ is ahead of Wright's first glider." The other instruments were no less noteworthy. Dunark had adopted the Perkins telephone system, but had improved it until it was scarcely recognized and had made it capable of almost unlimited range. Even the guns--heavy rapid-firers, mounted in spherical bearings in the walls--were aimed and fired by remote control, from the board. He had devised full automatic steering controls; and meters and recorders for acceleration, velocity, distance, and flight-angle. He had perfected a system of periscopic vision, which enabled the pilot to see the entire outside surfaces of the shell, and to look toward any point of the heavens without interference. "This kind of takes my eye, too, prince," Seaton said, as he seated himself, swung a large, concave disk in front of him, and experimented with levers and dials. "You certainly can't call this thing a periscope--it's no more a periscope than I am a polyp. When you look through this plate, it's better than looking out of a window--it subtends more than the angle of vision, so that you can't see anything but out-of-doors--I thought for a second I was going to fall out. What do you call 'em, Dunark?" "Kraloto. That would be in English ... Seeing-plate? Or rather, call it 'visiplate'." "That's a good word. Mart, take a look if you want to see a set of perfect lenses and prisms." Crane looked into the visiplate and gasped. The vessel had disappeared--he was looking directly down upon the Earth below him! "No trace of chromatic, spherical, or astigmatic aberration," he reported in surprise. "The refracting system is invisible--it seems as though nothing intervenes between the eye and the object. You perfected all these things since we left Osnome, Dunark? You are in a class by yourself. I could not even copy them in less than a month, and I never could have invented them." "I did not do it alone, by any means. The Society of Instrument-Makers, of which I am only one member, installed and tested more than a hundred systems. This one represents the best features of all the systems tried. It will not be necessary for you to copy them. I brought along two complete duplicate sets for the _Skylark_, as well as a dozen or so of the compasses. I thought that perhaps these particular improvements might not have occurred to you, since you Terrestrials are not as familiar as we are with complex instrumental work." Crane and Seaton spoke together. "That was thoughtful of you, Dunark, and we appreciated it fully." "That puts four more palms on your _Croix de Guerre_, ace. Thanks a lot." "Say, Dick," called Dorothy, from her seat near the wall. "If we're going down to the ground, how about Sitar?" "By lying down and not doing anything, and by staying in the vessel, where it is warm, she will be all right for the short time we must stay here," Dunark answered for his wife. "I will help all I can, but I do not know how much that will be." "It isn't so bad lying down." Sitar agreed. "I don't like your Earth a bit, but I can stand it a little while. Anyway, I _must_ stand it, so why worry about it?" "'At-a-girl!" cheered Seaton. "And as for you, Dunark, you'll pass the time just like Sitar does--lying down. If you do much chasing around down there where we live, you're apt to get your lights and liver twisted all out of shape--so you'll stay put, horizontal. We've got men enough around the shop to eat this cargo in three hours, let alone unload it. While they unload and load you up, we'll install the zone apparatus, put a compass on you, put one of yours on us, and then you can hop back up here where you're comfortable. Then as soon as we can get the 'Lark' ready for the trip, we'll jump up here and be on our way. Everything clear? Cut the rope, Mart--let the old bucket drop!" CHAPTER III Skylark Two Sets Out "Say, Mart, I just got conscious! It never occurred to me until just now, as Dunark left, that I'm as good an instrument-maker as Dunark is--the same one, in fact--and I've got a hunch. You know that needle on DuQuesne hasn't been working for quite a while? Well, I don't believe it's out of commission at all. I think he's gone somewhere, so far away that it can't read on him. I'm going to house it in, re-jewel it, and find out where he is." "An excellent idea. He has even you worrying, and as for myself----" "Worrying! That bird is simply pulling my cork! I'm so scared he'll get Dottie, that I'm running around in circles and biting myself in the small of the back. He's got a hen on, you can bet your shirt on that--what gravels me is he's aiming at the girls, not at us or the job." "I should say that someone had aimed at you fairly accurately, judging by the number of bullets stopped lately by that arenak armor of yours. I wish that I could take some of the strain, but they are centering all their attacks upon you." "Yes--I can't stick my nose outside our yard without somebody throwing lead at it. It's funny, too. You're more important to the power-plant than I am." "You should know why. They are not afraid of me. While my spirit is willing enough, it was your skill and rapidity with a pistol that frustrated four attempts at abduction in as many days. It is positively uncanny, the way you explode into action. With all my practice, I didn't even have my pistol out yesterday until it was all over. And besides Prescott's guards, we had four policemen with us--detailed to 'guard' us--because of the number of gunmen you had to kill before that!" "It ain't practice so much, Mart--it's a gift. I've always been fast, and I react automatically. You think first, that's why you're slow. Those cops were funny. They didn't know what it was all about until it was all over--all but calling the wagon. That was the worst yet. One of their slugs struck directly in front of my left eye--it was kinda funny, at that, seeing it splash--and I thought I was inside a boiler in a riveting shop when those machine-guns cut loose. It was hectic, all right, while it lasted. But one thing I'll tell the attentive world--we're not doing all the worrying. Very few, if any, of the gangsters they send after us are getting back. Wonder what they think when they shoot at us and we don't drop? "But I'm afraid I'm beginning to crack, Mart," Seaton went on, his voice becoming grimly earnest. "I don't like anything about this whole mess. I don't like all four of us wearing armor all the time. I don't like living constantly under guard. I don't like all this killing. And this constant menace of losing Dorothy, if I let her out of my sight for five seconds, is driving me mad. To tell you the real truth, I'm devilishly afraid that they'll figure out something that'll work. I could grab off two women, or kill two men, if they had armor and guns enough to stock a war. I believe that DuQuesne could, too--and the rest of that bunch aren't imbeciles, either, by any means. I won't feel safe until all four of us are in the _Skylark_ and a long ways from here. I'm sure glad we're pulling out; and I don't intend to come back until I get a good line on DuQuesne. He's the bird I'm going to get, and get right--and when I get him I'll tell the cock-eyed world he'll stay got. There won't be any two atoms of his entire carcass left in the same township. I meant that promise when I gave it to him!" "He realizes that fully. He knows that it is now definitely either his life or our own, and he is really dangerous. When he took Steel over and opened war upon us, he did it with his eyes wide open. With his ideas, he must have a monopoly of 'X' or nothing; and he knows the only possible way of getting it. However, you and I both know that he would not let either one of us live, even though we surrendered." "You chirped it! But that guy's going to find he's started something, unless I get paralysis of the intentions. Well, how about turning up a few R. P. M.? We don't want to keep Dunark waiting too long." "There is very little to do beyond installing the new instruments; and that is nearly done. We can finish pumping out the compass _en route_. You have already installed every weapon of offense and defense known to either Earthly or Osnomian warfare, including those ray-generators and screens you moaned so about not having during the battle over Kondal. I believe that we have on board every article for which either of us has been able to imagine even the slightest use." "Yes, we've got her so full of plunder that there's hardly room left for quarters. You ain't figuring on taking anybody but Shiro along, are you?" "No. I suppose there is no real necessity for taking even him, but he wants very much to go, and may prove himself useful." "I'll say he'll be useful. None of us really enjoys polishing brass or washing dishes--and besides, he's one star cook and an A-1 housekeeper." * * * * * The installation of the new instruments was soon completed, and while Dorothy and Margaret made last-minute preparations for departure, the men called a meeting of the managing directors and department heads of the "Seaton-Crane Co., Engineers." The chiefs gave brief reports in turn. Units Number One and Number Two of the immense new central super-power plant were in continuous operation. Number Three was almost ready to cut in. Number Four was being rushed to completion. Number Five was well under way. The research laboratory was keeping well up on its problems. Troubles were less than had been anticipated. Financially, it was a gold mine. With no expense for boilers or fuel, and thus with a relatively small investment in plant and a very small operating cost, they were selling power at one-sixth of prevailing rates, and still profits were almost paying for all new construction. With the completion of Number Five, rates would be reduced still further. "In short, Dad, everything's slick," remarked Seaton to Mr. Vaneman, after the others had gone. "Yes; your plan of getting the best men possible, paying them well, and giving them complete authority and sole responsibility, has worked to perfection. I have never seen an undertaking of such size go forward so smoothly and with such fine co-operation." "That's the way we wanted it. We hand-picked the directors, and put it up to you, strictly. You did the same to the managers. Everybody knows that his end is up to him, and him alone--so he digs in." "However, Dick, while everything at the works is so fine, when is this other thing going to break?" "We've won all the way so far, but I'm afraid something's about due. That's the big reason I want to get Dot away for a while. You know what they're up to?" "Too well," the older man answered. "Dottie or Mrs. Crane, or both. Her mother--she is telling her goodbye now--and I agree that the danger here is greater than out there." "Danger out there? With the old can fixed the way she is now, Dot's a lot safer there than you are in bed. Your house might fall down, you know." "You're probably right, son--I know you, and I know Martin Crane. Together, and in the _Skylark_, I believe you invincible." "All set, Dick?" asked Dorothy, appearing in the doorway. "All set. You've got the dope for Prescott and everybody Dad. We may be back in six months, or we may see something to investigate, and be gone a year or so. Don't begin to lose any sleep until after we've been out--oh, say three years. We'll make it a point to be back by then." Farewells were said; the party embarked, and _Skylark Two_ shot upward. Seaton flipped a phone set over his head and spoke. "Dunark!... Coming out, heading directly for 'X'.... No, better stay quite a ways off to one side when we get going good.... Yes, I'm accelerating twenty six point oh oh oh.... Yes. I'll call you now and then, until the radio waves get lost, to check the course with you. After that, keep on the last course, reverse at the calculated distance, and by the time we're pretty well slowed down, we'll feel around for each other with the compasses and go in together.... Right.... Uh-huh.... Fine! So long!" In order that the two vessels should keep reasonably close together, it had been agreed that each should be held at an acceleration of exactly twenty-six feet per second, positive and negative. This figure represented a compromise between the gravitational forces of the two worlds upon which the different parties lived. While considerably less than the acceleration of gravitation at the surface of the Earth, the Terrestrials could readily accustom themselves to it; and it was not enough greater than that of Osnome to hamper seriously the activities of the green people. Well clear of the Earth's influence, Seaton assured himself that everything was functioning properly, then stretched to his full height, wreathed his arms over his head, and heaved a deep sigh of relief. "Folks," he declared, "This is the first time I've felt right since we got out of this old bottle. Why, I feel so good a cat could walk up to me and scratch me right in the eye, and I wouldn't even scratch back. Yowp! I'm a wild Siberian catamount, and this is my night to howl. Whee-ee-yerow!" Dorothy laughed, a gay, lilting carol. "Haven't I always told you he had cat blood in him, Peggy? Just like all tomcats, every once in a while he has to stretch his claws and yowl. But go ahead, Dickie, I like it--this is the first uproar you've made in weeks. I believe I'll join you!" "It most certainly is a relief to get this load off our minds: I could do a little ladylike yowling myself," Margaret said; and Crane, lying completely at ease, a thin spiral of smoke curling upward from his cigarette, nodded agreement. "Dick's yowling is quite expressive at times. All of us feel the same way, but some of us are unable to express ourselves quite so vividly. However, it is past bedtime, and we should organize our crew. Shall we do it as we did before?" "No, it isn't necessary. Everything is automatic. The bar is held parallel to the guiding compass, and signal bells ring whenever any of the instruments show a trace of abnormal behavior. Don't forget that there is at least one meter registering and recording every factor of our flight. With this control system we can't get into any such jam as we did last trip." "Surely you are not suggesting that we run all night with no one at the controls?" "Exactly that. A man camping at this board is painting the lily and gilding fine gold. Awake or asleep nobody need be closer to it than is necessary to hear a bell if one should ring, and you can hear them all over the ship. Furthermore, I'll bet a hat we won't hear a signal a week. Simply as added precaution, though, I've run lines so that any time one of these signals lets go, it sounds a buzzer on the head of our bed, so I'm automatically taking the night shift. Remember, Mart, these instruments are thousands of times as sensitive as the keenest human senses--they'll spot trouble long before we could, even if we were looking right at it." "Of course, you understand these instruments much better than I do, as yet. If you trust them, I am perfectly willing to do the same. Goodnight." * * * * * Seaton sat down and Dorothy nestled beside him, her head snuggled into the curve of his shoulder. "Sleepy, cuddle-pup?" "Heavens, no! I couldn't sleep now, lover--could you?" "Not any. What's the use?" His arm tightened around her. Apparently motionless to its passengers, the cruiser bored serenely on into space, with ever-mounting velocity. There was not the faintest sound, not the slightest vibration--only the peculiar violet glow surrounding the shining copper cylinder in its massive universal bearing gave any indication of the thousands of kilowatts being generated in the mighty intra-atomic power-plant. Seaton studied it thoughtfully. "You know, if that violet aura and copper bar were a little different in shade and tone of color, they'd be just like your eyes and hair," he remarked finally. "You burn me up, Dick!" she retorted, her entrancing low chuckle bubbling through her words. "You do say the weirdest things at times! Possibly they would--and if the moon were made of different stuff than it is and had a different color, it might be green cheese, too! What say we go over and look at the stars?" "As you were, Rufus!" he commanded sternly. "Don't move a millimeter--you're a drive fit, right where you are. I'll get you any stars you want, and bring them right in here to you. What constellation would you like? I'll get you the Southern Cross--we never see it in Washington." "No, I want something familiar; the Pleiades or the Big Dipper--no, get me Canis Major--'where Sirius, brightest jewel in the diadem of the firmament, holds sway'," she quoted. "There! Thought I'd forgotten all the astronomy you ever taught me, didn't you? Think you can find it?" "Sure. Declination about minus twenty, as I remember it, and right ascension between six and seven hours. Let's see--where would that be from our course?" He thought for a moment, manipulated several levers and dials, snapped off the lights, and swung number one exterior visiplate around, directly before their eyes. "Oh.... Oh ... this is magnificent, Dick!" she exclaimed. "It's stupendous. It seems as though we were right out there in space itself, and not in here at all. It's ... it's just too perfectly darn wonderful!" Although neither of them was unacquainted with interstellar space, it presents a spectacle that never fails to awe even the most seasoned observer: and no human being had ever before viewed the wonders of space from such a coign of vantage. Thus the two fell silent and awed as they gazed out into the abysmal depths of the interstellar void. The darkness of Earthly night is ameliorated by light-rays scattered by the atmosphere: the stars twinkle and scintillate and their light is diffused, because of the same medium. But here, what a contrast! They saw the utter, absolute darkness of the complete absence of all light: and upon that indescribable blackness they beheld superimposed the almost unbearable brilliance of enormous suns concentrated into mathematical points, dimensionless. Sirius blazed in blue-white splendor, dominating the lesser members of his constellation, a minute but intensely brilliant diamond upon a field of black velvet--his refulgence unmarred by any trace of scintillation or distortion. As Seaton slowly shifted the field of vision, angling toward and across the celestial equator and the ecliptic, they beheld in turn mighty Rigel; The Belt, headed by dazzlingly brilliant-white Delta-Orionis; red Betelguese; storied Aldebaran, the friend of mariners; and the astronomically constant Pleiades. Seaton's arm contracted, swinging Dorothy into his embrace; their lips met and held. "Isn't it wonderful, lover," she murmured, "to be out here in space this way, together, away from all our troubles and worries? I am so happy." "It's all of that, sweetheart mine!" "I almost died, every time they shot at you. Suppose your armor cracked or something? I wouldn't want to go on living--I'd just naturally die!" "I'm glad it didn't--and I'm twice as glad that they didn't succeed in grabbing you away from me...." His jaw set rigidly, his gray eyes became hard as tempered drills. "Blackie DuQuesne has something coming to him. So far, I have always paid my debts.... I shall settle with him ... IN FULL." "That was an awfully quick change of subject," he continued, his voice changing instantly into a lighter vein, "but that's one penalty of being human. We can't live in high altitudes all our lives--if we could there would be no thrill in ascending them so often. "Yes, we love each other just the same--more than anybody else I ever heard of." After a moment she eyed him shrewdly and continued: "You've got something on your mind besides that tangled mop of hair, big boy. Tell it to Red-Top." "Nothing much...." "Come on, 'fess up--it's good for the soul. You can't fool your own wife, guy; I know your little winning ways too well." "Let me finish, woman; I was about to bare my very soul. To resume--nothing much to go on but a hunch, but I think DuQuesne's somewhere out here in the great open spaces, where men are sometimes schemers as well as men; and if so, I'm after him--foot, horse, and marines." "That object compass?" "Yes. You see, I built that thing myself, and I know darn well it isn't out of order. It's still on him, but doesn't indicate. Ergo, he is too far away to reach--and with his weight, I could find him anywhere up to about one and a half light-years. If he wants to go that far away from home, where is his logical destination? It can't be anywhere but Osnome, since that is the only place we stopped at for any length of time--the only place where he could have learned anything. He's learned something, or found something useful to him there, just as we did. That is certain, since he is not the type of man to do anything without a purpose. Uncle Dudley is on his trail--and will be able to locate him pretty soon." "When will you get that new compass-case exhausted to a skillionth of a whillimeter or something, whatever it is? I thought Dunark said it took five hundred hours of pumping to get it where he wanted it?" "It did him--but while the Osnomians are wonders at some things, they're not so hot at others. You see, I've got three pumps on that job, in series. First, a Rodebush-Michalek super-pump[A] then, backing that, an ordinary mercury-vapor pump, and last, backing both the others, a Cenco-Hyvac motor-driven oil pump. In less than fifty hours that case will be as empty as a flapper's skull. Just to make sure of cleaning up the last infinitesimal traces, though, I'm going to flash a getter charge of tantalum in it. After that, the atmosphere in that case will be tenuous--take my word for it." [A] J. Am. Chem. Soc. 51: 3, 750. "I'll have to; most of that contribution to science being over my head like a circus tent. What say we let _Skylark Two_ drift by herself for a while, and catch us some of Nature's sweet restorer?" CHAPTER IV The Zone of Force Is Tested Seaton strode into the control room with a small oblong box in his hand. Crane was seated at the desk, poring over an abstruse mathematical treatise in _Science_. Margaret was working upon a bit of embroidery. Dorothy, seated upon a cushion on the floor with one foot tucked under her, was reading, her hand straying from time to time to a box of chocolates conveniently near. "Well, this is a peaceful, home-like scene--too bad to bust it up. Just finished sealing off and flashing out this case, Mart. Going to see if she'll read. Want to take a look?" He placed the compass upon the plane table, so that its final bearing could be read upon the master circles controlled by the gyroscopes; then simultaneously started his stop-watch and pressed the button which caused a minute couple to be applied to the needle. Instantly the needle began to revolve, and for many minutes there was no apparent change in its motion in either the primary or secondary bearings. "Do you suppose it is out of order, after all?" asked Crane, regretfully. "I don't think so," Seaton pondered. "You see, they weren't designed to indicate such distances on such small objects as men, so I threw a million ohms in series with the impulse. That cuts down the free rotation to less than half an hour, and increases the sensitivity to the limit. There, isn't she trying to quit it?" "Yes, it is settling down. It must be on him still." Finally the ultra-sensitive needle came to rest. When it had done so, Seaton calculated the distance, read the direction, and made a reading upon Osnome. "He's there, all right. Bearings agree, and distances check to within a light-year, which is as close as we can hope to check on as small a mass as a man. Well, that's that--nothing to do about it until after we get there. One sure thing, Mart--we're not coming straight back home from 'X'." "No, an investigation is indicated." "Well, that puts me out of a job. What to do? Don't want to study, like you. Can't crochet, like Peg. Darned if I'll sit cross-legged on a pillow and eat candy, like that Titian blonde over there on the floor. I know what--I'll build me a mechanical educator and teach Shiro to talk English instead of that mess of language he indulges in. How'd that be, Mart?" "Don't do it," put in Dorothy, positively. "He's just too perfect the way he is. Especially don't do it if he'd talk the way you do--or could you teach him to talk the way you write?" "Ouch! That's a dirty dig. However, Mrs. Seaton, I am able and willing to defend my customary mode of speech. You realize that the spoken word is ephemeral, whereas the thought, whose nuances have once been expressed in imperishable print is not subject to revision--its crudities can never be remodeled into more subtle, more gracious shading. It is my contention that, due to these inescapable conditions, the mental effort necessitated by the employment of nice distinctions in sense and meaning of words and a slavish adherence to the dictates of the more precise grammarians should be reserved for the print...." He broke off as Dorothy, in one lithe motion, rose and hurled her pillow at his head. "Choke him, somebody! Perhaps you had better build it, Dick, after all." "I believe that he would like it, Dick. He is trying hard to learn, and the continuous use of a dictionary is undoubtedly a nuisance to him." "I'll ask him. Shiro!" "You have call, sir?" Shiro entered the room from his galley, with his unfailing bow. "Yes. How'd you like to learn to talk English like Crane there does--without taking lessons?" Shiro smiled doubtfully, unable to take such a thought seriously. "Yes, it can be done," Crane assured him. "Doctor Seaton can build a machine which will teach you all at once, if you like." "I like, sir, enormously, yes, sir. I years study and pore, but honorable English extraordinary difference from Nipponese--no can do. Dictionary useful but ..." he flipped pages dexterously, "extremely cumbrous. If honorable Seaton can do, shall be extreme ... gratification." He bowed again, smiled, and went out. "I'll do just that little thing. So long, folks, I'm going up to the shop." * * * * * Day after day the _Skylark_ plunged through the vast emptiness of the interstellar reaches. At the end of each second she was traveling exactly twenty-six feet per second faster than she had been at its beginning; and as day after day passed, her velocity mounted into figures which became meaningless, even when expressed in thousands of miles per second. Still she seemed stationary to her occupants, and only different from a vessel motionless upon the surface of the Earth in that objects within her hull had lost three-sixteenths of their normal weight. Acceleration, too, had its effect. Only the rapidity with which the closer suns and their planets were passed gave any indication of the frightful speed at which they were being hurtled along by the inconceivable power of that disintegrating copper bar. When the vessel was nearly half-way to "X," the bar was reversed in order to change the sign of their acceleration, and the hollow sphere spun through an angle of one hundred and eighty degrees around the motionless cage which housed the enormous gyroscopes. Still apparently motionless and exactly as she had been before, the _Skylark_ was now actually traveling in a direction which seemed "down" and with a velocity which was being constantly decreased by the amount of their negative acceleration. A few days after the bar had been reversed Seaton announced that the mechanical educator was complete, and brought it into the control room. In appearance it was not unlike a large radio set, but it was infinitely more complex. It possessed numerous tubes, kino-lamps, and photo-electric cells, as well as many coils of peculiar design--there were dozens of dials and knobs, and a multiple set of head-harnesses. "How can a thing like that possibly work as it does?" asked Crane. "I know that it does work, but I could scarcely believe it, even after it had educated me." "That is nothing like the one Dunark used, Dick," objected Dorothy. "How come?" "I'll answer you first, Dot. This is an improved model--it has quite a few gadgets of my own in it. Now, Mart, as to how it works--it isn't so funny after you understand it--it's a lot like radio in that respect. It operates on a band of frequencies lying between the longest light and heat waves and the shortest radio waves. This thing here is the generator of those waves and a very heavy power amplifier. The headsets are stereoscopic transmitters, taking or receiving a three-dimensional view. Nearly all matter is transparent to those waves; for instance bones, hair, and so on. However, cerebin, a cerebroside peculiar to the thinking structure of the brain, is opaque to them. Dunark, not knowing chemistry, didn't know why the educator worked or what it worked on--he found out by experiment that it did work; just as we found out about electricity. This three-dimensional model, or view, or whatever you want to call it, is converted into electricity in the headsets, and the resulting modulated wave goes back to the educator. There it is heterodyned with another wave--this second frequency was found after thousands of trials and is, I believe, the exact frequency existing in the optic nerves themselves--and sent to the receiving headset. Modulated as it is, and producing a three-dimensional picture, after rectification in the receiver, it reproduces exactly what has been 'viewed,' if due allowance has been made for the size and configuration of the different brains involved in the transfer. You remember a sort of flash--a sensation of seeing something--when the educator worked on you? Well, you did see it, just as though it had been transmitted to the brain by the optic nerve, but everything came at once, so the impression of sight was confused. The result in the brain, however, was clear and permanent. The only drawback is that you haven't the visual memory of what you have learned, and that sometimes makes it hard to use your knowledge. You don't know whether you know anything about a certain subject or not until after you go digging around in your brain looking for it." "I see," said Crane, and Dorothy, the irrepressible, put in: "Just as clear as so much mud. What are the improvements you added to the original design?" "Well, you see, I had a big advantage in knowing that cerebrin was the substance involved, and with that knowledge I could carry matters considerably farther than Dunark could in his original model. I can transfer the thoughts of somebody else to a third party or to a record. Dunark's machine couldn't work against resistance--if the subject wasn't willing to give up his thoughts he couldn't get them. This one can take them away by force. In fact, by increasing plate and grid voltages in the amplifier, I can pretty nearly burn out a man's brain. Yesterday, I was playing with it, transferring a section of my own brain to a magnetized tape--for a permanent record, you know--and found out that above certain rather low voltages it becomes a form of torture that would make the best efforts of the old Inquisition seem like a petting party." "Did you succeed in the transfer?" Crane was intensely interested. "Sure. Push the button for Shiro, and we'll start something." "Put your head against this screen," he directed when Shiro had come in, smiling and bowing as usual. "I've got to caliper your brains to do a good job." The calipering done, he adjusted various dials and clamped the electrodes over his own head and over the heads of Crane and Shiro. "Want to learn Japanese while we're at it, Mart? I'm going to." "Yes, please. I tried to learn it while I was in Japan, but it was altogether too difficult to be worth while." Seaton threw in a switch, opened it, depressed two more, opened them, and threw off the power. "All set," he reported crisply, and barked a series of explosive syllables at Shiro, ending upon a rising note. "Yes, sir," answered the Japanese. "You speak Nipponese as though you had never spoken any other tongue. I am very grateful to you, sir, that I may now discard my dictionary." "How about you two girls--anything you want to learn in a hurry?" "Not me!" declared Dorothy emphatically. "That machine is too darn weird to suit me. Besides, if I knew as much about science as you do, we'd probably fight about it." "I do not believe I care to...." began Margaret. She was interrupted by the penetrating sound of an alarm bell. "That's a new note!" exclaimed Seaton, "I never heard that note before." He stood in surprise at the board, where a brilliant purple light was flashing slowly. "Great Cat! That's a purely Osnomian war-gadget--kind of a battleship detector--shows that there's a boatload of bad news around here somewhere. Grab the visiplates quick, folks," as he rang Shiro's bell. "I'll take visiplate area one, dead ahead. Mart, take number two. Dot, three; Peg, four; Shiro, five. Look sharp!... Nothing in front. See anything, any of you?" * * * * * None of them could discover anything amiss, but the purple light continued to flash, and the bell to ring. Seaton cut off the bell. "We're almost to 'X'," he thought aloud. "Can't be more than a million miles or so, and we're almost stopped. Wonder if somebody's there ahead of us? Maybe Dunark is doing this, though. I'll call him and see." He threw in a switch and said one word--"Dunark!" "Here!" came the voice of the Kofedix from the speaker. "Are you generating?" "No--just called to see if you were. What do you make of it?" "Nothing as yet. Better close up?" "Yes, edge over this way and I'll come over to meet you. Leave your negative as it is--we'll be stopped directly. Whatever it is, it's dead ahead. It's a long ways off yet, but we'd better get organized. Wouldn't talk much, either--they may intercept our wave, narrow as it is." "Better yet, shut off your radio entirely. When we get close enough together, we'll use the hand-language. You may not know that you know it, but you do. Turn your heaviest searchlight toward me--I'll do the same." There was a click as Dunark's power was shut off abruptly, and Seaton grinned as he cut his own. "That's right, too, folks. In Osnomian battles we always used a sign-language when we couldn't hear anything--and that was most of the time. I know it as well as I know English, now that I am reminded of the fact." He shifted his course to intercept that of the Osnomian vessel. After a time the watchers picked out a minute point of light, moving comparatively rapidly against the stars, and knew it to be the searchlight of the _Kondal_. Soon the two vessels were almost side by side, moving cautiously forward, and Seaton set up a sixty-inch parabolic reflector, focused upon a coil. As they went on, the purple light continued to flash more and more rapidly, but still nothing was to be seen. "Take number six visiplate, will you, Mart? It's telescopic, equivalent to a twenty-inch refractor. I'll tell you where to look in a minute--this reflector increases the power of the regular indicator." He studied meters and adjusted dials. "Set on nineteen hours forty-three minutes, and two hundred seventy-one degrees. He's too far away yet to read exactly, but that'll put him in the field of vision." "Is this radiation harmful?" asked Margaret. "Not yet--it's too weak. Pretty soon we may be able to feel it; then I'll throw out a screen against it. When it's strong enough, it's pretty deadly stuff. See anything, Mart?" "I see something, but it is very indistinct. It is moving in sharper now. Yes, it is a space-ship, shaped like a dirigible airship." "See it yet, Dunark?" Seaton signaled. "Just sighted it. Ready to attack?" "I am not. I'm going to run. Let's go, and go fast!" Dunark signaled violently, and Seaton shook his head time after time, stubbornly. "A difficulty?" asked Crane. "Yes. He wants to go jump on it, but I'm not looking for trouble with any such craft as that--it must be a thousand feet long and is certainly neither Terrestrial nor Osnomian. I say beat it while we're all in one piece. How about it?" "Absolutely," concurred Crane and both women. The bar was reversed and the _Skylark_ leaped away. The _Kondal_ followed, although the observers could see that Dunark was raging. Seaton swung number six visiplate around, looked once, and switched on the radio. "Well, Dunark," he said grimly. "You get your wish. That bird is coming out, with at least twice the acceleration we could get with both motors full on. He saw us all the time, and was waiting for us." "Go on--get away if you can. You can stand a higher acceleration than we can. We'll hold him as long as possible." "I would, if it would do any good, but it won't. He's so much faster than we are that he could catch us anyway, if he wanted to, no matter how much of a start we had--and it looks now as though he wanted us. Two of us stand a lot better chance than one of licking him if he's looking for trouble. Spread out a mile or two, and pretend this is all the speed we've got. What'll we give him first?" "Give him everything at once. Rays six, seven, eight, nine, and ten...." Crane, with Seaton, began making contacts, rapidly but with precision. "Heat wave two-seven. Induction, five-eight. Oscillation, everything under point oh six three. All the explosive copper we can get in. Right?" "Right--and if worse comes to worst, remember the zone of force. Let him shoot first, because he may be peaceable--but it doesn't look like olive branches to me." "Got both your screens out?" "Yes. Mart, you might take number two visiplate and work the guns--I'll handle the rest of this stuff. Better strap yourselves in solid, folks--this may develop into a kind of rough party, by the looks of things right now." * * * * * As he spoke, a pyrotechnic display enveloped the entire ship as a radiation from the foreign vessel struck the other neutralizing screen and dissipated its force harmlessly in the ether. Instantly Seaton threw on the full power of his refrigerating system and shot in the master switch that actuated the complex offensive armament of his dreadnought of the skies. An intense, livid violet glow hid completely main and auxiliary power bars, and long flashes leaped between metallic objects in all parts of the vessel. The passengers felt each hair striving to stand on end as the very air became more and more highly charged--and this was but the slight corona-loss of the frightful stream of destruction being hurled at the other space-cruiser, now scarcely a mile away! Seaton stared into number one visiplate, manipulating levers and dials as he drove the _Skylark_ hither and yon, dodging frantically, the while the automatic focusing devices remained centered upon the enemy and the enormous generators continued to pour forth their deadly frequencies. The bars glowed more fiercely as they were advanced to full working load--the stranger was one blaze of incandescent ionization, but she still fought on; and Seaton noticed that the pyrometers recording the temperature of the shell were mounting rapidly, in spite of the refrigerators. "Dunark, put everything you've got upon one spot--right on the end of his nose!" As the first shell struck the mark, Seaton concentrated every force at his command upon the designated point. The air in the _Skylark_ crackled and hissed and intense violet flames leaped from the bars as they were driven almost to the point of disruption. From the forward end of the strange craft there erupted prominence after prominence of searing, unbearable flame as the terrific charges of explosive copper struck the mark and exploded, liberating instantaneously their millions upon millions of kilowatt-hours of intra-atomic energy. Each prominence enveloped all three of the fighting vessels and extended for hundreds of miles out into space--but still the enemy warship continued to hurl forth solid and vibratory destruction. A brilliant orange light flared upon the panel, and Seaton gasped as he swung his visiplate upon his defenses, which he had supposed impregnable. His outer screen was already down, although its mighty copper generator was exerting its utmost power. Black areas had already appeared and were spreading rapidly, where there should have been only incandescent radiance; and the inner screen was even now radiating far into the ultra-violet and was certainly doomed. Knowing as he did the stupendous power driving those screens, he knew that there were superhuman and inconceivable forces being directed against them, and his right hand flashed to the switch controlling the zone of force. Fast as he was, much happened in the mere moment that passed before his flying hand could close the switch. In the last infinitesimal instant of time before the zone closed in, a gaping black hole appeared in the incandescence of the inner screen, and a small portion of a ray of energy so stupendous as to be palpable, struck, like a tangible projectile, the exposed flank of the _Skylark_. Instantly the refractory arenak turned an intense, dazzling white and more than a foot of the forty-eight-inch skin of the vessel melted away, like snow before an oxy-acetylene flame: melting and flying away in molten globes and sparkling gases--the refrigerating coils lining the hull were of no avail against the concentrated energy of that titanic thrust. As Seaton shut off his power, intense darkness and utter silence closed in, and he snapped on the lights. "They take one trick!" he blazed, his eyes almost emitting sparks, and leaped for the generators. He had forgotten the efforts of the zone of force, however, and only sprawled grotesquely in the air until he floated within reach of a line. "Hold everything, Dick!" Crane snapped, as Seaton bent over one of the bars. "What are you going to do?" "I'm going to put as heavy bars in these ray-generators as they'll stand and go out and get that bird. We can't lick him with Osnomian rays or with our explosive copper, but I can carve that sausage into slices with a zone of force, and I'm going to do it." "Steady, old man--take it easy. I see your point, but remember that you must release the zone of force before you can use it as a weapon. Furthermore, you must discover his exact location, and must get close enough to him to use the zone as a weapon, all without its protection. Can those ray-screens be made sufficiently powerful to withstand the beam they employed last, even for a second?" "Hm ... m ... m. Never thought of that, Mart," Seaton replied, the fire dying out of his eyes. "Wonder how long the battle lasted?" "Eight and two-tenths seconds, from first to last, but they had had that heavy ray in action only a fraction of one second when you cut in the zone of force. Either they underestimated our strength at first, or else it required about eight seconds to tune in their heavy generators--probably the former." "But we've _got_ to do something, man! We can't just sit here and twiddle our thumbs!" "Why, and why not? That course seems eminently wise and proper. In fact, at the present time, thumb-twiddling is distinctly indicated." "Oh, you're full of little red ants! We can't do a thing with that zone on--and you say just sit here. Suppose they know all about that zone of force? Suppose they can crack it? Suppose they ram us?" "I shall take up your objections in order," Crane had lighted a cigarette and was smoking meditatively. "First, they may or may not know about it. At present, that point is immaterial. Second, whether or not they know about it, it is almost a certainty that they cannot crack it. It had been up for more than three minutes, and they have undoubtedly concentrated everything possible upon us during that time. It is still standing. I really expected it to go down in the first few seconds, but now that it has held this long it will, in all probability, continue to hold indefinitely. Third, they most certainly will not ram us, for several reasons. They probably have encountered few, if any, foreign vessels able to stand against them for a minute, and will act accordingly. Then, too, it is probably safe to assume that their vessel is damaged, to some slight extent at least; for I do not believe that any possible armament could withstand the forces you directed against them and escape entirely unscathed. Finally, if they did ram us, what would happen? Would we feel the shock? That barrier in the ether seems impervious, and if so, it could not transmit a blow. I do not see exactly how it would affect the ship dealing the blow. You are the one who works out the new problems in unexplored mathematics--some time you must take a few months off and work it out." "Yes, it would take that long, too, I guess--but you're right, he can't hurt us. That's using the old bean, Mart! I was going off half-cocked again, darn it! I'll pipe down, and we'll go into a huddle." * * * * * Seaton noticed that Dorothy's face was white and that she was fighting for self-control. Drawing himself over to her, he picked her up in a tight embrace. "Cheer up, Red-Top! This man's war ain't started yet!" "Not started? What do you mean? Haven't you and Martin just been admitting to each other that you can't do anything? Doesn't that mean that we are beaten?" "Beaten! Us? How do you get that way? Not on your sweet young life!" he ejaculated, and the surprise on his face was so manifest that she recovered instantly. "We've just dug a hole and pulled the hole in after us, that's all! When we get everything doped out to suit us, we'll snap out of it and that bird'll think he's been petting a wildcat!" "Mart, you're the thinking end of this partnership," he continued, thoughtfully. "You've got the analytical mind and the judicial disposition, and can think circles around me. From what little you've seen of those folks, tell me who, what, and where they are. I'm getting the germ of an idea, and maybe we can make it work." "I will try it." Crane paused. "They are, of course, neither from the Earth nor from Osnome. It is also evident that they have solved the secret of intra-atomic energy. Their vessels are not propelled as ours are--they have so perfected that force that it acts upon every particle of the structure and its contents...." "How do you figure that?" blurted Seaton. "Because of the acceleration they can stand. Nothing even semi-human, and probably nothing living, could endure it otherwise. Right?" "Yes--I never thought of that." "Furthermore, they are far from home, for if they were from anywhere nearby, the Osnomians would have known of them--particularly since it is evident from the size of the vessel that it is not a recent development with them, as it is with us. Since the green system is close to the center of the Galaxy, it seems reasonable, as a working hypothesis, to assume that they are from some system far from the center, perhaps close to the outer edge. They are very evidently of a high degree of intelligence. They are also highly treacherous and merciless...." "Why?" asked Dorothy, who was listening eagerly. "I deduce those characteristics from their unprovoked attack upon peaceful ships, vastly smaller and supposedly of inferior armament; and also from the nature of that attack. This vessel is probably a scout or an exploring ship, since it seems to be alone. It is not altogether beyond the bounds of reason to imagine it upon a voyage of discovery, in search of new planets to be subjugated and colonized...." "That's a sweet picture of our future neighbors--but I guess you're hitting the old nail on the head, at that." "If these deductions are anywhere nearly correct, they are terrible neighbors. For my next point, are we justified in assuming that they do or do not know about the zone of force?" "That's a hard one. Knowing what they evidently do know, it's hard to see how they could have missed it. And yet, if they had known about it for a long time, wouldn't they be able to get through it? Of course it may be a real and total barrier in the ether--in that case they'd know that they couldn't do a thing as long as we keep it on. Take your choice, but I believe that they know about it, and know more than we do--that it is a total barrier set up in the ether." "I agree with you, and we shall proceed upon that assumption. They know, then, that neither they nor we can do anything as long as we maintain the zone--that it is a stalemate. They also know that it takes an enormous amount of power to keep the zone in place. Now we have gone as far as we can go upon the meager data we have--considerably farther than we really are justified in going. We must now try to come to some conclusion concerning their present activities. If our ideas as to their natures are even approximately correct, they are waiting, probably fairly close at hand, until we shall be compelled to release the zone, no matter how long that period of waiting shall be. They know, of course, from our small size, that we cannot carry enough copper to maintain it indefinitely, as they could. Does that sound reasonable?" "I check you to nineteen decimal places, Mart, and from your ideas I'm getting surer and surer that we can pull their corks. I can get into action in a hurry when I have to, and my idea now is to wait until they relax a trifle, and then slip a fast one over on them. One more bubble out of the old think-tank and I'll let you off for the day. At what time will their vigilance be at lowest ebb? That's a poser, I'll admit, but the answer to it may answer everything--the first shot will, of course, be the best chance we'll ever have." "Yes, we should succeed in the first attempt. We have very little information to guide us in answering that question." He studied the problem for many minutes before he resumed, "I should say that for a time they would keep all their rays and other weapons in action against the zone of force, expecting us to release it immediately. Then, knowing that they were wasting power uselessly, they would cease attacking, but would be very watchful, with every eye fastened upon us and with every weapon ready for instant use. After this period of vigilance, regular ship's routine would be resumed. Half the force, probably, would go off duty--for, if they are even remotely like any organic beings with which we are familiar, they require sleep or its equivalent at intervals. The men on duty--the normal force, that is--would be doubly careful for a time. Then habit will assert itself, if we have done nothing to create suspicion, and their watchfulness will relax to the point of ordinary careful observation. Toward the end of their watch, because of the strain of the battle and because of the unusually long period of duty, they will become careless, and their vigilance will be considerably below normal. But the exact time of all these things depends entirely upon their conception of time, concerning which we have no information whatever. Though it is purely a speculation, based upon Earthly and Osnomian experience, I should say that after twelve or thirteen hours would come the time for us to make the attack." "That's good enough for me. Fine, Mart, and thanks. You've probably saved the lives of the party. We will now sleep for eleven or twelve hours." "Sleep, Dick! How could you?" Dorothy exclaimed. CHAPTER V First Blood The next twelve hours dragged with terrible slowness. Sleep was impossible and eating was difficult, even though all knew that they would have need of the full measure of their strength. Seaton set up various combinations of switching devices connected to electrical timers, and spent hours trying, with all his marvelous quickness of muscular control, to cut shorter and ever shorter the time between the opening and the closing of the switch. At last he arranged a powerful electro-magnetic device so that one impulse would both open and close the switch, with an open period of one one-thousandth of a second. Only then was he satisfied. "A thousandth is enough to give us a look around, due to persistence of vision; and it is short enough so that they won't see it unless they have a recording observer on us. Even if they still have rays on us, they can't possibly neutralize our screens in that short an exposure. All right, gang? We'll take five visiplates and cover the sphere. If any of you get a glimpse of him, mark the exact spot and outline on the glass. All set?" He pressed the button. The stars flashed in the black void for an instant, then were again shut out. "Here he is, Dick!" shrieked Margaret. "Right here--he covered almost half the visiplate!" She outlined for him, as nearly as she could, the exact position of the object she had seen, and he calculated rapidly. "Fine business!" he exulted. "He's within half a mile of us, three-quarters on--perfect! I thought he'd be so far away that I'd have to take photographs to locate him. He hasn't a single ray on us, either. That bird's goose is cooked right now, folks, unless every man on watch has his hand right on the controls of a generator and can get into action in less than a tenth of a second! Hang on, gang, I'm going to step on the gas!" After making sure that everyone was fastened immovably in their seats he strapped himself in the pilot's seat, then set the bar toward the strange vessel and applied fully one-third of its full power. The _Skylark_, of course, did not move. Then, with bewildering rapidity, he went into action; face glued to the visiplate, hands moving faster than the eye could follow--the left closing and opening the switch controlling the zone of force, the right swinging the steering controls to all points of the sphere. The mighty vessel staggered this way and that, jerking and straining terribly as the zone was thrown on and off, lurching sickeningly about the central bearing as the gigantic power of the driving bar was exerted, now in one direction, now in another. After a second or two of this mad gyration, Seaton shut off the power. He then released the zone, after assuring himself that both inner and outer screens were operating at the highest possible rating. "There, that'll hold 'em for a while, I guess. This battle was even shorter than the other one--and a lot more decisive. Let's turn on the flood-lights and see what the pieces look like." The lights revealed that the zone of force had indeed sliced the enemy vessel into pieces. No fragment was large enough to be navigable or dangerous and each was sharply cut, as though sheared from its neighbor by some gigantic curved blade. Dorothy sobbed with relief in Seaton's arms as Crane, with one arm around his wife, grasped his hand. "That was flawless, Dick. As an exhibition of perfect co-ordination and instantaneous timing under extreme physical difficulties, I have never seen its equal." "You certainly saved all our lives," Margaret added. "Only fifty-fifty, Peg," Seaton protested, and blushed vividly. "Mart did most of it, you know. I'd have gummed up everything back there if he had let me. Let's see what we can find out about them." He touched the lever and the _Skylark_ moved slowly toward the wreckage, the scattered fragments of which were beginning to move toward and around each other because of their mutual gravitational forces. Snapping on a searchlight, he swung its beam around, and as it settled upon one of the larger sections he saw a group of hooded figures; some of them upon the metal, others floating slowly toward it through space. "Poor devils--they didn't have a chance," he remarked regretfully. "However, it was either they or we--look out! Sweet spirits of niter!" He leaped back to the controls and the others were hurled bodily to the floor as he applied the power--for at a signal each of the hooded figures had leveled a tube and once more the outer screen had flamed into incandescence. As the _Skylark_ leaped away, Seaton focussed an attractor upon the one who had apparently signaled the attack. Rolling the vessel over in a short loop, so that the captive was hurled off into space upon the other side, he snatched the tube from the figure's grasp with one auxiliary attractor, and anchored head and limbs with others, so that the prisoner could scarcely move a muscle. Then, while Crane and the women scrambled up off the floor and hurried to the visiplates, Seaton cut in rays six, two-seven, and five-eight. Ray six, "the softener," was a band of frequencies extending from violet far up into the ultra-violet. When driven with sufficient power, this ray destroyed eyesight and nervous tissue, and its power increased still further, actually loosened the molecular structure of matter. Ray two-seven was operated in a range of frequencies far below the visible red. It was pure heat--under its action matter became hotter and hotter as long as it was applied, the upper limit being only the theoretical maximum of temperature. Ray five-eight was high-tension, high-frequency alternating current. Any conductor in its path behaved precisely as it would in the Ajax-Northrup induction furnace, which can boil platinum in ten seconds! These three rays composed the beam which Seaton directed upon the mass of metal from which the enemy had elected to continue the battle--and behind each ray, instead of the small energy at the command of its Osnomian inventor, were the untold millions of kilowatts developed by a one-hundred-pound bar of disintegrating copper! * * * * * There ensued a brief but appalling demonstration of the terrible effectiveness of those Osnomian weapons against anything not protected by ultra-powered ray screens. Metal and men--if men they were--literally vanished. One moment they were outlined starkly in the beam; there was a moment of searing, coruscating, blinding light--the next moment the beam bored on into the void, unimpeded. Nothing was visible save an occasional tiny flash, as some condensed or solidified droplet of the volatilized metal re-entered the path of that ravening beam. "We'll see if there's any more of them loose," Seaton remarked, as he shut off the force and probed into the wreckage with a searchlight. No sign of life or of activity was revealed, and the light was turned upon the captive. He was held motionless in the invisible grip of the attractors, at the point where the force of those peculiar magnets was exactly balanced by the outward thrust of the repellers. By manipulating the attractor holding it, Seaton brought the strange tubular weapon into the control-room through a small air-lock in the wall and examined it curiously, but did not touch it. "I never heard of a hand-ray before, so I guess I won't play with it much until after I learn something about it." "So you have taken a captive?" asked Margaret. "What are you going to do with him?" "I'm going to drag him in here and read his mind. He's one of the officers of that ship, I believe, and I'm going to find out how to build one exactly like it. This old can is now as obsolete as a 1920 flivver, and I'm going to make us a later model. How about it, Mart, don't we want something really up-to-date if we're going to keep on space-hopping?" "We certainty do. Those denizens seem to be particularly venomous, and we will not be safe unless we have the most powerful and most efficient space-ship possible. However, that fellow may be dangerous, even now--in fact, it is practically certain that he is." "You chirped it, ace. I'd much rather touch a pound of dry nitrogen iodide. I've got him spread-eagled so that he can't destroy his brain until after we've read it, though, so there's no particular hurry about him. We'll leave him out there for a while, to waste his sweetness on the desert air. Let's all look around for the _Kondal_. I sure hope they didn't get her in that fracas." They diffused the rays of eight giant searchlights into a vertical fan, and with it swept slowly through almost a semi-circle before anything was seen. Then there was revealed a cluster of cylindrical objects amid a mass of wreckage, which Crane recognized at once. "The _Kondal_ is gone, Dick. There is what is left of her, and most of her cargo of salt, in jute bags." As he spoke, a series of green flashes played upon the bags, and Seaton yelled in relief. "They got the ship all right, but Dunark and Sitar got away--they're still with their salt!" The _Skylark_ moved over to the wreck and Seaton, relinquishing the controls to Crane, donned a vacuum suit, entered the main air-lock and snapped on the motor which sealed off the lock, pumped the air into a pressure-tank, and opened the outside door. He threw a light line to the two figures and pushed himself lightly toward them. He then talked briefly to Dunark in the hand-language, and handed the end of the line to Sitar, who held it while the two men explored the fragments of the strange vessel, gathering up various things of interest as they came upon them. Back in the control-room, Dunark and Sitar let their pressure decrease gradually to that of the terrestrial vessel and removed the face-plates from their helmets. "Again, oh Karfedo of Earth, we thank you for our lives," Dunark began, gasping for breath, when Seaton leaped to the air-gauge with a quick apology. "Never thought of the effect our atmospheric pressure would have on you two. We can stand yours all right, but you'd pretty nearly pass out on ours. There, that'll suit you better. Didn't you throw out your zone of force?" "Yes, as soon as I saw that our screens were not going to hold." The Osnomians' labored breathing became normal as the air-pressure increased to a value only a little below that of the dense atmosphere of their native planet. "I then increased the power of the screens to the extreme limit and opened the zone for a moment to see how the screens would hold with the added power. That instant was enough. In that period a concentrated beam, such as I had no idea could ever be generated, went through the outer and inner screens as though they were not there, through the four-foot arenak of the hull, through the entire central installation, and through the hull on the other side. Sitar and I were wearing suits...." "Say, Mart, that's one bet we overlooked. It's a good idea, too--those strangers wore them all the time as regular equipment, apparently. Next time we get into a jam, be sure we do it; they might come in handy. Excuse me, Dunark--go ahead." "We had suits on, so as soon as the ray was shut off, which was almost instantly, I phoned the crew to jump, and we leaped out through the hole in the hull. The air rushing out gave us an impetus that carried us many miles out into space, and it required many hours for the slight attraction of the mass here to draw us back to it. We just got back a few minutes ago. That air-blast is probably what saved us, as they destroyed our vessel with atomic bombs and hunted down the four men of our crew, who stayed comparatively close to the scene. They rayed you for about an hour with the most stupendous beams imaginable--no such generators have ever been considered possible of construction--but couldn't make any impression upon you. Then they shut off their power and stood by, waiting. I wasn't looking at you when you released your zone. One moment it was there, and the next, the stranger had been cut in pieces. The rest you know." "We're sure glad you two got away, Dunark. Well, Mart, what say we drag that guy in and give him the once-over?" * * * * * Seaton swung the attractors holding the prisoner until they were in line with the main air-lock, then reduced the power of the repellers. As he approached the lock various controls were actuated, and soon the stranger stood in the control room, held immovable against one wall, while Crane, with a 0.50-caliber elephant gun, stood against the other. "Perhaps you girls should go somewhere else," suggested Crane. "Not on your life!" protested Dorothy, who, eyes wide and flushed with excitement, stood near a door, with a heavy automatic pistol in her hand. "I wouldn't miss this for a farm!" "Got him solid," declared Seaton, after a careful inspection of the various attractors and repellers he had bearing upon the prisoner, "Now let's get him out of that suit. No--better read his air first, temperature and pressure--might analyze it, too." Nothing could be seen of the person of the stranger, since he was encased in vacuum armor, but it was plainly evident that he was very short and immensely broad and thick. By means of hollow needles forced through the leather-like material of the suit Seaton drew off a sample of the atmosphere within, into an Orsat apparatus, while Crane made pressure and temperature readings. "Temperature, one hundred ten degrees. Pressure, twenty-eight pounds--about the same as ours is, now that we have stepped it up to keep the Osnomians from suffering." Seaton soon reported that the atmosphere was quite similar to that of the _Skylark_, except that it was much higher in carbon dioxide and carried an extremely high percentage of water vapor. He took up a pair of heavy shears and laid the suit open full length, on both sides, knowing that the powerful attractors would hold the stranger immovable. He then wrenched off the helmet and cast the whole suit aside, revealing the enemy officer, clad in a tunic of scarlet silk. He was less than five feet tall. His legs were merely blocks, fully as great in diameter as they were in length, supporting a torso of Herculean dimensions. His arms were as large as a strong man's thigh and hung almost to the floor. His astounding shoulders, fully a yard across, merged into and supported an enormous head. The being possessed recognizable nose, ears, and mouth; and the great domed forehead and huge cranium bespoke an immense and a highly developed brain. But it was the eyes of this strange creature that fixed and held the attention. Large they were, and black--the dull, opaque, lusterless black of platinum sponge. The pupils were a brighter black, and in them flamed ruby lights: pitiless, mocking, cold. Plainly to be read in those sinister depths were the untold wisdom of unthinkable age, sheer ruthlessness, mighty power, and ferocity unrelieved. His baleful gaze swept from one member of the party to another, and to meet the glare of those eyes was to receive a tangible physical blow--it was actually ponderable force; that of embodied hardness and of ruthlessness incarnate, generated in that merciless brain and hurled forth through those flame-shot, Stygian orbs. "If you don't need us for anything, Dick, I think Peggy and I will go upstairs," Dorothy broke the long silence. "Good idea, Dot. This isn't going to be pretty to watch--or to do, either, for that matter." "If I stay here another minute I'll see that thing as long as I live; and I might be very ill. Goodbye," and heartless and bloodthirsty Osnomian though she was, Sitar had gone to join the two Terrestrial women. "I didn't want to say much before the girls, but I want to check a couple of ideas with you two. Don't you think it's a safe bet that this bird reported back to his headquarters?" "I have been thinking that very thing," Crane spoke gravely, and Dunark nodded agreement. "Any race capable of developing such a vessel as this would almost certainly have developed systems of communication in proportion." "That's the way I doped it out--and that's why I'm going to read his mind, if I have to burn out his brain to do it. We've got to know how far away from home he is, whether he has turned in any report about us, and all about it. Also, I'm going to get the plans, power, and armament of their most modern ships, if he knows them, so that your gang, Dunark, can build us one like them; because the next boat that tackles us will be warned and we won't be able to take it by surprise. We won't stand a chance in the _Skylark_. With a ship like theirs, however, we can run--or we can fight, if we have to. Any other ideas, fellows?" * * * * * As neither Crane nor Dunark had any other suggestions to offer, Seaton brought out the mechanical educator, watching the creature's eyes narrowly. As he placed one headset over that motionless head the captive sneered in pure contempt, but when the case was opened and the array of tubes and transformers was revealed, that expression disappeared; and when he added a super-power stage by cutting in a heavy-duty transformer and a five-kilowatt transmitting tube, Seaton thought that he saw an instantaneously suppressed flicker of doubt or fear. "That headset thing was child's play to him, but he doesn't like the looks of this other stuff at all. I don't blame him a bit--I wouldn't like to be on the receiving end of this hook-up myself. I'm going to put him on the recorder and on the visualizer," Seaton continued as he connected spools of wire and tape, lamps, and lenses in an intricate system and donned a headset. "I'd hate to have much of that brain in my own skull--afraid I'd bite myself. I'm just going to look on, and when I see anything I want, I'll grab it and put it into my own brain. I'm starting off easy, not using the big tube." He closed several switches, lights flashed, and the wires and tapes began to feed through the magnets. "Well, I've got his language, folks, he seemed to want me to have it. It's got a lot of stuff in it that I can't understand yet, though, so guess I'll give him some English." He changed several connections and the captive spoke, in a profoundly deep bass voice. "You may as well discontinue your attempt, for you will gain no information from me. That machine of yours was out of date with us thousands of years ago." "Save your breath or talk sense," said Seaton, coldly. "I gave you English so that you can give me the information I want. You already know what it is. When you get ready to talk, say so, or throw it on the screen of your own accord. If you don't, I'll put on enough voltage to burn your brain out. Remember, I can read your dead brain as well as though it were alive, but I want your thoughts, as well as your knowledge, and I'm going to have them. If you give them voluntarily, I will tinker up a lifeboat that you can navigate back to your own world and let you go; if you resist I intend getting them anyway and you shall not leave this vessel alive. You may take your choice." "You are childish, and that machine is impotent against my will. I could have defied it a hundred years ago, when I was barely a grown man. Know you, American, that we supermen of the Fenachrone are as far above any of the other and lesser breeds of beings who spawn in their millions in their countless myriads of races upon the numberless planets of the Universe as you are above the inert metal from which this, your ship, was built. The Universe is ours, and in due course we shall take it--just as in due course I shall take this vessel. Do your worst; I shall not speak." The creature's eyes flamed, hurling a wave of hypnotic command through Seaton's eyes and deep into his brain. Seaton's very senses reeled for an instant under the impact of that awful mental force; but after a short, intensely bitter struggle he threw off the spell. "That was close, fellow, but you didn't quite ring the bell," he said grimly, staring directly into those unholy eyes. "I may rate pretty low mentally, but I can't be hypnotized into turning you loose. Also I can give you cards and spades in certain other lines which I am about to demonstrate. Being superman didn't keep the rest of your men from going out in my ray, and being a superman isn't going to save your brain. I am not depending upon my intellectual or mental force--I've got an ace in the hole in the shape of five thousand volts to apply to the most delicate centers of your brain. Start giving me what I want, and start quick, or I'll tear it out of you." The giant did not answer, merely glared defiance and bitter hate. "Take it, then!" Seaton snapped, and cut in the super-power stage and began turning dials and knobs, exploring that strange mind for the particular area in which he was most interested. He soon found it, and cut in the visualizer--the stereographic device, in parallel with Solon's own brain recorder, which projected a three-dimensional picture into the "viewing-area" or dark space of the cabinet. Crane and Dunark, tense and silent, looked on in strained suspense as, minute after minute, the silent battle of wills raged. Upon one side was a horrible and gigantic brain, of undreamed of power; upon the other side a strong man, fighting for all that life holds dear, wielding against that monstrous and frightful brain a weapon wrought of high-tension electricity, applied with all the skill that earthly and Osnomian science could devise. Seaton crouched over the amplifier, his jaw set and every muscle taut, his eyes leaping from one meter to another, his right hand slowly turning up the potentiometer which was driving more and ever more of the searing, torturing output of his super-power tube into that stubborn brain. The captive was standing utterly rigid, eyes closed, every sense and faculty mustered to resist that cruelly penetrant attack upon the very innermost recesses of his mind. Crane and Dunark scarcely breathed as the three-dimensional picture in the visualizer varied from a blank to the hazy outlines of a giant space-cruiser. It faded out as the unknown exerted himself to withstand that poignant inquisition, only to come back in, clearer than before, as Seaton advanced the potentiometer still farther. Finally, flesh and blood could no longer resist that lethal probe and the picture became sharp and clear. It showed the captain--for he was no less an officer than the commander of the vessel--at a great council table, seated, together with many other officers, upon very low, enormously strong metal stools. They were receiving orders from their Emperor; orders plainly understood by Crane and the Osnomian alike, for thought needs no translation. "Gentlemen of the Navy," the ruler spoke solemnly, "Our preliminary expedition, returned some time ago, achieved its every aim, and we are now ready to begin fulfilling our destiny, the Conquest of the Universe. This Galaxy comes first. Our base of operations will be the largest planet of that group of brilliant green suns, for they can be seen from any point in the Galaxy and are almost in the exact center of it. Our astronomers," here the captain's thoughts shifted briefly to an observatory far out in space for perfect seeing, and portrayed a reflecting telescope with a mirror five miles in diameter, capable of penetrating unimaginable myriads of light-years into space, "have tabulated all the suns, planets, and satellites belonging to this Galaxy, and each of you has been given a complete chart and assigned a certain area which he is to explore. Remember, gentlemen, that this first major expedition is to be purely one of exploration; the one of conquest will set out after you have returned with complete information. You will each report by torpedo every tenth of the year. We do not anticipate any serious difficulty, as we are of course the highest type of life in the Universe; nevertheless, in the unlikely event of trouble, report it. We shall do the rest. In conclusion, I warn you again--let no people know that we exist. Make no conquests, and destroy all who by any chance may see you. Gentlemen, go with power." The captain embarked in a small airboat and was shot to his vessel. He took his station at an immense control board and the warship shot off instantly, with unthinkable velocity, and with not the slightest physical shock. At this point Seaton made the captain take them all over the ship. They noted its construction, its power-plant, its controls--every minute detail of structure, operation, and maintenance was taken from the captain's mind and was both recorded and visualized. * * * * * The journey seemed to be a very long one, but finally the cluster of green suns became visible and the Fenachrone began to explore the solar systems in the area assigned to that particular vessel. Hardly had the survey started, however, when the two globular space-cruisers were detected and located. The captain stopped the ship briefly, then attacked. They watched the attack, and saw the destruction of the _Kondal_. They looked on while the captain read the brain of one of Dunark's crew, gleaning from it all the facts concerning the two space-ships, and thought with him that the two absentees from the _Kondal_ would drift back in a few hours, and would be disposed of in due course. They learned that these things were automatically impressed upon the torpedo next to issue, as was every detail of everything that happened in and around the vessel. They watched him impress a thought of his own upon the record--"the inhabitants of planet three of sun six four seven three Pilarone show unusual development and may cause trouble, as they have already brought knowledge of the metal of power and of the impenetrable shield to the Central System, which is to be our base. Recommend volatilization of this planet by vessel sent on special mission." They saw the raying of the _Skylark_. They sensed him issue commands: "Ray it for a time; he will probably open the shield for a moment, as the other one did," then, after a time skipped over by the mind under examination. "Cease raying--no use wasting power. He must open eventually, as he runs out of power. Stand by and destroy him when he opens." The scene shifted. The captain was asleep and was awakened by an alarm gong--only to find himself floating in a mass of wreckage. Making his way to the fragment of his vessel containing the torpedo port, he released the messenger, which flew, with ever-increasing velocity, back to the capital city of the Fenachrone, carrying with it a record of everything that had happened. "That's what I want," thought Seaton. "Those torpedoes went home, fast. I want to know how far they have to go and how long it'll take them to get there. You know what distance a parsec is, since it is purely a mathematical concept; and you must have a watch or some similar instrument with which we can translate your years into ours. I don't want to have to kill you, fellow, and if you'll give up even now I'll spare you. I'll get it anyway, you know--and you also know that a few hundred volts more will kill you." They saw the thought received, and saw its answer: "You shall learn no more. This is the most important of all, and I shall hold it to disintegration and beyond." Seaton advanced the potentiometer still farther, and the brain picture waxed and waned, strengthened and faded. Finally, however, it was revealed by flashes that the torpedo had about a hundred and fifty-five thousand parsecs to go and that it would take two-tenths of a year to make the journey; that the warships which would come in answer to the message were as fast as the torpedo; that he did indeed have in his suit a watch--a device of seven dials, each turning ten times as fast as its successor; and that one turn of the slowest dial measured one year of his time. Seaton instantly threw off his headset and opened the power switch. "Grab a stopwatch quick, Mart!" he called, as he leaped to the discarded vacuum suit and searched out the peculiar timepiece. They noted the exact time consumed by one complete revolution of one of the dials, and calculated rapidly. "Better than I thought!" exclaimed Seaton. "That makes his year about four hundred ten of our days. That gives us eighty-two days before the torpedo gets there--longer than I'd dared hope. We've got to fight, too, not run. They figure on getting the _Skylark_, then volatilizing our world. Well, we can take time enough to grab off an absolutely complete record of this guy's brain. We'll need it for what's coming, and I'm going to get it, if I have to kill him to do it." He resumed his place at the educator, turned on the power, and a shadow passed over his face. "Poor devil, he's conked out--couldn't stand the gaff," he remarked, half-regretfully. "However that makes it easy to get what we want, and we'd have had to kill him anyway, I guess--Bad as it is, I'd hate to bump him off in cold blood." He threaded new spools into the machine, and for three hours, mile after mile of tape sped between the magnets as Seaton explored every recess of that monstrous, yet stupendous brain. "Well, that's that," he declared finally, as, the last bit of information gleaned and recorded upon the flying tape, he removed the body of the Fenachrone captain into space and rayed it out of existence. "Now what to do?" "How can we get this salt to Osnome?" asked Dunark whose thoughts were never far from that store of the precious chemical. "You are already crowded, and Sitar and I will crowd you still more. You have no room for additional cargo, and yet much valuable time would be lost in going to Osnome for another vessel." "Yes, and we've got to get a lot of 'X', too. Guess we'll have to take time to get another vessel. I'd like to drag in the pieces of that ship, too--his instruments and a lot of the parts could be used." "Why not do it all at once?" suggested Crane. "We can start that whole mass toward Osnome by drawing it behind us until such a velocity has been attained that it will reach there at the desired time. We could then go to 'X,' and overtake this material near the green system." "Right you are, ace--that's a sound idea. But say, Dunark, it wouldn't be good technique for you to eat our food for any length of time. While we're figuring this out you'd better hop over there and bring over enough to last you two until we get you home. Give it to Shiro--after a couple of lessons, you'll find he'll be as good as any of your cooks." * * * * * Faster and faster the _Skylark_ flew, pulling behind her the mass of wreckage, held by every available attractor. When the calculated velocity had been attained, the attractors were shut off and the vessel darted away toward that planet, still in the Carboniferous Age, which possessed at least one solid ledge of metallic "X," the rarest of all earthly metals. As the automatic controls held the cruiser upon her course, the six wanderers sat long in discussion as to what should be done, what could be done, to avert the threatened destruction of all the civilization of the Galaxy except the monstrous and unspeakable culture of the Fenachrone. Nearing their destination, Seaton rose to his feet. "Well, folks, it's like this. We've got our backs to the wall. Dunark has troubles of his own--if the Third Planet doesn't get him the Fenachrone will, and the Third Planet is the more pressing danger. That lets him out. We've got nearly six months before the Fenachrone can get back here...." "But how can they possibly find us here, or wherever we'll be by that time, Dick?" asked Dorothy. "The battle was a long way from here." "With that much start they probably couldn't find us," Seaton replied soberly. "It's the world I'm thinking about. They've got to be stopped, and stopped cold--and we've got only six months to do it in.... Osnome's got the best tools and the fastest workmen I know of...." his voice died away in thought. "That sort of thing is in your department, Dick." Crane was calm and judicial as always. "I will, of course, do anything I can. But you probably have a plan of campaign already laid out?" "After a fashion. We've got to find out how to work through this zone of force or we're sunk without a trace. Even with rays, screens, and ships equal to theirs, we couldn't keep them from sending a vessel to destroy the earth; and they'd probably get us too, eventually. They've got a lot of stuff we don't know about, of course, since I took only one man's mind. While he was a very able man, he didn't know all that all the rest of them do, any more than any one man has all the earthly science known. Absolutely our only chance is to control that zone--it's the only thing they haven't got. Of course, it may be impossible, but I won't believe that, until I've exhausted a lot of possibilities. Dunark, can you spare a crew to build us a duplicate of that Fenachrone ship, besides those you are going to build for yourself?" "Certainly. I will be only too glad to do so." "Well, then, while Dunark is doing that, I suggest that we go to this Third Planet, abduct a few of their leading scientists, and read their minds. Then do the same, visiting every other highly advanced planet we can locate. There is a good chance that, by combining the best points of the warfares of many worlds, we can evolve something that will enable us to turn back these invaders." "Why not send a copper torpedo to destroy their entire planet?" suggested Dunark. "Wouldn't work. Their detecting screens would locate it a thousand million miles off in space, and they would ray it. With a zone of force that would get through their screens, that would be the first thing I'd do. You see, every thought comes back to that zone. We've got to get through it some way." The course alarm sounded, and they saw that a planet lay directly in their path. It was "X," and enough negative acceleration was applied to make an easy landing possible. "Isn't it going to be a long, slow job, chopping off two tons of that metal and fighting away those terrible animals besides?" asked Margaret. "It'll take about a millionth of a second, Peg. I'm going to bite it off with the zone, just as I took that bite out of our field. The rotation of the planet will throw us away from the surface, then we'll release the zone and drag our prey off with us. See?" The _Skylark_ descended rapidly toward that well-remembered ledge of metal to which the object compass had led them. "This is exactly where we landed before," Margaret commented in surprise, and Dorothy added: "Yes, and there's that horrible tree that ate the dinosaur or whatever it was. I thought you blew it up for me, Dick?" "I did, Dottie--blew it into atoms. Must be a good location for carnivorous trees--and they must grow awfully fast, too. As to its being the same place, Peg--sure it is. That's what object compasses are for." Everything appeared as it had been at the time of their first visit. The rank Carboniferous vegetation, intensely, vividly green, was motionless in the still, hot, heavy air; the living nightmares inhabiting that primitive world were lying in the cooler depths of the jungle, sheltered from the torrid rays of that strange and fervent sun. "How about it, Dot? Want to see some of your little friends again? If you do, I'll give them a shot and bring them out." "Heavens, no! I saw them once--if I never see them again, that will be twenty minutes too soon!" "All right--we'll grab us a piece of this ledge and beat it." Seaton lowered the vessel to the ledge, focussed the main anchoring attractor upon it, and threw on the zone of force. Almost immediately he released the zone, pointed the bar parallel to the compass bearing upon Osnome, and slowly applied the power. "How much did you take, anyway?" asked Dunark in amazement. "It looks bigger than the _Skylark_!" "It is; considerably bigger. Thought we might as well take enough while we're here, so I set the zone for a seventy-five-foot radius. It's probably of the order of magnitude of half a million tons, since the stuff weighs more than half a ton to the cubic foot. However, we can handle it as easily as we could a smaller bite, and that much mass will help us hold that other stuff together when we catch up with it." * * * * * The voyage to Osnome was uneventful. They overtook the wreckage, true to schedule, as they were approaching the green system, and attached it to the mass of metal behind them by means of attractors. "Where'll we land this junk, Dunark?" asked Seaton, as Osnome grew large beneath them. "We'll hold this lump of metal and the fragment of the ship carrying the salt; and we'll be able to hold some of the most important of the other stuff. But a lot of it is bound to get away from us--and the Lord help anybody who's under it when it comes down! You might yell for help--and say, you might ask somebody to have that astronomical data ready for us as soon as we land." "The parade ground will be empty now, so we will land there," Dunark replied. "We should be able to land everything in a field of that size, I should think." He touched the sender at his belt, and in the general code notified the city of their arrival and warned everyone to keep away from the parade ground. He then sent several messages in the official code, concluding by asking that one or two space-ships come out and help lower the burden to the ground. As the peculiar, pulsating chatter of the Osnomian telegraph died out, Seaton called for help. "Come here, you two, and grab some of these attractors. I need about twelve hands to keep this plunder in the straight and narrow path." The course had been carefully laid, with allowance for the various velocities and forces involved, to follow the easiest path to the Kondalian parade ground. The hemisphere of "X" and the fragment of the _Kondal_ which bore the salt were held immovably in place by the main attractor and one auxiliary; and many other auxiliaries held sections of the Fenachrone vessel. However, the resistance of the air seriously affected the trajectory of many of the irregularly shaped smaller masses of metal, and all three men were kept busy flicking attractors right and left; capturing those strays which threatened to veer off into the streets or upon the buildings of the Kondalian capital city, and shifting from one piece to another so that none should fall freely. Two sister-ships of the _Kondal_ appeared as if by magic in answer to Dunark's call, and their attractors aided greatly in handling the unruly collection of wreckage. A few of the smaller sections and a shower of debris fell clear, however, in spite of all efforts, and their approach was heralded by a meteoric display unprecedented in that world of continuous daylight. As the three vessels with their cumbersome convoy dropped down into the lower atmosphere, the guns of the city roared a welcome; banners and pennons waved; the air became riotous with color from hundreds of projectors and odorous with a bewildering variety of scents; while all around them played numberless aircraft of all descriptions and sizes. The space below them was carefully avoided, but on all sides and above them the air was so full that it seemed marvelous that no collision occurred. Tiny one-man helicopters, little more than single chairs flying about; beautiful pleasure-planes, soaring and wheeling; immense multiplane liners and giant helicopter freighters--everything in the air found occasion to fly as near as possible to the Skylark in order to dip their flags in salute to Dunark, their Kofedix, and to Seaton, the wearer of the seven disks--their revered Overlord. Finally the freight was landed without serious mishap and the _Skylark_ leaped to the landing dock upon the palace roof, where the royal family and many nobles were waiting, in full panoply of glittering harness. Dunark and Sitar disembarked and the four others stepped out and stood at attention as Seaton addressed Roban, the Karfedix. "Sir, we greet you, but we cannot stop, even for a moment. You know that only the most urgent necessity would make us forego the pleasure of a brief rest beneath your roof--the Kofedix will presently give you the measure of that dire need. We shall endeavor to return soon. Greetings, and, for a time, farewell." "Overlord, we greet you, and trust that soon we may entertain you and profit from your companionship. For what you have done, we thank you. May the great First Cause smile upon you until your return. Farewell." CHAPTER VI The Peace Conference "Here's a chart of the green system, Mart, with all the motions and the rest of the dope that they've been able to get. How'd it be for you to navigate us over to the third planet of the fourteenth sun?" "While you build a Fenachrone super-generator?" "Right, the first time. Your deducer is hitting on all eight, as usual. That big ray is hot stuff, and their ray-screen is something to write home about, too." "How can their rays be any hotter than ours, Dick?" Dorothy asked curiously. "I thought you said we had the very last word in rays." "I thought we had, but those birds we met back there spoke a couple of later words. Their rays work on an entirely different system than the one we use. They generate an extremely short carrier wave, like the Millikan cosmic ray, by recombining some of the electrons and protons of their disintegrating metal, and upon this wave they impose a pure heat frequency of terrific power. The Millikan rays will penetrate anything except a special ray screen or a zone of force, and carry with them--somewhat as radio frequencies carry sound frequencies--the heat rays, which volatilize anything they touch. Their ray screens are a lot better than ours, too--they generate the entire spectrum. It's a sweet system and when we revamp ours so as to be just like it, we'll be able to talk turkey to those folks on the third planet." "How long will it take you to build it?" asked Crane, who, dexterously turning the pages of "Vega's Handbuch" was calculating their course. "A day or so--maybe less. I've got all the stuff and with my Osnomian tools it won't take long. If you find you'll get there before I get done, you'll have to loaf a while--kill a little time." "Are you going to connect the power plant to operate on the entire vessel and all its contents?" "No--can't do it without redesigning the whole thing and that's hardly worth while for the short time we'll use this old bus." Building those generators would have been a long and difficult task for a corps of earthly mechanics and electricians, but to Seaton it was merely a job. The "shop" had been enlarged and had been filled to capacity with Osnomian machinery; machine tools that were capable of performing automatically and with the utmost precision and speed any conceivable mechanical operation. He put a dozen of them to work, and before the vessel reached its destination, the new offensive and defensive weapons had been installed and thoroughly tested. He had added a third screen-generator, so that now, in addition to the four-foot hull of arenak and the repellers, warding off any material projectile, the Skylark was also protected by an outer, an intermediate, and an inner ray-screen; each driven by the super-power of a four-hundred-pound bar and each covering the entire spectrum--capable of neutralizing any dangerous frequency known to those master-scientists, the Fenachrone. As the _Skylark_ approached the planet, Seaton swung number six visiplate upon it, and directed their flight toward a great army base. Darting down upon it, he snatched an officer into the airlock, closed the door, and leaped back into space. He brought the captive into the control room pinioned by auxiliary attractors, and relieved him of his weapons. He then rapidly read his mind, encountering no noticeable resistance, released the attractors, and addressed him in his own language. "Please be seated, lieutenant," Seaton said courteously, motioning him to one of the seats. "We come in peace. Please pardon my discourtesy in handling you, but it was necessary in order to learn your language and thus to get in touch with your commanding officer." The officer, overcome with astonishment that he had not been killed instantly, sank into the seat indicated, without a reply, and Seaton went on: "Please be kind enough to signal your commanding officer that we are coming down at once, for a peace conference. By the way, I can read your signals, and will send them myself if necessary." The stranger worked an instrument attached to his harness briefly, and the _Skylark_ descended slowly toward the fortress. "I know, of course, that your vessels will attack," Seaton remarked, as he noted a crafty gleam in the eyes of the officer. "I intend to let them use all their power for a time, to prove to them the impotence of their weapons. After that, I shall tell you what to say to them." "Do you think this is altogether safe, Dick?" asked Crane as they saw a fleet of gigantic airships soaring upward to meet them. "Nothing sure but death and taxes," returned Seaton cheerfully, "but don't forget that we've got Fenachrone armament now, instead of Osnomian. I'm betting that they can't begin to drive their rays through even our outer screen. And even if our outer screen should begin to go into the violet--I don't think it will even go cherry-red--out goes our zone of force and we automatically go up where no possible airship can reach. Since their only space-ships are rocket driven, and of practically no maneuverability, they stand a big chance of getting to us. Anyway, we must get in touch with them, to find out if they know anything we don't, and this is the only way I know of to do it. Besides, I want to head Dunark off from wrecking this world. They're exactly the same kind of folks he is, you notice, and I don't like civil war. Any suggestions? Keep an eye on that bird, then, Mart, and we'll go down." * * * * * The _Skylark_ dropped down into the midst of the fleet, which instantly turned against her the full force of their giant guns and their immense ray batteries. Seaton held the _Skylark_ motionless, staring into his visiplate, his right hand grasping the zone-switch. "The outer screen isn't even getting warm!" he exulted after a moment. The repellers were hurling the shells back long before they reached even the outer screen, and they were exploding harmlessly in the air. The full power of the ray-generators, too, which had been so destructive to the Osnomian defenses, were only sufficient to bring the outer screen to a dull red glow. After fifteen minutes of passive acceptance of all the airships could do, Seaton spoke to the captive. "Sir, please signal the commanding officer of vessel seven-two-four that I am going to cut it in two in the middle. Have him remove all men in that part of the ship to the ends, and have parachutes in readiness, as I do not wish to cause any loss of life." The signal was sent, and, as the officer was already daunted by the fact that their utmost efforts could not even make the strangers' screens radiate, it was obeyed. Seaton then threw on the frightful power of the Fenachrone super-generators. The defensive screens of the doomed warship flashed once--a sparkling, coruscating display of incandescent brilliance--and in the same instant went down. Simultaneously the entire midsection of the vessel exploded into light and disappeared; completely volatilized. "Sir, please signal the entire fleet to cease action, and to follow me down. If they do not do so, I will destroy the rest of them." The _Skylark_ dropped to the ground, followed by the fleet of warships, who settled in a ring about her--inactive, but ready. "Will you please loan me your sending instrument, sir?" Seaton asked. "From this point on I can carry on negotiations better direct than through you." The lieutenant found his voice as he surrendered the instrument. "Sir, are you the Overlord of Osnome, of whom we have heard? We had supposed that one was a mythical character, but you must be he--no one else would spare lives that he could take, and the Overlord is the only being reputed to have a skin the color of yours." "Yes, lieutenant, I am the Overlord--and I have decided to become the Overlord of the entire green system, as well as of Osnome." He then sent out a call to the commander-in-chief of all the armies of the planet, informing him that he was coming to visit him at once, and the _Skylark_ tore through the air to the capital city. No sooner had the earthly vessel alighted upon the palace grounds than she was surrounded by a ring of warships who, however, made no offensive move. Seaton again used the telegraph. "Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the planet Urvania; greetings from the Overlord of this solar system. I invite you to come into my vessel, unarmed and alone, for a conference. I come in peace and, peace or war as you decide, no harm shall come to you, until after you have returned to your own command. Think well before you reply." "If I refuse?" "I shall destroy one of the vessels surrounding me, and shall continue to destroy them, one every ten seconds, until you agree to come. If you still do not agree. I shall destroy all the armed forces upon this planet, then destroy all your people who are at present upon Osnome. I wish to avoid bloodshed and destruction, but I can and I will do as I have said." "I will come." The general came out upon the field unarmed, escorted by a company of soldiers. A hundred feet from the vessel he halted the guards and came on alone, erect and soldierly. Seaton met him at the door and invited him to be seated. "What can you have to say to me?" the general demanded, disregarding the invitation. "Many things. First, let me say that you are not only a brave man; you are a wise general--your visit to me proves it." "It is a sign of weakness, but I believed when I heard those reports, and still believe, that a refusal would have resulted in a heavy loss of our men," was the General's reply. "It would have," said Seaton. "I repeat that your act was not weakness, but wisdom. The second thing I have to say is that I had not planned on taking any active part in the management of things, either upon Osnome or upon this planet, until I learned of a catastrophe that is threatening all the civilization in this Galaxy--thus threatening my own distant world as well as those of this solar system. Third, only by superior force can I make either your race or the Osnomians listen to reason sufficiently to unite against a common foe. You have been reared in unreasoning hatred for so many generations that your minds are warped. For that reason I have assumed control of this entire system, and shall give you your choice between co-operating with us or being rendered incapable of molesting us while our attention is occupied by this threatened invasion." "We will have no traffic with the enemy whatever," said the general. "This is final." "You just think so. Here is a mathematical statement of what is going to happen to your world, unless I intervene." He handed the general a drawing of Dunark's plan and described it in detail. "That is the answer of the Osnomians to your invasion of their planet. I do not want this world destroyed, but if you refuse to make common cause with us against a common foe, it may be necessary. Have you forces at your command sufficient to frustrate this plan?" "No; but I cannot really believe that such a deflection of celestial bodies is possible. Possible or not, you realize that I could not yield to empty threats." "Of course not," said Seaton, "but you were wise enough to refuse to sacrifice a few ships and men in a useless struggle against my overwhelming armament, therefore you are certainly wise enough to refuse to sacrifice your entire race. However, before you come to any definite conclusion, I will show you what threatens the Galaxy." * * * * * He handed the other a headset and ran through the section of the record showing the plans of the invaders. He then ran a few sections showing the irresistible power at the command of the Fenachrone. "That is what awaits us all unless we combine against them." "What are your requirements?" the general asked. "I request immediate withdrawal of all your armed forces now upon Osnome and full co-operation with me in this coming war against the invaders. In return, I will give you the secrets I have just given the Osnomians--the power and the offensive and defensive weapons of this vessel." "The Osnomians are now building vessels such as this one?" asked the general. "They are building vessels a hundred times the size of this one, with the same armament." "For myself, I would agree to your terms. However, the word of the Emperor is law." "I understand," replied Seaton. "Would you be willing to seek an immediate audience with him? I would suggest that both you and he accompany me, and we shall hold a peace conference with the Osnomian Emperor and Commander-in-Chief upon this vessel. We shall be gone less than a day." "I shall do so at once." "You may accompany your general, lieutenant. Again I ask pardon for my necessary rudeness." As the Urvanian officers hurried toward the palace, the other Terrestrials, who had been listening in from another room, entered. "It sounded as though you convinced him, Dick; but that language is nothing like Kondalian. Why don't you teach it to us? Teach it to Shiro, too, so he can cook for, and talk to, our distinguished guests intelligently, if they're going back with us." As he connected up the educator, Seaton explained what had happened, and concluded: "I want to stop this civil war, keep Dunark from destroying this planet, preserve Osnome for Osnomians, and make them all co-operate with us against the Fenachrone. That's one tall order, since these folks haven't the remotest notion of anything except killing." A company of soldiers approached, and Dorothy got up hastily. "Stick around, folks. We can all talk to them." "I believe that it would be better for you to be alone," Crane decided, after a moment's thought. "They are used to autocratic power, and can understand nothing but one-man control. The girls and I will keep out of it." "That might be better at that," and Seaton went to the door to welcome the guests. Seaton instructed them to lie flat, and put on all the acceleration they could bear. It was not long until they were back in Kondal, where Roban, the Karfedix, and Tarnan, the Karbix, accepted Seaton's invitation and entered the Skylark, unarmed. Back out in space, the vessel stationary, Seaton introduced the emperors and commanders-in-chief to each other--introductions which were acknowledged almost imperceptibly. He then gave each a headset, and ran the complete record of the Fenachrone brain. "Stop!" shouted Roban, after only a moment. "Would you, the Overlord of Osnome, reveal such secrets as this to the arch-enemies of Osnome?" "I would. I have taken over the Overlordship of the entire green system for the duration of this emergency, and I do not want two of its planets engaged in civil war." The record finished, Seaton tried for some time to bring the four green warriors to his way of thinking, but in vain. Roban and Tarnan remained contemptuous. They would have thrown themselves upon him, but for the knowledge that no fifty unarmed men of the green race could have overcome his strength--to them supernatural. The two Urvanians were equally obdurate. This soft earth-being had given them everything; they had given him nothing and would give him nothing. Finally Seaton rose to his full height and stared at them in turn, wrath and determination blazing in his eyes. "I have brought you four together, here in a neutral vessel in neutral space, to bring about peace between you. I have shown you the benefits to be derived from the peaceful pursuit of science, knowledge, and power, instead of continuing this utter economic waste of continual war. You all close your senses to reason. You of Osnome accuse me of being an ingrate and a traitor; you of Urvania consider me a soft-headed, sentimental weakling, who may safely be disregarded--all because I think the welfare of the numberless peoples of the Universe more important than your narrow-minded, stubborn, selfish vanity. Think what you please. If brute force is your only logic, know now that I can, and will, use brute force. Here are the seven disks," and he placed the bracelet upon Roban's knee. "If you four leaders are short-sighted enough to place your petty enmity before the good of all civilization, I am done with you forever. I have deliberately given Urvanians precisely the same information that I have given the Osnomians--no more and no less. I have given neither of you all that I know, and I shall know much more than I do now, before the time of the conquest shall have arrived. Unless you four men, here and now, renounce this war and agree to a perpetual peace between your worlds, I shall leave you to your mutual destruction. You do not yet realize the power of the weapons I have given you. When you do realize it, you will know that mutual destruction is inevitable if you continue this internecine war. I shall continue upon other worlds my search for the one secret standing between me and a complete mastery of power. That I shall find that secret I am confident; and, having found it, I shall, without your aid, destroy the Fenachrone. "You have several times remarked with sneers that you are not to be swayed by empty threats. What I am about to say is no empty threat--it is a most solemn promise, given by one who has both the will and the power to fulfill his every given word. Now listen carefully to this, my final utterance. If you continue this warfare and if the victor should not be utterly destroyed in its course, I swear as I stand here, by the great First Cause, that I shall myself wipe out every trace of the surviving nation as soon as the Fenachrone shall have been obliterated. Work with each other and me and we all may live--fight on and both your nations, to the last person, will most certainly die. Decide now which it is to be. I have spoken." * * * * * Roban took up the bracelet and clasped it again about Seaton's arm, saying, "You are more than ever our Overlord. You are wiser than are we, and stronger. Issue your commands and they shall be obeyed." "Why did not you say those things first, Overlord?" asked the Urvanian emperor, as he saluted and smiled. "We could not in honor submit to a weakling, no matter what the fate in store. Having convinced us of your strength, there can be no disgrace in fighting beneath your screens. An armlet of seven symbols shall be cast and ready for you when you next visit us. Roban of Osnome, you are my brother." The two emperors saluted each other and stared eye to eye for a long moment, and Seaton knew that the perpetual peace had been signed. Then all four spoke, in unison: "Overlord, we await your commands." "Dunark of Osnome is already informed as to what Osnome is to do. Say to him that it will not be necessary for him to build the vessel for me; the Urvanians will do that. Urvan of Urvania, you will accompany Roban to Osnome, where you two will order instant cessation of hostilities. Osnome has many ships of this type, and upon some of them you will return your every soldier and engine of war to your own planet. As soon as possible you will build for me a vessel like that of the Fenachrone, except that it shall be ten times as large, in every dimension, and except that every instrument, control, and weapon is to be left out." "Left out? It shall be so built--but of what use will it be?" "The empty spaces shall be filled after I have returned from my quest. You will build this vessel of dagal. You will also instruct the Osnomian commander in the manufacture of that metal, which is so much more resistant than their arenak." "But, Overlord, we have...." "I have just brought immense stores of the precious chemical and of the metal of power to Osnome. They will share it with you. I also advise you to build for yourselves many ships like those of the Fenachrone, with which to do battle with the invaders, in case I should fail in my quest. You will, of course, see to it that there will be a corps of your most efficient mechanics and artisans within call at all times in case I should return and have sudden need for them." "All these things shall be done." The conference ended, the four nobles were quickly landed upon Osnome and once more the _Skylark_ traveled out into her element, the total vacuum and absolute zero of the outer void, with Crane at the controls. "You certainly sounded savage, Dick. I almost thought you really meant it!" Dorothy chuckled. "I did mean it, Dot. Those fellows are mighty keen on detecting bluffs. If I hadn't meant it, and if they hadn't known that I meant it, I'd never have got away with it." "But you _couldn't_ have meant it, Dick! You wouldn't have destroyed the Osnomians, surely--you know you wouldn't." "No, but I would have destroyed what was left of the Urvanians, and all five of us knew exactly how it would have turned out and exactly what I would have done about it--that's why they all pulled in their horns." "I don't know what would have happened," interjected Margaret. "What would have?" "With this new stuff the Urvanians would have wiped the Osnomians out. They are an older race, and so much better in science and mechanics that the Osnomians wouldn't have stood much chance, and knew it. Incidentally, that's why I'm having them build our new ship. They'll put a lot of stuff into it that Dunark's men would miss--maybe some stuff that even the Fenachrone haven't got. However, though it might seem that the Urvanians had all the best of it, Urvan knew that I had something up my sleeve besides my bare arm--and he knew that I'd clean up what there was left of his race if they polished off the Osnomians." "What a frightful chance you were taking, Dick!" gasped Dorothy. "You have to be hard to handle those folks--and believe me, I was a forty-minute egg right then. They have such a peculiar mental and moral slant that we can hardly understand them at all. This idea of co-operation is so new to them that it actually dazed all four of them even to consider it." "Do you suppose they will fight, anyway?" asked Crane. "Absolutely not. Both nations have an inflexible code of honor, such as it is, and lying is against both codes. That's one thing I like about them--I'm sort of honest myself, and with either of these races you need nothing signed or guaranteed." "What next, Dick?" "Now the real trouble begins. Mart, oil up the massive old intellect. Have you found the answer to the problem?" "What problem?" asked Dorothy. "You didn't tell us anything about a problem." "No, I told Mart. I want the best physicist in this entire solar system--and since there are only one hundred and twenty-five planets around these seventeen suns, it should be simple to yon phenomenal brain. In fact, I expect to hear him say 'elementary, my dear Watson, elementary'!" "Hardly that, Dick, but I have found out a few things. There are some eighty planets which are probably habitable for beings like us. Other things being equal, it seems reasonable to assume that the older the sun, the longer its planets have been habitable, and therefore the older and more intelligent the life...." "'Ha! ha! It was elementary,' says Sherlock." Seaton interrupted. "You're heading directly at that largest, oldest, and most intelligent planet, then, I take it, where I can catch me my physicist?" "Not directly at it, no. I am heading for the place where it will be when we reach it. That is elementary." "Ouch! That got to me, Mart, right where I live. I'll be good." "But you are getting ahead of me, Dick--it is not as simple as you have assumed from what I have said so far. The Osnomian astronomers have done wonders in the short time they have had, but their data, particularly on the planets of the outer suns, is as yet necessarily very incomplete. Since the furthermost outer sun is probably the oldest, it is the one in which we are most interested. It has seven planets, four of which are probably habitable, as far as temperature and atmosphere are concerned. However, nothing exact is yet known of their masses, motions, or places. Therefore I have laid our course to intercept the closest one to us, as nearly as I can from what meager data we have. If it should prove to be inhabited by intelligent beings, they can probably give us more exact information concerning their neighboring planets. That is the best I can do." "That's a darn fine best, old top--narrowing down to four from a hundred and twenty-five. Well, until we get there, what to do? Let's sing us a song, to keep our fearless quartette in good voice." "Before you do anything," said Margaret seriously, "I would like to know if you really think there is a chance of defeating those monsters." * * * * * "In all seriousness, I do. In fact, I am quite confident of it. If we had two years, I know that we could lick them cold; and by stepping on the gas I believe we can get the dope in less than the six months we have to work in." "I know that you are serious, Dick. Now you know that I do not want to discourage any one, but I can see small basis for optimism," Crane spoke slowly and thoughtfully. "I hope that you will be able to control the zone of force--but you are not studying it yourself. You seem to be certain that somewhere in this system there is a race who already knows all about it. I would like to know your reasons for thinking that such a race exists." "They may not be upon this system; they may have been outsiders, as we are--but I have reasons for believing them to be natives of this system, since they were green. You are as familiar with Osnomian mythology as I am--you girls in particular have read Osnomian legends to Osnomian children for hours. Also identically the same legends prevail upon Urvania. I read them in that lieutenant's brain--in fact, I looked for them. You also know that every folk-legend has some basis, however tenuous, in fact. Now, Dottie, tell about the battle of the gods, when Osnome was a pup." "The gods came down from the sky," Dorothy recited. "They were green, as were men. They wore invisible armor of polished metal, which appeared and disappeared. They stayed inside the armor and fought outside it with swords and lances of fire. Men who fought against them cut them through and through with swords, and they struck the men with lances of flame so that they were stunned. So the gods fought in days long gone and vanished in their invisible armor, and----" "That's enough," interrupted Seaton. "The little red-haired girl has her lesson perfectly. Get it, Mart?" "No, I cannot say that I do." "Why, it doesn't even make sense!" exclaimed Margaret. "All right, I'll elucidate. Listen!" and Seaton's voice grew tense with earnestness. "Visitors came down out of space. They were green. They wore zones of force, which they flashed on and off. They stayed inside the zones and projected their images outside, and used rays _through the zones_. Men who fought against the images cut them through and through with swords, but could not harm them since they were not actual substance; and the images directed rays against the men so that they were stunned. So the visitors fought in days long gone, and vanished in their zones of force. How does that sound?" "You have the most stupendous imagination the world has ever seen--but there may be some slight basis of fact there, after all," said Crane, slowly. "I'm convinced of it, for one reason in particular. Notice that it says specifically that the visitors stunned the natives. Now that thought is absolutely foreign to all Osnomian nature--when they strike they kill, and always have. Now if that myth has come down through so many generations without having that 'stunned' changed to 'killed', I'm willing to bet a few weeks of time that the rest of it came down fairly straight, too. Of course, what they had may not have been the zone of force as we know it, but it must have been a ray of some kind--and believe me, that was one educated ray. Somebody sure had something, even 'way back in those days. And if they had anything at all back there, they must know a lot by now. That's why I want to look 'em up." "But suppose they want to kill us off at sight?" objected Dorothy. "They might be able to do it, mightn't they?" "Sure, but they probably wouldn't want to--any more than you would step on an ant who asked you to help him move a twig. That's about how much ahead of us they probably are. Of course, we struck a pure mentality once, who came darn near dematerializing us entirely, but I'm betting that these folks haven't got that far along yet. By the way, I've got a hunch about those pure intellectuals." "Oh, tell us about it!" laughed Margaret. "Your hunches are the world's greatest brainstorms!" "Well, I pumped out and rejeweled the compass we put on that funny planet--as a last resort, I thought we might maybe visit them and ask that bozo we had the argument with to help us out. I think he--or it--would show us everything about the zone of force we want to know. I don't think that we'd be dematerialized, either, because the situation would give him something more to think about for another thousand cycles; and thinking seemed to be his main object in life. However, to get back to the subject, I found that even with the new power of the compass the entire planet was still out of reach. Unless they've dematerialized it, that means about ten billion light-years as an absolute minimum. Think about that for a minute!... I've just got a kind of a hunch that maybe they don't belong in this Galaxy at all--that they might be from some other Galaxy, planet and all; just riding around on it, as we are riding in the _Skylark_. Is the idea conceivable to a sane mind, or not?" "Not!" decided Dorothy, promptly. "We'd better go to bed. One more such idea, in progression with the last two you've had, would certainly give you a compound fracture of the skull. 'Night, Cranes." CHAPTER VII DuQuesne's Voyage Far from our solar system a cigar-shaped space-car slackened its terrific acceleration to a point at which human beings could walk, and two men got up, exercised vigorously to restore the circulation to their numbed bodies, and went into the galley to prepare their meal--the first since leaving the Earth some eight hours or more before. Because of the long and arduous journey he had decided upon, DuQuesne had had to abandon his custom of working alone, and had studied all the available men with great care before selecting his companion and relief pilot. He finally had chosen "Baby Doll" Loring--so called because of his curly yellow hair, his pink and white complexion, his guileless blue eyes, his slight form of rather less than medium height. But never did outward attributes more belie the inner man! The yellow curls covered a brain agile, keen, and hard; the girlish complexion neither paled nor reddened under stress; the wide blue eyes had glanced along the barrels of so many lethal weapons, that in various localities the noose yawned for him; the slender body was built of rawhide and whalebone, and responded instantly to the dictates of that ruthless brain. Under the protection of Steel he flourished, and in return for that protection he performed, quietly and with neatness and despatch, such odd jobs as were in his line, with which he was commissioned. When they were seated at an excellent breakfast of ham and eggs, buttered toast, and strong, aromatic coffee, DuQuesne broke the long silence. "Do you want to know where we are?" "I'd say we were a long way from home, by the way this elevator of yours has been climbing all night." "We are a good many million miles from the Earth, and we are getting farther away at a rate that would have to be measured in millions of miles per second." DuQuesne, watching the other narrowly as he made this startling announcement and remembering the effect of a similar one upon Perkins, saw with approval that the coffee-cup in midair did not pause or waver in its course. Loring noted the bouquet of his beverage and took an appreciative sip before he replied. "You certainly can make coffee, Doctor; and good coffee is nine-tenths of a good breakfast. As to where we are--that's all right with me. I can stand it if you can." "Don't you want to know where we're going, and why?" "I've been thinking about that. Before we started I didn't want to know anything, because what a man doesn't know he can't be accused of spilling in case of a leak. Now that we are on our way, though, maybe I should know enough about things to act intelligently, if something unforeseen should develop. If you'd rather keep it dark and give me orders when necessary, that's all right with me, too. It's your party, you know." "I brought you along because one man can't stay on duty twenty-four hours a day, continuously. Since you are in as deep as you can get, and since this trip is dangerous, you should know everything there is to know. You are one of the higher-ups now, anyway: and we understand each other thoroughly, I believe?" "I believe so." Back in the bow control-room DuQuesne applied more power, but not enough to render movement impossible. "You don't have to drive her as hard all the way, then, as you did last night?" "No, I'm out of range of Seaton's instrument now, and we don't have to kill ourselves. High acceleration is punishment for anyone and we must keep ourselves fit. To begin with, I suppose that you are curious about that object-compass?" "That and other things." "An object-compass is a needle of specially-treated copper, so activated that it points always toward one certain object, after being once set upon it. Seaton undoubtedly has one upon me; but, sensitive as they are, they can't hold on a mass as small as a man at this distance. That was why we left at midnight, after he had gone to bed--so that we'd be out of range before he woke up. I wanted to lose him, as he might interfere if he knew where I was going. Now I'll go back to the beginning and tell you the whole story." * * * * * Tersely, but vividly, he recounted the tale of the interstellar cruise, the voyage of the _Skylark of Space_. When he had finished, Loring smoked for a few minutes in silence. "There's a lot of stuff there that's hard to understand all at once. Do you mind if I ask a few foolish questions, to get things straightened out in my mind?" "Go ahead--ask as many as you want to. It is hard to understand a lot of that Osnomian stuff--a man can't get it all at once." "Osnome is so far away--how are you going to find it?" "With one of the object-compasses I mentioned. I had planned on navigating from notes I took on the trip back to the Earth, but it wasn't necessary. They tried to keep me from finding out anything, but I learned all about the compasses, built a few of them in their own shop, and set one on Osnome. I had it, among other things, in my pocket when I landed. In fact, the control of that explosive copper bullet is the only thing they had that I wasn't able to get--and I'll get that on this trip." "What is that arenak armor they're wearing?" "Arenak is a synthetic metal, almost perfectly transparent. It has practically the same refractive index as air, therefore it is, to all intents and purposes, invisible. It's about five hundred times as strong as chrome-vanadium steel, and even when you've got it to the yield-point, it doesn't break, but stretches out and snaps back, like rubber, with the strength unimpaired. It's the most wonderful thing I saw on the whole trip. They make complete suits of it. Of course they aren't very comfortable, but since they are only a tenth of an inch they can be worn." "And a tenth of an inch of that stuff will stop a steel-nosed machine-gun bullet?" "Stop it! A tenth of an inch of arenak is harder to pierce than fifty inches of our hardest, toughest armor steel. A sixteenth-inch armor-piercing projectile couldn't get through it. It's hard to believe, but nevertheless it's a fact. The only way to kill Seaton with a gun would be to use one heavy enough so that the shock of the impact would kill him--and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he had his armor anchored with an attractor against that very contingency. Even if he hasn't, you can imagine the chance of getting action against him with a gun of that size." "Yes, I've heard that he is fast." "That doesn't tell half of it. You know that I'm handy with a gun myself?" "You're faster than I am, and that's saying something. You're chain lightning." "Well, Seaton is at least that much faster than I am. You've never seen him work--I have. On that Osnomian dock he shot twice before I started, and shot twice to my once from then on. I must have been shooting a quarter of a second after he had his side all cleaned up. To make it worse I missed once with my left hand--he didn't. There's absolutely no use tackling Richard Seaton without an Osnomian ray-generator or something better; but, as you know, Brookings always has been and always will be a fool. He won't believe anything new until after he has actually been shown. Well, I imagine he will be shown plenty by this evening." "Well, I'll never tackle him with heat. How does he get that way?" "He's naturally fast, and has practiced sleight-of-hand work ever since he was a kid. He's one of the best amateur magicians in the country, and I will say that his ability along that line has come in handy for him more than once." "I see where you're right in wanting to get something, since we have only ordinary weapons and they have all that stuff. This trip is to get a little something for ourselves, I take it?" "Exactly, and you know enough now to understand what we are out here to get for ourselves. You have guessed that we are headed for Osnome?" "I suspected it. However, if you were going only to Osnome, you would have gone alone; so I also suspect that that's only half of it. I have no idea what it is, but you've got something else on your mind." "You're right--I knew you were keen. When I was on Osnome I found out something that only four other men--all--dead--ever knew. There is a race of men far ahead of the Osnomians in science, particularly in warfare. They live a long way beyond Osnome. It is my plan to steal an Osnomian airship and mount all its ray screens, generators, guns, and everything else, upon this ship, or else convert their vessel into a space-ship. Instead of using their ordinary power, however, we will do as Seaton did, and use intra-atomic power, which is practically infinite. Then we'll have everything Seaton's got, but that isn't enough. I want enough more than he's got to wipe him out. Therefore, after we get a ship armed to suit us, we'll visit this strange planet and either come to terms with them or else steal a ship from them. Then we'll have their stuff and that of the Osnomians, as well as our own. Seaton won't last long after that." "Do you mind if I ask how you got that dope?" "Not at all. Except when right with Seaton I could do pretty much as I pleased, and I used to take long walks for exercise. The Osnomians tired very easily, being so weak, and because of the light gravity of the planet, I had to do a lot of work or walking to keep in any kind of condition at all. I learned Kondalian quickly, and got so friendly with the guards, that pretty soon they quit trying to keep me in sight, but waited at the edge of the palace grounds until I came back and joined them. "Well, on one trip I was fifteen miles or so from the city when an airship crashed down in a woods about half a mile from me. It was in an uninhabited district and nobody else saw it. I went over to investigate, thinking probably I could find out something useful. It had the whole front end cut or broken off, and that made me curious, because no imaginable fall will break an arenak hull. I walked in through the hole and saw that it was one of their fighting tenders--a combination warship and repair shop, with all of the stuff in it that I've been telling you about. The generators were mostly burned out and the propelling and lifting motors were out of commission. I prowled around, getting acquainted with it, and found a lot of useful instruments and, best of all, one of Dunark's new mechanical educators, with complete instructions for its use. Also, I found three bodies, and thought I'd try it out...." "Just a minute. Only three bodies on a warship? And what good could a mechanical educator do you if the men were all dead?" "Three is all I found then, but there was another one. Three men and a captain compose an Osnomian crew for any ordinary vessel. Everything is automatic, you, know. As for the men being dead, that doesn't make any difference--you can read their brains just the same, if they haven't been dead too long. However, when I tried to read theirs, I found only blanks--their brains had been destroyed so that nobody could read them. That did look funny, so I ransacked the ship from truck to keelson, and finally found another body, wearing an air-helmet, in a sort of closet off the control room. I put the educator on it...." "This is getting good. It sounds like a page of the old 'Arabian Nights' that I used to read when I was a boy. You know, it really isn't surprising that Brookings didn't believe a lot of this stuff." "As I have said, a lot of it is hard to understand, but I'm going to show it to you--all that, and more." "Oh, I believe it, all right. After riding in this boat and looking out of the windows, I'll believe anything. Reading a dead man's brain is steep, though." "I'll let you do it after we get there. I don't understand exactly how it works, myself, but I know how to operate one. Well, I found out that this man's brain was in good shape, and I got a shock when I read it. Here's what he had been through. They had been flying very high on their way to the front when their ship was seized by an invisible force and thrown upward. He must have thought faster than the others, because he put on an air-helmet and dived into this locker where he hid under a pile of gear, fixing things so that he could see out through the transparent arenak of the wall. No sooner was he hidden that the front end of the ship went up in a blaze of light, in spite of their ray screens going full blast. They were up so high by that time that when the bow was burned off the other three fainted from lack of air. Then their generators went out, and pretty soon two peculiar-looking strangers entered. They were wearing vacuum suits and were very short and stocky, giving the impression of enormous strength. They brought an educator of their own with them and read the brains of the three men. Then they dropped the ship a few thousand feet and revived the three with a drink of something out of a flask." "Must have been different from the kind handled by most booties I know, then. The stuff we've been getting lately would make a man more unconscious than ever." "Some powerful drug, probably, but the Osnomian didn't know anything about it. After the men were revived, the strangers, apparently from sheer cruelty and love of torturing their victims, informed them in the Osnomian language that they were from another world, on the far edge of the Galaxy. They even told them, knowing that the Osnomians knew nothing of astronomy, exactly where they were from. Then they went on to say that they wanted the entire green system for themselves, and that in something like two years of our time they were going to wipe out all the present inhabitants of the system and take it over, as a base for further operations. After that they amused themselves by describing exactly the kinds of death and destruction they were going to use. They described most of it in great detail. It's too involved to tell you about now, but they've got rays, generators, and screens that even the Osnomians never heard of. And of course they've got intra-atomic energy the same as we have. After telling them all this and watching them suffer, they put a machine on their heads and they dropped dead. That's probably what disintegrated their brains. Then they looked the ship over rather casually, as though they didn't see anything they were interested in; crippled the motors; and went away. The vessel was then released, and crashed. This man, of course, was killed by the fall. I buried the men--I didn't want anybody else reading that brain--hid some of the stuff I wanted most, and camouflaged the ship so that I'm fairly sure that it's there yet. I decided then to make this trip." "I see." Loring's mind was grappling with these new and strange facts. "That news is staggering, Doctor. Think of it. Everybody thinks our own world is everything there is!" "Our world is simply a grain of dust in the Universe. Most people know it, academically, but very few ever give the fact any actual consideration. But now that you've had a little time to get used to the idea of there being other worlds, and some of them as far ahead of us in science as we are ahead of the monkeys, what do you think of it?" "I agree with you, that we've got their stuff," said Loring. "However, it occurs to me as a possibility that they may have so much stuff that we won't be able to make the approach. However, if the Osnomian fittings we're going to get are as good as you say they are, I think that two such men as you and I can get at least a lunch while any other crew, no matter who they are, are getting a square meal." "I like your style, Loring. You and I will have the world eating out of our hands shortly after we get back. As far as actual procedure over there is concerned, of course, I haven't made any definite plans. We'll have to size up the situation after we get there before we can know exactly what we'll have to do. However, we are not coming back empty-handed." "You said something, Chief!" and the two men, so startlingly unlike physically, but so alike inwardly, shook hands in token of their mutual dedication to a single purpose. * * * * * Loring was then instructed in the simple navigation of the ship of space, and thereafter the two men took their regular shifts at the controls. In due time they approached Osnome, and DuQuesne studied the planet carefully through a telescope before he ventured down into the atmosphere. "This half of it used to be Mardonale. I suppose it's all Kondal now. No, there's a war on down there yet--at least, there's a disturbance of some kind, and on this planet that means war." "What are you looking for, exactly?" asked Loring, who was also examining the terrain with a telescope. "They've got some spherical space-ships, like Seaton's. I know they had one, and they've probably built more of them since that time. Their airships can't touch us, but those ball-shaped cruisers would be pure poison for us, the way we are fixed now. Can you see any of them?" "Not yet. Too far away to make out details. They're certainly having a hot time down there, though, in that one spot." They dropped lower, toward the stronghold which was being so stubbornly defended by the inhabitants of the third planet of the fourteenth sun, and so savagely attacked by the Kondalian forces. "There, we can see what they're doing now," and DuQuesne anchored the vessel with an attractor. "I want to see if they've got many of those space-ships in action, and you will want to see what war is like, when it is fought by people, who have been making war steadily for ten thousand years." Poised at the limit of clear visibility, the two men studied the incessant battle being waged beneath them. They saw not one, but fully a thousand of the globular craft high in the air and grouped in a great circle around an immense fortification upon the ground below. They saw no airships in the line of battle, but noticed that many such vessels were flying to and from the front, apparently carrying supplies. The fortress was an immense dome of some glassy, transparent material, partially covered with slag, through which they saw that the central space was occupied by orderly groups of barracks, and that round the circumference were arranged gigantic generators, projectors, and other machinery at whose purposes they could not even guess. From the base of the dome a twenty-mile-wide apron of the same glassy substance spread over the ground, and above this apron and around the dome were thrown the mighty defensive ray-screens, visible now and then in scintillating violet splendor as one of the copper-driven Kondalian projectors sought in vain for an opening. But the Earth-men saw with surprise that the main attack was not being directed at the dome; that only an occasional ray was thrown against it in order to make the defenders keep their screens up continuously. The edge of the apron was bearing the brunt of that vicious and never-ceasing attack, and most concerned the desperate defense. For miles beyond that edge, and as deep under it as frightful rays and enormous charges of explosive copper could penetrate, the ground was one seething, flaming volcano of molten and incandescent lava; lava constantly being volatilized by the unimaginable heat of those rays and being hurled for miles in all directions by the inconceivable power of those explosive copper projectiles--the heaviest projectiles that could be used without endangering the planet itself--being directed under the exposed edge of that unbreakable apron, which was in actuality anchored to the solid core of the planet itself; lava flowing into and filling up the vast craters caused by the explosions. The attack seemed fiercest at certain points, perhaps a quarter of a mile apart around the circle, and after a time the watchers perceived that at those points, under the edge of the apron, in that indescribable inferno of boiling lava, destructive rays, and disintegrating copper, there were enemy machines at work. These machines were strengthening the protecting apron and extending it, very slowly, but ever wider and ever deeper as the ground under it and before it was volatilized or hurled away by the awful forces of the Kondalian attack. So much destruction had already been wrought that the edge of the apron and its molten moat were already fully a mile below the normal level of that cratered, torn, and tortured plain. Now and then one of the mechanical moles would cease its labors, overcome by the concentrated fury of destruction centered upon it. Its shattered remnants would be withdrawn and shortly, repaired or replaced, it would be back at work. But it was not the defenders who had suffered most heavily. The fortress was literally ringed about with the shattered remnants of airships, and the riddled hulls of more than a few of those mighty globular cruisers of the void bore mute testimony to the deadliness and efficiency of the warfare of the invaders. Even as they watched, one of the spheres, unable for some reason to maintain its screens or overcome by the awful forces playing upon it, flared from white into and through the violet and was hurled upward as though shot from the mouth of some Brobdingnagian howitzer. A door opened, and from its flaming interior four figures leaped out into the air, followed by a puff of orange-colored smoke. At the first sign of trouble, the ship next it in line leaped in front of it and the four figures floated gently to the ground, supported by friendly attractors and protected from enemy rays by the bulk and by the screens of the rescuing vessel. Two great airships soared upward from back of the lines and hauled the disabled vessel to the ground by means of their powerful attractors. The two observers saw with amazement that after brief attention from an ant-like ground-crew, the original four men climbed back into their warship and she again shot into the fray, apparently as good as ever. "What do you know about that!" exclaimed DuQuesne. "That gives me an idea, Loring. They must get to them that way fairly often, to judge by the teamwork they use when it does happen. How about waiting until they disable another one like that, and then grabbing it while its in the air, deserted and unable to fight back? One of those ships is worth a thousand of this one, even if we had everything known to the Osnomians." "That's a real idea--those boats certainly are brutes for punishment," agreed Loring, and as both men again settled down to watch the battle, he went on: "So this is war out this way? You're right. Seaton, with half this stuff, could whip the combined armies and navies of the world. I don't blame Brookings much, though, at that--nobody could believe half of this unless they could actually see it, as we are doing." "I can't understand it," DuQuesne frowned as he considered the situation. "The attackers are Kondalians, all right--those ships are developments of the _Skylark_--but I don't get that fort at all. Wonder if it can be the strangers already? Don't think so--they aren't due for a couple of years yet, and I don't think the Kondalians could stand against them a minute. It must be what is left of Mardonale, although I never heard of anything like that. Probably it is some new invention they dug up at the last minute. That's it, I guess," and his brow cleared. "It couldn't be anything else." * * * * * They waited long for the incident to be repeated, and finally their patience was rewarded. When the next vessel was disabled and hurled upward by the concentration of enemy forces, DuQuesne darted down, seized it with his most powerful attractor, and whisked it away into space at such a velocity that to the eyes of the Kordalians it simply disappeared. He took the disabled warship far out into space and allowed it to cool off for a long time before deciding that it was safe to board it. Through the transparent walls they could see no sign of life, and DuQuesne donned a vacuum suit and stepped into the airlock. As Loring held the steel vessel close to the stranger, DuQuesne leaped lightly through the open door into the interior. Shutting the door, he opened an auxiliary air-tank, adjusting the gauge to one atmosphere as he did so. The pressure normal, he divested himself of the suit and made a thorough examination of the vessel. He then signaled Loring to follow him, and soon both ships were over Kondal, so high as to be invisible from the ground. Plunging the vessel like a bullet towards the grove in which he had left the Kondalian airship, he slowed abruptly just in time to make a safe landing. As he stepped out upon Osnomian soil, Loring landed the Earthly ship hardly less skillfully. "This saves us a lot of trouble, Loring. This is undoubtedly one of the finest space-ships of the Universe, and just about ready for anything." "How did they get to it?" "One of the screen generators apparently weakened a trifle, probably from weeks of continuous use. That let some of the rays come through; everything got hot, and the crew had to jump or roast. Nothing is hurt, though, as the ship was thrown up and out of range before the arenak melted at all. The copper repellers are gone, of course, and most of the bars that were in use are melted down, but there was enough of the main bar left to drive the ship and we can replace the melted stuff easily enough. Nothing else was hurt, as there's absolutely nothing in the structure of these vessels that can be burned. Even the insulation in the coils and generators has a melting-point higher than that of porcelain. And not all the copper was melted, either. Some of these storerooms are lined with two feet of insulation and are piled full of bars and explosive ammunition." "What was the smoke we saw, then?" "That was their food-supply. It's cooked to an ash, and their water was all boiled away through the safety-valves. Those rays certainly can put out a lot of heat in a second or two!" "Can the two of us put on those copper repeller-bands? This ship must be seventy-five feet in diameter." "Yes, it's a lot bigger than the _Skylark_ was. It's one of their latest models, or it wouldn't have been on the front line. As to banding on the repellers--that's easy. That airship is half full of metal-working machinery that can do everything but talk. I know how to use most of it, from seeing it in use, and we can figure out the rest." In that unfrequented spot there was little danger of detection from the air. And none whatsoever of detection from the ground--of ground-travel upon Osnome there is none. Nevertheless, the two men camouflaged the vessels so that they were visible only to keen and direct scrutiny, and drove their task through to completion on the shortest possible time. The copper repellers were banded on, and much additional machinery was installed in the already well-equipped shop. This done, they transferred to their warship food, water, bedding, instruments, and everything else they needed or wanted from their own ship and from the disabled Kondalian airship. They made a last tour of inspection to be sure they had overlooked nothing useful, then embarked. "Think anybody will find those ships? They could get a good line on what we've done." "Probably, eventually, Loring, so we'd better destroy them. We'd better take a short hop first, though, to test everything out. Since you're not familiar with the controls of a ship of this type, you need practise. Shoot us up around that moon over there and bring us back to this spot." "She's a sweet-handling boat--easy like a bicycle," declared Loring as he brought the vessel lightly to a landing upon their return. "We can burn the old one up now. We'll never need her again, any more than a snake needs his last year's skin." "She's good, all right. Those two hulks must be put out of existence, but we shouldn't do it here. The rays would set the woods afire, and the metal would condense all around. We don't want to leave any tracks, so we'd better pull them out into space to destroy them. We could turn them loose, and as you've never worked a ray, it'll be good practice for you. Also, I want you to see for yourself just what our best armour-plate amounts to compared with arenak." When they towed the two vessels far out into space, Loring put into practise the instruction he had received from DuQuesne concerning the complex armament of their vessel. He swung the beam-projector upon the Kondalian airship, pressed the connectors of the softener ray, the heat ray, and the induction ray, and threw the master switch. Almost instantly the entire hull became blinding white, but it was several seconds before the extremely refractory material began to volatilize. Though the metal was less than an inch think, it retained its shape and strength stubbornly, and only slowly did it disappear in flaming, flaring gusts of incandescent gas. "There, you've seen what an inch of arenak is like," said DuQuesne when the destruction was complete. "Now shine it on that sixty-inch chrome-vanadium armor hull of our old bus and see what happens." Loring did so. As the beam touched it, the steel disappeared in one flare of radiance--as he swung the projector in one flashing arc from the stem to the stern there was nothing left. Loring, swinging the beam, whistled in amazement. "Wow! What a difference! And this ship of ours has a skin of arenak six feet thick!" "Yes. Now you understand why I didn't want to argue with anybody out here as long as we were in our steel ship." "I understand, all right; but I can't understand the power of these rays. Suppose I had had all twenty of them on instead of only three?" "In that case, I think that we could have whipped even the short, thick strangers." "You and me both. But say, every ship's got to have a name. This new one of ours is such a sweet, harmless, inoffensive little thing, we'd better name her the _Violet_, hadn't we?" * * * * * DuQuesne started the _Violet_ off in the direction of the solar system occupied by the warlike strangers, but he did not hurry. He and Loring practiced incessantly for days at the controls, darting here and there, putting on terrific acceleration until the indicators showed a velocity of hundreds of thousand of miles per second, then reversing the acceleration until the velocity was zero. They studied the controls and alarm system until each knew perfectly every instrument, every tiny light, and the tone of each bell. They practiced with the rays, singly and in combination, with the visiplates, and with the many levers and dials, until each was so familiar with the complex installation that his handling of every control had become automatic. Not until then did DuQuesne give the word to start out in earnest toward their goal, at an unthinkable distance. They had not been under way long when an alarm bell sounded its warning and a brilliant green light began flashing upon the board. "Hm ... m," DuQuesne frowned as he reversed the bar. "Outside intra-atomic energy detector. Somebody's using power out here. Direction, about dead ahead--straight down. Let's see if we can see anything." He swung number six, the telescopic visiplate, into connection. After what seemed to them a long time they saw a sudden sharp flash, apparently an immense distance ahead, and simultaneously three more alarm bells rang and three colored lights flashed briefly. "Somebody got quite a jolt then. Three rays in action at once for three or four seconds," reported DuQuesne, as he applied still more negative acceleration. "I'd like to know what this is all about!" he exclaimed after a time, as they saw a subdued glow, which lasted a minute or two. As the warning light was flashing more and more slowly and with diminishing intensity, the _Violet_ was once more put upon her course. As she proceeded, however, the warnings of the liberation of intra-atomic energy grew stronger and stronger, and both men scanned their path intensely for a sight of the source of the disturbance, while their velocity was cut to only a few hundred miles an hour. Suddenly the indicator swerved and pointed behind them, showing that they had passed the object, whatever it was. DuQuesne instantly applied power and snapped on a small searchlight. "If it's so small that we couldn't see it when we passed it, it's nothing to be afraid of. We'll be able to find it with a light." After some search, they saw an object floating in space-apparently a vacuum suit! "Shall one of us get in the airlock, or shall we bring it in with an attractor?" asked Loring. "An attractor, by all means. Two or three of them, in fact, to spread-eagle whatever it is. Never take any chances. It's probably an Osnomian, but you never can tell. It may be one of those other people. We know they were around here a few weeks ago, and they're the only ones I know of that have intra-atomic power besides us and the Osnomians." "That's no Osnomian," he continued, as the stranger was drawn into the airlock. "He's big enough around for four Osnomians, and very short. We'll take no chances at all with that fellow." The captive was brought into the control room pinioned head, hand, and foot with attractors and repellers, before DuQuesne approached him. He then read the temperature and pressure of the stranger's air-supply, and allowed the surplus air to escape slowly before removing the stranger's suit and revealing one of the Fenachrone--eyes closed, unconscious or dead. DuQuesne leaped for the educator and handed Loring a headset. "Put this on quick. He may be only unconscious, and we might not be able to get a thing from him if he were awake." Loring donned the headset, still staring at the monstrous form with amazement, not unmixed with awe, while DuQuesne, paying no attention to anything except the knowledge he was seeking, manipulated the controls of the instrument. His first quest was for the weapons and armament of the vessel. In this he was disappointed, as he learned that the stranger was one of the navigating engineers, and as such, had no detailed knowledge of the matters of prime importance to the inquisitor. He did have a complete knowledge of the marvelous Fenachrone propulsion system, however, and this DuQuesne carefully transferred to his own brain. He then rapidly explored other regions of that fearsome organ of thought. As the gigantic and inhuman brain was spread before them, DuQuesne and Loring read not only the language, customs, and culture of the Fenachrone, but all their plans for the future, as well as the events of the past. Plainly in his mind they perceived how he had been cast adrift in the emptiness of the void. They saw the Fenachrone cruiser lying in wait for the two globular vessels. Looking through an extraordinarily powerful telescope with the eyes of their prisoner, they saw them approach, all unsuspecting. DuQuesne recognized all five persons in the _Skylark_ and Dunark and Sitar in the Kondal; such was that unearthly optical instrument and so clear was the impression upon the mind before him. They saw the attack and the battle. They saw the _Skylark_ throw off her zone of force and attack; saw this one survivor standing directly in line with a huge projector-spring, and saw the spring severed by the zone. The free end, under its thousands of pounds of tension, had struck the being upon the side of the head, and the force of the blow, only partially blocked by the heavy helmet, had hurled him out through the yawning gap in the wall and hundreds of miles out into space. Suddenly the clear view of the brain of the Fenachrone became blurred and meaningless and the flow of knowledge ceased--the prisoner had regained consciousness and was trying with all his gigantic strength to break from those intangible bonds that held him. So powerful were the forces upon him, however, that only a few twitching muscles gave evidence that he was struggling at all. Glancing about him he recognized the attractors and repellers bearing upon him, ceased his efforts to escape, and hurled the full power of his baleful gaze into the black eyes so close to his own. But DuQuesne's mind, always under perfect control and now amply reenforced by a considerable proportion of the stranger's own knowledge and power, did not waver under the force of even that hypnotic glare. "It is useless, as you observe," he said coldly, in the stranger's own tongue, and sneered. "You are perfectly helpless. Unlike you of the Fenachrone, however, men of my race do not always kill strangers at sight, merely because they are strangers. I will spare your life, if you can give me anything of enough value to me to make extra time and trouble worth while." "You read my mind while I could not resist your childish efforts. I will have no traffic whatever with you who have destroyed my vessel. If you have mentality enough to understand any portion of my mind--which I doubt--you already know the fate in store for you. Do with me what you will." This from the stranger. * * * * * DuQuesne pondered long before he replied; considering whether it was to his advantage to inform this stranger of the facts. Finally he decided. "Sir, neither I nor this vessel had anything to do with the destruction of your warship. Our detectors discovered you floating in empty space; we stopped and rescued you from death. We have seen nothing else, save what we saw pictured in your own brain. I know that, in common with all of your race, you possess neither conscience nor honor, as we understand the terms. An automatic liar by instinct and training whenever you think lies will best serve your purpose, you may yet have intelligence enough to recognize simple truth when you hear it. You already have observed that we are of the same race as those who destroyed your vessel, and have assumed that we are with them. In that you are wrong. It is true that I am acquainted with those others, but they are my enemies. I am here to kill them, not to aid them. You have already helped me in one way--I know as much as does my enemy concerning the impenetrable shield of force. If I will return you unharmed to your own planet, will you assist me in stealing one of your ships of space, so that I may destroy that Earth-vessel?" The Fenachrone, paying no attention to DuQuesne's barbed comments concerning his honor and veracity, did not hesitate an instant in his reply. "I will not. We supermen of the Fenachrone will allow no vessel of ours, with its secrets unknown to any others of the Universe, to fall into the hands of any of the lesser breeds of men." "Well, you didn't try to lie that time, anyway," said DuQuesne, "but think a minute. Seaton, my enemy, already has one of your vessels--don't think he is too much of a fool to put it back together and to learn its every secret. Then, too, remember that I have your mind, and can get along without you; even though I am willing to admit that you could be of enough help to me so that I would save your life in exchange for that help. Also remember that, superman though you may be, your mentality cannot cope with the forces I have bearing upon you. Neither will your being a superman enable your body to retain life after I have pushed you through yonder door, dressed as you are in a silken tunic." "I have the normal love of life," was the reply, "but some things cannot be done, even with life at stake. Stealing a vessel of the Fenachrone is one of those things. I can, however, do this much--if you will return me to my own planet, you two shall be received as guests aboard one of our vessels and shall be allowed to witness the vengeance of the Fenachrone upon your enemy. Then you shall be returned to your vessel and allowed to depart unharmed." "Now you are lying by rote--I know just what you'd do," said DuQuesne. "Get that idea out of your head right now. The attractors now holding you will not be released until after you have told all. Then, and then only, will we try to discover a way of returning you to your own world safely, and yet in a manner which will in no way jeopardize my own safety. Incidentally, I warn you that the first sign of an attempt to play false with me in any way will mean your instant death." The prisoner remained silent, analyzing every feature of the situation, and DuQuesne continued, coldly: "Here's something else for you to think about. If you are unwilling to help us, what is to prevent me from killing you, and then hunting up Seaton and making peace with him for the duration of this forthcoming war? With the fragments of your vessel, which he has; with my knowledge of your mind, reenforced by your own dead brain; and with the vast resources of all the planets of the green system; there is no doubt that the plans of the Fenachrone will be seriously interfered with. Myriads of your race will certainly lose their lives, and it is quite possible that your entire race would be destroyed. Understand that I care nothing for the green system. You are welcome to it if you do as I ask. If you do not, I shall warn them and help them simply to protect my world, which is now my own personal property." "In return for our armament and equipment, you promise not to warn the green system against us? The death of your enemy takes first place in your mind?" The stranger spoke thoughtfully. "In that I understand your viewpoint thoroughly. But, after I have remodeled your power-plant into ours and have piloted you to our planet, what assurance have I that you will liberate me, as you have said?" "None whatever--I have made and am asking no promises, since I cannot expect you to trust me, any more than I can trust you. Enough of this argument! I am master here, and I am dictating terms. We can get along without you. Therefore you must decide quickly whether you would rather die suddenly and surely, here in space and right now, or help us as I demand and live until you get back home--enjoying meanwhile your life and whatever chance you think you may have of being liberated within the atmosphere of your own planet." "Just a minute, Chief!" Loring said, in English, his back to the prisoner. "Wouldn't we gain more by killing him and going back to Seaton and the green system, as you suggested?" "No." DuQuesne also turned away, to shield his features from the mind-reading gaze of the Fenachrone. "That was pure bluff. I don't want to get within a million miles of Seaton until after we have the armament of this fellow's ships. I couldn't make peace with Seaton now, even if I wanted to--and I haven't the slightest intention of trying. I intend killing him on sight. Here's what we're going to do. First, we'll get what we came after. Then we'll find the _Skylark_ and blow her clear out of space, and take over the pieces of that Fenachrone ship. After that we'll head for the green system, and with their own stuff and what we'll give them, they'll be able to give those fiends a hot reception. By the time they finally destroy the Osnomians--if they do--we'll have the world ready for them." He turned to the Fenachrone. "What is your decision?" "I submit, in the hope that you will keep your promise, since there is no alternative but death," and the awful creature, still loosely held by the attractors and carefully watched by DuQuesne and Loring, fairly tore into the task of rebuilding the Osnomian power-plant into the space-annihilating drive of the Fenachrone--for he well knew one fact that DuQuesne's hurried inspection had failed to glean from the labyrinthine intricacies of that fearsome brain: that once within the detector screens of that distant solar system these Earth-beings would be utterly helpless before the forces which would inevitably be turned upon them. Also, he realized that time was precious, and resolved to drive the _Violet_ so unmercifully that she would overtake that fleeing torpedo, now many hours upon its way--the torpedo bearing news, for the first time in Fenachrone history, of the overwhelming defeat and capture of one of its mighty engines of interstellar war. In a very short time, considering the complexity of the undertaking, the conversion of the power-plant was done and the repellers, already supposed the ultimate in protection, were reenforced by a ten-thousand-pound mass of activated copper, effective for untold millions of miles. Their monstrous pilot then set the bar and advanced both levers of the dual power control out to the extreme limit of their travel. There was no sense of motion or of acceleration, since the new system of propulsion acted upon every molecule of matter within the radius of activity of the bar, which had been set to include the entire hull. The passengers felt only the utter lack of all weight and the other peculiar sensations with which they were already familiar, as each had had previous experience of free motion in space. But in spite of the lack of apparent motion, the _Violet_ was now leaping through the unfathomable depths of interstellar space with the unthinkable speed of five times the velocity of light! CHAPTER VIII The Porpoise-Men of Dasor "How long do you figure it's going to take us to get there, Mart?" Seaton asked from a corner, where he was bending over his apparatus-table. "About three days at this acceleration. I set it at what I thought the safe maximum for the girls. Should we increase it?" "Probably not--three days isn't bad. Anyway, to save even one day we'd have to more than double the acceleration, and none of us could do anything, so we'd better let it ride. How're you making it, Peg?" "I'm getting used to weighing a ton now. My knees buckled only once this morning from my forgetting to watch them when I tried to walk. Don't let me interfere, though! if I am slowing us down, I'll go to bed and stay there!" "It'd hardly pay," said Seaton. "We can use the time to good advantage. Look here, Mart--I've been looking over this stuff I got out of their ship and here's something I know you'll eat up. They refer to it as a chart, but it's three-dimensional and almost incredible. I can't say that I understand it, but I get an awful kick out of looking at it. I've been studying it a couple of hours, and haven't started yet. I haven't found our solar system, the green one, or their own. It's too heavy to move around now, because of the acceleration we're using--come on over here and give it a look." The "chart" was a strip of some parchment-like material, or film, apparently miles in length, wound upon reels at each end of the machine. One section of the film was always under the viewing mechanism--an optical system projecting an undistorted image into a visiplate plate somewhat similar to their own--and at the touch of a lever, a small atomic motor turned the reels and moved the film through the projector. It was not an ordinary star-chart: it was three-dimensional, ultra-stereoscopic. The eye did not perceive a flat surface, but beheld an actual, extremely narrow wedge of space as seen from the center of the galaxy. Each of the closer stars was seen in its true position in space and in its true perspective, and each was clearly identified by number. In the background were faint stars and nebulous masses of light, too distant to be resolved into separate stars--a true representation of the actual sky. As both men stared, fascinated, into the visiplate, Seaton touched the lever and they apparently traveled directly along the center line of that ever-widening wedge. As they proceeded, the nearer stars grew brighter and larger, soon becoming suns, with their planets and then the satellites of the planets plainly visible, and finally passing out of the picture behind the observers. The fainter stars became bright, grew into suns and solar systems, and were passed in turn. The chart unrolled, and the nebulous masses of light were approached, became composed of faint stars, which developed as had the others, and were passed. Finally, when the picture filled the entire visiplate, they arrived at the outermost edge of the galaxy. No more stars were visible: they saw empty space stretching for inconceivably vast distances before them. But beyond that indescribable and incomprehensible vacuum they saw faint lenticular bodies of light, which were also named, and which each man knew to be other galaxies, charted and named by the almost unlimited power of the Fenachrone astronomers, but not as yet explored. As the magic scroll unrolled still farther, they found themselves back in the center of the galaxy, starting outward in the wedge adjacent to the one which they had just traversed. Seaton cut off the motor and wiped his forehead. "Wouldn't that break you off at the ankles, Mart? Did you ever conceive the possibility of such a thing? "It would, and I did not. There are literally miles and miles of film in each of those reels, and I see that there is a magazine full of reels in the cabinet. There must be an index or a master-chart." "Yeah, there's a book in this slot here," said Seaton, "but we don't know any of their names or numbers--wait a minute! How did he report our Earth on that torpedo? Planet number three of sun six four something Pilarone, wasn't it? I'll get the record. "Six four seven three Pilarone, it was." "Pilarone ... let's see...." Seaton studied the index volume. "Reel twenty, scene fifty-one, I'd translate it." They found the reel, and "scene fifty-one" did indeed show that section of space in which our solar system is. Seaton stopped the chart when star six four seven three was at its closest range, and there was our sun; with its nine planets and their many satellites accurately shown and correctly described. "They know their stuff, all right--you've got to hand it to 'em. I've been straightening out that brain record--cutting out the hazy stretches and getting his knowledge straightened out so we can use it, and there's a lot of this kind of stuff in the record you can get. Suppose that you can figure out exactly where he comes from with this dope and with his brain record?" "Certainly. I may be able to get more complete information upon the green system than the Osnomians have, which will be very useful indeed. You are right--I am intensely interested in this material, and if you do not care particularly about studying it any more at this time, I believe that I should begin to study it now." "Hop to it. I'm going to study that record some more. No human brain can take it all, I'm afraid, especially all at once, but I'm going to kinda peck around the edges and get me some dope that I want pretty badly. We got a lot of stuff from that wampus." About sixty hours out, Dorothy, who had been observing the planet through number six visiplate, called Seaton away from the Fenachrone brain-record, upon which he was still concentrating. "Come here a minute, Dickie! Haven't you got that knowledge all packed away in your skull yet?" "I'll say I haven't. That bird's brain would make a dozen of mine, and it was loaded until the scuppers were awash. I'm just nibbling around the edges yet." "I've always heard that the capacity of even the human brain was almost infinite. Isn't that true?" asked Margaret. "Maybe it is, if the knowledge were built up gradually over generations. I think maybe I can get most of this stuff into my peanut brain so I can use it, but it's going to be an awful job." "Is their brain really as far ahead of ours as I gathered from what I saw of it?" asked Crane. "It sure is," replied Seaton, "as far as knowledge and intelligence are concerned, but they have nothing else in common with us. They don't belong to the genus 'homo' at all, really. Instead of having a common ancestor with the anthropoids, as they say we had, they evolved from a genus which combined the worst traits of the cat tribe and the carnivorous lizards--the most savage and bloodthirsty branches of the animal kingdom--and instead of getting better as they went along, they got worse, in that respect at least. But they sure do know something. When you get a month or so to spare, you want to put on this harness and grab his knowledge, being very careful to steer clear of his mental traits and so on. Then, when we get back to the Earth, we'll simply tear it apart and rebuild it. You'll know what I mean when you get this stuff transplanted into your own skull. But to cut out the lecture, what's on your mind, Dottie Dimple?" "This planet Martin picked out is all wet, literally. The visibility is fine--very few clouds--but this whole half of it is solid ocean. If there are any islands, even, they're mighty small." * * * * * All four looked into the receiver. With the great magnification employed, the planet almost filled the visiplate. There were a few fleecy wisps of cloud, but the entire surface upon which they gazed was one sheet of the now familiar deep and glorious blue peculiar to the waters of that cuprous solar system, with no markings whatever. "What d'you make of it, Mart? That's water all right--copper-sulphate solution, just like the Osnomian and Urvanian oceans--and nothing else visible. How big would an island have to be for us to see it from here?" "So much depends upon the contour and nature of the island, that it is hard to say. If it were low and heavily covered with their green-blue vegetation, we might not be able to see even a rather large one, whereas if it were hilly and bare, we could probably see one only a few miles in diameter." "Well, one good thing, anyway, we're approaching it from the central sun, and almost in line with their own sun, so it's daylight all over it. As it turns and as we get closer, we'll see what we can see. Better take turns watching it, hadn't we?" asked Seaton. It was decided, and while the _Skylark_ was still some distance away, several small islands became visible, and the period of rotation of the planet was determined to be in the neighborhood of fifty hours. Margaret, then at the controls, picked out the largest island visible and directed the bar toward it. As they dropped down close to their objective, they found that the air was of the same composition as that of Osnome, but had a pressure of seventy-eight centimeters of mercury, and that the surface gravity of the planet was ninety-five hundredths that of the Earth. "Fine business!" exulted Seaton. "Just about like home, but I don't see much of any place to land without getting wet, do you? Those reflectors are probably solar generators, and they cover the whole island except for that lagoon right under us." The island, perhaps ten miles long and half that in width, was entirely covered with great parabolic reflectors, arranged so closely together that little could be seen between them. Each reflector apparently focussed upon an object in the center, a helix which seemed to writhe luridly in that flaming focus, glowing with a nacreous, opalescent green light. "Well, nothing much to see there--let's go down," remarked Seaton as he shot the _Skylark_ over to the edge of the island and down to the surface of the water. But here again nothing was to be seen of the land itself. The wall was one vertical plate of seamless metal, supporting huge metal guides, between which floated metal pontoons. From these gigantic floats metal girders and trusses went through slots in the wall into the darkness of the interior. Close scrutiny revealed that the large floats were rising steadily, although very slowly; while smaller floats bobbed up and down upon each passing wave. "Solar generators, tide-motors, and wave-motors, all at once!" ejaculated Seaton. "_Some_ power-plant! Folks, I'm going to take a look at that if I have to drill in with a ray!" [Illustration: Some power plant! Folks, I'm going to take a look at that....] They circumnavigated the island without revealing any door or other opening--the entire thirty miles was one stupendous battery of the generators. Back at the starting point, the _Skylark_ hopped over the structure and down to the surface of the small central lagoon previously noticed. Close to the water, it was seen that there was plenty of room for the vessel to move about beneath the roof of reflectors, and that the island was one solid stand of tide-motors. At one end of the lagoon was an open metal structure, the only building visible, and Seaton brought the space-cruiser up to it and through the huge opening--for door there was none. The interior of the room was lighted by long, tubular lights running around in front of the walls, which were veritable switchboards. Row after row and tier upon tier stood the instruments, plainly electrical meters of enormous capacity and equally plainly in full operation, but no wiring or bus-bar could be seen. Before each row of instruments there was a narrow walk, with steps leading down into the water of the lagoon. Every part of the great room was plainly visible, and not a living being was even watching that vast instrument-board. "What do you make of it, Dick?" asked Crane, slowly. "No wiring--tight beam transmission. The Fenachrone do it with two matched-frequency separable units. Millions and millions of kilowatts there, if I'm any judge. Absolutely automatic too, or else----" Seaton's voice died away. "Or else what?" asked Dorothy. "Just a hunch. I wouldn't wonder if----" "Hold it, Dicky! Remember I had to put you to bed after that last hunch you had!" "Here it is, anyway. Mart, what would be the logical line of evolution when the planet has become so old that all the land has been eroded to a level below that of the ocean? You picked us out an old one, all right--so old that there's no land left. Would a highly civilized people revert to fish? That seems like a backward move to me, but what other answer is possible?" "Probably not to true fishes--although they might easily develop some fish-like traits. I do not believe, however, that they would go back to gills or to cold blood." "What _are_ you two saying?" interrupted Margaret. "Do you mean to say that you think _fish_ live here instead of people, and that _fish_ did all this?" as she waved her hand at the complicated machinery about them. "Not fish exactly, no." Crane paused in thought. "Merely a people who have adjusted themselves to their environment through conscious or natural selection. We had a talk about this very thing in our first trip, shortly after I met you. Remember? I commented on the fact that there must be life throughout the Universe, much of it that we could not understand; and you replied that there would be no reason to suppose them awful because incomprehensible. That may be the case here." "Well, I'm going to find out," declared Seaton, as he appeared with a box full of coils, tubes, and other apparatus. "How?" asked Dorothy, curiously. "Fix me up a detector and follow up one of those beams. Find its frequency and direction, first, you know, then pick it up outside and follow it to where it's going. It'll go through anything, of course, but I can trap off enough of it to follow it, even if it's tight enough to choke itself," said Seaton. "That's one thing I got from that brain record." * * * * * He worked deftly and rapidly, and soon was rewarded by a flaring crimson color in his detector when it was located in one certain position in front of one of the meters. Noting the bearing on the great circles, he then moved the _Skylark_ along that exact line, over the reflectors, and out beyond the island, where he allowed the vessel to settle directly downwards. "Now folks, if I've done this just right, we'll get a red flash directly." As he spoke the detector again burst into crimson light, and he set the bar into the line and applied a little power, keeping the light at its reddest while the other three looked on in fascinated interest. "This beam is on something that's moving, Mart--can't take my eyes off it for a second or I'll lose it entirely. See where we're going, will you?" "We are about to strike the water," replied Crane quietly. "The water!" exclaimed Margaret. "Fair enough--why not?" "Oh, that's right--I forgot that the _Skylark_ is as good a submarine as she is an airship." Crane pointed number six visiplate directly into the line of flight and started into the dark water. "Mow deep are we, Mart?" asked Seaton after a time. "Only about a hundred feet, and we do not seem to be getting any deeper." "That's good. Afraid this beam might be going to a station on the other side of the planet--through the ground. If so, we'd have had to go back and trace another. We can follow it any distance under water, but not through rock. Need a light?" "Not unless we go deeper." For two hours Seaton held the detector upon that tight beam of energy, traveling at a hundred miles an hour, the highest speed he could use and still hold the beam. "I'd like to be up above watching us. I bet we're making the water boil behind us," remarked Dorothy. "Yeah, we're kicking up quite a wake, I guess. It sure takes power to drive the old can through this wetness." "Slow down!" commanded Crane. "I see a submarine ahead. I thought it might be a whale at first, but it is a boat and it is what we are aiming for. You are constantly swinging with it, keeping it exactly in the line." "O.K." Seaton reduced the power and swung the visiplate over in front of him, whereupon the detector lamp went out. "It's a relief to follow something I can see, instead of trying to guess which way that beam's going to wiggle next. Lead on, Macduff--I'm right on your tail!" The _Skylark_ fell in behind the submersible craft, close enough to keep it plainly visible in the telescopic visiplate. Finally the stranger stopped and rose to the surface between two rows of submerged pontoons which, row upon row, extended in every direction as far as the telescope could reach. "Well, Dot, we're where we're going, wherever that is." "What do you suppose it is? It looks like a floating isleport, like what it told about in that wild-story magazine you read so much." "Maybe--but if so they can't be fish," answered Seaton. "Let's go--I want to look it over," and water flew in all directions as the _Skylark_ burst out of the ocean and leaped into the air far above what was in truth a floating city. Rectangular in shape, it appeared to be about six miles long and four wide. It was roofed with solar generators like those covering the island just visited, but the machines were not spaced quite so closely together, and there were numerous open lagoons. The water around the entire city was covered with wave-motors. From their great height the visitors could see an occasional submarine moving slowly under the city, and frequently small surface craft dashed across the lagoons. As they watched, a seaplane with short, thick wings curved like those of a gull, rose from one of the lagoons and shot away over the water. "Quite a place," remarked Seaton as he swung a visiplate upon one of the lagoons. "Submarines, speedboats, and fast seaplanes. Fish or not, they're not so slow. I'm going to grab off one of those folks and see how much they know. Wonder if they're peaceable or warlike?" "They look peaceable, but you know the proverb," Crane cautioned his impetuous friend. "Yes, and I'm going to be timid like a mice," Seaton returned as the _Skylark_ dropped rapidly toward a lagoon near the edge of the island. "You ought to put that in a gag book, Dick," Dorothy chuckled. "You forget all about being timid until an hour afterwards." "Watch me, Red-top! If they even point a finger at us, I'm going to run a million miles a minute." No hostile demonstration was made as they dropped lower and lower, however, and Seaton, with one hand upon the switch actuating the zone of force, slowly lowered the vessel down past the reflectors and to the surface of the water. Through the visiplate he saw the crowd of people coming toward them--some swimming in the lagoon, some walking along narrow runways. They seemed to be of all sizes, and unarmed. "I believe they're perfectly peaceable, and just curious, Mart. I've already got the repellers on close range--believe I'll cut them off altogether." "How about the ray-screens?" "All three full out. They don't interfere with anything solid, though, and won't hurt anything. They'll stop any ray attack and this arenak hull will stop anything else we are apt to get there. Watch this board, will you, and I'll see if I can't negotiate with them." Seaton opened the door. As he did so, a number of the smaller beings dived headlong into the water, and a submarine rose quietly to the surface less than fifty feet away with a peculiar tubular weapon and a huge ray-generator trained upon the _Skylark_. Seaton stood motionless, his right hand raised in the universal sign of peace, his left holding at his hip an automatic pistol charged with X-plosive shells--while Crane, at the controls, had the Fenachrone super-generator in line, and his hand lay upon the switch, whose closing would volatilize the submarine and cut an incandescent path of destruction through the city lengthwise. * * * * * After a moment of inaction, a hatch opened, a man stepped out upon the deck of the submarine, and the two tried to converse, but with no success. Seaton then brought out the mechanical educator, held it up for the other's inspection, and waved an invitation to come aboard. Instantly the other dived, and came to the surface immediately below Seaton, who assisted him into the _Skylark_. Tall and heavy as Seaton was, the stranger was half a head taller and almost twice as heavy. His thick skin was of the characteristic Osnomian green and his eyes were the usual black, but he had no hair whatever. His shoulders, though broad and enormously strong, were very sloping, and his powerful arms were little more than half as long as would have been expected had they belonged to a human being of his size. The hands and feet were very large and very broad, and the fingers and toes were heavily webbed. His high domed forehead appeared even higher because of the total lack of hair, otherwise his features were regular and well-proportioned. He carried himself easily and gracefully, and yet with the dignity of one accustomed to command as he stepped into the control room and saluted gravely the three other Earth-beings. He glanced quickly around the room, and showed unmistakable pleasure as he saw the power-plant of the cruiser of space. Languages were soon exchanged and the stranger spoke, in a bass voice vastly deeper than Seaton's own. "In the name of our city and planet--I may say in the name of our solar system, for you are very evidently from one other than our green system--I greet you. I would offer you refreshment, as is our custom, but I fear that your chemistry is but ill adapted to our customary fare. If there be aught in which we can be of assistance to you, our resources are at your disposal--but before you leave us, I shall wish to ask from you a great gift." "Sir, we thank you. We are in search of knowledge concerning forces which we cannot as yet control. From the power systems you employ, and from what I have learned of the composition of your suns and planets, I assume you have none of the metal of power, and it is a quantity of that element that is your greatest need?" "Yes. Power is our only lack. We generate all we can with the materials and knowledge at our disposal, but we never have enough. Our development is hindered, our birth-rate must be held down to a minimum, many new cities which we need cannot be built and many new projects cannot be started, all for lack of power. For one gram of that metal I see plated upon that copper cylinder, of whose very existence no scientist upon Dasor has had even an inkling, we would do almost anything. In fact, if all else failed, I would be tempted to attack you, did I not know that our utmost power could not penetrate even your outer screen, and that you could volatilize the entire planet if you so desired." "Great Cat!" In his surprise Seaton lapsed from the formal language he had been employing. "Have you figured us all out already, from a standing start?" "We know electricity, chemistry, physics, and mathematics fairly well. You see, our race is many millions of years older than is yours." "You're the man I've been looking for, I guess," said Seaton. "We have enough of this metal with us so that we can spare you some as well as not. But before you get it, I'll introduce you. Folks, this is Sacner Carfon, Chief of the Council of the planet Dasor. They saw us all the time, and when we headed for this, the Sixth City, he came over from the capital, or First City, in the flagship of his police fleet, to welcome us or to fight us, as we pleased. Carfon, this is Martin Crane--or say, better than introductions, put on the headsets, everybody, and get acquainted right." Acquaintance made and the apparatus put away, Seaton went to one of the store-rooms and brought out a lump of "X," weighing about a hundred pounds. "There's enough to build power-plants from now on. It would save time if you were to dismiss your submarine. With you to pilot us, we can take you back to the First City a lot faster than your vessel can travel." Carfon took a miniature transmitter from a pouch under his arm and spoke briefly, then gave Seaton the course. In a few minutes, the First City was reached, and the _Skylark_ descended rapidly to the surface of a lagoon at one end of the city. Short as had been the time consumed by their journey from the Sixth City, they found a curious and excited crowd awaiting them. The central portion of the lagoon was almost covered by the small surface craft, while the sides, separated from the sidewalks by the curbs, were full of swimmers. The peculiar Dasorian equivalents of whistles, bells, and gongs were making a deafening uproar, and the crowd was yelling and cheering in much the same fashion as do earthly crowds upon similar occasions. Seaton stopped the _Skylark_ and took his wife by the shoulder, swinging her around in front of the visiplate. "Look at that, Dot. Talk about rapid transit! They could give the New York subway a flying start and beat them hands down!" * * * * * Dorothy looked into the visiplate and gasped. Six metal pipes, one above the other, ran above and parallel to each sidewalk-lane of water. The pipes were full of ocean water, water racing along at fully fifty miles an hour and discharging, each stream a small waterfall, into the lagoon. Each pipe was lighted in the interior, and each was full of people, heads almost touching feet, unconcernedly being borne along, completely immersed in that mad current. As the passenger saw daylight and felt the stream begin to drop, he righted himself, apparently selecting an objective point, and rode the current down into the ocean. A few quick strokes, and he was either at the surface or upon one of the flights of stairs leading up to the platform. Many of the travelers did not even move as they left the orifice. If they happened to be on their backs, they entered the ocean backward and did not bother about righting themselves or about selecting a destination until they were many feet below the surface. "Good heavens, Dick! They'll kill themselves or drown!" "Not these birds. Notice their skins? They've got a hide like a walrus, and a terrific layer of subcutaneous fat. Even their heads are protected that way--you could hardly hit one of them enough with a baseball bat to hurt him. And as for drowning--they can out-swim a fish, and can stay under water almost an hour without coming up for air. Even one of those youngsters can swim the full length of the city without taking a breath." "How do you get that velocity of flow, Carfon?" asked Crane. "By means of pumps. These channels run all over the city, and the amount of water running in each tube and the number of tubes in use are regulated automatically by the amount of traffic. When any section of tube is empty of people, no water flows through it. This was necessary in order to save power. At each intersection there are four stand pipes and automatic swim-counters that regulate the volume of water and the number of tubes in use. This is ordinarily a quiet pool, as it is in a residence section, and this channel--our channels correspond to your streets, you know--has only six tubes each way. If you will look on the other side of the channel, you will see the intake end of the tubes going down-town." Seaton swung the visiplate around and they saw six rapidly-moving stairways, each crowded with people, leading from the ocean level up to the top of a tall metal tower. As the passengers reached the top of the flight they were catapulted head-first into the chamber leading to the tube below. "Well, that is some system for handling people!" exclaimed Seaton. "What's the capacity of the system?" "When running full pressure, six tubes will handle five thousand people a minute. It is only very rarely, on such occasions as this, that they are ever loaded to capacity. Some of the channels in the middle of the city have as many as twenty tubes, so that it is always possible to go from one end of the city to the other in less than ten minutes." "Don't they ever jam?" asked Dorothy curiously. "I've been lost more than once in the New York subway, and been in some perfectly frightful jams, too--and they weren't moving ten thousand people a minute either." "No jams ever have occurred. The tubes are perfectly smooth and well-lighted, and all turns and intersections are rounded. The controlling machines allow only so many persons to enter any tube--if more should try to enter than can be carried comfortably, the surplus passengers are slid off down a chute to the swim-ways, or sidewalks, and may either wait a while or swim to the next intersection." "That looks like quite a jam down there now." Seaton pointed to the receiving pool, which was now one solid mass except for the space kept clear by the six mighty streams of humanity-laden water. "If the newcomers can't find room to come to the surface they'll swim over to some other pool." Carfon shrugged indifferently. "My residence is the fifth cubicle on the right side of this channel. Our custom demands that you accept the hospitality of my home, if only for a moment and only for a beaker of distilled water. Any ordinary visitor could be received in my office, but you must enter my home." Seaton steered the _Skylark_ carefully, surrounded as she was by a tightly packed crowd of swimmers, to the indicated dwelling, and anchored her so that one of the doors was close to a flight of steps leading from the corner of the building down into the water. Carfon stepped out, opened the door of his house, and preceded his guests within. The room was large and square, and built of a synthetic, non-corroding metal, as was the entire city. The walls were tastefully decorated with striking geometrical designs in many-colored metal, and upon the floor was a softly woven rug. Three doors leading into other rooms could be seen, and strange pieces of furniture stood here and there. In the center of the floor-space was a circular opening some four feet in diameter, and there, only a few inches below the level of the floor, was the surface of the ocean. Carfon introduced his guests to his wife--a feminine replica of himself, although she was not of quite such heroic proportions. "I don't suppose that Seven is far away, is he?" Carfon asked of the woman. "Probably he is outside, near the flying ball. If he has not been touching it ever since it came down, it is only because someone stronger than he pushed him aside. You know how boys are," turning to Dorothy with a smile as she spoke, "boy nature is probably universal." "Pardon my curiosity, but why 'Seven'?" asked Dorothy, as she returned the smile. "He is the two thousand three hundred and forty-seventh Sacner Carfon in direct male line of descent," she explained. "But perhaps Six has not explained these things to you. Our population must not be allowed to increase, therefore each couple can have only two children. It is customary for the boy to be born first, and is given the name of his father. The girl is younger, and is given her mother's name." "That will now be changed," said Carfon feelingly. "These visitors have given us the secret of power, and we shall be able to build new cities and populate Dasor as she should he populated." "Really?----" She checked herself, but a flame leaped to her eyes, and her voice was none too steady as she addressed the visitors. "For that we Dasorians thank you more than words can express. Perhaps you strangers do not know what it means to want a dozen children with every fiber of your being and to be allowed to have only two--we do, all too well--I will call Seven." She pressed a button, and up out of the opening in the middle of the floor there shot a half-grown boy, swimming so rapidly that he scarcely touched the coaming as he came to his feet. He glanced at the four visitors, then ran up to Seaton and Crane. "Please, sirs, may I ride, just a little short ride, in your vessel before you go away?" This was said in their language. "Seven!" boomed Carfon sternly, and the exuberant youth subsided. "Pardon me, sirs, but I was so excited----" "All right, son, no harm done at all. You bet you'll have a ride in the _Skylark_ if your parents will let you." He turned to Carfon. "I'm not so far beyond that stage myself that I'm not in sympathy with him. Neither are you, unless I'm badly mistaken." "I am very glad that you feel as you do. He would be delighted to accompany us down to the office, and it will be something to remember all the rest of his life." "You have a little girl, too?" Dorothy asked the woman. "Yes--would you like to see her? She is asleep now," and without waiting for an answer, the proud Dasorian mother led the way into a bedroom--a bedroom without beds, for Dasorians sleep floating in thermostatically controlled tanks, buoyed up in water of the temperature they like best, in a fashion that no Earthly springs and mattresses can approach. In a small tank in a corner reposed a baby, apparently about a year old, over whom Dorothy and Margaret made the usual feminine ceremony of delight and approbation. * * * * * Back in the living room, after an animated conversation in which much information was exchanged concerning the two planets and their races of peoples, Carfon drew six metal goblets of distilled water and passed them around. Standing in a circle, the six touched goblets and drank. They then embarked, and while Crane steered the _Skylark_ slowly along the channel toward the offices of the Council, and while Dorothy and Margaret showed the eager Seven all over the vessel, Seaton explained to Carfon the danger that threatened the Universe, what he had done, and what he was attempting to do. "Doctor Seaton, I wish to apologize to you," the Dasorian said when Seaton had done. "Since you are evidently still land animals, I had supposed you of inferior intelligence. It is true that your younger civilization is deficient in certain respects, but you have shown a depth of vision, a sheer power of imagination and grasp, that no member of our older civilization could approach. I believe that you are right in your conclusions. We have no such rays nor forces upon this planet, and never have had; but the sixth planet of our own sun has. Less than fifty of your years ago, when I was but a small boy, such a projection visited my father. It offered to 'rescue' us from our watery planet, and to show us how to build rocket-ships to move us to Three, which is half land, inhabited by lower animals." "And he didn't accept?" "Certainly not. Then as now our sole lack was power, and the strangers did not show us how to increase our supply. Perhaps they had more power than we, perhaps, because of the difficulty of communication, our want was not made clear to them. But, of course, we did not want to move to Three, and we had already had rocket-ships for hundreds of generations. We have never been able to reach Six with them, but we visited Three long ago; and every one who went there came back as soon as he could. We detest land. It is hard, barren, unfriendly. We have everything, here upon Dasor. Food is plentiful, synthetic or natural, as we prefer. Our watery planet supplies our every need and wish, with one exception; and now that we are assured of power, even that one exception vanishes, and Dasor becomes a very Paradise. We can now lead our natural lives, work and play to our fullest capacity--we would not trade our world for all the rest of the Universe." "I never thought of it in that way, but you're right, at that," Seaton conceded. "You are ideally suited to your environment. But how do I get to planet Six? Its distance is terrific, even as cosmic distances go. You won't have any night until Dasor swings outside the orbit of your sun, and until then Six will be invisible, even to our most powerful telescope." "I do not know, myself," answered Carfon, "but I will send out a call for the chief astronomer. He will meet us, and give you a chart and the exact course." At the office, the earthly visitors were welcomed formally by the Council--the nine men in control of the entire planet. The ceremony over and their course carefully plotted, Carfon stood at the door of the _Skylark_ a moment before it closed. "We thank you with all force, Earthmen, for what you have done for us this day. Please remember, and believe that this is no idle word--if we can assist you in any way in this conflict which is to come, the resources of this planet are at your disposal. We join Osnome and the other planets of this system in declaring you, Doctor Seaton, our Overlord." CHAPTER IX The Welcome to Norlamin The _Skylark_ was now days upon her way toward the sixth planet, Seaton gave the visiplates and the instrument board his customary careful scrutiny and rejoined the others. "Still talking about the human fish, Dottie Dimple?" he asked, as he stoked his villainous pipe. "Peculiar tribe of porpoises, but I'm strong for 'em. They're the most like our own kind of folks, as far as ideas go, of anybody we've seen yet--in fact, they're more like us than a lot of human beings we all know." "I like them immensely----" "You couldn't like 'em any other way, their size----" "Terrible, Dick, terrible! Easy as I am, I can't stand for any such joke as that was going to be. But really, I think they're just perfectly fine, in spite of their being so funny-looking. Mrs. Carfon is just simply sweet, even if she does look like a walrus, and that cute little seal of a baby was just too perfectly cunning for words. That boy Seven is keen as mustard, too." "He should be," put in Crane, dryly. "He probably has as much intelligence now as any one of us." "Do you think so?" asked Margaret. "He acted like any other boy, but he did seem to understand things remarkably well." "He would--they're 'way ahead of us in most things." Seaton glanced at the two women quizzically and turned to Crane. "And as for their being bald, this was one time, Mart, when those two phenomenal heads of hair our two little girl-friends are so proud of didn't make any kind of hit at all. They probably regard that black thatch of Peg's and Dot's auburn mop as relics of a barbarous and prehistoric age--about as we would regard the hirsute hide of a Neanderthal man." "That may be so, too," Dorothy replied, unconcernedly, "but we aren't planning on living there, so why worry about it? I like them, anyway, and I believe that they like us." "They acted that way. But say, Mart, if that planet is so old that all their land area has been eroded away, how come they've got so much water left? And they've got quite an atmosphere, too." "The air-pressure," said Crane, "while greater than that now obtaining upon Earth, was probably of the order of magnitude of three meters of mercury, originally. As to the erosion, they might have had more water to begin with than our Earth had." "Yeah, that'd account for it, all right," said Dorothy. "There's one thing I want to ask you two scientists," Margaret said. "Everywhere we've gone, except on that one world that Dick thinks is a wandering planet, we've found the intelligent life quite remarkably like human beings. How do you account for that?" "There, Mart, is one for the massive old bean to concentrate on," challenged Seaton: then, as Crane considered the question in silence for some time he went on: "I'll answer it myself, then, by asking another. Why not? Why shouldn't they be? Remember, man is the highest form of earthly life--at least, in our own opinion and as far as we know. In our wanderings, we have picked out planets quite similar to our own in point of atmosphere and temperature and, within narrow limits, of mass as well. It stands to reason that under such similarity of conditions, there would be a certain similarity of results. How about it, Mart? Reasonable?" "It seems plausible, in a way," conceded Crane, "but it probably is not universally true." "Sure not--couldn't be, hardly. No doubt we could find a lot of worlds inhabited by all kinds of intelligent things--freaks that we can't even begin to imagine now--but they probably would be occupying planets entirely different from ours in some essential feature of atmosphere, temperature, or mass." "But the Fenachrone world is entirely different," Dorothy argued, "and they're more or less human--they're bipeds, anyway, with recognizable features. I've been studying that record with you, you know, and their world has so much more mass than ours that their gravitation is simply frightful!" "That much difference is comparatively slight, not a real fundamental difference. I meant a hundred or so times either way--greater or less. And even their gravitation has modified their structure a lot--suppose it had been fifty times as great as it is? What would they have been like? Also, their atmosphere is very similar to ours in composition, and their temperature is bearable. It is my opinion that atmosphere and temperature have more to do with evolution than anything else, and that the mass of the planet runs a poor third." "You may be right," admitted Crane, "but it seems to me that you are arguing from insufficient premises." "Sure I am--almost no premises at all. I would be just about as well justified in deducing the structure of a range of mountains from a superficial study of three pebbles picked up in a creek near them. However, we can get an idea some time, when we have a lot of time." "How?" "Remember that planet we struck on the first trip, that had an atmosphere composed mostly of gaseous chlorin? In our ignorance we assumed that life there was impossible, and didn't stop. Well, it may be just as well that we didn't. If we go back there, protected as we are with our rays and stuff, it wouldn't surprise me a bit to find life there, and lots of it--and I've got a hunch that it'll be a form of life that'd make your grandfather's whiskers curl right up into a ball!" "You do get the weirdest ideas, Dick!" protested Dorothy. "I hope you aren't planning on exploring it, just to prove your point?" "Never thought of it before. Can't do it now, anyway--got our hands full already. However, after we get this Fenachrone mess cleaned up we'll have to do just that little thing, won't we, Mart? As that intellectual guy said while he was insisting upon dematerializing us, 'Science demands it.'" "By all means. We should be in a position to make contributions to science in fields as yet untouched. Most assuredly we shall investigate those points." "Then they'll go alone, won't they, Peggy?" "Absolutely! We've seen some pretty middling horrible things already, and if these two men of ours call the frightful things we have seen normal, and are planning on deliberately hunting up things that even they will consider monstrous, you and I most certainly shall stay at home!" "Yeah? You say it easy. Bounce back, Peg, you've struck a rubber fence! Rufus, you red-headed little fraud, you know you wouldn't let me go to the corner store after a can of tobacco without insisting on tagging along!" "You're a...." began Dorothy hotly, but broke off in amazement and gasped, "For Heaven's sake, what was that?" "What was what? It missed me." "It went right through you! It was a kind of funny little cloud, like smoke or something. It came right through the ceiling like a flash--went right through you and on down through the floor. There it comes back again!" * * * * * Before their staring eyes a vague, nebulous something moved rapidly upward through the floor and passed upward through the ceiling. Dorothy leaped to Seaton's side and he put his arm around her reassuringly. "'Sall right folks--I know what that thing is." "Well, shoot it, quick!" Dorothy implored. "It's one of those projections from where we're heading for, trying to get our range; and it's the most welcome sight these weary old eyes have rested upon for full many a long and dreary moon. They've probably located us from our power-plant rays. We're an awful long ways off yet, though, and going like a streak of greased lightning, so they're having trouble in holding us. They're friendly, we already know that--they probably want to talk to us. It'd make it easier for them if we'd shut off our power and drift at constant velocity, but we'd use up valuable time and throw our calculations all out of whack. We'll let them try to match our acceleration If they can do that, they're good." The apparition reappeared, oscillating back and forth irregularly--passing through the arenak walls, through the furniture and the instrument boards, and even through the mighty power-plant itself, as though nothing was there. Eventually, however, it remained stationary a foot or so above the floor of the control-room. Then it began to increase in density until apparently a man stood before them. His skin, like that of all the inhabitants of the planets of the green suns, was green. He was tall and well-proportioned when judged by Earthly standards, except for his head, which was overly large, and which was particularly massive above the eyes and backward from the ears. He was evidently of great age, for what little of his face was visible was seamed and wrinkled, and his long, thick mane of hair and his square-cut, yard-long beard were a dazzling white, only faintly tinged with green. While not in any sense transparent, nor even translucent, it was evident that the apparition before them was not composed of flesh and blood. He looked at each of the four Earth-beings intensely for a moment, then pointed toward the table upon which stood the mechanical educator, and Seaton placed it in front of the peculiar visitor. As Seaton donned a headset and handed one to the stranger, the latter stared at him, impressing upon his consciousness that he was to be given a knowledge of English. Seaton pressed the lever, receiving as he did so a sensation of an unbroken calm, a serenity profound and untroubled, and the projection spoke. "Dr. Seaton, Mr. Crane, and ladies--welcome to Norlamin, the planet toward which you are now flying. We have been awaiting you for more than five thousand years of your time. It has been a mathematical certainty--it has been graven upon the very Sphere itself--that in time someone would come to us from without this system, bringing a portion, however small, of Rovolon--of the metal of power, of which there is not even the most minute trace in our entire solar system. For more than five thousand years our instruments have been set to detect the vibrations which would herald the advent of the user of that metal. Now you have come, and I perceive that you have vast stores of it. Being yourselves seekers after truth, you will share it with us gladly as we will instruct you in many things you wish to know. Allow me to operate the educator--I would gaze into your minds and reveal my own to your sight. But first I must tell you that your machine is too rudimentary to work at all well, and with your permission I shall make certain minor alterations." Seaton nodded permission, and from the eyes and from the hands of the figure there leaped visible streams of force, which seized the transformers, coils and tubes, and reformed and reconnected them, under Seaton's bulging eyes, into an entirely different mechanism. "Oh, I see!" he gasped. "Say, what are you anyway?" "Pardon me; in my eagerness I became forgetful. I am Orlon, the First of Astronomy of Norlamin, in my observatory upon the surface of the planet. This that you see is simply my projection, composed of forces for which you have no name in your language. You can cut it off, if you wish, with your ray-screens, which even I can see are of a surprisingly high order of efficiency. There, this educator will now work very well. Please put on the remodeled headsets, all four of you." They did so, and the rays of force moved levers, switches, and dials as positively as human hands could have moved them, and with infinitely greater speed and precision. As the dials moved, each brain received clearly and plainly a knowledge of the customs, language, and manners of the inhabitants of Norlamin. Each mind became suffused with a vast, immeasurable peace, calm power, and a depth and breadth of mental vision theretofore undreamed of. Looking deep into his mind they sensed a quiet, placid certainty, beheld power and knowledge to them illimitable, perceived depths of wisdom to them unfathomable. Then from his mind into theirs there flowed smoothly a mighty stream of comprehension of cosmic phenomena. They hazily saw infinitely small units grouped into planetary formations to form practically dimensionless particles. These particles in turn grouped to form slightly larger ones, and after a long succession of such grouping they knew that the comparatively gigantic aggregates which then held their attention were in reality electrons and protons, the smallest units recognized by Earthly science. They clearly understood the combination of these electrons and protons into atoms. They perceived plainly the way in which atoms build up molecules, and comprehended the molecular structure of matter. In mathematical thoughts, only dimly grasped even by Seaton and Crane, were laid before them the fundamental laws of physics, of electricity, of gravitation, and of chemistry. They saw globular aggregations of matter, the suns and their planets, comprising solar systems; saw solar systems, in accordance with those immutable laws, grouped into galaxies, galaxies in turn--here the flow was suddenly shut off as though a valve had been closed, and the astronomer spoke. "Pardon me. Your brains should be stored only with the material you desire most and can use to the best advantage, for your mental capacity is even more limited than my own. Please understand that I speak in no derogatory sense; it is only that your race has many thousands of generations to go before your minds should be stored with knowledge indiscriminately. We ourselves have not yet reached that stage, and we are perhaps millions of years older than you. And yet," he continued musingly, "I envy you. Knowledge is, of course, relative, and I can know _so_ little! Time and space have yielded not an iota of their mystery to our most penetrant minds. And whether we delve baffled into the unknown smallness of the small, or whether we peer, blind and helpless, into the unknown largeness of the large, it is the same--infinity is comprehensible only to the Infinite One: the all-shaping Force directing and controlling the Universe and the unknowable Sphere. The more we know, the vaster the virgin fields of investigation open to us, and the more infinitesimal becomes our knowledge. But I am perhaps keeping you from more important activities. As you approach Norlamin more nearly, I shall guide you to my observatory. I am glad indeed that it is in my lifetime that you have come to us, and I await anxiously the opportunity of greeting you in the flesh. The years remaining to me of this cycle of existence are few, and I had almost ceased hoping to witness your coming." * * * * * The projection vanished instantaneously, and the four stared at each other in an incredulous daze of astonishment. Seaton finally broke the stunned silence. "Well, I'll be kicked to death by little red spiders!" he ejaculated. "Mart, did you see what I saw, or did I get tight on something without knowing it? That sure burned me up--it breaks me right off at the ankles, just to think of it!" Crane walked to the educator in silence. He examined it, felt the changed coils and transformers, and gently shook the new insulating base of the great power-tube. Still in silence he turned his back, walked around the instrument board, read the meters, then went back and again inspected the educator. "It was real, and not a higher development of hypnotism, as at first I thought it must be," he reported seriously. "Hypnotism, if sufficiently advanced, might have affected us in that fashion, even to teaching us all a strange language, but by no possibility could it have had such an effect upon copper, steel, bakelite, and glass. It was certainly real, and while I cannot begin to understand it, I will say that your imagination has certainly vindicated itself. A race of beings, who can do such things as that, can do almost anything--you have been right, from the start." "Then you can beat those horrible Fenachrone, after all!" cried Dorothy, and threw herself into her husband's arms. "Do you remember, Dick, that I hailed you once as Columbus at San Salvador?" asked Margaret unsteadily from Crane's encircling arm. "What could a man be called who from the sheer depths of his imagination called forth the means of saving from destruction all the civilization of millions of entire worlds?" "Don't talk that way, please, folks," Seaton was plainly very uncomfortable. He blushed intensely, the burning red tide rising in waves up to his hair as he wriggled in embarrassment, like any schoolboy. "Mart's done most of it, anyway, you know; and even at that, we ain't out of the woods yet, by forty-seven rows of apple trees." "You will admit, will you not, that we can see our way out of the woods, at least, and that you yourself feel rather relieved?" asked Crane. "I think we'll be able to pull their corks now, all right, after we get some dope. It's a cinch they've either got the stuff we need or know how to get it--and if that zone is impenetrable, I'll bet they'll be able to dope out something just as good. Relieved? That doesn't half tell it, guy--I feel as if I had just pitched off the Old Man of the Sea who's been sitting on my neck! What say you girls get your fiddle and guitar and we'll sing us a little song? I feel kind of relieved--they had me worried some--it's the first time I've felt like singing since we cut that warship up." Dorothy brought out her "fiddle"--the magnificent Stradivarius, formerly Crane's, which he had given her--Margaret her guitar, and they sang one rollicking number after another. Though by no means a Metropolitan Opera quartette, their voices were all better than mediocre, and they had sung together so much that they harmonized readily. "Why don't you play us some real music, Dottie?" asked Margaret, after a time. "You haven't practiced for ages." "I haven't felt like playing lately, but I do now," and Dorothy stood up and swept the bow over the strings. Doctor of Music in violin, an accomplished musician, playing upon one of the finest instruments the world has ever known, she was lifted out of herself by relief from the dread of the Fenachrone invasion and that splendid violin expressed every subtle nuance of her thought. She played rhapsodies and paeans, and solos by the great masters. She played vivacious dances, then "Traumerei" and "Liebestraum." At last she swept into the immortal "Meditation," and as the last note died away Seaton held out his arms. "You're a blinding flash and a deafening report, Dottie Dimple, and I love you," he declared--and his eyes and his arms spoke volumes that his light utterance had left unsaid. * * * * * Norlamin close enough so that its image almost filled number six visiplate, the four wanderers studied it with interest. Partially obscured by clouds and with its polar regions two glaring caps of snow--they would be green in a few months, when the planet would swing inside the orbit of its sun around the vast central luminary of that complex solar system--it made a magnificent picture. They saw sparkling blue oceans and huge green continents of unfamiliar outlines. So terrific was the velocity of the space-cruiser, that the image grew larger as they watched it, and soon the field of vision could not contain the image of the whole disk. "Well, I expect Orlon'll be showing up pretty quick now," remarked Seaton; and it was not long until the projection appeared in the air of the control room. "Hail, Terrestrials!" he greeted them. "With your permission, I shall direct your flight." Permission granted, the figure floated across the room to the board and the rays of force centered the visiplate, changed the direction of the bar a trifle, decreased slightly their negative acceleration, and directed a stream of force upon the steering mechanism. "We shall alight upon the grounds of my observatory upon Norlamin in seven thousand four hundred twenty-eight seconds," he announced presently. "The observatory will be upon the dark side of Norlamin when we arrive, but I have a force operating upon the steering mechanism which will guide the vessel along the required curved path. I shall remain with you until we land, and we may converse upon any topic of most interest to you." "We've got a topic of interest, all right. That's what we came out here for. But it would take too long to tell you about it--I'll show you!" He brought out the magnetic brain record, threaded it into the machine and handed the astronomer a head-set. Orlon put it on, touched the lever, and for an hour there was unbroken silence as the monstrous brain of the menace was studied by the equally capable intellect of the Norlaminian scientist. There was no pause in the motion of the magnetic tape, no repetition--Orlon's brain absorbed the information as fast as it could be sent, and understood that frightful mind in every particular. As the end of the tape was reached and the awful record ended, a shadow passed over Orlon's face. "Truly a depraved evolution--it is sad to contemplate such a perversion of a really excellent brain. They have power, even as you have, and they have the will to destroy, which is a thing that I cannot understand. However, if it is graven upon the Sphere that we are to pass, it means only that upon the next plane we shall continue our searches--let us hope with better tools and with greater understanding than we now possess." "'Smatter?" snapped Seaton gravely. "Going to take it lying down, without putting up any fight at all?" "What can we do? Violence is contrary to our very natures. No man of Norlamin could offer any but passive resistance." "You can do a lot if you will. Put on that headset again and get my plan, offering any suggestions your far abler brain may suggest." As the human scientist poured his plan of battle into the brain of the astronomer, Orlon's face cleared. "It is graven upon the Sphere that the Fenachrone shall pass," he said finally. "What you ask of us we can do. I have only a general knowledge of rays, as they are not in the province of the Orlon family; but the student Rovol, of the family Rovol of Rays, has all present knowledge of such phenomena. Tomorrow I will bring you together, and I have little doubt that he will be able, with the help of your metal of power, to solve your problem." "I don't quite understand what you said about a whole family studying one subject, and yet having only one student in it," said Dorothy, in perplexity. "A little explanation is perhaps necessary," replied Orlon. "First, you must know that every man of Norlamin is a student, and most of us are students of science. With us, 'labor' means mental effort, that is, study. We perform no physical or manual labor save for exercise, as all our mechanical work is done by forces. This state of things having endured for many thousands of years, it long ago became evident that specialization was necessary in order to avoid duplication of effort and to insure complete coverage of the field. Soon afterward, it was discovered that very little progress was being made in any branch, because so much was known that it took practically a lifetime to review that which had already been accomplished, even in a narrow and highly specialized field. Many points were studied for years before it was discovered that the identical work had been done before, and either forgotten or overlooked. To remedy this condition the mechanical educator had to be developed. Once it was perfected a new system was begun. One man was assigned to each small subdivision of scientific endeavor, to study it intensively. When he became old, each man chose a successor--usually a son--and transferred his own knowledge to the younger student. He also made a complete record of his own brain, in much the same way as you have recorded the brain of the Fenachrone upon your metallic tape. These records are all stored in a great central library, as permanent references. "All these things being true, now a young person may need only finish an elementary education--just enough to learn to think, which takes only about twenty-five or thirty years--and then he is ready to begin actual work. When that time comes, he receives in one day all the knowledge of his specialty which has been accumulated by his predecessors during many thousands of years of intensive study." "Whew!" Seaton whistled, "no wonder you folks know something! With that start, I believe I might know something myself! As an astronomer, you may be interested in this star-chart and stuff--or do you know all about that already?" "No, the Fenachrone are far ahead of us in that subject, because of their observatories out in open space and because of their gigantic reflectors, which cannot be used through any atmosphere. We are further hampered in having darkness for only a few hours at a time and only in the winter, when our planet is outside the orbit of our sun around the great central sun of our entire system. However, with the Rovolon you have brought us, we shall have real observatories far out in space; and for that I personally will be indebted to you more than I can ever express. As for the chart, I hope to have the pleasure of examining it while you are conferring with Rovol of Rays." "How many families are working on rays--just one?" "One upon each kind of ray. That is, each of the ray families knows a great deal about all kinds of vibrations of the ether, but is specializing upon one narrow field. Take, for instance, the rays you are most interested in; those able to penetrate a zone of force. From my own very slight and general knowledge I know that it would of necessity be a ray of the fifth order. These rays are very new--they have been under investigation only a few hundred years--and the Rovol is the only student who would be at all well informed upon them. Shall I explain the orders of rays more fully than I did by means of the educator?" "Please. You assumed that we knew more than we do, so a little explanation would help." "All ordinary vibrations--that is, all molecular and material ones, such as light, heat, electricity, radio, and the like--were arbitrarily called waves of the first order; in order to distinguish them from waves of the second order, which are given off by particles of the second order, which you know as protons and electrons, in their combination to form atoms. Your scientist Millikan discovered these rays for you, and in your language they are known as Millikan, or Cosmic, rays. * * * * * "Some time later, when sub-electrons were identified the rays given off by their combination into electrons, or by the disruption of electrons, were called rays of the third order. These rays are most interesting and most useful; in fact, they do all our mechanical work. They as a class are called protelectricity, and bear the same relation to ordinary electricity that electricity does to torque--both are pure energy, and they are inter-convertible. Unlike electricity, however, it may be converted into many different forms by fields of force, in a way comparable to that in which white light is resolved into colors by a prism--or rather, more like the way alternating current is changed to direct current by a motor-generator set, with attendant changes in properties. There is a complete spectrum of more than five hundred factors, each as different from the others as red is different from green. "Continuing farther, particles of the fourth order give rays of the fourth order; those of the fifth, rays of the fifth order. Fourth-order rays have been investigated quite thoroughly, but only mathematically and theoretically, as they are of excessively short wave-length and are capable of being generated only by the breaking down of matter itself into the corresponding particles. However, it has been shown that they are quite similar to protelectricity in their general behavior. Thus, the power that propels your space-vessel, your attractors, your repellers, your object-compass, your zone of force--all these things are simply a few of the many hundreds of wave-bands of the fourth order, all of which you doubtless would have worked out for yourselves in time. Very little is known, even in theory, of the rays of the fifth order, although they have been shown to exist." "For a man having no knowledge, you seem to know a lot about rays. How about the fifth order--is that as far as they go?" "My knowledge is slight and very general; only such as I must have in order to understand my own subject. The fifth order certainly is not the end--it is probably scarcely a beginning. We think now that the orders extend to infinite smallness, just as the galaxies are grouped into larger aggregations, which are probably in their turn only tiny units in a scheme infinitely large. "Over six thousand years ago the last third order rays were worked out; and certain peculiarities in their behavior led the then Rovol to suspect the existence of the fourth order. Successive generations of the Rovol proved their existence, determined the conditions of their liberation, and found that this metal of power was the only catalyst able to decompose matter and thus liberate the rays. This metal, which was called Rovolon after the Rovol, was first described upon theoretical grounds and later was found, by spectroscopy, in certain stars, notably in one star only eight light-years away, but not even the most infinitesimal trace of it exists in our entire solar system. Since these discoveries, the many Rovol have been perfecting the theory of the fourth order, beginning that of the fifth, and waiting for your coming. The present Rovol, like myself and many others whose work is almost at a standstill, is waiting with all-consuming interest to greet you, as soon as the _Skylark_ can be landed upon our planet." "Neither your rocket-ships nor your projections could get you any Rovolon?" "No. Every hundred years or so someone develops a new type of rocket that he thinks may stand a slight chance of making the journey, but not one of these venturesome youths has as yet returned. Either that sun has no planets or else the rocket-ships have failed. Our projections are useless, as they can be driven only a very short distance upon our present carrier wave. With a carrier of the fifth order we could drive a projection to any point in the galaxy, since its velocity would be millions of times that of light and the power necessary reduced accordingly--but as I have said before, such waves cannot be generated without metal Rovolon." "I hate to break this up--I'd like to listen to you talk for a week--but we're going to land pretty quick, and it looks as though we were going to land pretty hard." "We will land soon, but not hard," replied Orlon confidently, and the landing was as he had foretold. The _Skylark_ was falling with an ever-decreasing velocity, but so fast was the descent that it seemed to the watchers as though they must crash through the roof of the huge brilliantly lighted building upon which they were dropping and bury themselves many feet in the ground beneath it. But they did not strike the observatory. So incredibly accurate were the calculations of the Norlaminian astronomer and so inhumanly precise were the controls he had set upon their bar, that, as they touched the ground after barely clearing the domed roof and he shut off their power, the passengers felt only a sudden decrease in acceleration, like that following the coming to rest of a rapidly moving elevator, after it has completed a downward journey. "I shall join you in person very shortly," Orlon said, and the projection vanished. "Well, we're here, folks, on another new world. Not quite as thrilling as the first one was, is it?" and Seaton stepped toward the door. "How about the air composition, density, gravity, temperature, and so on?" asked Crane. "Perhaps we should make a few tests." "Didn't you get that on the educator? Thought you did. Gravity a little less than seven-tenths. Air composition, same as Osnome and Dasor. Pressure, half-way between Earth and Osnome. Temperature, like Osnome most of the time, but fairly comfortable in the winter. Snow now at the poles, but this observatory is only ten degrees from the equator. They don't wear clothes enough to flag a hand-car with here, either, except when they have to. Let's go!" He opened the door and the four travelers stepped out upon a close-cropped lawn--a turf whose blue-green softness would shame an Oriental rug. The landscape was illuminated by a soft and mellow, yet intense green light which emanated from no visible source. As they paused and glanced about them, they saw that the _Skylark_ had alighted in the exact center of a circular enclosure a hundred yards in diameter, walled by row upon row of shrubbery, statuary, and fountains, all bathed in ever-changing billows of light. At only one point was the circle broken. There the walls did not come together, but continued on to border a lane leading up to the massive structure of cream-and-green marble, topped by its enormous, glassy dome--the observatory of Orlon. "Welcome to Norlamin, Terrestrials," the deep, calm voice of the astronomer greeted them, and Orlon in the flesh shook hands cordially in the American fashion with each of them in turn, and placed around each neck a crystal chain from which depended a small Norlaminian chronometer-radiophone. Behind him there stood four other old men. "These men are already acquainted with each of you, but you do not as yet know them. I present Fodan, Chief of the Five of Norlamin. Rovol, about whom you know. Astron, the First of Energy. Satrazon, the First of Chemistry." Orlon fell in beside Seaton and the party turned toward the observatory. As they walked along the Earth-people stared, held by the unearthly beauty of the grounds. The hedge of shrubbery, from ten to twenty feet high, and which shut out all sight of everything outside it, was one mass of vivid green and flaring crimson leaves; each leaf and twig groomed meticulously into its precise place in a fantastic geometrical scheme. Just inside this boundary there stood a ring of statues of heroic size. Some of them were single figures of men and women; some were busts; some were groups in natural or allegorical poses--all were done with consummate skill and feeling. Between the statues there were fountains, magnificent bronze and glass groups of the strange aquatic denizens of this strange planet, bathed in geometrically shaped sprays, screens, and columns of water. Winding around between the statues and the fountains there was a moving, scintillating wall, and upon the waters and upon the wall there played torrents of color, cataracts of harmoniously blended light. Reds, blues, yellows, greens--every color of their peculiar green spectrum and every conceivable combination of those colors writhed and flamed in ineffable splendor upon those deep and living screens of falling water and upon that shimmering wall. As they entered the lane, Seaton saw with amazement that what he had supposed a wall, now close at hand, was not a wall at all. It was composed of myriads of individual sparkling jewels, of every known color, for the most part self-luminous; and each gem, apparently entirely unsupported, was dashing in and out and along among its fellows, weaving and darting here and there, flying at headlong speed along an extremely tortuous, but evidently carefully calculated course. "What can that be, anyway, Dick?" whispered Dorothy, and Seaton turned to his guide. "Pardon my curiosity, Orlon, but would you mind explaining the why of that moving wall? We don't get it." "Not at all. This garden has been the private retreat of the family of Orlon for many thousands of years, and women of our house have been beautifying it since its inception. You may have observed that the statuary is very old. No such work has been done for ages. Modern art has developed along the lines of color and motion, hence the lighting effects and the tapestry wall. Each gem is held upon the end of a minute pencil of force, and all the pencils are controlled by a machine which has a key for every jewel in the wall." Crane, the methodical, stared at the innumerable flashing jewels and asked, "It must have taken a prodigious amount of time to complete such an undertaking?" "It is far from complete; in fact, it is scarcely begun. It was started only about four hundred years ago." "_Four hundred years!_" exclaimed Dorothy. "Do you live that long? How long will it take to finish it, and what will it be like when it is done?" "No, none of us live longer than about one hundred and sixty years--at about that age most of us decide to pass. When this tapestry wall is finished, it will not be simply form and color, as it is now. It will be a portrayal of the history of Norlamin from the first cooling of the planet. It will, in all probability, require thousands of years for its completion. You see, time is of little importance to us, and workmanship is everything. My companion will continue working upon it until we decide to pass; my son's companion may continue it. In any event, many generations of the women of the Orlon will work upon it until it is complete. When it is done, it will be a thing of beauty as long as Norlamin shall endure." "But suppose that your son's wife isn't that kind of an artist? Suppose she should want to do music or painting or something else?" asked Dorothy, curiously. "That is quite possible; for, fortunately, our art is not yet entirely intellectual, as is our music. There are many unfinished artistic projects in the house of Orlon, and if the companion of my son should not find one to her liking, she will be at liberty to continue anything else she may have begun, or to start an entirely new project of her own." "You have a family, then?" asked Margaret, "I'm afraid I didn't understand things very well when you gave them to us over the educator." "I sent things too fast for you, not knowing that your educator was new to you; a thing with which you were not thoroughly familiar. I will therefore explain some things in language, since you are not familiar with the mechanism of thought transference. The Five, a self-perpetuating body, do what governing is necessary for the entire planet. Their decrees are founded upon self-evident truth, and are therefore the law. Population is regulated according to the needs of the planet, and since much work is now in progress, an increase in population was recommended by the Five. My companion and I therefore had three children, instead of the customary two. By lot it fell to us to have two boys and one girl. One of the boys will assume my duties when I pass; the other will take over a part of some branch of science that has grown too complex for one man to handle as a specialist should. In fact, he has already chosen his specialty and been accepted for it--he is to be the nine hundred and sixty-seventh of Chemistry, the student of the asymmetric carbon atom, which will thus be his specialty from this time henceforth. "It was learned long ago that the most perfect children were born of parents in the full prime of mental life, that is, at one hundred years of age. Therefore, with us each generation covers one hundred years. The first twenty-five years of a child's life are spent at home with his parents, during which time he acquires his elementary education in the common schools. Then boys and girls alike move to the Country of Youth, where they spend another twenty-five years. There they develop their brains and initiative by conducting any researches they choose. Most of us, at that age, solve all the riddles of the Universe, only to discover later that our solutions have been fallacious. However, much really excellent work is done in the Country of Youth, primarily because of the new and unprejudiced viewpoints of the virgin minds there at work. In that country also each finds his life's companion, the one necessary to round out mere existence into a perfection of living that no person, man or woman, can ever know alone. I need not speak to you of the wonders of love or of the completion and fullness of life that it brings, for all four of you, children though you are, know love in full measure. "At fifty years of age the man, now mentally mature, is recalled to his family home, as his father's brain is now losing some of its vigor and keenness. The father then turns over his work to the son by means of the educator--and when the weight of the accumulated knowledge of a hundred thousand generations of research is impressed upon the son's brain, his play is over." "What does the father do then?" "Having made his brain record, about which I have told you, he and his companion--for she has in similar fashion turned over her work to her successor--retire to the Country of Age, where they rest and relax after their century of effort. They do whatever they care to do, for as long as they please to do it. Finally, after assuring themselves that all is well with the children, they decide that they are ready for the Change. Then, side by side as they have labored, they pass." Now at the door of the observatory, Dorothy paused and shrank back against Seaton, her eyes widening as she stared at Orlon. "No, daughter, why should we fear the Change?" he answered her unspoken question, calm serenity in every inflection of his quiet voice. "The life-principle is unknowable to the finite mind, as is the All-Controlling Force. But even though we know nothing of the sublime goal toward which it is tending, any person ripe for the Change can, and of course does, liberate the life-principle so that its progress may be unimpeded." * * * * * In a spacious room of the observatory, in which the Terrestrials and their Norlaminian hosts had been long engaged in study and discussion, Seaton finally rose and extended a hand toward his wife. "Well, that's that, then, Orlon, I guess. We've been thirty hours without sleep, and for us that's a long time. I'm getting so dopey I can't think a lick. We'd better go back to the _Skylark_ and turn in, and after we've slept nine hours or so I'll go over to Rovol's laboratory and Crane'll come back here to you." "You need not return to your vessel," said Orlon. "I know that its somewhat cramped quarters have become irksome. Apartments have been prepared here for you. We shall have a meal here together, and then we shall retire, to meet again tomorrow." As he spoke, a tray laden with appetizing dishes appeared in the air in front of each person. As Seaton resumed his seat the tray followed him, remaining always in the most convenient position. Crane glanced at Seaton questioningly, and Satrazon, the First of Chemistry, answered his thought before he could voice it. "The food before you, unlike that which is before us of Norlamin, is wholesome for you. It contains no copper, no arsenic, no heavy metals--in short, nothing in the least harmful to your chemistry. It is balanced as to carbohydrates, proteins, fats and sugars, and contains the due proportion of each of the various accessory nutritional factors. You will also find the flavors are agreeable to each of you." "Synthetic, eh? You've got us analyzed," Seaton stated, rather than asked, as with knife and fork he attacked the thick, rare, and beautifully broiled steak which, with its mushrooms and other delicate trimmings, lay upon his rigid although unsupported tray--noticing as he did so that the Norlaminians ate with tools entirely different from those they had supplied to their Earthly guests. "Entirely synthetic," Satrazon made answer, "except for the sodium chloride necessary. As you already know, sodium and chlorin are very rare throughout our system, therefore the force upon the food-supply took from your vessel the amount of salt required for the formula. We have been unable to synthesize atoms, for the same reason that the labors of so many others have been hindered--because of the lack of Rovolon. Now, however, my science shall progress as it should; and for that I join with my fellow scientists in giving you thanks for the service you have rendered us." "We thank you instead," replied Seaton, "for the service we have been able to do you is slight indeed compared to what you are giving us in return. But it seems that you speak quite impersonally of the force upon the food supply. Did you yourself direct the preparation of these meats and vegetables?" "Oh, no. I merely analyzed your tissues, surveyed the food-supplies you carried, discovered your individual preferences, and set up the necessary integrals in the mechanism. The forces did the rest, and will continue to do so as long as you remain upon this planet." "Fruit salad always my favorite dish," Dorothy said, after a couple of bites, "and this one is just too perfectly divine! It doesn't taste like any other fruit I ever ate, either--I think it must be the same ambrosia that the old pagan gods used to eat." "If all you did was to set up the integrals, how do you know what you are going to have for the next meal?" asked Crane. "We have no idea what the form, flavor, or consistency of any dish will be," was the surprising answer. "We know only that the flavor will be agreeable and that it will agree with the form and consistency of the substance, and that the composition will be well-balanced chemically. You see, all the details of flavor, form, texture, and so on are controlled by a device something like one of your kaleidoscopes. The integrals render impossible any unwholesome, unpleasant, or unbalanced combination of any nature, and everything else is left to the mechanism, which operates upon pure chance." "Some system, I'd rise to remark," and Seaton, with the others, resumed his vigorous attack upon the long-delayed supper. The meal over, the Earthly visitors were shown to their rooms, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. CHAPTER X Norlaminian Science Breakfast over, Seaton watched intently as his tray, laden with empty containers, floated away from him and disappeared into an opening in the wall. "How do you do it, Orlon?" he asked, curiously. "I can hardly believe it, even after seeing it done." "Each tray is carried upon the end of a beam or rod of force, and supported rigidly by it. Since the beam is tuned to the individual wave of the instrument you wear upon your chest, your tray is, of course, placed in front of you, at a predetermined distance, as soon as the sending force is actuated. When you have finished your meal, the beam is shortened. Thus the tray is drawn back to the food laboratory, where other forces cleanse and sterilize the various utensils and place them in readiness for the next meal. It would be an easy matter to have this same mechanism place your meals before you wherever you may go upon this planet, provided only that a clear path can be plotted from the laboratory to your person." "Thanks, but it wouldn't pay. No telling where we'd be. Besides, we'd better eat in the _Skylark_ most of the time, to keep our cook good-natured. Well, I see Rovol's got his boat here for me, so guess I'd better turn up a few r. p. m. Coming along, Dot, or have you got something else on your mind?" "I'm going to leave you for a while. I can't really understand even a radio, and just thinking about those funny, complicated rays and things you are going after makes me dizzy in the head. Mrs. Orlon is going to take us over to the Country of Youth--she says Margaret and I can play around with her daughter and her bunch and have a good time while you scientists are doing your stuff." "All right. 'Bye till tonight," and Seaton stepped out into the grounds, where the First of Rays was waiting. The flier was a torpedo-shaped craft of some transparent, glassy material, completely enclosed except for one circular opening or doorway. From the midsection, which was about five feet in diameter and provided with heavily-cushioned seats capable of carrying four passengers in comfort, the hull tapered down smoothly to a needle point at each end. As Seaton entered and settled himself into the cushions, Rovol touched a lever. Instantly a transparent door slid across the opening, locking itself into position flush with the surface of the hull, and the flier darted into the air and away. For a few minutes there was silence, as Seaton studied the terrain beneath them. Fields or cities there were none; the land was covered with dense forests and vast meadows, with here and there great buildings surrounded by gracious, park-like areas. Rovol finally broke the silence. "I understand your problem, I believe, since Orlon has transferred to me all the thoughts he had from you. With the aid of the Rovolon you have brought us, I am confident that we shall be able to work out a satisfactory solution of the various problems involved. It will take us some few minutes to traverse the distance to my laboratory, and if there are any matters upon which your mind is not quite clear, I shall try to clarify them." "That's letting me down easy," Seaton grinned, "but you don't need to be afraid of hurting my feelings--I know just exactly how ignorant and dumb I am compared to you. There's a lot of things I don't get at all. First, and nearest, this airboat. It has no power-plant at all. I assume that it, like so many other things hereabouts, is riding on the end of a rod of force?" "Exactly. The beam is generated and maintained in my laboratory. All that is here in the flier is a small sender, for remote control." "How do you obtain your power?" asked Seaton. "Solar generators and tide motors? I know that all your work is done by protelectricity, but Orlon did not inform us as to the sources." "We have not used such inefficient generators for many thousands of years. Long ago it was shown by research that these rays were constantly being generated in abundance in outer space, and that they could be collected upon spherical condensers and transmitted without loss to the surface of the planet by means of matched and synchronized crystals. Several millions of these condensers have been built and thrown out to become tiny satellites of Norlamin." "How did you get them far enough out?" "The first ones were forced out to the required distance upon beams of force produced by the conversion of electricity, which was in turn produced from turbines, solar motors, and tide motors. With a few of them out, however, it was easy to obtain sufficient power to send out more; and now, whenever one of us requires more power than he has at his disposal, he merely sends out such additional collectors as he needs." "Now about those fifth-order rays, which will penetrate a zone of force. I am told that they are not ether waves at all?" "They are not ether waves. The fourth order rays, of which the theory has been completely worked out, are the shortest vibrations that can be propagated through the ether; for the ether itself is not a continuous medium. We do not know its nature exactly, but it is an actual substance, and is composed of discrete particles of the fourth order. Now the zone of force, which is itself a fourth-order phenomenon, sets up a condition of stasis in the particles composing the ether. These particles are relatively so coarse, that rays and particles of the fifth order will pass through the fixed zone without retardation. Therefore, if there is anything between the particles of the ether--this matter is being debated hotly among us at the present time--it must be a sub-ether, if I may use that term. We have never been able to investigate any of these things experimentally, not even such a coarse aggregation as is the ether; but now, having Rovolon, it will not be many thousands of years until we shall have extended our knowledge many orders farther, in both directions." "Just how will Rovolon help you?" "It will enable us to generate a force of the ninth magnitude--that much power is necessary to set up what you have so aptly named a zone of force--and will give us a source of fourth, fifth, and probably higher orders of rays which, if they are generated in space at all, are beyond our present reach. The zone of force is necessary to shield certain items of equipment from ether vibrations; as any such vibration inside the controlling fields of force renders observation or control of the higher orders of rays impossible." "Hm ... m, I see--I'm learning something," Seaton replied cordially. "Just as the higher-powered a radio set is, the more perfect must be its shielding?" "Yes. Just as a trace of any gas will destroy the usefulness of your most sensitive vacuum tubes, and just as imperfect shielding will allow interfering waves to enter sensitive electrical apparatus--in that same fashion will even the slightest ether vibration interfere with the operation of the extremely sensitive fields and lenses of force which must be used in controlling forces of the higher orders." "You haven't tested the theory of the fourth order yet, have you?" "No, but that is unnecessary. The theory of the fourth order is not really theory at all--it is mathematical fact. Although we have never been able to generate them, we know exactly the forces you use in your ship of space, and we can tell you of some thousands of others more or less similar and also highly useful forces which you have not yet discovered, but are allowing to go to waste. We know exactly what they are, how to liberate and control them, and how to use them. In fact, in the work which we are to begin today, we shall use but little ordinary power: almost all our work will be done by fourth-order forces, liberated from copper by means of the Rovolon you have given me. But here we are at my laboratory. You already know that the best way to learn is by doing, and we shall begin at once." * * * * * The flier alighted upon a lawn quite similar to the one before the observatory of Orlon, and the scientist led his Earthly guest through the main entrance of the imposing structure of vari-colored marble and gleaming metal and into the vast, glass-lined room that was his laboratory. Great benches lined the walls, and there were hundreds of dials, meters, tubes, transformers and other instruments, whose uses Seaton could not even guess. Rovol first donned a suit of transparent, flexible material, of a deep golden color, instructing Seaton to do the same; explaining that much of the work would be with dangerous frequencies and with high pressures, and that the suits were not only absolute insulators against electricity, heat, and sound, but were also ray-filters proof against any harmful radiations. As each helmet was equipped with radiophones, conversation was not interfered with in the least. Rovol took up a tiny flash-pencil, and with it deftly cut off a bit of Rovolon, almost microscopic in size. This he placed upon a great block of burnished copper, and upon it played a force. As he manipulated two levers, two more beams of force flattened out the particle of metal, spread it out over the copper, and forced it into the surface of the block until the thin coating was at every point in molecular contact with the copper beneath it--a perfect job of plating, and one done in the twinkling of an eye. He then cut out a piece of the treated copper the size of a pea, and other forces rapidly built around it a structure of coils and metallic tubes. This apparatus he suspended in the air at the extremity of a small beam of force. The block of copper was next cut in two, and Rovol's fingers moved rapidly over the keys of a machine which resembled slightly an overgrown and exceedingly complicated book-keeping machine. Streams and pencils of force flashed and crackled, and Seaton saw raw materials transformed into a complete power-plant, in its center the two-hundred-pound lump of plated copper, where an instant before there had been only empty space upon the massive metal bench. Rovol's hands moved rapidly from keys to dials and back, and suddenly a zone of force, as large as a basketball appeared around the apparatus poised in the air. "But it'll fly off and we can't stop it with anything," Seaton protested, and it did indeed dart rapidly upward. The old man shook his head as he manipulated still more controls, and Seaton gasped as nine stupendous beams of force hurled themselves upon that brilliant spherical mirror of pure energy, seized it in mid-flight, and shaped it resistlessly, under his bulging eyes, into a complex geometrical figure of precisely the desired form. Lurid violet light filled the room, and Seaton turned towards the bar. That two-hundred-pound mass of copper was shrinking visibly, second by second, so vast were the forces being drawn from it, and the searing, blinding light would have been intolerable but for the protective color-filters of his helmet. Tremendous flashes of lightning ripped and tore from the relief-points of the bench to the ground-rods, which flared at blue-white temperature under the incessant impacts. Knowing that this corona-loss was but an infinitesimal fraction of the power being used, Seaton's very mind staggered as he strove to understand the magnitude of the forces at work upon that stubborn sphere of energy. The aged scientist used no tools whatever, as we understand the term. His laboratory was a power-house; at his command were the stupendous forces of a battery of planetoid accumulators, and added to these were the fourth-order, ninth-magnitude forces of the disintegrating copper bar. Electricity, protelectricity, and fourth-order rays, under millions upon millions of kilovolts of pressure, leaped to do the bidding of that wonderful brain, stored with the accumulated knowledge of countless thousands of years of scientific research. Watching the ancient physicist work, Seaton compared himself to a schoolboy mixing chemicals indiscriminately and ignorantly, with no knowledge whatever of their properties, occasionally obtaining a reaction by pure chance. Whereas he had worked with intra-atomic energy schoolboy fashion, the master craftsman before him knew every reagent, every reaction, and worked with known and thoroughly familiar agencies to bring about his exactly predetermined ends--just as calmly certain of the results as Seaton himself would have been in his own laboratory, mixing equivalent quantities of solutions of barium chloride and of sulphuric acid to obtain a precipitate of barium sulphate. [Illustration: _Hour after hour Rovol labored on, oblivious to the passage of time in his zeal of accomplishment, the while carefully instructing Seaton, who watched every step with intense interest...._] Hour after hour Rovol labored on, oblivious to the passage of time in his zeal of accomplishment, the while carefully instructing Seaton, who watched every step with intense interest and did everything possible for him to do. Bit by bit a towering structure arose in the middle of the laboratory. A metal foundation supported a massive compound bearing, which in turn carried a tubular network of latticed metal, mounted like an immense telescope. Near the upper, outer end of this openwork tube a group of nine forces held the field of force rigidly in place in its axis; at the lower extremity were mounted seats for two operators and the control panels necessary for the operation of the intricate system of forces and motors which would actuate and control that gigantic projector. Immense hour and declination circles could be read by optical systems from the operators' seats--circles fully forty feet in diameter, graduated with incredible delicacy and accuracy into decimal fractions of seconds of arc, and each driven by variable-speed motors through gear-trains and connections having no backlash whatever. While Rovol was working upon one of the last instruments to be installed upon the controlling panel a mellow note sounded throughout the building, and he immediately ceased his labors and opened the master-switches of his power plants. "You have done well, youngster," he congratulated his helper, as he began to take off his protective covering, "Without your aid I could not have accomplished nearly this much during one period of labor. The periods of exercise and of relaxation are at hand--let us return to the house of Orlon, where we all shall gather to relax and to refresh ourselves for the labors of tomorrow." "But it's almost done!" protested Seaton. "Let's finish it up and shoot a little juice through it, just to try it out." "There speaks the rashness and impatience of youth," rejoined the scientist, calmly removing the younger man's suit and leading him out to the waiting airboat. "I read in your mind that you are often guilty of laboring continuously until your brain loses its keen edge. Learn now, once and for all, that such conduct is worse than foolish--it is criminal. We have labored the full period. Laboring for more than that length of time without recuperation results in a loss of power which, if persisted in, wreaks permanent injury to the mind; and by it you gain nothing. We have more than ample time to do that which must be done--the fifth-order projector shall be completed before the warning torpedo shall have reached the planet of the Fenachrone--therefore over-exertion is unwarranted. As for testing, know now that only mechanisms built by bunglers require testing. Properly built machines work properly." "But I'd have liked to see it work just once, anyway," lamented Seaton as the small airship tore through the air on its way back to the observatory. "You must cultivate calmness, my son, and the art of relaxation. With those qualities your race can easily double its present span of useful life. Physical exercise to maintain the bodily tissues at their best, and mental relaxation following mental toil--these things are the secrets of a long and productive life. Why attempt to do more than can be accomplished efficiently? There is always tomorrow. I am more interested in that which we are now building than you can possibly be, since many generations of the Rovol have anticipated its construction; yet I realize that in the interest of our welfare and for the progress of civilization, today's labors must not be prolonged beyond today's period of work. Furthermore, you yourself realize that there is no optimum point at which any task may be interrupted. Short of final completion of any project, one point is the same as any other. Had we continued, we would have wished to continue still farther, and so on without end." "You're probably right, at that," the impetuous chemist conceded, as their craft came to earth before the observatory. * * * * * Crane and Orlon were already in the common room, as were the scientists Seaton already knew, as well as a group of women and children still strangers to the Terrestrials. In a few minutes Orlon's companion, a dignified, white-haired woman, entered; accompanied by Dorothy, Margaret, and a laughing, boisterous group of men and women from the Country of Youth. Introductions over, Seaton turned to Crane. "How's every little thing, Mart?" "Very well indeed. We are building an observatory in space--or rather, Orlon is building it and I am doing what little I can to help him. In a few days we shall be able to locate the system of the Fenachrone. How is your work progressing?" "Smoother than a kitten's ear. Got the fourth-order projector about done. We're going to project a fourth-order force out to grab us some dense material, a pretty close approach to pure neutronium. There's nothing dense enough around here, even in the core of the central sun, so we're going out to a white dwarf star--one a good deal like the companion star to Sirius in Canis Major--get some material of the proper density from its core, and convert our sender into a fifth-order machine. Then we can really get busy--go places and do things." "Neutronium? Pure mass?" queried Crane, "I have been under the impression that it does not exist. Of what use can such a substance be to you?" "Can't get pure neutronium, of course--couldn't use it if we could. What we need and are going to get is a material of about two and a half million specific gravity. Got to have it for lenses and controls for the fifth-order forces. Those rays go right through anything less dense without measurable refraction. But I see Rovol's giving me a nasty look. He's my boss on this job, and I imagine this kind of talk's barred during the period of relaxation, as being work. That so, chief?" "You know that it is barred, you incorrigible young cub!" answered Rovol, with a smile. "All right, boss; one more little infraction and I'll shut up like a clam. I'd like to know what the girls have been doing." "We've been having a wonderful time!" Dorothy declared. "We've been designing fabrics and ornaments and jewels and things. Wait 'til you see 'em!" "Fine! All right, Orlon, it's your party--what to do?" "This is the time of exercise. We have many forms, most of which are unfamiliar to you. You all swim, however, and as that is one of the best of exercises, I suggest that we all swim." "Lead us to it!" Seaton exclaimed, then his voice changed abruptly. "Wait a minute--I don't know about our swimming in copper sulphate solution." "We swim in fresh water as often as in salt, and the pool is now filled with distilled water." The Terrestrials quickly donned their bathing suits and all went through the observatory and down a winding path, bordered with the peculiarly beautiful scarlet and green shrubbery, to the "pool"--an artificial lake covering a hundred acres, its polished metal bottom and sides strikingly decorated with jewels and glittering tiles in tasteful yet contrasting inlaid designs. Any desired depth of water was available and plainly marked, from the fenced-off shallows where the smallest children splashed to the forty feet of liquid crystal which received the diver who cared to try his skill from one of the many spring-boards, flying rings, and catapults which rose high into the air a short distance away from the entrance. Orlon and the others of the older generation plunged into the water without ado and struck out for the other shore, using a fast double-overarm stroke. Swimming in a wide circle they came out upon the apparatus and went through a series of methodical dives and gymnastic performances. It was evident that they swam, as Orlon had intimated, for exercise. To them, exercise was a necessary form of labor--labor which they performed thoroughly and well--but nothing to call forth the whole-souled enthusiasm they displayed in their chosen fields of mental effort. The visitors from the Country of Youth, however, locked arms and sprang to surround the four Terrestrials, crying, "Let's do a group dive!" "I don't believe that I can swim well enough to enjoy what's coming," whispered Margaret to Crane, and they slipped into the pool and turned around to watch. Seaton and Dorothy, both strong swimmers, locked arms and laughed as they were encircled by the green phalanx and swept out to the end of a dock-like structure and upon a catapult. * * * * * "Hold tight, everybody!" someone yelled, and interlaced, straining arms and legs held the green and white bodies in one motionless group as a gigantic force hurled them fifty feet into the air and out over the deepest part of the pool. There was a mighty splash and a miniature tidal wave as that mass of humanity struck the water. Many feet they went down before the cordon was broken and the individual units came to the surface. Then pandemonium reigned. Vigorous informal games, having to do with floating and sinking balls and effigies: pushball, in which the players never seemed to know, or to care, upon which side they were playing; water-fights and ducking contests.... A green mermaid, having felt the incredible power of Seaton's arms as he tossed her lightly away from a goal he was temporarily defending, put both her small hands around his biceps wonderingly, amazed at a strength unknown and impossible upon her world; then playfully tried to push him under. Failing, she called for help. "He's needed a good ducking for ages!" Dorothy cried, and she and several other girls threw themselves upon him. Over and around him the lithe forms flashed, while the rest of the young people splashed water impartially over all the combatants and cheered them on. In the midst of the battle the signal sounded to end the period of exercise. "Saved by the bell," Seaton laughed as, thoroughly ducked and almost half drowned, he was allowed to swim ashore. When all had returned to the common room of the observatory and had seated themselves, Orlon took out his miniature ray-projector, no larger than a fountain pen, and flashed it briefly upon one of the hundreds of button-like lenses upon the wall. Instantly each chair converted itself into a form-fitting divan, inviting complete repose. "I believe that you of Earth would perhaps enjoy some of our music during this, the period of relaxation and repose--it is so different from your own," Orlon remarked, as he again manipulated his tiny force-tube. * * * * * Every light was extinguished and there was felt a profoundly deep vibration--a note so low as to be palpable rather than audible; and simultaneously the utter darkness was relieved by a tinge of red so dark as to be barely perceptible, while a peculiar somber fragrance pervaded the atmosphere. The music rapidly ran the gamut to the limit of audibility and, in the same tempo, the lights traversed the visible spectrum and disappeared. Then came a crashing chord and a vivid flare of blended light; ushering in an indescribable symphony of sound and color, accompanied by a slower succession of shifting, blending odors. The quality of tone was now that of a gigantic orchestra, now that of a full brass band, now that of a single unknown instrument--as though the composer had had at his command every overtone capable of being produced by any possible instrument, and with them had woven a veritable tapestry of melody upon an incredibly complex loom of sound. As went the harmony, so the play of light accompanied it. Neither music nor illumination came from any apparent source; they simply pervaded the entire room. When the music was fast--and certain passages were of a rapidity impossible for any human fingers to attain--the lights flashed in vivid, tiny pencils, intersecting each other in sharply drawn, brilliant figures, which changed with dizzying speed; when the tempo was slow, the beams were soft and broad, blending into each other to form sinuous, indefinite, writhing patterns, whose very vagueness was infinitely soothing. "What do you think of it, Mrs. Seaton?" Orlon asked. "Marvelous!" breathed Dorothy, awed. "I never imagined anything like it. I can't begin to tell you how much I like it. I never dreamed of such absolute perfection of execution, and the way the lighting accompanies the theme is just too perfectly wonderful for words! It was incredibly brilliant." "Brilliant--yes. Perfectly executed--yes. But I notice that you say nothing of depth of feeling or of emotional appeal." Dorothy blushed uncomfortably and started to say something, but Orlon silenced her and continued: "You need not apologize. I had a reason for speaking as I did, for in you I recognize a real musician, and our music is indeed entirely soulless. That is the result of our ancient civilization. We are so old that our music is purely intellectual, entirely mechanical, instead of emotional. It is perfect, but, like most of our other arts, it is almost completely without feeling." "But your statues are wonderful!" "As I told you, those statues were made myriads of years ago. At that time we also had real music, but, unlike statuary, music at that time could not be preserved for posterity. That is another thing you have given us. Attend!" At one end of the room, as upon a three-dimensional screen, the four Terrestrials saw themselves seated in the control-room of the _Skylark_. They saw and heard Margaret take up her guitar, and strike four sonorous chords in "A." Then, as if they had been there in person, they heard themselves sing "The Bull-Frog" and all the other songs they had sung, far off in space. They heard Margaret suggest that Dorothy play some "real music," and heard Seaton's comments upon the quartette. "In that, youngster, you were entirely wrong," said Orlon, stopping the reproduction for a moment. "The entire planet was listening to you very attentively--we were enjoying it as no music has been enjoyed for thousands of years." "The whole planet!" gasped Margaret. "Were you broadcasting it? How could you?" "Easy," grinned Seaton. "They can do most anything with these rays of theirs." "When you have time, in some period of labor, we would appreciate it very much if you four would sing for us again, would give us more of your vast store of youthful music, for we can now preserve it exactly as it is sung. But much as we enjoyed the quartette, Mrs. Seaton, it was your work upon the violin that took us by storm. Beginning with tomorrow, my companion intends to have you spend as many periods as you will, playing for our records. We shall now have your music." "If you like it so well, wouldn't you rather I'd play you something I hadn't played before?" "That is labor. We could not...." "Piffle!" Dorothy interrupted. "Don't you see that I could really play right now, with somebody to listen, who really enjoys music; whereas, if I tried to play in front of a record, I'd be perfectly mechanical?" "'At-a-girl, Dot! I'll get your fiddle." "Keep your seat, son," instructed Orlon, as the case containing the Stradivarius appeared before Dorothy, borne by a pencil of force. "While that temperament is incomprehensible to every one of us, it is undoubtedly true that the artistic mind does work in that manner. We listen." Dorothy swept into "The Melody in F," and as the poignantly beautiful strains poured forth from that wonderful violin, she knew that she had her audience with her. Though so intellectual that they themselves were incapable of producing music of real depth of feeling, they could understand and could enjoy such music with an appreciation impossible to a people of lesser mental attainments; and their profound enjoyment of her playing, burned into her mind by the telepathic, almost hypnotic power of the Norlaminian mentality, raised her to heights of power she had never before attained. Playing as one inspired, she went through one tremendous solo after another--holding her listeners spellbound, urged on by their intense feeling to carry them further and ever further into the realm of pure emotional harmony. The bell which ordinarily signaled the end of the period of relaxation did not sound; for the first time in thousands of years the planet of Norlamin deserted its rigid schedule of life--to listen to one Earth-woman, pouring out her very soul upon her incomparable violin. The final note of "Memories" died away in a diminuendo wail, and the musician almost collapsed into Seaton's arms. The profound silence, more impressive far than any possible applause, was soon broken by Dorothy. "There--I'm all right now, Dick. I was about out of control for a minute. I wish they could have had that on a recorder--I'll never be able to play like that again if I live to be a thousand years old." "It is on record, daughter. Every note and every inflection is preserved, precisely as you played it," Orlon assured her. "That is our only excuse for allowing you to continue as you did, almost to the point of exhaustion. While we cannot really understand an artistic mind of the peculiar type to which yours belongs, yet we realized that each time you play you are doing something that no one, not even yourself, can ever do again in precisely the same subtle fashion. Therefore we allowed, in fact encouraged, you to go on as long as that creative impulse should endure--not merely for our pleasure in hearing it, great though that pleasure was, but in the hope that our workers in music could, by a careful analysis of your product, determine quantitatively the exact vibrations or overtones which make the difference between emotional and intellectual music." CHAPTER XI Into a Sun As Rovol and Seaton approached the physics laboratory at the beginning of the period of labor, another small airboat occupied by one man drew up beside them and followed them to the ground. The stranger, another white-bearded ancient, greeted Rovol cordially and was introduced to Seaton as "Caslor, the First of Mechanism." "Truly, this is a high point in the course of Norlaminian science, my young friend," Caslor acknowledged the introduction smilingly. "You have enabled us to put into practice many things which our ancestors studied in theory for many a wearisome cycle of time." Turning to Rovol, he went on: "I understand that you require a particularly precise directional mechanism? I know well that it must indeed be one of exceeding precision and delicacy, for the controls you yourself have built are able to hold upon any point, however moving, within the limits of our immediate solar system." "We require controls a million times as delicate as any I have constructed," said Rovol, "therefore I have called your surpassing skill into co-operation. It is senseless for me to attempt a task in which I would be doomed to failure. We intend to send out a fifth-order projection, something none of our ancestors ever even dreamed of, which, with its inconceivable velocity of propagation, will enable us to explore any region in the galaxy as quickly as we now visit our closest sister planet. Knowing the dimensions of this, our galaxy, you can readily understand the exact degree of precision required to hold upon a point at its outermost edge." "Truly, a problem worthy of any man's brain," Caslor replied after a moment's thought. "Those small circles," pointing to the forty-foot hour and declination circles which Seaton had thought the ultimate in precise measurement of angular magnitudes, "are of course useless. I shall have to construct large and accurate circles, and in order to produce the slow and fast motions of the required nature, without creep, slip, play, or backlash, I shall require a pure torque, capable of being increased by infinitesimal increments.... Pure torque." He thought deeply for a time, then went on: "No gear-train or chain mechanism can be built of sufficient tightness, since in any mechanism there is some freedom of motion, however slight, and for this purpose the director must have no freedom of motion whatever. We must have a pure torque--and the only possible force answering our requirements is the four hundred sixty-seventh band of the fourth order. I shall therefore be compelled to develop that band. The director must, of course, have a full equatorial mounting, with circles some two hundred and fifty feet in diameter. Must your projector tube be longer than that, for correct design?" "That length will be ample." "The mounting must be capable of rotation through the full circle of arc in either plane, and must be driven in precisely the motion required to neutralize the motion of our planet, which, as you know, is somewhat irregular. Additional fast and slow motions must, of course, be provided to rotate the mechanism upon each graduated circle at the will of the operator. It is my idea to make the outer supporting tube quite large, so that you will have full freedom with your inner, or projector tube proper. It seems to me that dimensions X37 B42 J867 would perhaps be as good as any." "Perfectly satisfactory. You have the apparatus well in mind." "These things will consume some time. How soon will you require this mechanism?" asked Caslor. "We also have much to do. Two periods of labor, let us say: or, if you require them, three." "It is well. Two periods will be ample time: I was afraid that you might need it today, and the work cannot be accomplished in one period of labor. The mounting will, of course, be prepared in the Area of Experiment. Farewell." "You aren't going to build the final projector here, then?" Seaton asked as Caslor's flier disappeared. "We shall build it here, then transport it to the Area, where its dirigible housing will be ready to receive it. All mechanisms of that type are set up there. Not only is the location convenient to all interested, but there are to be found all necessary tools, equipment and material. Also, and not least important for such long-range work as we contemplate, the entire Area of Experiment is anchored immovably to the solid crust of the planet, so that there can be not even the slightest vibration to affect the direction of our beams of force, which must, of course, be very long." He closed the master switches of his power-plants and the two resumed work where they had left off. The control panel was soon finished. Rovol then plated an immense cylinder of copper and placed it in the power-plant. He next set up an entirely new system of refractory relief-points and installed additional ground-rods, sealed through the floor and extending deep into the ground below, explaining as he worked. "You see, son, we must lose one one-thousandth of one per cent of our total energy, and provision must be made for its dissipation in order to avoid destruction of the laboratory. These air-gap resistances are the simplest means of disposing of the wasted power." "I get you--but say, how about disposing of it when we get the thing in a ship out in space? We picked up pretty heavy charges in the _Skylark_--so heavy that I had to hold up several times in the ionized layer of an atmosphere while they faded--and this outfit will burn up tons of copper where the old ones used ounces." "In the projected space-vessel we shall install converters to utilize all the energy, so that there will be no loss whatever. Since such converters must be designed and built especially for each installation, and since they require a high degree of precision, it is not worth while to construct them for a purely temporary mechanism, such as this one." * * * * * The walls of the laboratory were opened, ventilating blowers were built, and refrigerating coils were set up everywhere, even in the tubular structure and behind the visiplates. After assuring themselves that everything combustible had been removed, the two scientists put on under their helmets, goggles whose protecting lenses could be built up to any desired thickness. Rovol then threw a switch, and a hemisphere of flaming golden radiance surrounded the laboratory and extended for miles upon all sides. "I get most of the stuff you've pulled so far, but why such a light?" asked Seaton. "As a warning. This entire area will be filled with dangerous frequencies, and that light is a warning for all uninsulated persons to give our theater of operations a wide berth." "I see. What next?" "All that remains to be done is to take our lens-material and go," replied Rovol, as he took from a cupboard the largest faidon that Seaton had ever seen. "Oh, that's what you're going to use! You know, I've been wondering about that stuff. I took one back with me to the Earth to experiment on. I gave it everything I could think of and couldn't touch it. I couldn't even make it change its temperature. What is it, anyway?" "It is not matter at all, in the ordinary sense of the word. It is almost pure crystallized energy. You have, of course, noticed that it looks transparent, but that it is not. You cannot see into its substance a millionth of a micron--the illusion of transparency being purely a surface phenomenon, and peculiar to this one form of substance. I have told you that the ether is a fourth-order substance--this also is a fourth-order substance, but it is crystalline, whereas the ether is probably fluid and amorphous. You might call this faidon crystallized ether without being far wrong." "But it should weigh tons, and it is hardly heavier than air--or no, wait a minute. Gravitation is also a fourth-order phenomenon, so it might not weigh anything at all--but it would have terrific mass--or would it, not having protons? Crystallized ether would displace fluid ether, so it might--I'll give up! It's too deep for me!" said Seaton. "Its theory is abstruse, and I cannot explain it to you any more fully than I have, until after we have given you a knowledge of the fourth and fifth orders. Pure fourth-order material would be without weight and without mass; but these crystals as they are found are not absolutely pure. In crystallizing from the magma, they entrapped sufficient numbers of particles of the higher orders to give them the characteristics which you have observed. The impurities, however, are not sufficient in quantity to offer a point of attack to any ordinary reagent." "But how could such material possibly be formed?" "It could be formed only in some such gigantic cosmic body as this, our green system, formed incalculable ages ago, when all the mass comprising it existed as one colossal sun. Picture for yourself the condition in the center of that sun. It has attained the theoretical maximum of temperature--some seventy million of your centigrade degrees--the electrons have been stripped from the protons until the entire central core is one solid ball of neutronium and can be compressed no more without destruction of the protons themselves. Still the pressure increases. The temperature, already at the theoretical maximum, can no longer increase. What happens?" "Disruption." "Precisely. And just at the instant of disruption, during the very instant of generation of the frightful forces that are to hurl suns, planets and satellites millions of miles out into space--in that instant of time, as a result of those unimaginable temperatures and pressures, the faidon comes into being. It can be formed only by the absolute maximum of temperature and at a pressure which can exist only momentarily, even in the largest conceivable masses." "Then how can you make a lens of it? It must be impossible to work it in any way." "It cannot be worked in any ordinary way, but we shall take this crystal into the depths of that white dwarf star, into a region in which obtain pressures and temperatures only less than those giving it birth. There we shall play forces upon it which, under those conditions, will be able to work it quite readily." "Hm--m--m. I want to see that! Let's go!" They seated themselves at the panels, and Rovol began to manipulate keys, levers and dials. Instantly a complex structure of visible force--rods, beams and flat areas of flaming scarlet energy--appeared at the end of the tubular, telescope-like network. "Why red?" "Merely to render them visible. One cannot work well with invisible tools, hence I have imposed a colored light frequency upon the invisible frequencies of the forces. We will have an assortment of colors if you prefer," and as he spoke each ray assumed a different color, so that the end of the projector was almost lost beneath a riot of color. The structure of force, which Seaton knew was the secondary projector, swung around as if sentient, and a lurid green ray extended itself, picked up the faidon, and lengthened out, hurling the jewel a thousand yards out through the open side of the laboratory. Rovol moved more controls and the structure again righted itself, swinging back into perfect alignment with the tube and carrying the faidon upon its extremity, a thousand yards beyond the roof of the laboratory. "We are now ready to start our projection. Be sure your suit and goggles are perfectly tight. We must see what we are doing, so the light-rays must be heterodyned upon our carrier wave. Therefore the laboratory and all its neighborhood will be flooded with dangerous frequencies from the sun we are to visit, as well as with those from our own generators." "O. K., chief! All tight here. You say it's ten light-years to that star. How long's it going to take us to get there?" "About ten minutes. We could travel that far in less than ten seconds but for the fact that we must take the faidon with us. Slight as is its mass, it will require much energy in its acceleration. Our projections, of course, have no mass, and will require only the energy of propagation." [Illustration: _Looking into the visiplate, he was out in space in person, hurtling through space at a pace, beside which the best effort of the Skylark seemed the veriest crawl._] Rovol flicked a finger, a massive pair of plunger switches shot into their sockets, and Seaton, seated at his board and staring into his visiplate, was astounded to find that he apparently possessed a dual personality. He _knew_ that he was seated motionless in the operator's chair in the base of the rigidly anchored primary projector, and by taking his eyes away from the visiplate before him, he could see that nothing in the laboratory had changed, except that the pyrotechnic display from the power-bar was of unusual intensity. Yet, looking into the visiplate, he was out in space _in person_, hurtling through space at a pace beside which the best effort of the _Skylark_ seemed the veriest crawl. Swinging his controls to look backward, he gasped as he saw, so stupendous was their velocity, that the green system was only barely discernible as a faint green star! * * * * * Again looking forward, it seemed as though a fierce white star had separated from the immovable firmament and was now so close to the structure of force in which he was riding that it was already showing a disk perceptible to the unaided eye. A few moments more and the violet-white splendor became so intense that the watchers began to build up, layer by layer, the protective goggles before their eyes. As they approached still closer, falling with their unthinkable velocity into that incandescent inferno, a sight was revealed to their eyes such as man had never before been privileged to gaze upon. They were falling into a white dwarf star, could see everything visible during such an unheard-of journey, and would live to remember what they had seen! They saw the magnificent spectacle of solar prominences shooting hundreds of thousands of miles into space, and directly in their path they saw an immense sunspot, a combined volcanic eruption and cyclonic storm in a gaseous-liquid medium of blinding incandescence. "Better dodge that spot, hadn't we, ace? Mightn't it be generating interfering fourth-order frequencies?" cried Seaton. "It is undoubtedly generating fourth-order rays, but nothing can interfere with us, since we are controlling every component of our beam from Norlamin." Seaton gripped his hand-rail violently and involuntarily drew himself together into the smallest possible compass as, with their awful speed unchecked, they plunged through that flaming, incandescent photosphere and on, straight down, into the unexplored, unimaginable interior of that frightful and searing orb. Through the protecting goggles, now a full four inches of that peculiar, golden, shielding metal, Seaton could see the structure of force in which he was, and could also see the faidon--in outline, as transparent diamonds are visible in equally transparent water. Their apparent motion slowed rapidly and the material about them thickened and became more and more opaque. The faidon drew back toward them until it was actually touching the projector, and eddy currents and striae became visible in the mass about them as their progress grew slower and slower. "'Smatter? Something gone screwy?" demanded Seaton. "Not at all, everything is working perfectly. The substance is now so dense that it is becoming opaque to rays of the fourth order, so that we are now partially displacing the medium instead of moving through it without friction. At the point where we can barely see to work; that is, when the fourth-order rays will be so retarded that they can no longer carry the heterodyned light waves without complete distortion, we shall stop automatically, as the material at that depth will have the required density to refract the fifth-order rays to the correct degree." "How can our foundations stand it?" asked Seaton. "This stuff must be a hundred times as dense as platinum already, and we must he pushing a horrible load in going through it." "We are exerting no force whatever upon our foundations nor upon Norlamin. The force is transmitted without loss from the power-plant in our laboratory to this secondary projector here inside the star, where it is liberated in the correct band to pull us through the mass, using all the mass ahead of us as anchorage. When we wish to return, we shall simply change the pull into a push. Ah! we are now at a standstill--now comes the most important moment of the entire project!" All apparent motion had ceased, and Seaton could see only dimly the outlines of the faidon, now directly before his eyes. The structure of force slowly warped around until its front portion held the faidon as in a vise. Rovol pressed a lever and behind them, in the laboratory, four enormous plunger switches drove home. A plane of pure energy, flaming radiantly even in the indescribable incandescence of the core of that seething star, bisected the faidon neatly, and ten gigantic beams, five upon each half of the jewel, rapidly molded two sections of a geometrically-perfect hollow lens. The two sections were then brought together by the closing of the jaws of the mighty vise, their edges in exact alignment. Instantly the plane and the beams of energy became transformed into two terrific opposing tubes of force--vibrant, glowing tubes, whose edges in contact coincided with the almost invisible seam between the two halves of the lens. Like a welding arc raised to the _nth_ power these two immeasurable and irresistible forces met exactly in opposition--a meeting of such incredible violence that seismic disturbances occurred throughout the entire mass of that dense, violet-white star. Sunspots of unprecedented size appeared, prominences erupted to hundreds of times their normal distances, and although the two scientists deep in the core of the tormented star were unaware of what was happening upon its surface, convulsion after Titanic convulsion wracked the mighty globe, and enormous masses of molten and gaseous material were riven from it and hurled far out into space--masses which would in time become planets of that youthful and turbulent luminary. Seaton felt his air-supply grow hot. Suddenly it became icy cold, and knowing that Rovol had energized the refrigerator system, Seaton turned away from the fascinating welding operation for a quick look around the laboratory. As he did so, he realized Rovol's vast knowledge and understood the reason for the new system of relief-points and ground-rods, as well as the necessity for the all-embracing scheme of refrigeration. Even through the practically opaque goggles he could see that the laboratory was one mass of genuine lightning. Not only from the relief-points, but from every metallic corner and protuberance the pent-up losses from the disintegrating bar were hurling themselves upon the flaring, blue-white, rapidly-volatilizing ground-rods; and the very air of the room, renewed second by second though it was by the powerful blowers, was beginning to take on the pearly luster of the highly-ionized corona. The bar was plainly visible, a scintillating demon of pure violet radiance, and a momentary spasm of fear seized him as he saw how rapidly that great mass of copper was shrinking--fear that their power would be exhausted with their task still uncompleted. But the calculations of the aged physicist had been accurate. The lens was completed with some hundreds of pounds of copper to spare, and that geometrical form, with its precious content of semi-neutronium, was following the secondary projector back toward the green system. Rovol left his seat, discarded his armor, and signaled Seaton to do the same. "I've got to hand it to you, ace--you sure are a blinding flash and a deafening report!" Seaton exclaimed, writhing out of his insulating suit. "I feel as though I'd been pulled half-way through a knot-hole and riveted over on both ends! How big a lens did you make, anyway? Looked as though it would hold a couple of liters; maybe three." "Its contents are almost exactly three liters." "Hm--m--m. Seven and a half million kilograms--say eight thousand tons. _Some_ mass, I'd say, to put into a gallon jug. Of course, being inside the faidon, it won't have any weight, but it'll have all its full quota of inertia. That's why you're taking so long to bring it in, of course." "Yes. The projector will now bring it here into the laboratory without any further attention from us. The period of labor is about to end, and tomorrow we shall find the lens awaiting us when we arrive to begin work." "How about cooling it off? It had a temperature of something like forty million degree centigrade before you started working on it; and when you got done with it, it was hot." "You're forgetting again, son. Remember that the hot, dense material is entirely enclosed in an envelope impervious to all vibrations longer than those of the fifth order. You could put your hand upon it now, without receiving any sensation either of heat, or of cold." "Yeah, that's right, too. I noticed that I could take a faidon right out of an electric arc and it wouldn't even be warm. I couldn't explain why it was, but I see now. So that stuff inside that lens will always stay as hot as it is right now! Zowie! Here's hoping she never explodes! Well, there's the bell--for once in my life, I'm all ready to quit when the whistle blows," and arm in arm the young Terrestrial chemist and the aged Norlaminian physicist strolled out to their waiting airboat. CHAPTER XII Flying Visits--Via Projection "Well, what to do?" asked Seaton as he and Rovol entered the laboratory, "Tear down this fourth-order projector and tackle the big job? I see the lens is here, on schedule, so we can hop right into it." "We shall have further use for this mechanism. We shall need at least one more lens of this dense material, and other scientists also may have need of one or two. Then, too, the new projector must be so large that it cannot be erected in this room." As he spoke, Rovol seated himself at his control-desk and ran his fingers lightly over the keys. The entire wall of the laboratory disappeared, hundreds of beams of force darted here and there, seizing and working raw materials, and in the portal there grew up, to Seaton's amazement, a keyboard and panel installation such as the Earth-man, in his wildest moments, had never imagined. Bank upon bank of typewriter-like keys; row upon row of keys, pedals, and stops resembling somewhat those of the console of a gigantic pipe-organ; panel upon panel of meters, switches, and dials--all arranged about two deeply-cushioned chairs and within reach of their occupants. "Whew! That looks like the combined mince-pie nightmares of a whole flock of linotype operators, pipe-organists, and hard-boiled radio hams!" exclaimed Seaton when the installation was complete. "Now that you've got it, what are you going to do with it?" "There is not a control system in Norlamin adequate for the task we face, since the problem of the projection of rays of the fifth order has heretofore been of only academic interest. Therefore it becomes necessary to construct such a control. This mechanism will, I am confident, have a sufficiently wide range of application to perform any operation we shall require of it." "It sure looks as though it could do almost anything, provided the man behind it knows how to play a tune on it--but if that rumble seat is for me, you'd better count me out right now. I followed you for about fifteen seconds, then lost you completely; and now I'm sunk without a trace," said Seaton. "That is, of course, true, and is a point I was careless enough to overlook." Rovol thought for a moment, then got up, crossed the room to his control desk, and continued, "We shall dismantle the machine and rebuild it at once." "Oh no--too much work!" protested Seaton, "You've got it about done, haven't you?" "It is hardly started. Two hundred thousand bands of force must be linked to it, each in its proper place, and it is necessary that you should understand thoroughly every detail of this entire projector," Rovol answered. "Why? I'm not ashamed to admit that I haven't got brains enough to understand a thing like that." "You have sufficient brain capacity; it is merely undeveloped. There are two reasons why you must be as familiar with the operation of this mechanism as you are with the operation of one of your Earthly automobiles. The first is that a similar control is to be installed in your new space-vessel, since by its use you can attain a perfection of handling impossible by any other system. The second, and more important reason, is that neither I nor any other man of Norlamin could compel himself, by any force of will, to direct a ray that would take away the life of any fellow-man." While Rovol was speaking, he reversed his rays, and soon the component parts of the new control had been disassembled and piled in orderly array about the room. "Hm--m--m. Never thought of that. It's right too," mused Seaton. "How're you going to get it into my thick skull--with an educator?" "Exactly," and Rovol sent a beam of force after his highly developed educational mechanism. Dials and electrodes were adjusted, connections were established, and the beams and pencils of force began to reconstruct the great central controlling device. But this time, instead of being merely a bewildered spectator, Seaton was an active participant in the work. As each key and meter was wrought and mounted, there were indelibly impressed upon his brain the exact reason for and function of the part, and later, when the control itself was finished and the seemingly interminable task of connecting it up to the output force-bands of the transformers had begun, he had a complete understanding of everything with which he was working, and understood all the means by which the ends he had so long desired were to be attained. For to the ancient scientist the tasks he was then performing were the merest routine, to be performed in reflex fashion, and he devoted most of his attention to transferring from his own brain to that of his young assistant as much of his stupendous knowledge as the smaller brain of the Terrestrial was capable of absorbing. More and more rapidly as the work progressed the mighty flood of knowledge poured into Seaton's mind. After an hour or so, when enough connections had been made so that automatic forces could be so directed as to finish the job, Rovol and Seaton left the laboratory and went into the living room. As they walked, the educator accompanied them, borne upon its beam of force. "Your brain is behaving very nicely indeed," said Rovol, "much better than I would have thought possible from its size. In fact, it may be possible for me to transfer to you all the knowledge I have which might be of use to you. That is why I took you away from the laboratory. What do you think of the idea?" "Our psychologists have always maintained that none of us ever uses more than a minute fraction of the actual capacity of his brain," Seaton replied after a moment's thought. "If you think you can give me even a percentage of your knowledge without killing me, go to it--I'm for it, strong!" "Knowing that you would be, I have already requested Drasnik, the First of Psychology, to come here, and he has just arrived," answered Rovol. And as he spoke, that personage entered the room. When the facts had been set before him, the psychologist nodded his head "That is quite possible," he said with enthusiasm, "and I will be only too glad to assist in such an operation." "But listen!" protested Seaton, "You'll probably change my whole personality! Rovol's brain is three times the size of mine." "Tut-tut--nothing of the kind," Drasnik reproved him. "As you have said, you are using only a minute portion of the active mass of your brain. The same thing is true with us--many millions of cycles would have to pass before we would be able to fill the brains we now have." "Then why are your brains so large?" "Merely a provision of Nature that no possible accession of knowledge shall find her storehouse too small," replied Drasnik, positively. "Ready?" All three donned the headsets and a wave of mental force swept into Seaton's mind, a wave of such power that the Terrestrial's every sense wilted under the impact. He did not faint, he did not lose consciousness--he simply lost all control of every nerve and fiber as his entire brain passed into the control of the immense mentality of the First of Psychology and became a purely receptive, plastic medium upon which to impress the knowledge of the aged physicist. * * * * * Hour after hour the transfer continued, Seaton lying limp as though lifeless, the two Norlaminians tense and rigid, every faculty concentrated upon the ignorant, virgin brain exposed to their gaze. Finally the operation was complete and Seaton, released from the weird, hypnotic grip of that stupendous mind, gasped, shook himself, and writhed to his feet. "Great Cat!" he exclaimed, his eyes wide with astonishment. "I wouldn't have believed there was as much to know in the entire Universe as I know right now, and I know it as well as I ever knew elementary algebra. Thanks, fellows, a million times--but say, did you leave any open spaces for more? In one way, I seem to know less than I did before, there's so much more to find out. Can I learn anything more, or did you fill me up to capacity?" The psychologist, who had been listening to the exuberant youth with undisguised pleasure, spoke calmly. "The mere fact that you appreciate your comparative ignorance shows that you are still capable of learning. Your capacity to learn is greater than it ever was before, even though the waste space has been reduced. Much to our surprise, Rovol and I gave you all of his knowledge that would be of any use to you, and some of my own, and still theoretically you can add to it more than nine times the total of your present knowledge." The psychologist departed, and Rovol and Seaton returned to the laboratory, where the forces were still merrily at work. There was nothing that could be done to hasten the connecting, and it was late in the following period of labor before they could begin the actual construction of the projector. Once started, however, it progressed with amazing rapidity. Now understanding the system, it did not seem strange to Seaton that he should merely actuate a certain combination of forces when he desired a certain operation performed; nor did it seem unusual or worthy of comment that one flick of his finger over that switchboard would send a force a distance of hundreds of miles to a factory where other forces were busily at work, to seize a hundred angle-bars of transparent purple metal that were to form the backbone of the fifth-order projector. Nor did it seem peculiar that the same force, with no further instruction, should bring these hundred bars back to him, in a high loop through the atmosphere; should deposit them gently in a convenient space near the site of operations; and then should disappear as though it had never existed! With such tools as that, it was a matter of only a few hours before the projector was done--a task that would have required years of planning and building upon Earth. Two hundred and fifty feet it towered above their heads, a tubular network of braced and latticed bars of purple metal, fifty feet in diameter at the base and tapering smoothly to a diameter of about ten feet at the top. Built of a metal thousands of times as strong and hard as steel, it was not cumbersome in appearance, and yet was strong enough to be absolutely rigid. Ten enormous supporting forces held the lens of neutronium immovable in the exact center of the upper end; at intervals down the shaft similar forces held variously-shaped lenses and prisms formed from zones of force; in the center of the bottom or floor of the towering structure was the double controlling system, with a universal visiplate facing each operator. "Well, Rovol, that's that," remarked Seaton as the last connection was made. "What say we hop in and give the baby a ride over to the Area of Experiment? Caslor must have the mounting done, and we've got time enough left in this period to try her out." "In a moment. I am setting the fourth-order projector to go out to the dwarf star after an additional supply of neutronium." Seaton, knowing from the data of their first journey, that the controls could be so set as to duplicate their feat in every particular without supervision, stepped into his seat in the new controller, pressed a key, and spoke. "Hi, Dottie, what's on your mind?" "Nothing much," Dorothy's clear voice answered. "Got it done and can I see it?" "Sure--sit tight and I'll send a boat after you." As he spoke, Rovol's flier darted into the air and away; and in two minutes it returned, slowing abruptly as it landed. Dorothy stepped out, radiant, and returned Seaton's enthusiastic caresses with equal fervor before she spoke. "Lover, I'm afraid you violated all known speed laws getting me over here. Aren't you afraid of getting pinched?" "Nope--not here. Besides, I didn't want to keep Rovol waiting--we're all ready to go. Hop in here with me, this left-hand control's mine." Rovol entered the tube, took his place, and waved his hand. Seaton's hands swept over the keys and the whole gigantic structure wafted into the air. Still upright, it was borne upon immense rods of force toward the Area of Experiment, which was soon reached. Covered as the Area was with fantastic equipment, there was no doubt as to their destination, for in plain sight, dominating all the lesser instruments, there rose a stupendous telescopic mounting, with an enormous hollow tube of metallic lattice-work which could be intended for nothing else than their projector. Approaching it carefully, Seaton deftly guided the projector lengthwise into that hollow receptacle and anchored it in the exact optical axis. Flashing beams of force made short work of welding the two tubes together immovably with angles and lattices of the same purple metal, the terminals of the variable-speed motors were attached to the controllers, and everything was in readiness for the first trial. "What special instructions do we need to run it, if any?" Seaton asked of the First of Mechanism, who had lifted himself up into the projector. "Very little. This motor governs the hour motion, that one the right ascension. The potentiometers regulate the degree of vernier action--any ratio is possible, from direct drive up to more than a hundred million complete revolutions of that graduated dial to give you one second of arc." "Plenty fine, I'd say. Thanks a lot, ace. Whither away, Rovol--any choice?" "Anywhere you please, son, since this is merely a try-out." "O. K. We'll hop over and tell Dunark hello." The tube swung around into line with that distant planet and Seaton stepped down hard, upon a pedal. Instantly they seemed infinite myriads of miles out in space, the green system barely visible as a faint green star behind them. "Wow, that ray's fast!" exclaimed the pilot, ruefully. "I overshot about a thousand light years. We'll try again, with considerably less power," and he rearranged and reset the dials and meters before him. Adjustment after adjustment and many reductions in power had to be made before the projection ceased leaping millions of miles at a touch, but finally the operators became familiar with the new technique and the ray became manageable. Soon they were hovering above what had been Mardonal, and saw that all signs of warfare had disappeared. Slowly turning the controls, Seaton flashed the projection over the girdling Osnomian sea and guided it through the impregnable metal walls of the palace into the throne room of Roban, where they saw the Emperor, Tarnan the Karbix, and Dunark in close conference. "Well, here we are," remarked Seaton. "Now we'll put on a little visibility and give the natives a treat." "Sh-sh," whispered Dorothy, "they'll hear you, Dick--we're intruding shamefully." "No, they won't hear us, because I haven't heterodyned the audio in on the wave yet. And as for intruding, that's exactly what we came over here for." * * * * * He imposed the audio system upon the inconceivably high frequency of their carrier wave and spoke in the Osnomian tongue. "Greetings, Roban, Dunark, and Tarnan, from Seaton." All three jumped to their feet, amazed, staring about the empty room as Seaton went on, "I am not here in person. I am simply sending you my projection. Just a moment and I will put on a little visibility." He brought more forces into play, and solid images of force appeared in the great hall; images of the three occupants of the controller. Introductions and greetings over, Seaton spoke briefly and to the point. "We've got everything we came after--much more than I had any idea we could get. You need have no more fear of the Fenachrone--we have found a science superior to theirs. But much remains to be done, and we have none too much time; therefore I have come to you with certain requests." "The Overlord has but to command," replied Roban. "Not command, since we are all working together for a common cause. In the name of that cause, Dunark, I ask you to come to me at once, accompanied by Tarnan and any others you may select. You will be piloted by a ray which we shall set upon your controls. Upon your way here you will visit the First City of Dasor, another planet, where you will pick up Sacner Carfon, who will be awaiting you there." "As you direct, so it shall be," and Seaton flashed the projector to the neighboring planet of Urvania. There he found that the gigantic space-cruiser he had ordered had been completed, and requested Urvan and his commander-in-chief to tow it to Norlamin, piloted by a ray. He then jumped to Dasor, there interviewing Carfon and being assured of the full co-operation of the porpoise-men. "Well, that's that, folks," said Seaton as he shut off the power. "We can't do much more for a few days, until the gang gets here for the council of war. How'd it be, Rovol, for me to practice with this outfit while you are finishing up the odds and ends you want to clean up? You might suggest to Orlon, too, that it'd be a good deed for him to pilot those folks over here." As Rovol wafted himself to the ground from their lofty station, Crane and Margaret appeared and were lifted up to the place formerly occupied by the physicist. "How's tricks, Mart? I hear you're quite an astronomer?" said Seaton. "Yes, thanks to Orlon and the First of Psychology. He seemed quite interested in increasing our Earthly knowledge. I certainly know much more than I had ever hoped to know of anything." "Yeah, you can pilot us to the Fenachrone system now without any trouble. You also absorbed some ethnology and kindred sciences. What d'you think--with Dunark and Urvan, do we know enough to go ahead or should we take a chance on holding things up while we get acquainted with some of the other peoples of these planets of the green system?" "Delay is dangerous, as our time is already short," Crane replied after a time. "We know enough, I believe; and furthermore, any additional assistance is problematical; in fact, it is more than doubtful. The Norlaminians have surveyed the system rather thoroughly, and no other planet seems to have inhabitants who have even approached the development attained here." "Right--that's the way I dope it, exactly. We'll wait until the gang assembles, then go over the top. In the meantime, I called you over to take a ride in this projector--it's a darb. I'd like to shoot for the Fenachrone system first, but I don't quite dare to." "Don't _dare_ to? You?" scoffed Margaret. "How come?" "Cancel the 'dare'--change it to 'prefer not to.' Why? Because while they can't work through a zone of force, some of their real scientists--and they have lots of them, not like the bull-headed soldier we captured--may well be able to detect a fifth-order ray--even if they can't work with them intelligently--and if they detected our ray, it'd put them on guard." "You are exactly right, Dick," agreed Crane. "And there speaks the Norlaminian physicist, and not my old and reckless playmate Richard Seaton." "Oh, I don't know--I told you I was getting timid as a mouse. But let's not sit here twiddling our thumbs--let's go places and do things. Whither away? I want a destination a good ways off, not something in our own back yard." "Go back home, of course, stupe," put in Dorothy, "do you have to be told every little thing?" "Sure--never thought of that," and Seaton, after a moment's rapid mental arithmetic, swung the great tube around, rapidly adjusted a few dials, and stepped down upon a pedal. There was a fleeting instant of unthinkable velocity; then they found themselves poised somewhere in space. "Well, wonder how far I missed it on my first shot?" Seaton's crisp voice broke the stunned silence. "Guess that's our sun, over to the left, ain't it, Mart?" "Yes. You were about right for distance, and within a few tenths of a light-year laterally. That is fairly close, I should have said." "Rotten, for these controls. Except for the effect of relative proper motions, which I can't calculate yet for lack of data. I should be able to hit a gnat right in the left eye at this range--and the difference in proper motions couldn't have thrown me off more than a few hundred feet. Nope, I was too anxious--hurried too much on the settings of the slow verniers. I'll snap back and try it again." He adjusted the verniers very carefully, and again threw on the power. Again there was the sensation of the barest perceptible moment of unimaginable speed, and they were in the air some fifty feet above the ground of Crane Field, almost above the testing shed. Seaton rapidly adjusted the variable-speed motors until they were perfectly stationary, relative to the surface of the earth. "You are improving," commended Crane. "Yeah--that's more like it. Guess maybe I can learn in time to shoot this gun. Well, let's go down." They dropped through the roof into the laboratory where Maxwell, now in charge of the place, was watching a reaction and occasionally taking notes. "Hi, Max! Seaton speaking, on a television. Got your range?" "Exactly, Chief, apparently. I can hear you perfectly, but can't see anything," Maxwell stared about the empty laboratory. "You will in a minute. I knew I had you, but didn't want to scare you out of a year's growth," and Seaton thickened the image until they were plainly visible. "Please call Mr. Vaneman on the phone and tell him you're in touch with us," directed Seaton as soon as greetings had been exchanged. "Better yet, after you've broken it to them gently, Dot can talk to them, then we'll go over and see 'em." The connection established, Dorothy's image floated up to the telephone and apparently spoke. "Mother? This is the weirdest thing you ever imagined. We're not really here at all you know--we're actually here in Norlamin--no, I mean Dick's just sending a kind of a talking picture of us to see you on earth here.... Oh, no, I don't know anything about it--it's like a talkie sent by radio, only worse, because I am saying this myself right now, without any rehearsal or anything ... we didn't want to burst in on you without warning, because you'd be sure to think you were seeing actual ghosts, and we're not dead the least bit ... we're having the most perfectly gorgeous time you ever imagined.... Oh, I'm so excited I can't explain anything, even if I knew anything about it to explain. We'll all four of us be over there in about a second and tell you all about it. 'Bye!" Indeed, it was even less than a second--Mrs. Vaneman was still in the act of hanging up the receiver when the image materialized in the living room of Dorothy's girlhood home. "Hello, mother and dad," Seaton's voice was cheerful but matter-of-fact. "I'll thicken this up so you can see us better in a minute. But don't think that we are flesh and blood. You'll see simply three-dimensional talking pictures of ourselves, transmitted by radio." For a long time Mr. and Mrs. Vaneman chatted with the four visitors from so far away in space, while Seaton gloried in the working of that marvelous projector. "Well, our time's about up," Seaton finally ended the visit. "The quitting-whistle's going to blow in five minutes, and they don't like overtime work here where we are. We'll drop in and see you again maybe, sometime before we come back." "Do you know yet when you are coming back?" asked Mrs. Vaneman. "Not an idea in the world, mother, any more than we had when we started. But we're getting along fine, having the time of our lives, and are learning a lot besides. So-long!" and Seaton clicked off the power. * * * * * As they descended from the projector and walked toward the waiting airboat, Seaton fell in beside Rovol. "You know they've got our new cruiser built of dagal, and are bringing it over here. Dagal's good stuff, but it isn't as good as your purple metal, inoson, which is the theoretical ultimate in strength possible for any material possessing molecular structure. Why wouldn't it be a sound idea to flash it into inoson when it gets here?" "That would be an excellent idea, and we shall do so. It also has occurred to me that Caslor of Mechanism, Astron of Energy, Satrazon of Chemistry, myself, and one of two others, should collaborate in installing a very complete fifth-order projector in the new _Skylark_, as well as any other equipment which may seem desirable. The security of the Universe may depend upon the abilities and qualities of you Terrestrials and your vessel, and therefore _nothing_ should be left undone which it is possible for us to do." "You chirped something then, old scout--thanks. You might do that, while I attend to such preliminaries as wiping out the Fenachrone fleet." In due time the reinforcements from the other planets arrived, and the mammoth space-cruiser attracted attention even before it landed, so enormous was she in comparison with the tiny vessels having her in tow. Resting upon the ground, it seemed absurd that such a structure could possibly move under her own power. For two miles that enormous mass of metal extended over the country-side, and while it was very narrow for its length, still its fifteen hundred feet of diameter dwarfed everything near by. But Rovol and his aged co-workers smiled happily as they saw it, erected their keyboards, and set to work with a will. Meanwhile a group had gathered about a conference table--a group such as had never before been seen together upon any world. There was Fodan, the ancient Chief of the Five of Norlamin, huge-headed, with his leonine mane and flowing beard of white. There were Dunark and Tarnan of Osnome and Urvan of Urvania--smooth-faced and keen, utterly implacable and ruthless in war. There was Sacner Carfon Twenty Three Forty Six, the immense, porpoise-like, hairless Dasorian. There were Seaton and Crane, representatives of our own Earthly civilization. Seaton opened the meeting by handing each man a headset and running a reel showing the plans of the Fenachrone; not only as he had secured them from the captain of the marauding vessel, but also everything the First of Psychology had deduced from his own study of that inhuman brain. He then removed the reel and gave them the tentative plans of battle. Headsets removed, he threw the meeting open for discussion--and discussion there was in plenty. Each man had ideas, which were thrown upon the table and studied, for the most part calmly and dispassionately. The conference continued until only one point was left, upon which argument waxed so hot that everyone seemed shouting at once. "Order!" commanded Seaton, banging his fist upon the table. "Osnome and Urvania wish to strike without warning, Norlamin and Dasor insist upon a formal declaration of war. Earth has the deciding vote. Mart, how do we vote on this?" "I vote for formal warning, for two reasons, one of which I believe will convince even Dunark. First, because it is the fair thing to do--which reason is, of course, the one actuating the Norlaminians, but which would not be considered by Osnome, nor even remotely understood by the Fenachrone. Second, I am certain that the Fenachrone will merely be enraged by the warning and will defy us. Then what will they do? You have already said that you have been able to locate only a few of their exploring warships. As soon as we declare war upon them they will almost certainly send out torpedoes to every one of their ships of war. We can then follow the torpedoes with our rays, and thus will be enabled to find and to destroy their vessels." "That settles that," declared the chairman as a shout of agreement arose. "We shall now adjourn to the projector and send the warning. I have a ray upon the torpedo, announcing the destruction by us of their vessel, and that torpedo will arrive at its destination in less than an hour. It seems to me that we should make our announcement immediately after their ruler has received the news of their first defeat." In the projector, where they were joined by Rovol, Orlon, and several others of the various "Firsts" of Norlamin, they flashed out to the flying torpedo, and Seaton grinned at Crane as their fifth-order carrier beam went through the far-flung detector screens of the Fenachrone without setting up the slightest reaction. In the wake of that speeding messenger they flew through a warm, foggy, dense atmosphere, through a receiving trap in the wall of a gigantic conical structure, and on into the telegraph room. They saw the operator remove spools of tape from the torpedo and attach them to a magnetic sender--heard him speak. "Pardon, your majesty--we have just received a first-degree emergency torpedo from flagship Y427W of fleet 42. In readiness." "Put it on, here in the council chamber," a deep voice snapped. "If he's broadcasting it, we're in for a spell of hunting," Seaton remarked. "Nope, he's putting it on a tight beam--that's fine, we can chase it up," and with a narrow detector beam he traced the invisible transmission beam into the council room. "'Sfunny. This place seems awfully familiar--I'd swear I'd seen it before, lots of times--seems like I've been in it, more than once," Seaton remarked, puzzled, as he looked around the somber room, with its dull, paneled metal walls covered with charts, maps, screens, and speakers; and with its low, massive furniture. "Oh, sure, I'm familiar with it from studying the brain of that Fenachrone captain. Well, while His Nibs is absorbing the bad news, we'll go over this once more. You, Carfon, having the biggest voice of any of us ever heard uttering intelligible language, are to give the speech. You know about what to say. When I say 'go ahead' do your stuff. Now, everybody else, listen. While he's talking I've got to have audio waves heterodyned both ways in the circuit, and they'll be able to hear any noise any of us make--so all of us except Carfon want to keep absolutely quiet, no matter what happens or what we see. As soon as he's done I'll cut off the audio sending and say something to let you all know we're off the air. Got it?" "One point has occurred to me about handling the warning," boomed Carfon. "If it should be delivered from apparently empty air, directly at those we wish to address, it would give the enemy an insight into our methods, which might be undesirable." "H--m--m. Never thought of that ... it sure would, and it would be undesirable," agreed Seaton. "Let's see ... we can get away from that by broadcasting it. They have a very complete system of speakers, but no matter how many private-band speakers a man may have, he always has one on the general wave, which is used for very important announcements of wide interest. I'll broadcast you on that wave, so that every general-wave speaker on the planet will be energized. That way, it'll look as if we're shooting from a distance. You might talk accordingly." "If we have a minute more, there's something I would like to ask," Dunark broke the ensuing silence. "Here we are, seeing everything that is happening there. Walls, planets, even suns, do not bar our vision, because of the fifth-order carrier wave. I understand that, partially. But how can we see anything there? I always thought that I knew something about rays, but I see that I do not. The light-rays must be released, or deheterodyned, close to the object viewed, with nothing opaque to light intervening. They must then be reflected from the object seen, must be gathered together, again heterodyned upon the fifth-order carrier, and retransmitted back to us. And there is neither receiver nor transmitter at the other end. How can you do all that from our end?" "We don't," Seaton assured him. "At the other end there are all the things you mentioned, and a lot more besides. Our secondary projector out there is composed of forces, visible or invisible, as we please. Part of those forces comprise the receiving, viewing, and sending instruments. They are not material, it is true, but they are nevertheless fully as actual, and far more efficient, than any other system of radio, television, or telephone in existence anywhere else. It is force, you know, that makes radio or television work--the actual copper, insulation, and other matter serve only to guide and to control the various forces employed. The Norlaminian scientists have found out how to direct and control pure forces without using the cumbersome and hindering material substance...." He broke off as the record from the torpedo stopped suddenly and the operator's voice came through a speaker. "General Fenimol! Scoutship K3296, patrolling the detector zone, wishes to give you an urgent emergency report. I told them that you were in council with the Emperor, and they instructed me to interrupt it, no matter how important the council may be. They have on board a survivor of the Y427W, and have captured and killed two men of the same race as those who destroyed our vessel. They say that you will want their report without an instant's delay." "We do!" barked the general, at a sign from his ruler. "Put it on here. Run the rest of the torpedo report immediately afterward." In the projector, Seaton stared at Crane a moment, then a light of understanding spread over his features. "DuQuesne, of course--I'll bet a hat no other Terrestrial is this far from home. I can't help feeling sorry for the poor devil--he's a darn good man gone wrong--but we'd have had to kill him ourselves before we got done with him; so it's probably as well they got him. Pin your ears back, everybody, and watch close--we want to get this, all of it." CHAPTER XIII The Declaration of War The capital city of the Fenachrone lay in a jungle plain surrounded by towering hills. A perfect circle of immense diameter, its buildings of uniform height, of identical design, and constructed of the same dull gray, translucent metal, were arranged in concentric circles, like the annular rings seen upon the stump of a tree. Between each ring of buildings and the one next inside it there were lagoons, lawns and groves--lagoons of tepid, sullenly-steaming water; lawns which were veritable carpets of lush, rank rushes and of dank mosses; groves of palms, gigantic ferns, bamboos, and numerous tropical growths unknown to Earthly botany. At the very edge of the city began jungle unrelieved and primeval; the impenetrable, unconquerable jungle, possible only to such meteorological conditions as obtained there. Wind there was none, nor sunshine. Only occasionally was the sun of that reeking world visible through the omnipresent fog, a pale, wan disk; always the atmosphere was one of oppressive, hot, humid vapor. In the exact center of the city rose an immense structure, a terraced cone of buildings, as though immense disks of smaller and smaller diameter had been piled one upon the other. In these apartments dwelt the nobility and the high officials of the Fenachrone. In the highest disk of all, invisible always from the surface of the planet because of the all-enshrouding mist, were the apartments of the Emperor of that monstrous race. Seated upon low, heavily-built metal stools about the great table in the council-room were Fenor, Emperor of the Fenachrone; Fenimol, his General-in-Command, and the full Council of Eleven of the planet. Being projected in the air before them was a three-dimensional moving, talking picture--the report of the sole survivor of the warship that had attacked the _Skylark II_. In exact accordance with the facts as the engineer knew them, the details of the battle and complete information concerning the conquerors were shown. As vividly as though the scene were being re-enacted before their eyes they saw the captive revive in the _Violet_, and heard the conversation between the engineer, DuQuesne, and Loring. In the _Violet_ they sped for days and weeks, with ever-mounting velocity, toward the system of the Fenachrone. Finally, power reversed, they approached it, saw the planet looming large, and passed within the detector screen. DuQuesne tightened the controls of the attractors, which had never been entirely released from their prisoner, thus again pinning the Fenachrone helplessly against the wall. "Just to be sure you don't try to start something," he explained coldly. "You have done well so far, but I'll run things myself from now on, so that you can't steer us into a trap. Now tell me exactly how to go about getting one of your vessels. After we get it, I'll see about letting you go." "Fools, you are too late! You would have been too late, even had you killed me out there in space and had fled at your utmost acceleration. Did you but know it, you are as dead, even now--our patrol is upon you!" DuQuesne whirled, snarling, and his automatic and that of Loring were leaping out when an awful acceleration threw them flat upon the floor, a magnetic force snatched away their weapons, and a heat-ray reduced them to two small piles of gray ash. Immediately thereafter a beam of force from the patrolling cruiser neutralized the retractors bearing upon the captive, and he was transferred to the rescuing vessel. The emergency report ended, and with a brief "Torpedo message from flagship Y427W resumed at point of interruption," the report from the ill-fated vessel continued the story of its own destruction, but added little in the already complete knowledge of the disaster. Fenor of the Fenachrone leaped up from the table, his terrible, flame-shot eyes glaring venomously--teetering in Berserk rage upon his block-like legs--but he did not for one second take his full attention from the report until it had been completed. Then he seized the nearest object, which happened to be his chair, and with all his enormous strength hurled it across the floor, where it lay, a tattered, twisted, shapeless mass of metal. "Thus shall we treat the entire race of the accursed beings who have done this!" he stormed, his heavy voice reverberating throughout the room. "Torture, dismemberment and annihilation to every...." "Fenor of the Fenachrone!" a tremendous voice, a full octave lower than Fenor's own terrific bass, and of ear-shattering volume and timbre in that dense atmosphere boomed from the general-wave speaker, its deafening roar drowning out Fenor's raging voice and every other lesser sound. "Fenor of the Fenachrone! I know that you hear, for every general-wave speaker upon your reeking planet is voicing my words. Listen well, for this warning shall not be repeated. I am speaking by and with the authority of the Overlord of the Green System, which you know as the Central System of this, our Galaxy. Upon some of our many planets there are those who wished to destroy you without warning and out of hand, but the Overlord has ruled that you may continue to live provided you heed these, his commands, which he has instructed me to lay upon you. "You must forthwith abandon forever your vainglorious and senseless scheme of universal conquest. You must immediately withdraw your every vessel to within the boundaries of your solar system, and you must keep them there henceforth. "You are allowed five minutes to decide whether or not you will obey these commands. If no answer has been received at the end of the calculated time the Overlord will know that you have defied him, and your entire race shall perish utterly. Well he knows that your very existence is an affront to all real civilization, but he holds that even such vileness incarnate, as are the Fenachrone, may perchance have some obscure place in the Great Scheme of Things, and he will not destroy you if you are content to remain in your proper place, upon your own dank and steaming world. Through me, the two thousand three hundred and forty-sixth Sacner Carfon of Dasor, the Overlord has given you your first, last and only warning. Heed its every word, or consider it the formal declaration of a war of utter and complete extinction!" * * * * * The awful voice ceased and pandemonium reigned in the council hall. Obeying a common impulse, each Fenachrone leaped to his feet, raised his huge arms aloft, and roared out rage and defiance. Fenor snapped a command, and the others fell silent as he began howling out orders. "Operator! Send recall torpedoes instantly to every outlying vessel!" He scuttled over to one of the private-band speakers. "X-794-PW! Radio general call for all vessels above E blank E to concentrate on battle stations! Throw out full-power defensive screens, and send the full series of detector screens out to the limit! Guards and patrols on invasion plan XB-218!" "The immediate steps are taken, gentlemen!" He turned to the Council, his rage unabated. "Never before have we supermen of the Fenachrone been so insulted and so belittled! That upstart Overlord will regret that warning to the instant of his death, which shall be exquisitely postponed. All you of the Council know your duties in such a time as this--you are excused to perform them. General Fenimol, you will stay with me--we shall consider together such other details as require attention." After the others had left the room Fenor turned to the general. "Have you any immediate suggestions?" "I would suggest sending at once for Ravindau, the Chief of the Laboratories of Science. He certainly heard the warning, and may be able to cast some light upon how it could have been sent, and from what point it came." The Emperor spoke into another sender, and soon the scientist entered, carrying in his hand a small instrument upon which a blue light blazed. "Do not talk here, there is grave danger of being overheard by that self-styled Overlord," he directed tersely, and led the way into a ray-proof compartment of his private laboratory, several floors below. "It may interest you to know that you have sealed the doom of our planet and of all the Fenachrone upon it," Ravindau spoke savagely. "Dare you speak thus to me, your sovereign?" roared Fenor. "I dare so," replied the other, coldly. "When all the civilization of a planet has been given to destruction by the unreasoning stupidity and insatiable rapacity of its royalty, allegiance to such royalty is at an end. SIT DOWN!" he thundered as Fenor sprang to his feet. "You are no longer in your throne-room, surrounded by servile guards and by automatic rays. You are in MY laboratory, and by a movement of my finger I can hurl you into eternity!" The general, aware now that the warning was of much more serious import than he had suspected, broke into the acrimonious debate. "Never mind questions of royalty!" he snapped. "The safety of the race is paramount. Am I to understand that the situation is really grave?" "It is worse than grave--it is desperate. The only hope for even ultimate triumph is for as many of us as possible to flee instantly clear out of the Galaxy, in the hope that we may escape the certain destruction to be dealt out to us by the Overlord of the Green System." "You speak folly, surely," returned Fenimol. "Our science is--must be--superior to any other in the Universe?" "So thought I until this warning came in and I had an opportunity to study it. Then I knew that we are opposed by a science immeasurably higher than our own." "Such vermin as those two whom one of our smallest scouts captured without a battle, vessel and all? In what respects is their science even comparable to ours?" "Not those vermin, no. The one who calls himself the Overlord. That one is our master. He can penetrate the impenetrable shield of force and can operate mechanisms of pure force behind it; he can heterodyne, transmit, and use the infra-rays, of whose very existence we were in doubt until recently! While that warning was being delivered he was, in all probability, watching you and listening to you, face to face. You in your ignorance supposed his warning borne by the ether, and thought therefore he must be close to this system. He is very probably at home in the Central System, and is at this moment preparing the forces he intends to hurl against us." The Emperor fell back into his seat, all his pomposity gone, but the general stiffened eagerly and went straight to the point. "How do you know these things?" "Largely by deduction. We of the school of science have cautioned you repeatedly to postpone the Day of Conquest until we should have mastered the secrets of sub-rays and of infra-rays. Unheeding, you of war have gone ahead with your plans, while we of science have continued to study. We know a little of the sub-rays, which we use every day, and practically nothing of the infra-rays. Some time ago I developed a detector for infra-rays, which come to us from outer space in small quantities and which are also liberated by our power-plants. It has been regarded as a scientific curiosity only, but this day it proved of real value. This instrument in my hand is such a detector. At normal impacts of infra-rays its light is blue, as you see it now. Some time before the warning sounded it turned a brilliant red, indicating that an intense source of infra-rays was operating in the neighborhood. By plotting lines of force I located the source as being in the air of the council hall, almost directly above the table of state. Therefore the carrier wave must have come through our whole system of screens without so much as giving an alarm. That fact alone proves it to have been an infra-ray. Furthermore, it carried through those screens and released in the council room a system of forces of great complexity, as is shown by their ability to broadcast from those pure forces without material aid a modulated wave in the exact frequency required to energize our general speakers. "As soon as I perceived these facts I threw about the council room a screen of force entirely impervious to anything longer than ultra-rays. The warning continued, and I then knew that our fears were only too well grounded--that there is in this Galaxy somewhere a race vastly superior to ours in science and that our destruction is a matter of hours, perhaps of minutes." "Are these ultra-rays, then, of such a dangerous character?" asked the general. "I had supposed them to be of such infinitely high frequency that they could be of no practical use whatever." * * * * * "I have been trying for years to learn something of their nature, but beyond working out a method for their detection and a method of possible analysis that may or may not succeed I can do nothing with them. It is perfectly evident, however, that they lie below the level of the ether, and therefore have a velocity of propagation infinitely greater than that of light. You may see for yourself, then, that to a science able to guide and control them, to make them act as carrier waves for any other desired frequency--to do all of which the Overlord has this day shown himself capable--they should theoretically afford weapons before which our every defense would be precisely as efficacious as so much vacuum. Think a moment! You know that we know nothing fundamental concerning even our servants, the sub-rays. If we really knew them we could utilize them in thousands of ways as yet unknown to us. We work with the merest handful of forces, empirically, while it is practically certain that the enemy has at his command the entire spectrum, visible and invisible, embracing untold thousands of bands of unknown but terrific potentiality." "But he spoke of a calculated time necessary before our answer could be received. They must, then, be using vibrations in the ether." "Not necessarily--not even probably. Would we ourselves reveal unnecessarily to an enemy the possession of such rays? Do not be childish. No, Fenimol, and you, Fenor of the Fenachrone, instant and headlong flight is our only hope of present salvation and of ultimate triumph--flight to a far distant Galaxy, since upon no point in this one shall we be safe from the infra-beams of that self-styled Overlord." "You snivelling coward! You pusillanimous bookworm!" Fenor had regained his customary spirit as the scientist explained upon what grounds his fears were based. "Upon such a tenuous fabric of evidence would you have such a people as ours turn tail like beaten hounds? Because, forsooth, you detect a peculiar vibration in the air, will you have it that we are to be invaded and destroyed forthwith by a race of supernatural ability? Bah! Your calamity-howling clan has delayed the Day of Conquest from year to year--I more than half believe that you yourself or some other treacherous poltroon of your ignominious breed prepared and sent that warning, in a weak and rat-brained attempt to frighten us into again postponing the Day of Conquest! Know now, spineless weakling, that the time is ripe, and that the Fenachrone in their might are about to strike. But you, foul traducer of your emperor, shall die the death of the cur you are!" The hand within his tunic moved and a vibrator burst into operation. "Coward I may be, and pusillanimous, and other things as well," the scientist replied stonily, "but, unlike you, I am not a fool. These walls, this very atmosphere, are fields of force that will transmit no rays directed by you. You weak-minded scion of a depraved and obscene house--arrogant, overbearing, rapacious, ignorant--your brain is too feeble to realize that you are clutching at the Universe hundreds of years before the time has come. You by your overweening pride and folly have doomed our beloved planet--the most perfect planet in the Galaxy in its grateful warmth and wonderful dampness and fogginess--and our entire race to certain destruction. Therefore you, fool and dolt that you are, shall die--for too long already have you ruled." He flicked a finger and the body of the monarch shuddered as though an intolerable current of electricity had traversed it, collapsed and lay still. "It was necessary to destroy this that was our ruler," Ravindau explained to the general. "I have long known that you are not in favor of such precipitate action in the Conquest: hence all this talking upon my part. You know that I hold the honor of Fenachrone dear, and that all my plans are for the ultimate triumph of our race?" "Yes, and I begin to suspect that those plans have not been made since the warning was received." "My plans have been made for many years; and ever since an immediate Conquest was decided upon I have been assembling and organizing the means to put them into effect. I would have left this planet in any event shortly after the departure of the grand fleet upon its final expedition--Fenor's senseless defiance of the Overlord has only made it necessary for me to expedite my leave-taking." "What do you intend to do?" "I have a vessel twice as large as the largest warship Fenor boasted; completely provisioned, armed, and powered for a cruise of one hundred years at high acceleration. It is hidden in a remote fastness of the jungle. I am placing in that vessel a group of the finest, brainiest, most highly advanced and intelligent of our men and women, with their children. We shall journey at our highest speed to a certain distant Galaxy, where we shall seek out a planet similar in atmosphere, temperature, and mass to the one upon which we now dwell. There we shall multiply and continue our studies; and from that planet, in that day when we shall have attained sufficient knowledge, there shall descend upon the Central System of this Galaxy the vengeance of the Fenachrone. That vengeance will be all the sweeter for the fact that it shall have been delayed." "But how about libraries, apparatus and equipment? Suppose that we do not live long enough to perfect that knowledge? And with only one vessel and a handful of men we could not cope with that accursed Overlord and his navies of the void." "Libraries are aboard, so are much apparatus and equipment. What we cannot take with us we can build. As for the knowledge I mentioned, it may not be attained in your lifetime nor in mine. But the racial memory of the Fenachrone is long, as you know; and even if the necessary problems are not solved until our descendants are sufficiently numerous to populate an entire planet, yet will those descendants wreak the vengeance of the Fenachrone upon the races of that hated one, the Overlord, before they go on with the Conquest of the Universe. Many questions will arise, of course; but they shall be solved. Enough! Time passes rapidly, and all too long have I talked. I am using this time upon you because in my organization there is no soldier, and the Fenachrone of the future will need your great knowledge of warfare. Are you going with us?" "Yes." "Very well." Ravindau led the general through a door and into an airboat lying upon the terrace outside the laboratory. "Drive us at speed to your home, where we shall pick up your family." Fenimol took the controls and laid a ray to his home--a ray serving a double purpose. It held the vessel upon its predetermined course through that thick and sticky fog and also rendered collision impossible, since any two of these controller rays repelled each other to such a degree that no two vessels could take paths which would bring them together. Some such provision had been found necessary ages ago, for all Fenachrone craft were provided with the same space-annihilating drive, to which any comprehensible distance was but a journey of a few moments, and at that frightful velocity collision meant annihilation. "I understand that you could not take any one of the military into your confidence until you were ready to put your plans into effect," the general conceded. "How long will it take you to get ready to leave? You have said that haste is imperative, and I therefore assume that you have already warned the other members of the expedition." "I flashed the emergency signal before I joined you and Fenor in the council room. Each man of the organization has received that signal, wherever he may have been, and by this time most of them, with their families, are on the way to the hidden cruiser. We shall leave this planet in fifteen minutes from now at most--I dare not stay an instant longer than is absolutely necessary." The members of the general's family were bundled, amazed, into the airboat, which immediately flew along a ray laid by Ravindau to the secret rendezvous. In a remote and desolate part of the planet, concealed in the depths of the towering jungle growth, a mammoth space-cruiser was receiving her complement of passengers. Airboats, flying at their terrific velocity through the heavy, steaming fog as closely-spaced as their controller rays would permit, flashed signals along their guiding beams, dove into the apparently impenetrable jungle, and added their passengers to the throng pouring into the great vessel. * * * * * As the minute of departure drew near, the feeling of tension aboard the cruiser increased and vigilance was raised to the maximum. None of the passengers had been allowed senders of any description, and now even the hair-line beams guiding the airboats were cut off, and received only when the proper code signal was heard. The doors were shut, no one was allowed outside, and everything was held in readiness for instant flight at the least alarm. Finally a scientist and his family arrived from the opposite side of the planet--the last members of the organization--and, twenty-seven minutes after Ravindau had flashed his signal, the prow of that mighty space-ship reared toward the perpendicular, poising its massive length at the predetermined angle. There it halted momentarily, then disappeared utterly, only a vast column of tortured and shattered vegetation, torn from the ground and carried for miles upward into the air by the vacuum of its wake, remaining to indicate the path taken by the flying projectile. Hour after hour the Fenachrone vessel bored on, with its frightful and ever-increasing velocity, through the ever-thinning stars, but it was not until the last star had been passed, until everything before them was entirely devoid of light, and until the Galaxy behind them began to take on a well-defined lenticular aspect, that Ravindau would consent to leave the controls and to seek his hard-earned rest. Day after day and week after week went by, and the Fenachrone vessel still held the rate of motion with which she had started out. Ravindau and Fenimol sat in the control cabin, staring out through the visiplates, abstracted. There was no need of staring, and they were not really looking, for there was nothing at which to look. Outside the transparent metal hull of that monster of the trackless void, there was nothing visible. The Galaxy of which our Earth is an infinitesimal mote, the Galaxy which former astronomers considered the Universe, was so far behind that its immeasurable diameter was too small to affect the vision of the unaided eye. Other Galaxies lay at even greater distances away on either side. The Galaxy toward which they were making their stupendous flight was as yet untold millions of light-years distant. Nothing was visible--before their gaze stretched an infinity of emptiness. No stars, no nebulæ, no meteoric matter, nor even the smallest particle of cosmic dust--absolutely empty space. Absolute vacuum and absolute zero. Absolute nothingness--a concept intrinsically impossible for the most highly trained human mind to grasp. Conscienceless and heartless monstrosities though they both were, by heredity and training, the immensity of the appalling lack of anything tangible oppressed them. Ravindau was stern and serious, Fenimol moody. Finally the latter spoke. "It would be endurable if we knew what had happened, or if we ever could know definitely, one way or the other, whether all this was necessary." "We shall know, general, definitely. I am certain in my own mind, but after a time, when we have settled upon our new home and when the Overlord shall have relaxed his vigilance, you shall come back to the solar system of the Fenachrone in this vessel or a similar one. I know what you shall find--but the trip shall be made, and you shall yourself see what was once our home planet, a seething sun, second only in brilliance to the parent sun about which she shall still be revolving." "Are we safe, even now--what of possible pursuit?" asked Fenimol, and the monstrous, flame-shot wells of black that were Ravindau's eyes almost emitted tangible fires as he made reply: "We are far from safe, but we grow stronger minute by minute. Fifty of the greatest minds our world has ever known have been working from the moment of our departure upon a line of investigation suggested to me by certain things my instruments recorded during the visit of the self-styled Overlord. I cannot say anything yet: even to you--except that the Day of Conquest may not be so far in the future as we have supposed." CHAPTER XIV Interstellar Extermination "I hate to leave this meeting--it's great stuff" remarked Seaton as he flashed down to the torpedo room at Fenor's command to send recall messages to all outlying vessels, "but this machine isn't designed to let me be in more than two places at once. Wish it were--maybe after this fracas is over we'll be able to incorporate something like that into it." The chief operator touched a lever and the chair upon which he sat, with all its control panels, slid rapidly across the floor toward an apparently blank wall. As he reached it, a port opened a metal scroll appeared, containing the numbers and last reported positions of all Fenachrone vessels outside the detector zone, and a vast magazine of torpedoes came up through the floor, with an automatic loader to place a torpedo under the operator's hand the instant its predecessor had been launched. "Get Peg here quick, Mart--we need a stenographer. Till she gets here, see what you can do in getting those first numbers before they roll off the end of the scroll. No, hold it--as you were! I've got controls enough to put the whole thing on a recorder, so we can study it at our leisure." Haste was indeed necessary for the operator worked with uncanny quickness of hand. One fleeting glance at the scroll, a lightning adjustment of dials in the torpedo, a touch upon a tiny button, and a messenger was upon its way. But quick as he was, Seaton's flying fingers kept up with him, and before each torpedo disappeared through the ether gate there was fastened upon it a fifth-order tracer ray that would never leave it until the force had been disconnected at the gigantic control board of the Norlaminian projector. One flying minute passed during which seventy torpedoes had been launched, before Seaton spoke. "Wonder how many ships they've got out, anyway? Didn't get any idea from the brain-record. Anyway, Rovol, it might be a sound idea for you to install me some more tracer rays on this board, I've got only a couple of hundred, and that may not be enough--and I've got both hands full." Rovol seated himself beside the younger man, like one organist joining another at the console of a tremendous organ. Seaton's nimble fingers would flash here and there, depressing keys and manipulating controls until he had exactly the required combination of forces centered upon the torpedo next to issue. He then would press a tiny switch and upon a panel full of red-topped, numbered plungers; the one next in series would drive home, transferring to itself the assembled beam and releasing the keys for the assembly of other forces. Rovol's fingers were also flying, but the forces he directed were seizing and shaping material, as well as other forces. The Norlaminian physicist, set up one integral, stepped upon a pedal, and a new red-topped stop precisely like the others and numbered in order, appeared as though by magic upon the panel at Seaton's left hand. Rovol then leaned back in his seat--but the red-topped stops continued to appear, at the rate of exactly seventy per minute, upon the panel, which increased in width sufficiently to accommodate another row as soon as a row was completed. Rovol bent a quizzical glance upon the younger scientist, who blushed a fiery red, rapidly set up another integral, then also leaned back in his place, while his face burned deeper than before. "That is better, son. Never forget that it is a waste of energy to do the same thing twice with your hands and that if you know precisely what is to be done, you need not do it with your hands at all. Forces are tireless, and they neither slip nor make mistakes." "Thanks, Rovol--I'll bet this lesson will make it stick in my mind, too." "You are not thoroughly accustomed to using all your knowledge as yet. That will come with practice, however, and in a few weeks you will be as thoroughly at home with forces as I am." "Hope so, Chief, but it looks like a tall order to me." Finally the last torpedo was dispatched, the tube closed, and Seaton moved the projection back up into the council chamber, finding it empty. "Well, the conference is over--besides, we've got more important fish to fry. War has been declared, on both sides, and we've got to get busy. They've got nine hundred and six vessels out, and every one of them has got to go to Davy Jones' locker before we can sleep sound of nights. My first job'll have to be untangling those nine oh six forces, getting lines on each one of them, and seeing if I can project straight enough to find the ships before the torpedoes overtake them. Mart, you and Orlon, the astronomer, had better dope out the last reported positions of each of those vessels, so we'll know about where to hunt for them. Rovol, you might send out a detector screen a few light years in diameter, to be sure none of them slips a fast one over on us. By starting it right here and expanding it gradually, you can be sure that no Fenachrone is inside it. Then we'll find a hunk of copper on that planet somewhere, plate it with some of their own 'X' metal, and blow them into Kingdom Come." "May I venture a suggestion?" asked Drasnik, the First of Psychology. "Absolutely--nothing you've said so far has been idle chatter." "You know, of course, that there are real scientists among the Fenachrone; and you yourself have suggested that while they cannot penetrate the zone of force nor use fifth-order rays, yet they might know about them in theory, might even be able to know when they were being used--detect them, in other words. Let us assume that such a scientist did detect your rays while you were there a short time ago. What would he do?" "Search me.... I bite, what would he do?" "He might do any one of several things, but if I read their nature aright, such a one would gather up a few men and women--as many as he could--and migrate to another planet. For he would of course grasp instantly the fact that you had used fifth-order rays as carrier waves, and would be able to deduce your ability to destroy. He would also realize that in the brief time allowed him, he could not hope to learn to control those unknown forces; and with his terribly savage and vengeful nature and intense pride of race, he would take every possible step both to perpetuate his race and to obtain revenge. Am I right?" * * * * * Seaton swung to his controls savagely, and manipulated dials and keys rapidly. "Right as rain, Drasnik. There--I've thrown around them a fifth-order detector screen, that they can't possibly neutralize. Anything that goes out through it will have a tracer slapped onto it. But say, it's been half an hour since war was declared--suppose we're too late? Maybe some of them have got away already, and if one couple of 'em has beat us to it, we'll have the whole thing to do over again a thousand years or so from now. You've got the massive intellect, Drasnik. What can we do about it? We can't throw a detector screen all over the Galaxy." "I would suggest that since you have now guarded against further exodus, it is necessary to destroy the planet for a time. Rovol and his co-workers have the other projector nearly done. Let them project me to the world of the Fenachrone, where I shall conduct a thorough mental investigation. By the time you have taken care of the raiding vessels, I believe that I shall have been able to learn everything we need to know." "Fine--hop to it, and may there be lots of bubbles in your think-tank. Anybody else know of any other loop-holes I've left open?" No other suggestions were made, and each man bent to his particular task. Crane at the star-chart of the Galaxy and Orlon at the Fenachrone operator's dispatching scroll rapidly worked out the approximate positions of the Fenachrone vessels, and marked them with tiny green lights in a vast model of the Galaxy which they had already caused forces to erect in the air of the projector's base. It was soon learned that a few of the ships were exploring quite close to their home system; so close that the torpedoes, with their unthinkable acceleration, would reach them within a few hours. Ascertaining the stop-number of the tracer ray upon the torpedo which should first reach its destination, Seaton followed it from the stop upon his panel out to the flying messenger. Now moving with a velocity many times that of light, it was, of course, invisible to direct vision; but to the light waves heterodyned upon the fifth-order projector rays, it was as plainly visible as though it were stationary. Lining up the path of the projectile accurately, he then projected himself forward in that exact line, with a flat detector-screen thrown out for half a light year upon each side of him. Setting the controls, he flashed ahead, the detector stopping him the instant that the invisible barrier encountered the power-plant of the exploring raider. An oscillator sounded a shrill and rising note, and Seaton slowly shifted his controls until he stood in the control room of the enemy vessel. The Fenachrone ship, a thousand feet long and more than a hundred feet in diameter, was tearing through space toward a brilliant blue-white star. Her crew were at battle stations, her navigating officers peering intently into the operating visiplates, all oblivious to the fact that a stranger stood in their very midst. "Well, here's the first one, gang," said Seaton, "I hate like sin to do this--it's altogether too much like pushing baby chickens into a creek to suit me, but it's a dirty job that's got to be done." As one man, Orlon and the other remaining Norlaminians leaped out of the projector and floated to the ground below. "I expected that," remarked Seaton. "They can't even think of a thing like this without getting the blue willies--I don't blame them much, at that. How about you, Carfon? You can be excused if you like." "I want to watch those forces at work. I do not enjoy destruction, but like you, I can make myself endure it." Dunark, the fierce and bloodthirsty Osnomian prince, leaped to his feet, his eyes flashing. "That's one thing I never could get about you, Dick!" he exclaimed in English. "How a man with your brains can be so soft--so sloppily sentimental, gets clear past me. You remind me of a bowl of mush--you wade around in slush clear to your ears. Faugh! It's their lives or ours! Tell me what button to push and I'll be only too glad to push it. I wanted to blow up Urvania and you wouldn't let me; I haven't killed an enemy for ages, and that's my trade. Cut out the sob-sister act and for Cat's sake, let's get busy!" "'At-a-boy, Dunark! That's tellin' 'im! But it's all right with me--I'll be glad to let you do it. When I say 'shoot' throw in that plunger there--number sixty-three." Seaton manipulated controls until two electrodes of force were clamped in place, one at either end of the huge power-bar of the enemy vessel; adjusted rheostats and forces to send a disintegrating current through that massive copper cylinder, and gave the word. Dunark threw in the switch with a vicious thrust, as though it were an actual sword which he was thrusting through the vitals of one of the awesome crew, and the very Universe exploded around them--exploded into one mad, searing coruscation of blinding, dazzling light as the gigantic cylinder of copper resolved itself instantaneously into the pure energy from which its metal originally had come into being. Seaton and Dunark staggered back from the visiplates, blinded by the intolerable glare of light, and even Crane, working at his model of the galaxy, blinked at the intensity of the radiation. Many minutes passed before the two men could see through their tortured eyes. "Zowie! That was fierce!" exclaimed Seaton, when a slowly-returning perception of things other than dizzy spirals and balls of flame assured him that his eyesight was not permanently gone. "It's nothing but my own fool carelessness, too. I should have known that with all the light frequencies in heterodyne for visibility, enough of that same stuff would leak through to make strong medicine on these visiplates--for I knew that that bar weighed a hundred tons and would liberate energy enough to volatilize our Earth and blow the by-products clear to Arcturus. How're you coming, Dunark? See anything yet?" "Coming along O. K. now, I guess--but I thought for a few minutes I'd been bloody well jobbed." "I'll do better next time. I'll cut out the visible spectrum before the flash, and convert and reconvert the infra-red. That'll let us see what happens, without the direct effect of the glare--won't burn our eyes out. What's my force number on the next nearest one, Mart?" "Twenty-nine." * * * * * Seaton fastened a detector ray upon stop twenty-nine of the tracer-ray panel and followed its beam of force out to the torpedo hastening upon its way toward the next doomed cruiser. Flashing ahead in its line as he had done before, he located the vessel and clamped the electrodes of force upon the prodigious driving bar. Again, as Dunark drove home the detonating switch, there was a frightful explosion and a wild glare of frenzied incandescence far out in that desolate region of interstellar space; but this time the eyes behind the visiplates were not torn by the high frequencies, everything that happened was plainly visible. One instant, there was an immense space-cruiser boring on through the void upon its horrid mission, with its full complement of the hellish Fenachrone performing their routine tasks. The next instant there was a flash of light extending for thousands upon untold thousands of miles in every direction. That flare of light vanished as rapidly as it had appeared--instantaneously--and throughout the entire neighborhood of the place where the Fenachrone cruiser had been, there was nothing. Not a plate nor a girder, not a fragment, not the most minute particle nor droplet of disrupted metal nor of condensed vapor. So terrific, so incredibly and incomprehensibly vast were the forces liberated by that mass of copper in its instantaneous decomposition, that every atom of substance in that great vessel had gone with the power-bar--had been resolved into radiations which would at some distant time and in some far-off solitude unite with other radiations, again to form matter, and thus obey Nature's immutable cyclic law. Thus vessel after vessel was destroyed of that haughty fleet which until now had never suffered a reverse and a little green light in the galactic model winked out and flashed back in rosy pink as each menace was removed. In a few hours the space surrounding the system of the Fenachrone was clear; then progress slackened as it became harder and harder to locate each vessel as the distance between it and its torpedo increased. Time after time Seaton would stab forward with his detector screen extended to its utmost possible spread, upon the most carefully plotted prolongation of the line of the torpedo's flight, only to have the projection flash far beyond the vessel's furthest possible position without a reaction from the far-flung screen. Then he would go back to the torpedo, make a minute alteration in his line, and again flash forward, only to miss it again. Finally, after thirty fruitless attempts to bring his detector screen into contact with the nearest Fenachrone ship, he gave up the attempt, rammed his battered, reeking briar full of the rank blend that was his favorite smoke, and strode up and down the floor of the projector base--his eyes unseeing, his hands jammed deep into his pockets, his jaw thrust forward, clamped upon the stem of his pipe, emitting dense, blue clouds of strangling vapor. "The maestro is thinking, I perceive," remarked Dorothy, sweetly, entering the projector from an airboat. "You must all be blind, I guess--you no hear the bell blow, what? I've come after you--it's time to eat!" "'At-a-girl, Dot--never miss the eats! Thanks," and Seaton put his problem away, with perceptible effort. "This is going to be a job, Mart," he went back to it as soon as they were seated in the airboat, flying toward "home." "I can nail them, with an increasing shift in azimuth, up to about thirty thousand light-years, but after that it gets awfully hard to get the right shift, and up around a hundred thousand it seems to be darn near impossible--gets to be pure guesswork. It can't be the controls, because they can hold a point rigidly at five hundred thousand. Of course, we've got a pretty short back-line to sight on, but the shift is more than a hundred times as great as the possible error in backsight could account for, and there's apparently nothing either regular or systematic about it that I can figure out. But.... I don't know.... Space is curved in the fourth dimension, of course.... I wonder if ... hm--m--m." He fell silent and Crane made a rapid signal to Dorothy, who was opening her mouth to say something. She shut it, feeling ridiculous, and nothing was said until they had disembarked at their destination. "Did you solve the puzzle, Dickie?" "Don't think so--got myself in deeper than ever, I'm afraid," he answered, then went on, thinking aloud rather than addressing any one in particular: "Space is curved in the fourth dimension, and fifth-order rays, with their velocity, may not follow the same path in that dimension that light does--in fact, they do not. If that path is to be plotted it requires the solution of five simultaneous equations, each complete and general, and each of the fifth degree, and also an exponential series with the unknown in the final exponent, before the fourth-dimensional concept can be derived ... hm--m--m. No use--we've struck something that not even Norlaminian theory can handle." "You surprise me." Crane said. "I supposed that they had everything worked out." "Not on fifth-order stuff--it's new, you know. It begins to look as though we'd have to stick around until every one of those torpedoes gets somewhere near its mother-ship. Hate to do it, too--it'll take six months, at least, to reach the vessels clear across the Galaxy. I'll put it up to the gang at dinner--guess they'll let me talk business a couple of minutes overtime, especially after they find out what I've got to say." He explained the phenomenon to an interested group of white-bearded scientists as they ate. Rovol, to Seaton's surprise, was elated and enthusiastic. "Wonderful, my boy!" he breathed. "Marvelous! A perfect subject for years after year of deepest study and the most profound thought. Perfect!" "But what can we _do_ about it?" asked Seaton, exasperated. "We don't want to hang around here twiddling our thumbs for a year waiting for those torpedoes to get to wherever they're going!" "We can do nothing but wait and study. That problem is one of splendid difficulty, as you yourself realize. Its solution may well be a matter of lifetimes instead of years. But what is a year, more or less? You can destroy the Fenachrone eventually, so be content." "But content is just exactly what I'm _not_!" declared Seaton, emphatically. "I want to do it, and do it _now_!" "Perhaps I might volunteer a suggestion," said Caslor, diffidently; and as both Rovol and Seaton looked at him in surprise he went on: "Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean concerning the mathematical problem in discussion, about which I am entirely ignorant. But has it occurred to you that those torpedoes are not intelligent entities, acting upon their own volition and steering themselves as a result of their own ordered mental processes? No, they are mechanisms, in my own province, and I venture to say with the utmost confidence that they are guided to their destinations by streamers of force of some nature, emanating from the vessels upon whose tracks they are." "'Nobody Holme' is right!" exclaimed Seaton, tapping his temple with an admonitory forefinger. "'Sright, ace--I thought maybe I'd quit using my head for nothing but a hatrack now, but I guess that's all it's good for, yet. Thanks a lot for the idea--that gives me something I can get my teeth into, and now that Rovol's got a problem to work on for the next century or so, everybody's happy." "How does that help matters?" asked Crane in wonder. "Of course it is not surprising that no lines of force were visible, but I thought that your detectors screens would have found them if any such guiding beams had been present." "The ordinary bands, if of sufficient power, yes. But there are many possible tracer rays not reactive to a screen such as I was using. It was very light and weak, designed for terrific velocity and for instantaneous automatic arrest when in contact with the enormous forces of a power bar. It wouldn't react at all to the minute energy of the kind of beams they'd be most likely to use for that work. Caslor's certainly right. They're steering their torpedoes with tracer rays of almost infinitesimal power, amplified in the torpedoes themselves--that's the way I'd do it myself. It may take a little while to rig up the apparatus, but we'll get it--and then we'll run those birds ragged--so fast that their ankles'll catch fire--and won't need the fourth-dimensional correction after all." * * * * * When the bell announced the beginning of the following period of labor, Seaton and his co-workers were in the Area of Experiment waiting, and the work was soon under way. "How are you going about this, Dick?" asked Crane. "Going to examine the nose of one of those torpedoes first, and see what it actually works on. Then build me a tracer detector that'll pick it up at high velocity. Beats the band, doesn't it, that neither Rovol nor I, who should have thought of it first, ever did see anything as plain as that? That those things are following a ray?" "That is easily explained, and is no more than natural. Both of you were not only devoting all your thoughts to the curvature of space, but were also too close to the problem--like the man in the woods, who cannot see the forest because of the trees." "Yeah, may be something in that, too. Plain enough, when Caslor showed it to us," said Seaton. While he was talking, Seaton had projected himself into the torpedo he had lined up so many times the previous day. With the automatic motions set to hold him stationary in the tiny instrument compartment of the craft, now traveling at a velocity many times that of light, he set to work. A glance located the detector mechanism, a set of short-wave coils and amplifiers, and a brief study made plain to him the principles underlying the directional loop finders and the controls which guided the flying shell along the path of the tracer ray. He then built a detector structure of pure force immediately in front of the torpedo, and varied the frequency of his own apparatus until a meter upon one of the panels before his eyes informed him that his detector was in perfect resonance with the frequency of the tracer ray. He then moved ahead of the torpedo, along the guiding ray. "Guiding it, eh?" Dunark congratulated him. "Kinda. My directors out there aren't quite so hot, though. I'm a trifle shy on control somewhere, so much so that if I put on anywhere near full velocity, I lose the ray. Think I can clear that up with a little experimenting, though." He fingered controls lightly, depressed a few more keys, and set one vernier, already at a ratio of a million to one, down to ten million. He then stepped up his velocity, and found that the guides worked well up to a speed much greater than any ever reached by Fenachrone vessels or torpedoes, but failed utterly to hold the ray at anything approaching the full velocity possible to his fifth-order projector. After hours and days of work and study--in the course of which hundreds of the Fenachrone vessels were destroyed--after employing all the resources of his mind, now stored with the knowledge of rays accumulated by hundreds of generations of highly-trained research specialists in rays, he became convinced that it was an inherent impossibility to trace any ether wave with the velocity he desired. "Can't be done, I guess, Mart," he confessed, ruefully. "You see, it works fine up to a certain point; but beyond that, nothing doing. I've just found out why--and in so doing, I think I've made a contribution to science. At velocities well below that of light, light-waves are shifted a minute amount, you know. At the velocity of light, and up to a velocity not even approached by the Fenachrone vessels on their longest trips, the distortion is still not serious--no matter how fast we want to travel in the _Skylark_, I think I can guarantee that we will still be able to see things. That is to be expected from the generally-accepted idea that the apparent velocity of any ether vibration is independent of the velocity of either source or receiver. However, that relationship fails at velocities far below that of fifth-order rays. At only a very small fraction of that speed the tracers I am following are so badly distorted that they disappear altogether, and I have to distort them backwards. That wouldn't be too bad, but when I get up to about one per cent of the velocity I want to use, I can't calculate a force that will operate to distort them back into recognizable wave-forms. That's another problem for Rovol to chew on, for another hundred years." "That will, of course, slow up the work of clearing the Galaxy of the Fenachrone, but at the same time I see nothing about which to be alarmed," Crane replied. "You are working very much faster than you could have done by waiting for the torpedoes to arrive. The present condition is very satisfactory, I should say," and he waved his hand at the galactic model, in nearly three-fourths of whose volume the green lights had been replaced by pink ones. "Yeah, pretty fair as far as that goes--we'll clean up in ten days or so--but I hate to be licked. Well, I might as well quit sobbing and get busy!" In due time the nine hundred and sixth Fenachrone vessel was checked off on the model, and the two Terrestrials went in search of Drasnik, whom they found in his study, summing up and analyzing a mass of data, facts, and ideas which were being projected in the air around him. "Well, our first job's done," Seaton stated. "What do you know that you feel like passing around?" "My investigation is practically complete," replied the First of Psychology, gravely. "I have explored many Fenachrone minds, and without exception I have found them chambers of horror of a kind unimaginable to one of us. However, you are not interested in their psychology, but in facts bearing upon your problem. While such facts were scarce, I did discover a few interesting items. I spied upon them in public and in their most private haunts. I analyzed them individually and collectively, and from the few known facts and from the great deal of guesswork and conjecture there available to me, I have formulated a theory. I shall first give you the known facts. Their scientists cannot direct nor control any ray not propagated through ether, but they can detect one such frequency or band of frequencies which they call 'infra-rays' and which are probably the fifth-order rays, since they lie in the first level below the ether. The detector proper is a type of lamp, which gives a blue light at the ordinary intensity of such rays as would come from space or from an ordinary power plant, but gives a red light under strong excitation." "Uh-huh, I get that O. K.," said Seaton. "Rovol's great-great-great-grandfather had 'em--I know all about 'em," Seaton encouraged Drasnik, who had paused, with a questioning glance. "I know exactly how and why such a detector works. We gave 'em an alarm, all right. Even though we were working on a tight beam from here to there, our secondary projector there was radiating enough to affect every such detector within a thousand miles." * * * * * Drasnik continued: "Another significant fact is that a great many persons--I learned of some five hundred, and there were probably many more--have disappeared without explanation and without leaving a trace; and it seems that they disappeared very shortly after our communication was delivered. One of these was Fenor, the Emperor. His family remain, however, and his son is not only ruling in his stead, but is carrying out his father's policies. The other disappearances are all alike and are peculiar in certain respects. First, every man who vanished belonged to the Party of Postponement--the minority party of the Fenachrone, who believe that the time for the Conquest has not yet come. Second, every one of them was a leader in thought in some field of usefulness, and every such field is represented by at least one disappearance--even the army, as General Fenimol, the Commander-in-Chief, and his whole family, are among the absentees. Third, and most remarkable, each such disappearance included an entire family, clear down to children and grand-children, however young. Another fact is that the Fenachrone Department of Navigation keeps a very close check upon all vessels, particularly vessels capable of navigating outer space. Every vessel built must be registered, and its location is always known from its individual tracer ray. No Fenachrone vessel is missing." "I also sifted a mass of gossip and conjecture, some of which may bear upon the subject. One belief is that all the persons were put to death by Fenor's secret service, and that the Emperor was assassinated in revenge. The most widespread belief, however, is that they have fled. Some hold that they are in hiding in some remote shelter in the jungle, arguing that the rigid registration of all vessels renders a journey of any great length impossible and that the detector screens would have given warning of any vessel leaving the planet. Others think that persons as powerful as Fenimol and Ravindau could have built any vessel they chose with neither the knowledge nor consent of the Department of Navigation, or that they could have stolen a Navy vessel, destroying its records; and that Ravindau certainly could have so neutralized the screens that they would have given no alarm. These believe that the absent ones have migrated to some other solar system or to some other planet of the same sun. One old general loudly gave it as his opinion that the cowardly traitors had probably fled clear out of the Galaxy, and that it would be a good thing to send the rest of the Party of Postponement after them. There, in brief, are the salient points of my investigation in so far as it concerns your immediate problem." "A good many straws pointing this way and that," commented Seaton. "However, we know that the 'postponers' are just as rabid on the idea of conquering the Universe as the others are--only they are a lot more cautious and won't take even a gambler's chance of a defeat. But you've formed a theory--what is it, Drasnik?" "From my analysis of these facts and conjectures, in conjunction with certain purely psychological indices which we need not take time to go into now, I am certain that they have left their solar system, probably in an immense vessel built a long time ago and held in readiness for just such an emergency. I am not certain of their destination, but it is my opinion that they have left this Galaxy, and are planning upon starting anew upon some suitable planet in some other Galaxy, from which, at some future date, the Conquest of the Universe shall proceed as it was originally planned." "Great balls of fire!" blurted Seaton. "They couldn't--not in a million years!" He thought a moment, then continued more slowly: "But they could--and, with their dispositions, they probably would. You're one hundred per cent. right, Drasnik. We've got a real job of hunting on our hands now. So-long, and thanks a lot." Back in the projector Seaton prowled about in brown abstraction, his villainous pipe poisoning the circumambient air, while Crane sat, quiet and self-possessed as always, waiting for the nimble brain of his friend to find a way over, around, or through the obstacle confronting them. "Got it, Mart!" Seaton yelled, darting to the board and setting up one integral after another. "If they did leave the planet in a ship, we'll be able to watch them go--and we'll see what they did, anyway, no matter what it was!" "How? They've been gone almost a month already," protested Crane. "We know within half an hour the exact time of their departure. We'll simply go out the distance light has traveled since that time, gather in the rays given off, amplify them a few billion times, and take a look at whatever went on." "But we have no idea of what region of the planet to study, or whether it was night or day at the point of departure when they left." "We'll get the council room, and trace events from there. Day or night makes no difference--we'll have to use infra-red anyway, because of the fog, and that's almost as good at night as in the daytime. There is no such thing as absolute darkness upon any planet, anyway, and we've got power enough to make anything visible that happened there, night or day. Mart, I've got power enough here to see and to photograph the actual construction of the pyramids of Egypt in that same way--and they were built thousands of years ago!" "Heavens, what astounding possibilities!" breathed Crane. "Why, you could...." "Yeah, I could do a lot of things," Seaton interrupted him rudely, "but right now we've got other fish to fry. I've just got the city we visited, at about the time we were there. General Fenimol, who disappeared, must be in the council room down here right now. I'll retard our projection, so that time will apparently pass more quickly, and we'll duck down there and see what actually did happen. I can heterodyne, combine, and recombine just as though we were watching the actual scene--it's more complicated, of course, since I have to follow it and amplify it too, but it works out all right." "This is unbelievable, Dick. Think of actually seeing something that really happened in the past!" "Yeah, it's kinda strong, all right. As Dot would say, it's just too perfectly darn outrageous. But we're doing it, ain't we? I know just how, and why. When we get some time I'll shoot the method into your brain. Well, here we are!" * * * * * Peering into the visiplates, the two men were poised above the immense central cone of the capital city of the Fenachrone. Viewing with infra-red light as they were, the fog presented no obstacle and the indescribable beauty of the city of concentric rings and the wonderfully luxuriant jungle growth were clearly visible. They plunged down into the council chamber, and saw Fenor, Ravindau, and Fenimol deep in conversation. "With all the other feats of skill and sorcery you have accomplished, why don't you reconstruct their speech, also?" asked Crane, with a challenging glance. "Well, old Doubting Thomas, it might not be absolutely impossible, at that. It would mean two projectors, however, due to the difference in speed of sound-waves and light-waves. Theoretically, sound-waves also extend to an infinite distance, but I don't believe that any possible detector and amplifier could reconstruct a voice more than an hour or so after it had spoken. It might, though--we'll have to try it some time, and see. You're fairly good at lip-reading, as I remember it. Get as much of it as you can, will you?" As though they were watching the scene itself as it happened--which, in a sense, they were--they saw everything that had occurred. They saw Fenor die, saw the general's family board the airboat, saw the orderly embarkation of Ravindau's organization. Finally they saw the stupendous take-off of the first inter-galactic cruiser, and with that take-off, Seaton went into action. Faster and faster he drove that fifth-order beam along the track of the fugitive, until a speed was attained beyond which his detecting converters could not hold the ether-rays they were following. For many minutes Seaton stared intently into the visiplate, plotting lines and calculating forces, then he swung around to Crane. "Well, Mart, noble old bean, solving the disappearances was easier than I thought it would be; but the situation as regards wiping out the last of the Fenachrone is getting no better, fast." "I glean from the instruments that they are heading straight out into space away from the Galaxy, and I assume that they are using their utmost acceleration?" "I'll say they're traveling! They're out in absolute space, you know, with nothing in the way and with no intention of reversing their power or slowing down--they must've had absolute top acceleration on every minute since they left. Anyway, they're so far out already that I couldn't hold even a detector on them, let alone a force that I can control. Well, let's snap into it, fellow--on our way!" "Just a minute, Dick. Take it easy, what are your plans?" "Plans! Why worry about plans? Blow up that planet before any more of 'em get away, and then chase that boat clear to Andromeda, if necessary. Let's go!" "Calm down and be reasonable--you are getting hysterical again. They have a maximum acceleration of five times the velocity of light. So have we, exactly, since we adopted their own drive. Now if our acceleration is the same as theirs, and they have a month's start, how long will it take us to catch them?" "Right again. Mart--I sure was going off half-cocked again," Seaton conceded ruefully, after a moment's thought. "They'd always be going a million or so times as fast as we would be, and getting further ahead of us in geometrical ratio. What's your idea?" "I agree with you that the time has come to destroy the planet of Fenachrone. As for pursuing that vessel through intergalactic space, that is your problem. You must figure out some method of increasing our acceleration. Highly efficient as is this system of propulsion, it seems to me that the knowledge of the Norlaminians should be able to improve it in some detail. Even a slight increase in acceleration would enable us to overtake them eventually." "Hm--m--m." Seaton, no longer impetuous, was thinking deeply. "How far are we apt to have to go?" "Until we get close enough to them to use your rays--say half a million light-years." "But surely they'll stop, some time?" "Of course, but not necessarily for many years. They are powered and provisioned for a hundred years, you remember, and are going to 'a distant galaxy.' Such a one as Ravindau would not have specified a _distant_ Galaxy idly, and the very closest Galaxies are so far away that even the Fenachrone astronomers, with their reflecting mirrors five miles in diameter, could form only the very roughest approximations of the true distances." "Our astronomers are all wet in their guesses, then?" "Their estimates are, without exception, far below the true values. They are not even of the correct order of magnitude.'" "Well, then, let's mop up on that planet. Then we'll go places and do things." Seaton had already located the magazines in which the power bars of the Fenachrone war-vessels were stored, and it was a short task to erect a secondary projector of force in the Fenachrone atmosphere. Working out of that projector, beams of force seized one of the immense cylinders of plated copper and at Seaton's direction transported it rapidly to one of the poles of the planet, where electrodes of force were clamped upon it. In a similar fashion seventeen more of the frightful bombs were placed, equidistant over the surface of the world of the Fenachrone, so that when they were simultaneously exploded, the downward forces would be certain to meet sufficient resistance to assure complete demolition of the entire globe. Everything in readiness, Seaton's hand went to the plunger switch and closed upon it. Then, his face white and wet, he dropped his hand. "No use, Mart--I can't do it. It pulls my cork. I know darn well you can't either--I'll yell for help." "Have you got it on the infra-red?" asked Dunark calmly, as he shot up into the projector in reply to Seaton's call. "I want to see this, all of it." "It's on--you're welcome to it," and, as the Terrestrials turned away, the whole projector base was illuminated by a flare of intense, though subdued light. For several minutes Dunark stared into the visiplate, savage satisfaction in every line of his fierce green face as he surveyed the havoc wrought by those eighteen enormous charges of incredible explosive. "A nice job of clean-up, Dick," the Osnomian prince reported, turning away from the visiplate. "It made a sun of it--the original sun is now quite a splendid double star. Everything was volatized, clear out, far beyond their outermost screen." "It had to be done, of course--it was either them or else all the rest of the Universe," Season said, jerkily. "However, even that fact doesn't make it go down easy. Well, we're done with this projector. From now on it's strictly up to us and _Skylark Three_. Let's beat it over there and see if they've got her done yet--they were due to finish up today, you know." * * * * * It was a silent group who embarked in the little airboat. Half way to their destination, however, Seaton came out of his blue mood with a yell. "Mart, I've got it! We can give the _Lark_ a lot more acceleration than they are getting--and won't need the assistance of all the minds of Norlamin, either." "How?" "By using one of the very heavy metals for fuel. The intensity of the power liberated is a function of atomic weight, or atomic number, and density; but the fact of liberation depends upon atomic configuration--a fact which you and I figured out long ago. However, our figuring didn't go far enough--it couldn't: we didn't know anything then. Copper happens to be the most efficient of the few metals which can be decomposed at all under ordinary excitation--that is, by using an ordinary coil, such as we and the Fenachrone both use. But by using special exciters, sending out all the orders of rays necessary to initiate the disruptive processes, we can use any metal we want to. Osnome has unlimited quantities of the heaviest metals, including radium and uranium. Of course we can't use radium and live--but we can and will use uranium, and that will give us something like four times the acceleration possible with copper. Dunark, what say you snap over there and smelt us a cubic mile of uranium? No--hold it--I'll put a flock of forces on the job. They'll do it quicker, and I'll make 'em deliver the goods. They'll deliver 'em fast, too, believe us--we'll see to that with a ten-ton bar. The uranium bars'll be ready to load tomorrow, and we'll have enough power to chase those birds all the rest of our lives!" Returning to the projector, Seaton actuated the complex system of forces required for the smelting and transportation of the enormous amount of metal necessary, and as the three men again boarded their aerial conveyance, the power-bar in the projector behind them flared into violet incandescence under the load already put upon it by the new uranium mine in distant Osnome. The _Skylark_ lay stretched out over two miles of country, exactly as they had last seen her, but now, instead of being water-white, the ten-thousand-foot cruiser of the void was one jointless, seamless structure of sparkling, transparent, purple inoson. Entering one of the open doors, they stepped into an elevator and were whisked upward into the control room, in which a dozen of the aged, white-bearded students of Norlamin were grouped about a banked and tiered mass of keyboards, which Seaton knew must be the operating mechanism of the extraordinarily complete fifth-order projector he had been promised. "Ah, youngsters, you are just in time. Everything is complete and we are just about to begin loading." "Sorry, Rovol, but we'll have to make a couple of changes--have to rebuild the exciter or build another one," and Seaton rapidly related what they had learned, and what they had decided to do. "Of course, uranium is a much more efficient source of power," agreed Rovol, "and you are to be congratulated for thinking of it. It perhaps would not have occurred to one of us, since the heavy metals of that highly efficient group are very rare here. Building a new exciter for uranium is a simple task, and the converters for the corona-loss will, of course, require no change, since their action depends only upon the frequency of the emitted losses, not upon their magnitude." "Hadn't you suspected that some of the Fenachrone might be going to lead us a life-long chase?" asked Dunark curiously. "We have not given the matter a thought, my son," the Chief of the Five made answer. "As your years increase, you will learn not to anticipate trouble and worry. Had we thought and worried over the matter before the time had arrived, you will note that it would have been pain wasted, for our young friend Seaton has avoided that difficulty in a truly scholarly fashion." "All set, then, Rovol?" asked Seaton, when the forces flying from the projector had built the compound exciter which would make possible the disruption of the atoms of uranium. "The metal, enough of it to fill all the spare space in the hull, will be here tomorrow. You might give Crane and me the method of operating this projector, which I see is vastly more complex even than the one in the Area of Experiment." "It is the most complete thing ever seen upon Norlamin," replied Rovol with a smile. "Each of us installed everything in it that he could conceive of ever being of the slightest use, and since our combined knowledge covers a large field, the projector is accordingly quite comprehensive." Multiple headsets were donned, and from each of the Norlaminian brains there poured into the minds of the two Terrestrials a complete and minute knowledge of every possible application of the stupendous force-control banked in all its massed intricacy before them. "Well, that's some outfit!" exulted Seaton in pleased astonishment as the instructions were concluded. "It can do anything but lay an egg--and I'm not a darn bit sure that we couldn't make it do that! Well, let's call the girls and show them around this thing that's going to be their home for quite a while." While they were waiting, Dunark led Seaton aside. "Dick, will you need me on this trip?" he asked. "Of course I knew there was something on your mind when you didn't send me home when you let Urvan, Carfon and the others go back." "No, we're going it alone--unless you want to come along. I did want you to stick around until I got to a good chance to talk to you alone--now will be a good a time as any. You and I have traded brains, and besides, we've been through quite a lot of grief together, here and there--I want to apologize to you for not passing along to you all this stuff I've been getting here. In fact, I really wish I didn't have to have it myself. Get me?" "Got you? I'm 'way ahead of you! Don't want it, not any part of it--that's why I've stayed away from any chance of learning any of it, and the one reason why I am going back home instead of going with you. I have just brains enough to realize that neither I nor any other man of my race should have it. By the time we grow up to it naturally we shall be able to handle it, but not until then." The two brain brothers grasped hands strongly, and Dunark continued in a lighter vein: "It takes all kinds of people to make a world, you know--and all kinds of races, except the Fenachrone, to make a Universe. With Mardonale gone, the evolution of Osnome shall progress rapidly, and while we may not reach the Ultimate Goal, I have learned enough from you already to speed up our progress considerably." "Well, that's that. Had to get it off my chest, although I knew you'd get the idea all right. Here are the girls--Sitar too. We'll show 'em around." * * * * * Seaton's first thought was for the very brain of the ship--the precious lens of neutronium in its thin envelope of the eternal jewel--without which the beam of fifth-order rays could not be directed. He found it a quarter of a mile back from the needle-sharp prow, exactly in the longitudinal axis of the hull, protected from any possible damage by bulkhead after massive bulkhead of impregnable inoson. Satisfied upon that point, he went in search of the others, who were exploring their vast new space-ship. Huge as she was, there was no waste space--her design was as compact as that of a fine radio set. The living quarters were grouped closely about the central compartment, which housed the power plants, the many ray generators and projectors, and the myriads of controls of the marvelous mechanism for the projection and direction of fifth-order rays. Several large compartments were devoted to the machinery which automatically serviced the vessel--refrigerators, heaters, generators and purifiers for water and air, and the numberless other mechanisms which would make the cruiser a comfortable and secure home, as well as an invincible battleship, in the heatless, lightless, airless, matterless waste of illimitable, inter-galactic space. Many compartments were for the storage of food-supplies, and these were even then being filled by forces under the able direction of the first of Chemistry. "All the comforts of home, even to the labels," Seaton grinned, as he read "Dole No. 1" upon cans of pineapple which had never been within thousands of light-years of the Hawaiian Islands, and saw quarter after quarter of fresh meat going into the freezer room from a planet upon which no animal other than man had existed for many thousands of years. Nearly all of the remaining millions of cubic feet of space were for the storage of uranium for power, a few rooms already having been filled with ingot inoson for repairs. Between the many bulkheads that divided the ship into numberless airtight sections, and between the many concentric skins of purple metal that rendered the vessel space-worthy and sound, even though slabs many feet thick were to be shown off in any direction--in every nook and cranny could be stored the metal to keep those voracious generators full-fed, no matter how long or how severe the demand for power. Every room was connected through a series of tubular tunnels, along which force-propelled cars or elevators slid smoothly--tubes whose walls fell together into air-tight seals at any point, in case of a rupture. As they made their way back to the great control-room room of the vessel, they saw something that because of its small size and clear transparency they had not previously seen. Below that room, not too near the outer skin, in a specially-built spherical launching space, there was _Skylark Two_, completely equipped and ready for an interstellar journey on her own account! "Why, hello, little stranger!" Margaret called. "Rovol, that was a kind thought on your part. Home wouldn't quite be home without our old _Skylark_, would it, Martin?" "A practical thought, as well as a kind one," Crane responded. "We undoubtedly will have occasion to visit places altogether too small for the really enormous bulk of this vessel." "Yes, and whoever heard of a sea-going ship without a small boat?" put in irrepressible Dorothy. "She's just too perfectly kippy for words, sitting up there, isn't she?" CHAPTER XV The Extra-Galactic Duel Loaded until her outer skin almost bulged with tightly packed bars of uranium and equipped to meet any emergency of which the combined efforts of the mightiest intellects of Norlamin could foresee even the slightest possibility, _Skylark Three_ lay quiescent. Quiescent, but surcharged with power, she seemed to Seaton's tense mind to share his own eagerness to be off; seemed to be motionlessly straining at her neutral controls in a futile endeavor to leave that unnatural and unpleasant environment of atmosphere and of material substance, to soar outward into absolute zero of temperature and pressure, into the pure and undefiled ether which was her natural and familiar medium. The five human beings were grouped near an open door of their cruiser; before them were the ancient scientists, who for so many days had been laboring with them in their attempt to crush the monstrous race which was threatening the Universe. With the elders were the Terrestrials' many friends from the Country of Youth, and surrounding the immense vessel in a throng covering an area to be measured only in square miles were massed myriads of Norlaminians. From their tasks everywhere had come the mental laborers; the Country of Youth had been left depopulated; even those who, their lifework done, had betaken themselves to the placid Nirvana of the Country of Age, returned briefly to the Country of Study to speed upon its way that stupendous Ship of Peace. The majestic Fodan, Chief of the Five, was concluding his address: "And may the Unknowable Force direct your minor forces to a successful conclusion of your task. If, upon the other hand, it should by some unforeseen chance be graven upon the Sphere that you are to pass in this supreme venture, you may pass in all tranquillity, for the massed intellect of our entire race is here supporting me in my solemn affirmation that the Fenachrone shall not be allowed to prevail. In the name of all Norlamin, I bid you farewell." [Illustration: Very slowly at first, the unimaginable mass of the vessel floated lightly upward.] Crane spoke briefly in reply and the little group of Earthly wanderers stepped into the elevator. As they sped upward toward the control room, door after door shot into place behind them, establishing a manifold seal. Seaton's hand played over the controls and the great cruiser of the void tilted slowly upward until its narrow prow pointed almost directly into the zenith. Then, very slowly at first, the unimaginable mass of the vessel floated lightly upward, with a slowly increasing velocity. Faster and faster she flew--out beyond measurable atmosphere, out beyond the outermost limits of the green system. Finally, in interstellar space, Seaton threw out super-powered detector and repelling screens, anchored himself at the driving console with a force, set the power control at "molecular" so that the propulsive force affected alike every molecule of the vessel and its contents, and, all sense of weight and acceleration lost, he threw in the plunger switch which released every iota of the theoretically possible power of the driving mass of uranium. Staring intently into the visiplate, he corrected their course from time to time by minute fractions of a second of arc; then, satisfied at last, he set the automatic forces which would guide them, temporarily out of their course, around any obstacles, such as the uncounted thousands of solar systems lying in or near their path. He then removed the restraining forces from his body and legs, and with a small pencil of force wafted himself over to Crane and the two women. "Well, bunch," he stated, matter-of-fact, "we're on our way. We'll be this way for some time, so we might as well get used to it. Any little thing you want to talk over?" "How long will it take us to catch 'em?" asked Dorothy "Traveling this way isn't half as much fun as it is when you let us have some weight to hold us down." "Hard to tell exactly, Dottie. If we had precisely four times their acceleration and had started from the same place, we would of course overtake them in just the number of days they had the start of us, since the distance covered at any constant positive acceleration is proportional to the square of the time elapsed. However, there are several complicating factors in the actual situation. We started out not only twenty-nine days behind them, but also a matter of five hundred thousand light-years of distance. It will take us quite a while to get to their starting-point. I can't tell even that very close, as we will probably have to reduce this acceleration before we get out of the Galaxy, in order to give detectors and repellers time to act on stars and other loose impediments. Powerful as those screens are and fast as they work, there is a limit to the velocity we can use here in this crowded Galaxy. Outside it, in free space, of course we can open her up again. Then, too, our acceleration is not exactly four times theirs, only three point nine one eight six. On the other hand, we don't have to catch them to go to work on them. We can operate very nicely at five thousand light-centuries. So there you are--it'll probably be somewhere between thirty-nine and forty-one days, but it may be a day or so more or less." "How do you know they are using copper?" asked Margaret. "Maybe their scientists stored up some uranium and know how to use it." "Nope, that's out like a light. First, Mart and I saw only copper bars in their ship. Second, copper is the most efficient metal found in quantity upon their planet. Third, even if they had uranium or any metal of its class, they couldn't use it without a complete knowledge of, and ability to handle, the fourth and fifth orders of rays." "It is your opinion, then, that destroying this last Fenachrone vessel is to prove as simple a matter as did the destruction of the others?" Crane queried, pointedly. "Hm-m-m. Never thought about it from that angle at all, Mart.... You're still the ground-and-lofty thinker of the outfit, ain't you? Now that you mention it, though, we may find that the Last of the Mohicans ain't entirely toothless, at that. But say, Mart, how come I'm as wild and cock-eyed as I ever was? Rovol's a slow and thoughtful old codger, and with his accumulation of knowledge it looks like I'd be the same way." "Far from it," Crane replied. "Your nature and mine remain unchanged. Temperament is a basic trait of heredity, and is neither affected nor acquired by increase of knowledge. You acquired knowledge from Rovol, Drasnik, and others, as did I--but you are still the flashing genius and I am still your balance wheel. As for Fenachrone toothlessness: now that you have considered it, what is your opinion?" "Hard to say. They didn't know how to control the fifth order rays, or they wouldn't have run. They've got real brains, though, and they'll have something like seventy days to work on the problem. While it doesn't stand to reason that they could find out much in seventy days, still they may have had a set-up of instruments on their detectors that would have enabled them to analyze our fields and thus compute the structure of the secondary projector we used there. If so, it wouldn't take them long to find out enough to give us plenty of grief--but I don't really believe that they knew enough. I don't quite know what to think. They may be easy and they may not; but, easy or hard to get, we're loaded for bear and I'm plenty sure that we'll pull their corks." "So am I, really, but we must consider every contingency. We know that they had at least a detector of fifth-order rays...." "And if they did have an analytical detector," Seaton interrupted, "they'll probably slap a ray on us as soon as we stick our nose out of the Galaxy!" "They may--and even though I do not believe that there is any probability of them actually doing it, it will be well to be armed against the possibility." "Right, old top--we'll do that little thing!" * * * * * Uneventful days passed, and true to Seaton's calculations, the awful acceleration with which they had started out could not be maintained. A few days before the edge of the Galaxy was reached, it became necessary to cut off the molecular drive, and to proceed with an acceleration equal only to that of gravitation at the surface of the Earth. Tired of weightlessness and its attendant discomforts to everyday life, the travelers enjoyed the interlude immensely, but it was all too short--too soon the stars thinned out ahead of "_Three's_" needle prow. As soon as the way ahead of them was clear, Seaton again put on the maximum power of his terrific bars and, held securely at the console, set up a long and involved integral. Ready to transfer the blended and assembled forces to a plunger, he stayed his hand, thought a moment, and turned to Crane. "Want some advice, Mart. I'd thought of setting up three or four courses of five-ply screen on the board--a detector screen on the outside of each course, next to it a repeller, then a full-coverage ether-ray screen, then a zone of force, and a full-coverage fifth-order ray-screen as a liner. Then, with them all set up on the board, but not out, throw out a wide detector. That detector would react upon the board at impact with anything hostile, and automatically throw out the courses it found necessary." "That sounds like ample protection, but I am not enough of a ray-specialist to pass an opinion. Upon what point are you doubtful?" "About leaving them on the board. The only trouble is that the reaction isn't absolutely instantaneous. Even fifth-order rays would require a millionth of a second or so to set the courses. Now if they were using ether waves, that would be lots of time to block them, but if they _should_ happen to have fifth-order stuff it'd get here the same time our own detector-impulse would, and it's just barely conceivable that they might give us a nasty jolt before the defenses went out. Nope, I'm developing a cautious streak myself now, when I take time to do it. We've got lots of uranium, and I'm going to put one course out." "You cannot put everything out, can you?" "Not quite, but pretty nearly, I'll leave a hole in the ether screen to pass visible light--no, I won't either. You folks can see just as well, even on the direct-vision wall plates, with light heterodyned on the fifth, so we'll close all ether bands, absolutely. All we'll have to leave open will be the one extremely narrow band upon which our projector is operating, and I'll protect that with a detector screen. Also, I'm going to send out all four courses, instead of only one--then I'll _know_ we're all right." "Suppose they find our one band, narrow as it is? Of course, if that were shut off automatically by the detector, we'd be safe; but would we not be out of control?" "Not necessarily--I see you didn't get quite all this stuff over the educator. The other projector worked that way, on one fixed band out of the nine thousand odd possible. But this one is an ultra-projector, an improvement invented at the last minute. Its carrier wave can be shifted at will from one band of the fifth order to any other one; and I'll bet a hat that's _one_ thing the Fenachrone haven't got! Any other suggestions?... all right, let's get busy!" A single light, quick-acting detector was sent out ahead of four courses of five-ply screen, then Seaton's fingers again played over the keys, fabricating a detector screen so tenuous that it would react to nothing weaker than a copper power bar in full operation and with so nearly absolute zero resistance that it could be driven at the full velocity of his ultra-projector. Then, while Crane watched the instruments closely and while Dorothy and Margaret watched the faces of their husbands with only mild interest, Seaton drove home the plunger that sent that prodigious and ever-widening fan ahead of them with a velocity unthinkable millions of times that of light. For five minutes, until that far-flung screen had gone as far as it could be thrown by the utmost power of the uranium bar, the two men stared at the unresponsive instruments, then Seaton shrugged his shoulders. "I had a hunch," he remarked with a grin. "They didn't wait for us a second. 'I don't care for some,' says they, 'I've already had any.' They're running in a straight line, with full power on, and don't intend to stop or slow down." "How do you know?" asked Dorothy. "By the distance? How far away are they?" "I know, Red-Top, by what I didn't find out with that screen I just put out. It didn't reach them, and it went so far that the distance is absolutely meaningless, even expressed in parsecs. Well, a stern chase is proverbially a long chase, and I guess this one isn't going to be any exception." * * * * * Every eight hours Seaton launched his all-embracing ultra-detector, but day after day passed and the instruments remained motionless after each cast of that gigantic net. For several days the Galaxy behind them had been dwindling from a mass of stars down to a huge bright lens; down to a small, faint lens; down to a faintly luminous patch. At the previous cast of the detector it had still been visible as a barely-perceptible point of light in the highest telescopic power of the visiplate. Now, as Dorothy and Seaton, alone in the control room, stared into that visiplate, everything was blank and black; sheer, indescribable blackness; the utter and absolute absence of everything visible or tangible. "This is awful, Dick.... It's just too darn horrible. It simply scares me pea-green!" she shuddered as she drew herself to him, and he swept both his mighty arms around her in a soul-satisfying embrace. "'Sall right, darling. That stuff out there'd scare anybody--I'm scared purple myself. It isn't in any finite mind to understand anything infinite or absolute. There's one redeeming feature, though, cuddle-pup--we're together." "You chirped it, lover!" Dorothy returned his caresses with all her old-time fervor and enthusiasm. "I feel lots better now. If it gets to you that way, too, I know it's perfectly normal--I was beginning to think maybe I was yellow or something ... but maybe you're kidding me?" she held him off at arm's length, looking deep into his eyes: then, reassured, went back-into his arms. "Nope, you feel it, too," and her glorious auburn head found its natural resting-place in the curve of his mighty shoulder. "Yellow!... You?" Seaton pressed his wife closer still! and laughed aloud. "Maybe--but so is picric acid; so is nitroglycerin; and so is pure gold." "Flatterer!" Her low, entrancing chuckle bubbled over. "But you know I just revel in it. I'll kiss you for that!" "It _is_ awfully lonesome out here, without even a star to look at," she went on, after a time, then laughed again. "If the Cranes and Shiro weren't along, we'd be really 'alone at last,' wouldn't we?" "I'll say we would! But that reminds me of something. According to my figures, we might have been able to detect the Fenachrone on the last test, but we didn't. Think I'll try 'em again before we turn in." Once more he flung out that tenuous net of force, and as it reached the extreme limit of its travel, the needle of the micro-ammeter flickered slightly, barely moving off its zero mark. "Whee! Whoopee!" he yelled. "Mart, we're on 'em!" "Close?" demanded Crane, hurrying into the control room upon his beam. "Anything but. Barely touched 'em--current something less than a thousandth of a micro-ampere on a million to one step-up. However, it proves our ideas are O. K." The next day--_Skylark III_ was running on Eastern Standard Time, of the Terrestrial United States of America--the two mathematicians covered sheet after sheet of paper with computations and curves. After checking and rechecking the figures, Seaton shut off the power, released the molecular drive, and applied acceleration of twenty-nine point six oh two feet per second; and five human beings breathed as one a profound sigh of relief as an almost-normal force of gravitation was restored to them. "Why the let-up?" asked Dorothy. "They're an awful long ways off yet, aren't they? Why not hurry up and catch them?" "Because we're going infinitely faster than they are now. If we kept up full acceleration, we'd pass them so fast that we couldn't fight them at all. This way, we'll still be going a lot faster than they are when we get close to them, but not enough faster to keep us from maneuvering relatively to their vessel, if things should go that far. Guess I'll take another reading on 'em." "I do not believe that I should," Crane suggested, thoughtfully. "After all, they may have perfected their instruments, and yet may not have detected that extremely light touch of our ray last night. If so, why put them on guard?" "They're probably on guard, all right, without having to be put there--but it's a sound idea, anyway. Along the same line I'll release the fifth-order screens, with the fastest possible detector on guard. We're just about within reach of a light copper-driven ray right now, but it's a cinch they can't send anything heavy this far, and if they think we're overconfident, so much the better." "There," he continued, after a few minutes at the keyboard. "All set. If they put a detector on us, I've got a force set to make a noise like a New York City fire siren. If pressed, I'd reluctantly admit that in my opinion we're carrying caution to a point ten thousand degrees below the absolute zero of sanity. I'll bet my shirt that we don't hear a yip out of them before we touch 'em off. Furthermore...." * * * * * The rest of his sentence was lost in a crescendo bellow of sound. Seaton, still at the controls, shut off the noise, studied his meters carefully, and turned around to Crane with a grin. "You win the shirt, Mart. I'll give it to you next Wednesday, when my other one comes back from the laundry. It's a fifth-order detector ray, coming in beautifully on band forty-seven fifty, right in the middle of the order." "Aren't you going to put a ray on 'em?" asked Dorothy in surprise. "Nope--what's the use? I can read theirs as well as I could one of my own. Maybe they know that too--if they don't we'll let 'em think we're coming along, as innocent as Mary's little lamb, so I'll let their ray stay on us. It's too thin to carry anything, and if they thicken it up much I've got an axe set to chop it off." Seaton whistled a merry lilting refrain as his fingers played over the stops and keys. "Why, Dick, you seem actually pleased about it." Margaret was plainly ill at ease. "Sure am. I never did like to drown baby kittens, and it kinda goes against the grain to stab a guy in the back, when he ain't even looking, even if he is a Fenachrone. If they can fight back some I'll get mad enough to blow 'em up happy." "But suppose they fight back too hard?" "They can't--the worst that can possibly happen is that we can't lick them. They certainly can't lick us, because we can outrun 'em. If we can't get 'em alone, we'll beat it back to Norlamin and bring up re-enforcements." "I am not so sure," Crane spoke slowly. "There is, I believe, a theoretical possibility that sixth-order rays exist. Would an extension of the methods of detection of fifth-order rays reveal them?" "_Sixth_? Sweet spirits of niter! Nobody knows anything about them. However, I've had one surprise already, so maybe your suggestion isn't as crazy as it sounds. We've got three or four days yet before either side can send anything except on the sixth, so I'll find out what I can do." He flew at the task, and for the next three days could hardly be torn from it for rest; but "O. K., Mart," he finally announced. "They exist, all right, and I can detect 'em. Look here," and he pointed to a tiny receiver, upon which a small lamp flared in brilliant scarlet light. "Are they sending them?" "No, fortunately. They're coming from our bar. See, it shines blue when I put a grounded shield between it and the bar, and stays blue when I attach it to their detector ray." "Can you direct them?" "Not a chance in the world. That means a lifetime, probably many lifetimes, of research, unless somebody uses a fairly complete pattern of them close enough to this detector so that I can analyze it. 'Sa good deal like calculus in that respect. It took thousands of years to get it in the first place, but it's easy when somebody that already knows it shows you how it goes." "The Fenachrone learned to direct fifth-order rays so quickly, then, by an analysis of our fifth-order projector there?" "Our secondary projector, yes. They must have had some neutronium in stock, too--but it would have been funny if they hadn't, at that--they've had intra-atomic power for ages." Silent and grim, he seated himself at the console, and for an hour he wove an intricate pattern of forces upon the inexhaustible supply of keys afforded by the ultra-projector before he once touched a plunger. "What are you doing? I followed you for a few hundred steps, but could go no farther." "Merely a little safety-first stuff. In case they should send any real pattern of sixth-order rays this set-up will analyze it, record the complete analysis, throw out a screen against every frequency of the pattern, throw on the molecular drive, and pull us back toward the galaxy at full acceleration, while switching the frequency of our carrier wave a thousand times a second, to keep them from shooting a hot one through our open band. It'll do it all in about a millionth of a second, too--I want to get us all back alive if possible! Hm--m. They've shut off their ray--they know we've tapped onto it. Well, war's declared now--we'll see what we can see." Transferring the assembled beam to a plunger, he sent out a secondary projector toward the Fenachrone vessel, as fast as it could be driven, close behind a widespread detector net. He soon found the enemy cruiser, but so immense was the distance that it was impossible to hold the projection anywhere in its neighborhood. They flashed beyond it and through it and upon all sides of it, but the utmost delicacy of the controls would not permit of holding even upon the immense bulk of the vessel, to say nothing of holding upon such a relatively tiny object as the power bar. As they flashed repeatedly through the warship, they saw piecemeal and sketchily her formidable armament and the hundreds of men of her crew, each man at battle station at the controls of some frightful engine of destruction. Suddenly they were cut off as a screen closed behind them--the Earth-men felt an instant of unreasoning terror as it seemed that one-half of their peculiar dual personalities vanished utterly. Seaton laughed. "That was a funny sensation, wasn't it? It just means that they've climbed a tree and pulled the tree up after them." "I do not like the odds, Dick," Crane's face was grave. "They have many hundreds of men, all trained; and we are only two. Yes, only one, for I count for nothing at those controls." "All the better, Mart. This board more than makes up the difference. They've got a lot of stuff, of course, but they haven't got anything like this control system. Their captain's got to issue orders, whereas I've got everything right under my hands. Not so uneven as they think!" * * * * * Within battle range at last, Seaton hurled his utmost concentration of direct forces, under the impact of which three courses of Fenachrone defensive screen flared through the ultra-violet and went black. There the massed direct attack was stopped--at what cost the enemy alone knew--and the Fenachrone countered instantly and in a manner totally unexpected. Through the narrow slit in the fifth-order screen through which Seaton was operating, in the bare one-thousandth of a second that it was open, so exactly synchronized and timed that the screens did not even glow as it went through the narrow opening, a gigantic beam of heterodyned force struck full upon the bow of the _Skylark_, near the sharply-pointed prow, and the stubborn metal instantly flared blinding white and exploded outward in puffs of incandescent gas under the awful power of that Titanic thrust. Through four successive skins of inoson, the theoretical ultimate of possible strength, toughness, and resistance, that frightful beam drove before the automatically-reacting detector closed the slit and the impregnable defensive screens, driven by their mighty uranium bars, flared into incandescent defense. Driven as they were, they held, and the Fenachrone, finding that particular attack useless, shut off their power. "Wow! They sure have got something!" Seaton exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. "They sure gave us a solid kick that time! We will now take time out for repairs. Also, I'm going to cut our slit down to a width of one kilocycle, if I can possibly figure out a way of working on that narrow a band, and I'm going to step up our shifting speed to a hundred thousand. It's a good thing they built this ship of ours in a lot of layers--if that'd go through the interior we would have been punctured for fair. You might weld up those holes, Mart, while I see what I can do here." Then Seaton noticed the women, white and trembling, upon a seat. "'Smatter? Cheer up, kids, you ain't seen nothing yet. That was just a couple of little preliminary love-taps, like two boxers kinda feeling each other out in the first ten seconds of the first round." "Preliminary love-taps!" repeated Dorothy, looking into Seaton's eyes and being reassured by the serene confidence she read there. "But they hit us, and hurt us badly--why, there's a hole in our _Skylark_ as big as a house, and it goes through four or five layers!" "Yes, but we're not hurt a bit. They're easily fixed, and we've lost nothing but a few tons of inoson and uranium. We've got lots of spare metal. I don't know what I did to him, any more than he knows what he did to us, but I'll bet my other shirt that he knows he's been nudged!" Repairs completed and the changes made in the method of projection, Seaton actuated the rapidly-shifting slit and peered through it at the enemy vessel. Finding their screens still up, he directed a complete-coverage attack upon them with four bars, while with the entire massed power of the remaining generators concentrated into one frequency, he shifted that frequency up and down the spectrum, probing, probing, ever probing with that gigantic beam of intolerable energy--feeling for some crack, however slight, into which he could insert that searing sheet of concentrated destruction. Although much of the available power of the Fenachrone was perforce devoted to repelling the continuous attack of the Terrestrials, they maintained an equally continuous attack offensive, and in spite of the narrowness of the open slit and the rapidity with which that slit was changing from frequency to frequency, enough of the frightful forces came through to keep the ultra-powered defensive screens radiating far into the violet--and, the utmost power of the refrigerating system proving absolutely useless against the concentrated beams being employed, mass after mass of inoson was literally blown from the outer and secondary skins of the _Skylark_ by the comparatively tiny jets of force that leaked through the momentarily open slit from time to time, as exact synchronization was accidentally obtained. Seaton, grimly watching his instruments, glanced at Crane, who, calm but watchful at his console, was repairing the damage as fast as it was done. "They're sending more stuff, Mart, and it's getting hotter to handle. That means they're building more projectors. We can play that game, too. They're using up their fuel reserves fast; but we're bigger than they are, carry more metal, and it's more efficient metal, too. Only one way out of it, I guess--what say we put in enough generators to smother them down by brute force, no matter how much power it takes?" "Why don't you use some of those awful copper shells? Or aren't we close enough yet?" Dorothy's low voice came clearly, so utterly silent was that frightful combat. "Close! We're still better than two hundred thousand light-years apart! There may have been longer-range battles than this somewhere in the Universe, but I doubt it. And as for copper, even if we could get it to them, it'd be just like so many candy kisses compared to the stuff we're both using. Dear girl, there are fields of force extending for thousands of miles from each of these vessels beside which the exact center of the biggest lightning flash you ever saw would be a dead area!" He set up a series of integrals and, machine after machine, in a space left vacant by the rapidly-vanishing store of uranium, there appeared inside the fourth skin of the _Skylark_ a row of gigantic generators, each one adding its hellish output to the already inconceivable stream of energy being directed at the foe. As that frightful flow increased by leaps and bounds, the intensity of the Fenachrone attack diminished, and finally it ceased altogether as every iota of the enemy's power became necessary for the maintenance of the defenses. Still greater grew the stream of force from the _Skylark_, and, now that the attack had ceased, Seaton opened the slit wider and stopped its shifting, in order still further to increase the efficiency of his terrible weapon. Face set in a fighting mask and eyes hard as gray iron, deeper and deeper he drove his now irresistible forces. His flying fingers were upon the keys of his console; his keen and merciless eyes were in a secondary projector near the now doomed ship of the Fenachrone, directing masterfully his terrible attack. As the output of his generators still increased, Seaton began to compress a searing hollow sphere of seething energy upon the furiously-straining defensive screens of the Fenachrone. Course after course of the heaviest possible screen was sent out, driven by massed batteries of copper now disintegrating at the rate of tons in every second, only to flare through the ultra-violet and to go down before that dreadful, that irresistible onslaught. Finally, as the inexorable sphere still contracted, the utmost efforts of the defenders could not keep their screens away from their own vessel, and simultaneously the prow and the stern of the Fenachrone cruiser was bared to that awful field of force, in which no possible substance could endure for even the most infinitesimal instant of time. There was a sudden cessation of all resistance, and those Titanic forces, all directed inward, converged upon a point with a power behind which there was the inconceivable energy of four hundred thousand tons of uranium, being disintegrated at the highest possible rate, short of instant disruption. In that same instant of collapse, the enormous mass of power-copper in the Fenachrone cruiser and the vessel's every atom, alike of structure and contents, also exploded into pure energy at the touch of that unimaginable field of force. In that awful moment before Seaton could shut off his power it seemed to him that space itself must be obliterated by the very concentration of the unknowable and incalculable forces there unleashed--must be swallowed up and lost in the utterly indescribable brilliance of the field of radiance driven to a distance of millions upon incandescent millions of miles from the place where the last representatives of the monstrous civilization of the Fenachrone had made their last stand against the forces of Universal Peace. Epilogue The three-dimensional, moving, talking, almost living picture, being shown simultaneously in all the viewing areas throughout the innumerable planets of the Galaxy, faded out and the image of an aged, white-bearded Norlaminian appeared and spoke in the Galactic language. "As is customary, the showing of this picture has opened the celebration of our great Galactic holiday, Civilization Day. As you all know, it portrays the events leading up to and making possible the formation of the League of Civilization by a mere handful of planets. The League now embraces all of this, the First Galaxy, and is spreading rapidly throughout the Universe. Varied are the physical forms and varied are the mentalities of our almost innumerable races of beings, but in Civilization we are becoming one, since those backward people who will not co-operate with us are rendered impotent to impede our progress among the more enlightened. "It is peculiarly fitting that the one who has just been chosen to head the Galactic Council--the first person of a race other than one of those of the Central System to prove himself able to wield justly the vast powers of that office--should be a direct descendant of two of the revered persons whose deeds of olden times we have just witnessed. "I present to you my successor as Chief of the Galactic Council, Richard Ballinger Seaton, the fourteen hundred sixty-ninth, of Earth." THE END SOME REMARKS ON THE "SKYLARK THREE" AND ABOUT ERRORS. A COMPLIMENT TO DR. SMITH'S STORIES. _Editor_, AMAZING STORIES: Dr. Smith, in his foreword to "Skylark Three" mentions two errors which he made knowingly. I think I can recognize the astronomical one, at any rate. Of course, the acceleration of twice 186,000 miles per second, as used in escaping the field of the great "dud" star, as told in "Skylark of Space" was impossible. Nothing could withstand that strain. Further, no gravitational field could be that intense. It would have exactly the effect Dr. Smith describes and allots to the zone of force in "Skylark Three"--it would make a hole in space and pull the hole in after it. Light would be too heavy to leave the planet. The effect on space would be so great as to curve it so violently as to shut it in about it like a blanket. The dud would be both invisible and unapproachable. The astronomical error? I wonder how Dr. Smith solved the problem of three--or more--bodies? Osnome is a planet of a sun in a group of seventeen suns, is it not? The gravitational field about even two suns is so exceedingly complex that a planet could take up an orbit only such that one sun was at each of the two foci of the ellipse of its orbit, and then only provided the suns were of very nearly the same mass, and stationary, which in turn means they must have _no_ attraction for each other. No, I think his complex system of seventeen suns would not be so good for planets. Celestial Mechanics won't let them stay there. And I really don't see why it was necessary to have so complex a system. Further, I wonder if Dr. Smith considered the proposition of his ammonia cooling plant carefully? The ammonia "cooling" plant works only to _transmit_ heat, not to remove it. The heat is removed by it from the inside of an icebox for instance, and put outside, which is what is wanted. However, it must have some place to dump the heat. In the fight with the Mardonalians, Seaton has an arenak cylinder on his compressor, and runs it very heavily, but if he can't get the heat outside the ship, and away from it, he wouldn't cool the machine at all. Since the Mardonalians kept the outside so hot, and the story says the compressor-cooling was accomplished by a water cooler which boiled--some amount of water, too, if it would absorb all the heat of that Mardonalian fleet in any way--and this heat was then merely transferred from outside to inside--where they DIDN'T want it! Again, in this battle, to protect themselves against ultra-violet radiation, they smear themselves with _red_ paint--presumably because red will stop ultra-violet. Personalty, I'd have picked some ultra-violet paint--if any were handy as that would _reflect_ the rays. Red wouldn't affect them at all, so far as I can see--he might as well have used blue. What he wanted, was a complementary color of ultra-violet, and I don't believe it is red--green is the complement of red. (Green light won't pass through red glass.) Dr. Smith invited "knocks" with that foreword of his--I hope I am complying, as an interested reader, and a hopeful scientist. However, my personal opinion has always been that "Skylark of Space" was the best story of scientifiction ever printed, without exception. I have recently changed my opinion, however, since "Skylark Three" has come out. John W. Campbell, Jr. Cambridge, Mass. (This letter from a fellow author is an excellent comment on Dr. Smith's foreword to "Skylark Three." But the writer of this letter is himself inclined to deal with and use very large quantities and high accelerations and velocities in his stories. We are going to let your knocks await a reply from Dr. Smith. The Editor does not desire to find himself between the upper and lower millstones represented by an author and his critic. But you certainly make amends for your criticism by what you say about the merit of "The Skylark Stories." We hope to hear from Dr. Smith.--EDITOR.) +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note & Errata | | | | Images have been moved to their appropriate places in the | | text. | | | | All SmallCaps text has been changed to ALL CAPS. | | | | The heading and title of Chapter VII were reversed in order | | in the text. Restored. | | | | The following typographical errors have been corrected | | | | Error |Correction | | briar; |briar, | | musn't |mustn't | | heads |head | | torpedos |torpedoes | | corruscating |coruscating | | Tarnana |Tarnan | | The attackers |"The attackers | | concience |conscience | | tubular, |tubular | | psssible |possible | | trending |tending | | Normalin |Norlamin | | Seaton |Rovol | | gear-strain |gear-train | | long. |long." | | You are |"You are | | emperically |empirically | | desired." |desired. | | aways |always | | fast. |fast." | | acceleration? |acceleration?" | | | | Both 'cerebin' and 'cerebrin' were used once each. No | | changes have been made. | | | | Variable hyphenation has not been corrected. Numbers in | | parentheses in the following table indicate the number of | | times each form has been used. | | | | air-lock (3) |airlock (4) | | air-tight (1) |airtight (1) | | Earth-men (2) |Earthmen (1) | | head-set (1) |headset (12) | | inter-galactic (2) |intergalactic (1) | | stop-watch (1) |stopwatch (1) | | store-rooms (1) |storerooms (1) | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ 
32706	----	_ONE MAN DISCOVERED THE TRUTH_ --The Fall of Rome, the Wars that racked the world, mass murder and horror.... Men thought they were historical accidents, "human nature." But each one was a move in a Universe-wide battle--and the men who suffered and died were the big chessmen. Finally, one man discovered the truth--and faced his strange destiny in the ultimate struggle for control of the Universe. _First of the Famous Lensman Series_ NOVELS OF SCIENCE FICTION by "DOC" SMITH _The Lensman series_ TRIPLANETARY FIRST LENSMAN GALACTIC PATROL GRAY LENSMAN SECOND STAGE LENSMAN CHILDREN OF THE LENS MASTERS OF THE VORTEX _The Skylark series_ THE SKYLARK OF SPACE SKYLARK THREE SKYLARK OF VALERON SKYLARK DU QUESNE TRIPLANETARY E.E. "DOC" SMITH _PYRAMID BOOKS_ _NEW YORK_ TRIPLANETARY A PYRAMID BOOK Published by arrangement with the Author Fantasy Press edition published 1948 Pyramid edition published August 1965 Eighth printing, January 1973 Copyright 1948 by Edward E. Smith, Ph.D. No part of this book may be reprinted without written permission of the publishers. All Rights Reserved. ISBN 0-515-02890-8 Printed in the United States of America PYRAMID BOOKS are published by Pyramid Communications, Inc. Its trademarks consisting of the word "Pyramid" and the portrayal of a pyramid are registered in the United States Patent Office. Pyramid Communications, Inc. 919 Third Avenue New York, New York 10022 CONDITIONS OF SALE "Any sale, lease, transfer or circulation of this book by way of trade or in quantities of more than one copy, without the original cover bound thereon, will be construed by the Publisher as evidence that the parties to such transaction have illegal possession of the book, and will subject them to claim by the Publisher and prosecution under law." * * * * * Transcibers Note Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. * * * * * _TO ROD_ CONTENTS Chapter Page BOOK ONE: DAWN I. Arisia and Eddore 11 II. The Fall of Atlantis 18 III. The Fall of Rome 36 BOOK TWO: THE WORLD WAR IV. 1918 53 V. 1941 63 VI. 19--? 80 BOOK THREE: TRIPLANETARY VII. Pirates of Space 93 VIII. In Roger's Planetoid 107 IX. Fleet Against Planetoid 121 X. Within the Red Veil 130 XI. Nevian Strife 145 XII. Worm, Submarine, and Freedom 159 XIII. The Hill 165 XIV. The Super-Ship Is Launched 175 XV. Specimens 183 XVI. Super-Ship in Action 187 XVII. Roger Carries On 199 XVIII. The Specimens Escape 215 XIX. Giants Meet 229 BOOK ONE DAWN CHAPTER 1 ARISIA AND EDDORE Two thousand million or so years ago two galaxies were colliding; or, rather, were passing through each other. A couple of hundreds of millions of years either way do not matter, since at least that much time was required for the inter-passage. At about that same time--within the same plus-or-minus ten percent margin of error, it is believed--practically all of the suns of both those galaxies became possessed of planets. There is much evidence to support the belief that it was not merely a coincidence that so many planets came into being at about the same time as the galactic inter-passage. Another school of thought holds that it was pure coincidence; that all suns have planets as naturally and as inevitably as cats have kittens. Be that as it may, Arisian records are clear upon the point that before the two galaxies began to coalesce, there were never more than three solar systems present in either; and usually only one. Thus, when the sun of the planet upon which their race originated grew old and cool, the Arisians were hard put to it to preserve their culture, since they had to work against time in solving the engineering problems associated with moving a planet from an older to a younger sun. Since nothing material was destroyed when the Eddorians were forced into the next plane of existence, their historical records also have become available. Those records--folios and tapes and playable discs of platinum alloy, resistant indefinitely even to Eddore's noxious atmosphere--agree with those of the Arisians upon this point. Immediately before the Coalescence began there was one, and only one, planetary solar system in the Second Galaxy; and, until the advent of Eddore, the Second Galaxy was entirely devoid of intelligent life. Thus for millions upon untold millions of years the two races, each the sole intelligent life of a galaxy, perhaps of an entire space-time continuum, remained completely in ignorance of each other. Both were already ancient at the time of the Coalescence. The only other respect in which the two were similar, however, was in the possession of minds of power. Since Arisia was Earth-like in composition, atmosphere, and climate, the Arisians were at that time distinctly humanoid. The Eddorians were not. Eddore was and is large and dense; its liquid a poisonous, sludgy syrup; its atmosphere a foul and corrosive fog. Eddore was and is unique; so different from any other world of either galaxy that its very existence was inexplicable until its own records revealed the fact that it did not originate in normal space-time at all, but came to our universe from some alien and horribly different other. As differed the planets, so differed the peoples. The Arisians went through the usual stages of savagery and barbarism on the way to Civilization. The Age of Stone. The Ages of Bronze, of Iron, of Steel, and of Electricity. Indeed, it is probable that it is because the Arisians went through these various stages that all subsequent Civilizations have done so, since the spores which burgeoned into life upon the cooling surfaces of all the planets of the commingling galaxies were Arisian, not Eddorian, in origin. Eddorian spores, while undoubtedly present, must have been so alien that they could not develop in any one of the environments, widely variant although they are, existing naturally or coming naturally into being in normal space and time. The Arisians--especially after atomic energy freed them from physical labor--devoted themselves more and ever more intensively to the exploration of the limitless possibilities of the mind. Even before the Coalescence, then, the Arisians had need neither of space-ships nor of telescopes. By power of mind alone they watched the lenticular aggregation of stars which was much later to be known to Tellurian astronomers as Lundmark's Nebula approach their own galaxy. They observed attentively and minutely and with high elation the occurrence of mathematical impossibility; for the chance of two galaxies ever meeting in direct, central, equatorial-plane impact and of passing completely through each other is an infinitesimal of such a high order as to be, even mathematically, practically indistinguishable from zero. They observed the birth of numberless planets, recording minutely in their perfect memories every detail of everything that happened; in the hope that, as ages passed, either they or their descendants would be able to develop a symbology and a methodology capable of explaining the then inexplicable phenomenon. Carefree, busy, absorbedly intent, the Arisian mentalities roamed throughout space--until one of them struck an Eddorian mind. * * * * * While any Eddorian could, if it chose, assume the form of a man, they were in no sense man-like. Nor, since the term implies a softness and a lack of organization, can they be described as being amoeboid. They were both versatile and variant. Each Eddorian changed, not only its shape, but also its texture, in accordance with the requirements of the moment. Each produced--extruded--members whenever and wherever it needed them; members uniquely appropriate to the task then in work. If hardness was indicated, the members were hard; if softness, they were soft. Small or large, rigid or flexible; joined or tentacular--all one. Filaments or cables; fingers or feet; needles or mauls--equally simple. One thought and the body fitted the job. They were asexual: sexless to a degree unapproached by any form of Tellurian life higher than the yeasts. They were not merely hermaphroditic, nor androgynous, nor parthenogenetic. They were completely without sex. They were also, to all intents and purposes and except for death by violence, immortal. For each Eddorian, as its mind approached the stagnation of saturation after a lifetime of millions of years, simply divided into two new-old beings. New in capacity and in zest; old in ability and in power, since each of the two "children" possessed in toto the knowledges and the memories of their one "parent." And if it is difficult to describe in words the physical aspects of the Eddorians, it is virtually impossible to write or to draw, in any symbology of Civilization, a true picture of an Eddorian's--_any_ Eddorian's--mind. They were intolerant, domineering, rapacious, insatiable, cold, callous, and brutal. They were keen, capable, persevering, analytical, and efficient. They had no trace of any of the softer emotions or sensibilities possessed by races adherent to Civilization. No Eddorian ever had anything even remotely resembling a sense of humor. While not essentially bloodthirsty--that is, not loving bloodshed for its own sweet sake--they were no more averse to blood-letting than they were in favor of it. Any amount of killing which would or which might advance an Eddorian toward his goal was commendable; useless slaughter was frowned upon, not because it was slaughter, but because it was useless--and hence inefficient. And, instead of the multiplicity of goals sought by the various entities of any race of Civilization, each and every Eddorian had only one. The same one: power. _Power!_ P-O-W-E-R!! Since Eddore was peopled originally by various races, perhaps as similar to each other as are the various human races of Earth, it is understandable that the early history of the planet--while it was still in its own space, that is--was one of continuous and ages-long war. And, since war always was and probably always will be linked solidly to technological advancement, the race now known simply as "The Eddorians" became technologists supreme. All other races disappeared. So did all other forms of life, however lowly, which interfered in any way with the Masters of the Planet. Then, all racial opposition liquidated and overmastering lust as unquenched as ever, the surviving Eddorians fought among themselves: "push-button" wars employing engines of destruction against which the only possible defense was a fantastic thickness of planetary bedrock. Finally, unable either to kill or to enslave each other, the comparatively few survivors made a peace of sorts. Since their own space was practically barren of planetary systems, they would move their planet from space to space until they found one which so teemed with planets that each living Eddorian could become the sole Master of an ever increasing number of worlds. This was a program very much worthwhile, promising as it did an outlet for even the recognizedly insatiable Eddorian craving for power. Therefore the Eddorians, for the first time in their prodigiously long history of fanatical non-cooperation, decided to pool their resources of mind and of material and to work as a group. Union of a sort was accomplished eventually; neither peaceably nor without highly lethal friction. They knew that a democracy, by its very nature, was inefficient; hence a democratic form of government was not even considered. An efficient government must of necessity be dictatorial. Nor were they all exactly alike or of exactly equal ability; perfect identity of any two such complex structures was in fact impossible, and any difference, however slight, was ample justification for stratification in such a society as theirs. Thus one of them, fractionally more powerful and more ruthless than the rest, became the All-Highest--His Ultimate Supremacy--and a group of about a dozen others, only infinitesimally weaker, became his Council; a cabinet which was later to become known as the Innermost Circle. The tally of this cabinet varied somewhat from age to age; increasing by one when a member divided, decreasing by one when a jealous fellow or an envious underling managed to perpetrate a successful assassination. And thus, at long last, the Eddorians began really to work together. There resulted, among other things, the hyper-spatial tube and the fully inertialess drive--the drive which was, millions of years later, to be given to Civilization by an Arisian operating under the name of Bergenholm. Another result, which occured shortly after the galactic inter-passage had begun, was the eruption into normal space of the planet Eddore. "I must now decide whether to make this space our permanent headquarters or to search farther," the All-Highest radiated harshly to his Council. "On the one hand, it will take some time for even those planets which have already formed to cool. Still more will be required for life to develop sufficiently to form a part of the empire which we have planned or to occupy our abilities to any great degree. On the other, we have already spent millions of years in surveying hundreds of millions of continua, without having found anywhere such a profusion of planets as will, in all probability, soon fill both of these galaxies. There may also be certain advantages inherent in the fact that these planets are not yet populated. As life develops, we can mold it as we please. Krongenes, what are your findings in regard to the planetary possibilities of other spaces?" The term "Krongenes" was not, in the accepted sense, a name. Or, rather, it was more than a name. It was a key-thought, in mental shorthand; a condensation and abbreviation of the life-pattern or ego of that particular Eddorian. "Not at all promising, Your Supremacy," Krongenes replied promptly. "No space within reach of my instruments has more than a small fraction of the inhabitable worlds which will presently exist in this one." "Very well. Have any of you others any valid objections to the establishment of our empire here in this space? If so, give me your thought now." No objecting thoughts appeared, since none of the monsters then knew anything of Arisia or of the Arisians. Indeed, even if they had known, it is highly improbable that any objection would have been raised. First, because no Eddorian, from the All-Highest down, could conceive or would under any circumstances admit that any race, anywhere, had ever approached or ever would approach the Eddorians in any quality whatever; and second, because, as is routine in all dictatorships, disagreement with the All-Highest did not operate to lengthen the span of life. "Very well. We will now confer as to ... but hold! That thought is not one of ours! Who are you, stranger, to dare to intrude thus upon a conference of the Innermost Circle?" "I am Enphilistor, a younger student, of the planet Arisia." This name, too, was a symbol. Nor was the young Arisian yet a Watchman, as he and so many of his fellows were so soon to become, for before Eddore's arrival Arisia had had no need of Watchmen. "I am not intruding, as you know. I have not touched any one of your minds; have not read any one of your thoughts. I have been waiting for you to notice my presence, so that we could become acquainted with each other. A surprising development, truly--we have thought for many cycles of time that we were the only highly advanced life in this universe...." "Be silent, worm, in the presence of the Masters. Land your ship and surrender, and your planet will be allowed to serve us. Refuse, or even hesitate, and every individual of your race shall die." "Worm? Masters? Land my ship?" The young Arisian's thought was pure curiosity, with no tinge of fear, dismay, or awe. "Surrender? Serve you? I seem to be receiving your thought without ambiguity, but your meaning is entirely...." "Address me as 'Your Supremacy'," the All-Highest directed, coldly. "Land now or die now--this is your last warning." "Your Supremacy? Certainly, if that is the customary form. But as to landing--and warning--and dying--surely you do not think that I am present in the flesh? And can it be possible that you are actually so aberrant as to believe that you can kill me--or even the youngest Arisian infant? What a peculiar--what an _extraordinary_--psychology!" "Die, then, worm, if you must have it so!" the All-Highest snarled, and launched a mental bolt whose energies were calculated to slay any living thing. Enphilistor, however, parried the vicious attack without apparent effort. His manner did not change. He did not strike back. The Eddorian then drove in with an analyzing probe, only to be surprised again--the Arisian's thought could not be traced! And Enphilistor, while warding off the raging Eddorian, directed a quiet thought as though he were addressing someone close by his side: "Come in, please, one or more of the Elders. There is a situation here which I am not qualified to handle." "We, the Elders of Arisia in fusion, are here." A grave, deeply resonant pseudo-voice filled the Eddorians' minds; each perceived in three-dimensional fidelity an aged, white-bearded human face. "You of Eddore have been expected. The course of action which we must take has been determined long since. You will forget this incident completely. For cycles upon cycles of time to come no Eddorian shall know that we Arisians exist." Even before the thought was issued the fused Elders had gone quietly and smoothly to work. The Eddorians forgot utterly the incident which had just happened. Not one of them retained in his conscious mind any inkling that Eddore did not possess the only intelligent life in space. * * * * * And upon distant Arisia a full meeting of minds was held. "But why didn't you simply kill them?" Enphilistor asked. "Such action would be distasteful in the extreme, of course--almost impossible--but even I can perceive...." He paused, overcome by his thought. "That which you perceive, youth, is but a very small fraction of the whole. We did not attempt to slay them because we could not have done so. Not because of squeamishness, as you intimate, but from sheer inability. The Eddorian tenacity of life is a thing far beyond your present understanding; to have attempted to kill them would have rendered it impossible to make them forget us. We must have time ... cycles and cycles of time." The fusion broke off, pondered for minutes, then addressed the group as a whole: "We, the Elder Thinkers, have not shared fully with you our visualization of the Cosmic All, because until the Eddorians actually appeared there was always the possibility that our findings might have been in error. Now, however, there is no doubt. The Civilization which has been pictured as developing peacefully upon all the teeming planets of two galaxies will not now of itself come into being. We of Arisia should be able to bring it eventually to full fruition, but the task will be long and difficult. "The Eddorians' minds are of tremendous latent power. Were they to know of us now, it is practically certain that they would be able to develop powers and mechanisms by the use of which they would negate our every effort--they would hurl us out of this, our native space and time. We must have time ... given time, we shall succeed. There shall be Lenses ... and entities of Civilization worthy in every respect to wear them. But we of Arisia alone will never be able to conquer the Eddorians. Indeed, while this is not yet certain, the probability is exceedingly great that despite our utmost efforts at self-development our descendants will have to breed, from some people to evolve upon a planet not yet in existence, an entirely new race--a race tremendously more capable than ours--to succeed us as Guardians of Civilization." * * * * * _Centuries passed. Millenia. Cosmic and geologic ages. Planets cooled to solidity and stability. Life formed and grew and developed. And as life evolved it was subjected to, and strongly if subtly affected by, the diametrically opposed forces of Arisia and Eddore._ CHAPTER 2 THE FALL OF ATLANTIS 1. EDDORE "Members of the Innermost Circle, wherever you are and whatever you may be doing, tune in!" the All-Highest broadcast. "Analysis of the data furnished by the survey just completed shows that in general the Great Plan is progressing satisfactorily. There seem to be only four planets which our delegates have not been or may not be able to control properly: Sol III, Rigel IV, Velantia III, and Palain VII. All four, you will observe, are in the other galaxy. No trouble whatever has developed in our own. "Of these four, the first requires drastic and immediate personal attention. Its people, in the brief interval since our previous general survey, have developed nuclear energy and have fallen into a cultural pattern which does not conform in any respect to the basic principles laid down by us long since. Our deputies there, thinking erroneously that they could handle matters without reporting fully to or calling for help upon the next higher operating echelon, must be disciplined sharply. Failure, from whatever cause, can not be tolerated. "Gharlane, as Master Number Two, you will assume control of Sol III immediately. This Circle now authorizes and instructs you to take whatever steps may prove necessary to restore order upon that planet. Examine carefully this data concerning the other three worlds which may very shortly become troublesome. Is it your thought that one or more others of this Circle should be assigned to work with you, to be sure that these untoward developments are suppressed?" "It is not, Your Supremacy," that worthy decided, after a time of study. "Since the peoples in question are as yet of low intelligence; since one form of flesh at a time is all that will have to be energized; and since the techniques will be essentially similar; I can handle all four more efficiently alone than with the help or cooperation of others. If I read this data correctly, there will be need of only the most elementary precaution in the employment of mental force, since of the four races, only the Velantians have even a rudimentary knowledge of its uses. Right?" "We so read the data." Surprisingly enough, the Innermost Circle agreed unanimously. "Go, then. When finished, report in full." "I go, All-Highest. I shall render a complete and conclusive report." 2. ARISIA "We, the Elder Thinkers in fusion, are spreading in public view, for study and full discussion, a visualization of the relationships existing and to exist between Civilization and its irreconcilable and implacable foe. Several of our younger members, particularly Eukonidor, who has just attained Watchmanship, have requested instruction in this matter. Being as yet immature, their visualizations do not show clearly why Nedanillor, Kriedigan, Drounli, and Brolenteen, either singly or in fusion, have in the past performed certain acts and have not performed certain others; or that the future actions of those Moulders of Civilization will be similarly constrained. "This visualization, while more complex, more complete, and more detailed than the one set up by our forefathers at the time of the Coalescence, agrees with it in every essential. The five basics remain unchanged. First: the Eddorians can be overcome only by mental force. Second: the magnitude of the required force is such that its only possible generator is such an organization as the Galactic Patrol toward which we have been and are working. Third: since no Arisian or any fusion of Arisians will ever be able to spear-head that force, it was and is necessary to develop a race of mentality sufficient to perform that task. Fourth: this new race, having been instrumental in removing the menace of Eddore, will as a matter of course displace the Arisians as Guardians of Civilization. Fifth: the Eddorians must not become informed of us until such a time as it will be physically, mathematically impossible for them to construct any effective counter-devices." "A cheerless outlook, truly," came a somber thought. "Not so, daughter. A little reflection will show you that your present thinking is loose and turbid. When that time comes, every Arisian will be ready for the change. We know the way. We do not know to what that way leads; but the Arisian purpose in this phase of existence--this space-time continuum--will have been fulfilled and we will go eagerly and joyfully on to the next. Are there any more questions?" There were none. "Study this material, then, each of you, with exceeding care. It may be that some one of you, even a child, will perceive some facet of the truth which we have missed or have not examined fully; some fact or implication which may be made to operate to shorten the time of conflict or to lessen the number of budding Civilizations whose destruction seems to us at present to be sheerly unavoidable." Hours passed. Days. No criticisms or suggestions were offered. "We take it, then, that this visualization is the fullest and most accurate one possible for the massed intellect of Arisia to construct from the information available at the moment. The Moulders therefore, after describing briefly what they have already done, will inform us as to what they deem it necessary to do in the near future." "We have observed, and at times have guided, the evolution of intelligent life upon many planets," the fusion began. "We have, to the best of our ability, directed the energies of these entities into the channels of Civilization; we have adhered consistently to the policy of steering as many different races as possible toward the intellectual level necessary for the effective use of the Lens, without which the proposed Galactic Patrol cannot come into being. "For many cycles of time we have been working as individuals with the four strongest races, from one of which will be developed the people who will one day replace us as Guardians of Civilization. Blood lines have been established. We have encouraged matings which concentrate traits of strength and dissipate those of weakness. While no very great departure from the norm, either physically or mentally, will take place until after the penultimates have been allowed to meet and to mate, a definite general improvement of each race has been unavoidable. "Thus the Eddorians have already interested themselves in our budding Civilization upon the planet Tellus, and it is inevitable that they will very shortly interfere with our work upon the other three. These four young Civilizations must be allowed to fall. It is to warn every Arisian against well-meant but inconsidered action that this conference was called. We ourselves will operate through forms of flesh of no higher intelligence than, and indistinguishable from, the natives of the planets affected. No traceable connection will exist between those forms and us. No other Arisians will operate within extreme range of any one of those four planets; they will from now on be given the same status as has been so long accorded Eddore itself. The Eddorians must not learn of us until after it is too late for them to act effectively upon that knowledge. Any chance bit of information obtained by any Eddorian must be obliterated at once. It is to guard against and to negate such accidental disclosures that our Watchmen have been trained." "But if all of our Civilizations go down...." Eukonidor began to protest. "Study will show you, youth, that the general level of mind, and hence of strength, is rising," the fused Elders interrupted. "The trend is ever upward; each peak and valley being higher than its predecessor. When the indicated level has been reached--the level at which the efficient use of the Lens will become possible--we will not only allow ourselves to become known to them; we will engage them at every point." "One factor remains obscure." A Thinker broke the ensuing silence. "In this visualization I do not perceive anything to preclude the possibility that the Eddorians may at any time visualize us. Granted that the Elders of long ago did not merely visualize the Eddorians, but perceived them in time-space surveys; that they and subsequent Elders were able to maintain the status quo; and that the Eddorian way of thought is essentially mechanistic, rather than philosophic, in nature. There is still a possibility that the enemy may be able to deduce us by processes of logic alone. This thought is particularly disturbing to me at the present time because a rigid statistical analysis of the occurrences upon those four planets shows that they cannot possibly have been due to chance. With such an analysis as a starting point, a mind of even moderate ability could visualize us practically in toto. I assume, however, that this possibility has been taken into consideration, and suggest that the membership be informed." "The point is well taken. The possibility exists. While the probability is very great that such an analysis will not be made until after we have declared ourselves, it is not a certainty. Immediately upon deducing our existence, however, the Eddorians would begin to build against us, upon the four planets and elsewhere. Since there is only one effective counter-structure possible, and since we Elders have long been alert to detect the first indications of that particular activity, we know that the situation remains unchanged. If it changes, we will call at once another full meeting of minds. Are there any other matters of moment...? If not, this conference will dissolve." 3. ATLANTIS Ariponides, recently elected Faros of Atlantis for his third five-year term, stood at a window of his office atop the towering Farostery. His hands were clasped loosely behind his back. He did not really see the tremendous expanse of quiet ocean, nor the bustling harbor, nor the metropolis spread out so magnificently and so busily beneath him. He stood there, motionless, until a subtle vibration warned him that visitors were approaching his door. "Come in, gentlemen.... Please be seated." He sat down at one end of a table molded of transparent plastic. "Psychologist Talmonides, Statesman Cleto, Minister Philamon, Minister Marxes and Officer Artomenes, I have asked you to come here personally because I have every reason to believe that the shielding of this room is proof against eavesdroppers; a thing which can no longer be said of our supposedly private television channels. We must discuss, and if possible come to some decision concerning, the state in which our nation now finds itself. "Each of us knows within himself exactly what he is. Of our own powers, we cannot surely know each others' inward selves. The tools and techniques of psychology, however, are potent and exact; and Talmonides, after exhaustive and rigorous examination of each one of us, has certified that no taint of disloyalty exists among us." "Which certification is not worth a damn," the burly Officer declared. "What assurance do we have that Talmonides himself is not one of the ringleaders? Mind you, I have no reason to believe that he is not completely loyal. In fact, since he has been one of my best friends for over twenty years, I believe implicitly that he is. Nevertheless the plain fact is, Ariponides, that all the precautions you have taken, and any you can take, are and will be useless insofar as definite knowledge is concerned. The real truth is and will remain unknown." "You are right," the Psychologist conceded. "And, such being the case, perhaps I should withdraw from the meeting." "That wouldn't help, either." Artomenes shook his head. "Any competent plotter would be prepared for this, as for any other contingency. One of us others would be the real operator." "And the fact that our Officer is the one who is splitting hairs so finely could be taken to indicate which one of us the real operator could be," Marxes pointed out, cuttingly. "Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" Ariponides protested. "While absolute certainty is of course impossible to any finite mind, you all know how Talmonides was tested; you know that in his case there is no reasonable doubt. Such chance as exists, however, must be taken, for if we do not trust each other fully in this undertaking, failure is inevitable. With this word of warning I will get on with my report. "This worldwide frenzy of unrest followed closely upon the controlled liberation of atomic energy and may be--probably is--traceable to it. It is in no part due to imperialistic aims or acts on the part of Atlantis. This fact cannot be stressed too strongly. We never have been and are not now interested in Empire. It is true that the other nations began as Atlantean colonies, but no attempt was ever made to hold any one of them in colonial status against the wish of its electorate. All nations were and are sister states. We gain or lose together. Atlantis, the parent, was and is a clearing-house, a co-ordinator of effort, but has never claimed or sought authority to rule; all decisions being based upon free debate and free and secret ballot. "But now! Parties and factions everywhere, even in old Atlantis. Every nation is torn by internal dissensions and strife. Nor is this all. Uighar as a nation is insensately jealous of the Islands of the South, who in turn are jealous of Maya. Maya of Bantu, Bantu of Ekopt, Ekopt of Norheim, and Norheim of Uighar. A vicious circle, worsened by other jealousies and hatreds intercrossing everywhere. Each fears that some other is about to try to seize control of the entire world; and there seems to be spreading rapidly the utterly baseless belief that Atlantis itself is about to reduce all other nations of Earth to vassalage. "This is a bald statement of the present condition of the world as I see it. Since I can see no other course possible within the constituted framework of our democratic government, I recommend that we continue our present activities, such as the international treaties and agreements upon which we are now at work, intensifying our effort wherever possible. We will now hear from Statesman Cleto." "You have outlined the situation clearly enough, Faros. My thought, however, is that the principal cause of the trouble is the coming into being of this multiplicity of political parties, particularly those composed principally of crackpots and extremists. The connection with atomic energy is clear: since the atomic bomb gives a small group of people the power to destroy the world, they reason that it thereby confers upon them the authority to dictate to the world. My recommendation is merely a special case of yours; that every effort be made to influence the electorates of Norheim and of Uighar into supporting an effective international control of atomic energy." "You have your data tabulated in symbolics?" asked Talmonides, from his seat at the keyboard of a calculating machine. "Yes. Here they are." "Thanks." "Minister Philamon," the Faros announced. "As I see it--as any intelligent man should be able to see it--the principal contribution of atomic energy to this worldwide chaos was the complete demoralization of labor," the gray-haired Minister of Trade stated, flatly. "Output per man-hour should have gone up at least twenty percent, in which case prices would automatically have come down. Instead, short-sighted guilds imposed drastic curbs on production, and now seem to be surprised that as production falls and hourly wages rise, prices also rise and real income drops. Only one course is possible, gentlemen; labor _must_ be made to listen to reason. This feather-bedding, this protected loafing, this...." "I protest!" Marxes, Minister of Work, leaped to his feet. "The blame lies squarely with the capitalists. Their greed, their rapacity, their exploitation of...." "One moment, please!" Ariponides rapped the table sharply. "It is highly significant of the deplorable condition of the times that two Ministers of State should speak as you two have just spoken. I take it that neither of you has anything new to contribute to this symposium?" Both claimed the floor, but both were refused it by vote. "Hand your tabulated data to Talmonides," the Faros directed. "Officer Artomenes?" "You, our Faros, have more than intimated that our defense program, for which I am primarily responsible, has been largely to blame for what has happened," the grizzled warrior began. "In part, perhaps it was--one must be blind indeed not to see the connection, and biased indeed not to admit it. But what should I have done, knowing that there is no practical defense against the atomic bomb? Every nation has them, and is manufacturing more and more. Every nation is infested with the agents of every other. Should I have tried to keep Atlantis toothless in a world bristling with fangs? And could I--or anyone else--have succeeded in doing so?" "Probably not. No criticism was intended; we must deal with the situation as it actually exists. Your recommendations, please?" "I have thought this thing over day and night, and can see no solution which can be made acceptable to our--or to any real--democracy. Nevertheless, I have one recommendation to make. We all know that Norheim and Uighar are the sore spots--particularly Norheim. We have more bombs as of now than both of them together. We know that Uighar's super-sonic jobs are ready. We don't know exactly what Norheim has, since they cut my Intelligence line a while back, but I'm sending over another operative--my best man, too--tonight. If he finds out that we have enough advantage in speed, and I'm pretty sure that we have, I say hit both Norheim and Uighar right then, while we can, before they hit us. And hit them hard--pulverize them. Then set up a world government strong enough to knock out any nation--including Atlantis--that will not cooperate with it. This course of action is flagrantly against all international law and all the principles of democracy, I know; and even it might not work. It is, however, as far as I can see, the only course which _can_ work." "You--we all--perceive its weaknesses." The Faros thought for minutes. "You cannot be sure that your Intelligence has located all of the danger points, and many of them must be so far underground as to be safe from even our heaviest missiles. We all, including you, believe that the Psychologist is right in holding that the reaction of the other nations to such action would be both unfavorable and violent. Your report, please, Talmonides." "I have already put my data into the integrator." The Psychologist punched a button and the mechanism began to whir and to click. "I have only one new fact of any importance; the name of one of the higher-ups and its corollary implication that there may be some degree of cooperation between Norheim and Uighar...." He broke off as the machine stopped clicking and ejected its report. "Look at that graph--up ten points in seven days!" Talmonides pointed a finger. "The situation is deteriorating faster and faster. The conclusion is unavoidable--you can see yourselves that this summation line is fast approaching unity--that the outbreaks will become uncontrollable in approximately eight days. With one slight exception--here--you will notice that the lines of organization and purpose are as random as ever. In spite of this conclusive integration I would be tempted to believe that this seeming lack of coherence was due to insufficient data--that back of this whole movement there is a carefully-set-up and completely-integrated plan--except for the fact that the factions and the nations are so evenly matched. But the data are sufficient. It is shown conclusively that no one of the other nations can possibly win, even by totally destroying Atlantis. They would merely destroy each other and our entire Civilization. According to this forecast, in arriving at which the data furnished by our Officer were prime determinants, that will surely be the outcome unless remedial measures be taken at once. You are of course sure of your facts, Artomenes?" "I am sure. But you said you had a name, and that it indicated a Norheim-Uighar hookup. What is that name?" "An old friend of yours...." "Lo Sung!" The words as spoken were a curse of fury. "None other. And, unfortunately, there is as yet no course of action indicated which is at all promising of success." "Use mine, then!" Artomenes jumped up and banged the table with his fist. "Let me send two flights of rockets over right now that will blow Uigharstoy and Norgrad into radioactive dust and make a thousand square miles around each of them uninhabitable for ten thousand years! If that's the only way they can learn anything, let them learn!" "Sit down, Officer," Ariponides directed, quietly. "That course, as you have already pointed out, is indefensible. It violates every Prime Basic of our Civilization. Moreover, it would be entirely futile, since this resultant makes it clear that every nation on Earth would be destroyed within the day." "What, then?" Artomenes demanded, bitterly. "Sit still here and let them annihilate us?" "Not necessarily. It is to formulate plans that we are here. Talmonides will by now have decided, upon the basis of our pooled knowledge, what must be done." "The outlook is not good: not good at all," the Psychologist announced, gloomily. "The only course of action which carries any promise whatever of success--and its probability is only point one eight--is the one recommended by the Faros, modified slightly to include Artomenes' suggestion of sending his best operative on the indicated mission. For highest morale, by the way, the Faros should also interview this agent before he sets out. Ordinarily I would not advocate a course of action having so little likelihood of success; but since it is simply a continuation and intensification of what we are already doing, I do not see how we can adopt any other." "Are we agreed?" Ariponides asked, after a short silence. They were agreed. Four of the conferees filed out and a brisk young man strode in. Although he did not look at the Faros his eyes asked questions. "Reporting for orders, sir." He saluted the Officer punctiliously. "At ease, sir." Artomenes returned the salute. "You were called here for a word from the Faros. Sir, I present Captain Phryges." "Not orders, son ... no." Ariponides' right hand rested in greeting upon the captain's left shoulder, wise old eyes probed deeply into gold-flecked, tawny eyes of youth; the Faros saw, without really noticing, a flaming thatch of red-bronze-auburn hair. "I asked you here to wish you well; not only for myself, but for all our nation and perhaps for our entire race. While everything in my being rebels against an unprovoked and unannounced assault, we may be compelled to choose between our Officer's plan of campaign and the destruction of Civilization. Since you already know the vital importance of your mission, I need not enlarge upon it. But I want you to know fully, Captain Phryges, that all Atlantis flies with you this night." "Th ... thank you, sir." Phryges gulped twice to steady his voice. "I'll do my best, sir." And later, in a wingless craft flying toward the airfield, young Phryges broke a long silence. "So _that_ is the Faros ... I like him, Officer ... I have never seen him close up before ... there's something about him.... He isn't like my father, much, but it seems as though I have known him for a thousand years!" "Hm ... m ... m. Peculiar. You two are a lot alike, at that, even though you don't look anything like each other. ... Can't put a finger on exactly what it is, but it's there." Although Artomenes nor any other of his time could place it, the resemblance was indeed there. It was in and back of the eyes; it was the "look of eagles" which was long later to become associated with the wearers of Arisia's Lens. "But here we are, and your ship's ready. Luck, son." "Thanks, sir. But one more thing. If it should--if I don't get back--will you see that my wife and the baby are...?" "I will, son. They will leave for North Maya tomorrow morning. They will live, whether you and I do or not. Anything else?" "No, sir. Thanks. Goodbye." The ship was a tremendous flying wing. A standard commercial job. Empty--passengers, even crewmen, were never subjected to the brutal accelerations regularly used by unmanned carriers. Phryges scanned the panel. Tiny motors were pulling tapes through the controllers. Every light showed green. Everything was set. Donning a water-proof coverall, he slid through a flexible valve into his acceleration-tank and waited. A siren yelled briefly. Black night turned blinding white as the harnessed energies of the atom were released. For five and six-tenths seconds the sharp, hard, beryllium-bronze leading edge of the back-sweeping V sliced its way through ever-thinning air. The vessel seemed to pause momentarily; paused and bucked viciously. She shuddered and shivered, tried to tear herself into shreds and chunks; but Phryges in his tank was unconcerned. Earlier, weaker ships went to pieces against the solid-seeming wall of atmospheric incompressibility at the velocity of sound; but this one was built solidly enough, and powered to hit that wall hard enough, to go through unharmed. The hellish vibration ceased; the fantastic violence of the drive subsided to a mere shove; Phryges knew that the vessel had leveled off at its cruising speed of two thousand miles per hour. He emerged, spilling the least possible amount of water upon the polished steel floor. He took off his coverall and stuffed it back through the valve into the tank. He mopped and polished the floor with towels, which likewise went into the tank. He drew on a pair of soft gloves and, by manual control, jettisoned the acceleration tank and all the apparatus which had made that unloading possible. This junk would fall into the ocean; would sink; would never be found. He examined the compartment and the hatch minutely. No scratches, no scars, no mars; no tell-tale marks or prints of any kind. Let the Norskies search. So far, so good. Back toward the trailing edge then, to a small escape-hatch beside which was fastened a dull black ball. The anchoring devices went out first. He gasped as the air rushed out into near-vacuum, but he had been trained to take sudden and violent fluctuations in pressure. He rolled the ball out upon the hatch, where he opened it; two hinged hemispheres, each heavily padded with molded composition resembling sponge rubber. It seemed incredible that a man as big as Phryges, especially when wearing a parachute, could be crammed into a space so small; but that lining had been molded to fit. This ball _had_ to be small. The ship, even though it was on a regularly-scheduled commercial flight, would be scanned intensively and continuously from the moment of entering Norheiman radar range. Since the ball would be invisible on any radar screen, no suspicion would be aroused; particularly since--as far as Atlantean Intelligence had been able to discover--the Norheimans had not yet succeeded in perfecting any device by the use of which a living man could bail out of a super-sonic plane. Phryges waited--and waited--until the second hand of his watch marked the arrival of zero time. He curled up into one half of the ball; the other half closed over him and locked. The hatch opened. Ball and closely-prisoned man plummeted downward; slowing abruptly, with a horrible deceleration, to terminal velocity. Had the air been any trifle thicker the Atlantean captain would have died then and there; but that, too, had been computed accurately and Phryges lived. And as the ball bulleted downward on a screaming slant, it _shrank_! This, too, the Atlanteans hoped, was new--a synthetic which air-friction would erode away, molecule by molecule, so rapidly that no perceptible fragment of it would reach ground. The casing disappeared, and the yielding porous lining. And Phryges, still at an altitude of over thirty thousand feet, kicked away the remaining fragments of his cocoon and, by judicious planning, turned himself so that he could see the ground, now dimly visible in the first dull gray of dawn. There was the highway, paralleling his line of flight; he wouldn't miss it more than a hundred yards. He fought down an almost overwhelming urge to pull his rip-cord too soon. He had to wait--wait until the last possible second--because parachutes were big and Norheiman radar practically swept the ground. Low enough at last, he pulled the ring. Z-r-r-e-e-k--WHAP! The chute banged open; his harness tightened with a savage jerk, mere seconds before his hard-sprung knees took the shock of landing. That was close--too close! He was white and shaking, but unhurt, as he gathered in the billowing, fighting sheet and rolled it, together with his harness, into a wad. He broke open a tiny ampoule, and as the drops of liquid touched it the stout fabric began to disappear. It did not burn; it simply disintegrated and vanished. In less than a minute there remained only a few steel snaps and rings, which the Atlantean buried under a meticulously-replaced circle of sod. He was still on schedule. In less than three minutes the signals would be on the air and he would know where he was--unless the Norsks had succeeded in finding and eliminating the whole Atlantean under-cover group. He pressed a stud on a small instrument; held it down. A line burned green across the dial--flared red--vanished. "Damn!" he breathed, explosively. The strength of the signal told him that he was within a mile or so of the hide-out--first-class computation--but the red flash warned him to keep away. Kinnexa--_it had better be Kinnexa!_--would come to him. How? By air? Along the road? Through the woods on foot? He had no way of knowing--talking, even on a tight beam, was out of the question. He made his way to the highway and crouched behind a tree. Here she could come at him by any route of the three. Again he waited, pressing infrequently a stud of his sender. A long, low-slung ground-car swung around the curve and Phryges' binoculars were at his eyes. It was Kinnexa--or a duplicate. At the thought he dropped his glasses and pulled his guns--blaster in right hand, air-pistol in left. But no, that wouldn't do. She'd be suspicious, too--she'd have to be--and that car probably mounted heavy stuff. If he stepped out ready for business she'd fry him, and quick. Maybe not--she might have protection--but he couldn't take the chance. The car slowed; stopped. The girl got out, examined a front tire, straightened up, and looked down the road, straight at Phryges' hiding place. This time the binoculars brought her up to little more than arm's length. Tall, blonde, beautifully built; the slightly crooked left eyebrow. The thread-line of gold betraying a one-tooth bridge and the tiny scar on her upper lip, for both of which he had been responsible--she always did insist on playing cops-and-robbers with boys older and bigger than herself--it _was_ Kinnexa! Not even Norheim's science could imitate so perfectly every personalizing characteristic of a girl he had known ever since she was knee-high to a duck! The girl slid back into her seat and the heavy car began to move. Open-handed, Phryges stepped out into its way. The car stopped. "Turn around. Back up to me, hands behind you," she directed, crisply. The man, although surprised, obeyed. Not until he felt a finger exploring the short hair at the back of his neck did he realize what she was seeking--the almost imperceptible scar marking the place where she bit him when she was seven years old! "Oh, Fry! It _is_ you! _Really_ you! Thank the gods! I've been ashamed of that all my life, but now...." He whirled and caught her as she slumped, but she did not quite faint. "Quick! Get in ... drive on ... not too fast!" she cautioned, sharply, as the tires began to scream. "The speed limit along here is seventy, and we can't be picked up." "Easy it is, Kinny. But _give_! What's the score? Where's Kolanides? Or rather, what happened to him?" "Dead. So are the others, I think. They put him on a psycho-bench and turned him inside out." "But the blocks?" "Didn't hold--over here they add such trimmings as skinning and salt to the regular psycho routine. But none of them knew anything about me, nor about how their reports were picked up, or I'd have been dead, too. But it doesn't make any difference, Fry--we're just one week too late." "What do you mean, too late? Speed it up!" His tone was rough, but the hand he placed on her arm was gentleness itself. "I'm telling you as fast as I can. I picked up his last report day before yesterday. They have missiles just as big and just as fast as ours--maybe more so--and they are going to fire one at Atlantis tonight at exactly seven o'clock." "Tonight! Holy gods!" The man's mind raced. "Yes." Kinnexa's voice was low, uninflected. "And there was nothing in the world that I could do about it. If I approached any one of our places, or tried to use a beam strong enough to reach anywhere, I would simply have got picked up, too. I've thought and thought, but could figure out only one thing that might possibly be of any use, and I couldn't do that alone. But two of us, perhaps...." "Go on. Brief me. Nobody ever accused you of not having a brain, and you know this whole country like the palm of your hand." "Steal a ship. Be over the ramp at exactly Seven Pay Emma. When the lid opens, go into a full-power dive, beam Artomenes--if I had a second before they blanketed my wave--and meet their rocket head-on in their own launching-tube." This was stark stuff, but so tense was the moment and so highly keyed up were the two that neither of them saw anything out of the ordinary in it. "Not bad, if we can't figure out anything better. The joker being, of course, that you didn't see how you could steal a ship?" "Exactly. I can't carry blasters. No woman in Norheim is wearing a coat or a cloak now, so I can't either. And just look at this dress! Do you see any place where I could hide even one?" He looked, appreciatively, and she had the grace to blush. "Can't say that I do," he admitted. "But I'd rather have one of our own ships, if we could make the approach. Could both of us make it, do you suppose?" "Not a chance. They'd keep at least one man inside all the time. Even if we killed everybody outside, the ship would take off before we could get close enough to open the port with the outside controls." "Probably. Go on. But first, are you sure that you're in the clear?" "Positive." She grinned mirthlessly. "The fact that I am still alive is conclusive evidence that they didn't find out anything about me. But I don't want you to work on that idea if you can think of a better one. I've got passports and so on for you to be anything you want to be, from a tube-man up to an Ekoptian banker. Ditto for me, and for us both, as Mr. and Mrs." "Smart girl." He thought for minutes, then shook his head. "No possible way out that I can see. The sneak-boat isn't due for a week, and from what you've said it probably won't get here. But you might make it, at that. I'll drop you somewhere...." "You will not," she interrupted, quietly but definitely. "Which would _you_ rather--go out in a blast like that one will be, beside a good Atlantean, or, after deserting him, be psychoed, skinned, salted, and--still alive--drawn and quartered?" "Together, then, all the way," he assented. "Man and wife. Tourists--newlyweds--from some town not too far away. Pretty well fixed, to match what we're riding in. Can do?" "Very simple." She opened a compartment and selected one of a stack of documents. "I can fix this one up in ten minutes. We'll have to dispose of the rest of these, and a lot of other stuff, too. And you had better get out of that leather and into a suit that matches this passport photo." "Right. Straight road for miles, and nothing in sight either way. Give me the suit and I'll change now. Keep on going or stop?" "Better stop, I think," the girl decided. "Quicker, and we'll have to find a place to hide or bury this evidence." While the man changed clothes, Kinnexa collected the contraband, wrapping it up in the discarded jacket. She looked up just as Phryges was adjusting his coat. She glanced at his armpits, then stared. "Where are your blasters?" she demanded. "They ought to show, at least a little, and even I can't see a sign of them." He showed her. "But they're so tiny! I never saw blasters like that!" "I've got a blaster, but it's in the tail pocket. These aren't. They're air-guns. Poisoned needles. Not worth a damn beyond a hundred feet, but deadly close up. One touch anywhere and the guy dies right then. Two seconds max." "Nice!" She was no shrinking violet this young Atlantean spy. "You have spares, of course, and I can hide two of them easily enough in leg-holsters. Gimme, and show me how they work." "Standard controls, pretty much like blasters. Like so." He demonstrated, and as he drove sedately down the highway the girl sewed industriously. The day wore on, nor was it uneventful. One incident, in fact--the detailing of which would serve no useful purpose here--was of such a nature that at its end: "Better pin-point me, don't you think, on that ramp?" Phryges asked, quietly. "Just in case you get scragged in one of these brawls and I don't?" "Oh! Of course! Forgive me, Fry--it slipped my mind completely that you didn't know where it was. Area six; pin-point four seven three dash six oh five. "Got it." He repeated the figures. But neither of the Atlanteans was "scragged", and at six P.M. an allegedly honeymooning couple parked their big roadster in the garage at Norgrad Field and went through the gates. Their papers, tickets included, were in perfect order; they were as inconspicuous and as undemonstrative as newlyweds are wont to be. No more so, and no less. Strolling idly, gazing eagerly at each new thing, they made their circuitous way toward a certain small hangar. As the girl had said, this field boasted hundreds of super-sonic fighters, so many that servicing was a round-the-clock routine. In that hangar was a sharp-nosed, stubby-V'd flyer, one of Norheim's fastest. It was serviced and ready. It was too much to hope, of course, that the visitors could actually get into the building unchallenged. Nor did they. "Back, you!" A guard waved them away. "Get back to the Concourse, where you belong--no visitors allowed out here!" F-f-t! F-f-t! Phryges' air-gun broke into soft but deadly coughing. Kinnexa whirled--hands flashing down, skirt flying up-and ran. Guards tried to head her off; tried to bring their own weapons to bear. Tried--failed--died. Phryges, too, ran; ran backward. His blaster was out now and flaming, for no living enemy remained within needle range. A rifle bullet w-h-i-n-g-e-d past his head, making him duck involuntarily and uselessly. Rifles were bad; but their hazard, too, had been considered and had been accepted. Kinnexa reached the fighter's port, opened it, sprang in. He jumped. She fell against him. He tossed her clear, slammed and dogged the door. He looked at her then, and swore bitterly. A small, round hole marred the bridge of her nose: the back of her head was gone. He leaped to the controls and the fleet little ship screamed skyward. He cut in transmitter and receiver, keyed and twiddled briefly. No soap. He had been afraid of that. They were already blanketing every frequency he could employ; using power through which he could not drive even a tight beam a hundred miles. But he could still crash that missile in its tube. Or--could he? He was not afraid of other Norheiman fighters; he had a long lead and he rode one of their very fastest. But since they were already so suspicious, wouldn't they launch the bomb _before_ seven o'clock? He tried vainly to coax another knot out of his wide-open engines. With all his speed, he neared the pin-point just in time to see a trail of super-heated vapor extending up into and disappearing beyond the stratosphere. He nosed his flyer upward, locked the missile into his sights, and leveled off. Although his ship did not have the giant rocket's acceleration, he could catch it before it got to Atlantis, since he did not need its altitude and since most of its journey would be made without power. What he could do about it after he caught it he did not know, but he'd do _something_. He caught it; and, by a feat of piloting to be appreciated only by those who have handled planes at super-sonic speeds, he matched its course and velocity. Then, from a distance of barely a hundred feet, he poured his heaviest shells into the missile's war-head. He _couldn't_ be missing! It was worse than shooting sitting ducks--it was like dynamiting fish in a bucket! Nevertheless, nothing happened. The thing wasn't fuzed for impact, then, but for time; and the activating mechanism would be shell-and shock-proof. But there was still a way. He didn't need to call Artomenes now, even if he could get through the interference which the fast-approaching pursuers were still sending out. Atlantean observers would have lined this stuff up long since; the Officer would know exactly what was going on. Driving ahead and downward, at maximum power, Phryges swung his ship slowly into a right-angle collision course. The fighter's needle nose struck the war-head within a foot of the Atlantean's point of aim, and as he died Phryges knew that he had accomplished his mission. Norheim's missile would not strike Atlantis, but would fall at least ten miles short, and the water there was very deep. Very, _very_ deep. Atlantis would not be harmed. It might have been better, however, if Phryges had died with Kinnexa on Norgrad Field; in which case the continent would probably have endured. As it was, while that one missile did not reach the city, its frightful atomic charge exploded under six hundred fathoms of water, ten scant miles from Atlantis' harbor, and very close to an ancient geological fault. Artomenes, as Phryges had surmised, had had time in which to act, and he knew much more than Phryges did about what was coming toward Atlantis. Too late, he knew that not one missile, but seven, had been launched from Norheim, and at least five from Uighar. The retaliatory rockets which were to wipe out Norgrad, Uigharstoy, and thousands of square miles of environs were on their way long before either bomb or earthquake destroyed all of the Atlantean launching ramps. But when equilibrium was at last restored, the ocean rolled serenely where a minor continent had been. CHAPTER 3 THE FALL OF ROME 1. EDDORE Like two high executives of a Tellurian corporation discussing business affairs during a chance meeting at one of their clubs, Eddore's All Highest and Gharlane, his second in command, were having the Eddorian equivalent of an after-business-hours chat. "You did a nice job on Tellus," the All-Highest commended. "On the other three, too, of course, but Tellus was so far and away the worst of the lot that the excellence of the work stands out. When the Atlantean nations destroyed each other so thoroughly I thought that this thing called 'democracy' was done away with forever, but it seems to be mighty hard to kill. However, I take it that you have this Rome situation entirely under control?" "Definitely. Mithradates of Pontus was mine. So were both Sulla and Marius. Through them and others I killed practically all of the brains and ability of Rome, and reduced that so-called 'democracy' to a howling, aimless mob. My Nero will end it. Rome will go on by momentum--outwardly, will even appear to grow--for a few generations, but what Nero will do can never be undone." "Good. A difficult task, truly." "Not difficult, exactly ... but it's so damned _steady_." Gharlane's thought was bitter. "But that's the hell of working with such short-lived races. Since each creature lives only a minute or so, they change so fast that a man can't take his mind off of them for a second. I've been wanting to take a little vacation trip back to our old time-space, but it doesn't look as though I'll be able to do it until after they get some age and settle down." "That won't be too long. Life-spans lengthen, you know, as races approach their norms." "Yes. But none of the others is having half the trouble that I am. Most of them, in fact, have things coming along just about the way they want them. My four planets are raising more hell than all the rest of both galaxies put together, and I know that it isn't me--next to you, I'm the most efficient operator we've got. What I'm wondering about is why I happen to be the goat." "Precisely because you _are_ our most efficient operator." If an Eddorian can be said to smile, the All-Highest smiled. "You know, as well as I do, the findings of the Integrator." "Yes, but I am wondering more and more as to whether to believe them unreservedly or not. Spores from an extinct life-form--suitable environments--operation of the laws of chance--Tommyrot! I am beginning to suspect that chance is being strained beyond its elastic limit, for my particular benefit, and as soon as I can find out who is doing that straining there will be one empty place in the Innermost Circle." "Have a care, Gharlane!" All levity, all casualness disappeared. "Whom do you suspect? Whom do you accuse?" "Nobody, as yet. The true angle never occurred to me until just now, while I have been discussing the thing with you. Nor shall I either suspect or accuse, ever. I shall determine, then I shall act." "In defiance of _me_? Of _my_ orders?" the All-Highest demanded, his short temper flaring. "Say, rather, in support," the lieutenant shot back, unabashed. "If some one is working on me through my job, what position are you probably already in, without knowing it? Assume that I am right, that these four planets of mine got the way they are because of monkey business inside the Circle. Who would be next? And how sure are you that there isn't something similar, but not so far advanced, already aimed at you? It seems to me that serious thought is in order." "Perhaps so.... You may be right.... There have been a few nonconformable items. Taken separately, they did not seem to be of any importance; but together, and considered in this new light...." Thus was borne out the conclusion of the Arisian Elders that the Eddorians would not at that time deduce Arisia; and thus Eddore lost its chance to begin in time the forging of a weapon with which to oppose effectively Arisia's--Civilization's--Galactic Patrol, so soon to come into being. If either of the two had been less suspicious, less jealous, less arrogant and domineering--in other words, had not been Eddorians--this History of Civilization might never have been written; or written very differently and by another hand. Both were, however, Eddorians. 2. ARISIA In the brief interval between the fall of Atlantis and the rise of Rome to the summit of her power, Eukonidor of Arisia had aged scarcely at all. He was still a youth. He was, and would be for many centuries to come, a Watchman. Although his mind was powerful enough to understand the Elders' visualization of the course of Civilization--in fact, he had already made significant progress in his own visualization of the Cosmic All--he was not sufficiently mature to contemplate unmoved the events which, according to all Arisian visualizations, were bound to occur. "Your feeling is but natural, Eukonidor." Drounli, the Moulder principally concerned with the planet Tellus, meshed his mind smoothly with that of the young Watchman. "We do not enjoy it ourselves, as you know. It is, however, _necessary_. In no other way can the ultimate triumph of Civilization be assured." "But can nothing be done to alleviate...?" Eukonidor paused. Drounli waited. "Have you any suggestions to offer?" "None," the younger Arisian confessed. "But I thought ... you, or the Elders, so much older and stronger ... could...." "We can not. Rome will fall. It must be allowed to fall." "It will be Nero, then? And we can do nothing?" "Nero. We can do little enough. Our forms of flesh--Petronius, Acte, and the others--will do whatever they can; but their powers will be exactly the same as those of other human beings of their time. They must be and will be constrained, since any show of unusual powers, either mental or physical, would be detected instantly and would be far too revealing. On the other hand, Nero--that is, Gharlane of Eddore--will be operating much more freely." "Very much so. Practically unhampered, except in purely physical matters. But, if nothing can be done to stop it.... If Nero must be allowed to sow his seeds of ruin...." And upon that cheerless note the conference ended. 3. ROME "But what have you, Livius, or any of us, for that matter, got to live for?" demanded Patroclus the gladiator of his cell-mate. "We are well fed, well kept, well exercised; like horses. But, like horses, we are lower than slaves. Slaves have some freedom of action; most of us have none. We fight--fight whoever or whatever our cursed owners send us against. Those of us who live fight again; but the end is certain and comes soon. I had a wife and children once. So did you. Is there any chance, however slight, that either of us will ever know them again; or learn even whether they live or die? None. At this price, is your life worth living? Mine is not." Livius the Bithynian, who had been staring out past the bars of the cubicle and over the smooth sand of the arena toward Nero's garlanded and purple-bannered throne, turned and studied his fellow gladiator from toe to crown. The heavily-muscled legs, the narrow waist, the sharply-tapering torso, the enormous shoulders. The leonine head, surmounted by an unkempt shock of red-bronze-auburn hair. And, lastly, the eyes--gold-flecked, tawny eyes--hard and cold now with a ferocity and a purpose not to be concealed. "I have been more or less expecting something of this sort," Livius said then, quietly. "Nothing overt--you have builded well, Patroclus--but to one who knows gladiators as I know them there has been something in the wind for weeks past. I take it that someone swore his life for me and that I should not ask who that friend might be." "One did. You should not." "So be it. To my unknown sponsor, then, and to the gods, I give thanks, for I am wholly with you. Not that I have any hope. Although your tribe breeds men--from your build and hair and eyes you descend from Spartacus himself--you know that even he did not succeed. Things now are worse, infinitely worse, than they were in his day. No one who has ever plotted against Nero has had any measure of success; not even his scheming slut of a mother. All have died, in what fashions you know. Nero is vile, the basest of the base. Nevertheless, his spies are the most efficient that the world has ever known. In spite of that, I feel as you do. If I can take with me two or three of the Praetorians, I die content. But by your look, your plan is not what I thought, to storm vainly Nero's podium yonder. Have you, by any chance, some trace of hope of success?" "More than a trace; much more." The Thracian's teeth bared in a wolfish grin. "His spies are, as you say, very good. But, this time, so are we. Just as hard and just as ruthless. Many of his spies among us have died; most, if not all, of the rest are known. They, too, shall die. Glatius, for instance. Once in a while, by the luck of the gods, a man kills a better man than he is; but Glatius has done it six times in a row, without getting a scratch. But the next time he fights, in spite of Nero's protection, Glatius dies. Word has gone out, and there are gladiators' tricks that Nero never heard of." "Quite true. One question, and I too may begin to hope. This is not the first time that gladiators have plotted against Ahenobarbus. Before the plotters could accomplish anything, however, they found themselves matched against each other and the signal was always for death, never for mercy. Has this...?" Livius paused. "It has not. It is that which gives me the hope I have. Nor are we gladiators alone in this. We have powerful friends at court; one of whom has for days been carrying a knife sharpened especially to slip between Nero's ribs. That he still carries that knife and that we still live are proofs enough for me that Ahenobarbus, the matricide and incendiary, has no suspicion whatever of what is going on." (At this point Nero on his throne burst into a roar of laughter, his gross body shaking with a merriment which Petronius and Tigellinus ascribed to the death-throes of a Christian woman in the arena.) "Is there any small thing which I should be told in order to be of greatest use?" Livius asked. "Several. The prisons and the pits are so crowded with Christians that they die and stink, and a pestilence threatens. To mend matters, some scores of hundreds of them are to be crucified here tomorrow." "Why not? Everyone knows that they are poisoners of wells and murderers of children, and practitioners of magic. Wizards and witches." "True enough." Patroclus shrugged his massive shoulders. "But to get on, tomorrow night, at full dark, the remaining hundreds who have not been crucified are to be--have you ever seen sarmentitii and semaxii?" "Once only. A gorgeous spectacle, truly, almost as thrilling as to feel a man die on your sword. Men and women, wrapped in oil-soaked garments smeared with pitch and chained to posts, make splendid torches indeed. You mean, then, that...?" "Aye. In Caesar's own garden. When the light is brightest Nero will ride in parade. When his chariot passes the tenth torch our ally swings his knife. The Praetorians will rush around, but there will be a few moments of confusion during which we will go into action and the guards will die. At the same time others of our party will take the palace and kill every man, woman, and child adherent to Nero." "Very nice--in theory." The Bithynian was frankly skeptical. "But just how are we going to get there? A few gladiators--such champions as Patroclus of Thrace--are at times allowed to do pretty much as they please in their free time, and hence could possibly be on hand to take part in such a brawl, but most of us will be under lock and guard." "That too, has been arranged. Our allies near the throne and certain other nobles and citizens of Rome, who have been winning large sums by our victories, have prevailed upon our masters to give a grand banquet to _all_ gladiators tomorrow night, immediately following the mass crucifixion. It is going to be held in the Claudian Grove, just across from Caesar's Gardens." "Ah!" Livius breathed deep; his eyes flashed. "By Baal and Bacchus! By the round, high breasts of Isis! For the first time in years I begin to live! Our masters die first, then and there ... but hold--weapons?" "Will be provided. Bystanders will have them, and armor and shields, under their cloaks. Our owners first, yes; and then the Praetorians. But note, Livius, that Tigellinus, the Commander of the Guard, is mine--mine alone. I, personally, am going to cut his heart out." "Granted. I heard that he had your wife for a time. But you seem quite confident that you will still be alive tomorrow night. By Baal and Ishtar, I wish I could feel so! With something to live for at last, I can feel my guts turning to water--I can hear Charon's oars. Like as not, now, some toe-dancing stripling of a retiarius will entangle me in his net this very afternoon, and no mercy signal has been or will be given this day. Such is the crowd's temper, from Caesar down, that even you will get 'Pollice verso' if you fall." "True enough. But you had better get over that feeling, if you want to live. As for me, I'm safe enough. I have made a vow to Jupiter, and he who has protected me so long will not desert me now. Any man or any thing who faces me during these games, dies." "I hope so, sin ... but listen! The horns ... and someone is coming!" The door behind them swung open. A lanista, or master of gladiators, laden with arms and armor, entered. The door swung to and was locked from the outside. The visitor was obviously excited, but stared wordlessly at Patroclus for seconds. "Well, Iron-heart," he burst out finally, "aren't you even curious about what you have got to do today?" "Not particularly," Patroclus replied, indifferently. "Except to dress to fit. Why? Something special?" "_Extra_ special. The sensation of the year. Fermius himself. Unlimited. Free choice of weapons and armor." "Fermius!" Livius exclaimed. "Fermius the Gaul? May Athene cover you with her shield!" "You can say that for me, too," the lanista agreed, callously. "Before I knew who was entered, like a fool, I bet a hundred sesterces on Patroclus here, at odds of only one to two, against the field. But listen, Bronze-head. If you get the best of Fermius, I'll give you a full third of my winnings." "Thanks. You'll collect. A good man, Fermius, and smart. I've heard a lot about him, but never saw him work. He has seen me, which isn't so good. Both heavy and fast--somewhat lighter than I am, and a bit faster. He knows that I always fight Thracian, and that I'd be a fool to try anything else against him. He fights either Thracian or Samnite depending upon the opposition. Against me his best bet would be to go Samnite. Do you know?" "No. They didn't say. He may not decide until the last moment." "Unlimited, against me, he'll go Samnite. He'll have to. These unlimiteds are tough, but it gives me a chance to use a new trick I've been working on. I'll take that sword there--no scabbard--and two daggers, besides my gladius. Get me a mace; the lightest real mace they've got in their armory." "A _mace_! Fighting _Thracian_, against a _Samnite_?" "Exactly. A mace. Am I going to fight Fermius, or do you want to do it yourself?" The mace was brought and Patroclus banged it, with a two-handed roundhouse swing, against a stone of the wall. The head remained solid upon the shaft. Good. They waited. Trumpets blared; the roar of the vast assemblage subsided almost to silence. "Grand Champion Fermius versus Grand Champion Patroclus," came the raucous announcement. "Single combat. Any weapons that either chooses to use, used in any way possible. No rest, no intermission. Enter!" Two armored figures strode toward the center of the arena. Patroclus' armor, from towering helmet down, and including the shield, was of dully-gleaming steel, completely bare of ornament. Each piece was marred and scarred; very plainly that armor was for use and had been used. On the other hand, the Samnite half-armor of the Gaul was resplendent with the decorations affected by his race. Fermius' helmet sported three brilliantly-colored plumes, his shield and cuirass, enameled in half the colors of the spectrum, looked as though they were being worn for the first time. Five yards apart, the gladiators stopped and wheeled to face the podium upon which Nero lolled. The buzz of conversation--the mace had excited no little comment and speculation--ceased. Patroclus heaved his ponderous weapon into the air; the Gaul whirled up his long, sharp sword. They chanted in unison: "Ave, Caesar Imperator! Morituri te salutant!" The starting-flag flashed downward; and at its first sight, long before it struck the ground, both men moved. Fermius whirled and leaped; but, fast as he was, he was not quite fast enough. That mace, which had seemed so heavy in the Thracian's hands a moment before, had become miraculously maneuverable--it was hurtling through the air directly toward the middle of his body! It did not strike its goal--Patroclus hoped that he was the only one there who suspected that he had not expected it to touch his opponent--but in order to dodge the missile Fermius had to break his stride; lost momentarily the fine co-ordination of his attack. And in that moment Patroclus struck. Struck, and struck again. But, as has been said, Fermius was both strong and fast. The first blow, aimed backhand at his bare right leg, struck his shield instead. The left-handed stab, shield-encumbered as the left arm was, ditto. So did the next trial, a vicious forehand cut. The third of the mad flurry of swordcuts, only partially deflected by the sword which Fermius could only then get into play, sheared down and a red, a green, and a white plume floated toward the ground. The two fighters sprang apart and studied each other briefly. From the gladiators' standpoint, this had been the veriest preliminary skirmishing. That the Gaul had lost his plumes and that his armor showed great streaks of missing enamel meant no more to either than that the Thracian's supposedly surprise attack had failed. Each knew that he faced the deadliest fighter of his world; but if that knowledge affected either man, the other could not perceive it. But the crowd went wild. Nothing like that first terrific passage-at-arms had ever before been seen. Death, sudden and violent, had been in the air. The arena was saturated with it. Hearts had been ecstatically in throats. Each person there, man or woman, had felt the indescribable thrill of death--vicariously, safely--and every fiber of their lusts demanded more. More! Each spectator knew that one of those men would die that afternoon. None wanted, or would permit them both to live. This was to the death, and death there would be. Women, their faces blotched and purple with emotion, shrieked and screamed. Men, stamping their feet and waving their arms, yelled and swore. And many, men and women alike, laid wagers. "Five hundred sesterces on Fermius!" one shouted, tablet and stylus in air. "Taken!" came an answering yell. "The Gaul is done--Patroclus all but had him there!" "One thousand, you!" came another challenge. "Patroclus missed his chance and will never get another--a thousand on Fermius!" "Two thousand!" "Five thousand!" "Ten!" The fighters closed--swung--stabbed. Shields clanged vibrantly under the impact of fended strokes, swords whined and snarled. Back and forth--circling--giving and taking ground--for minute after endless minute that desperately furious exhibition of skill, of speed and of power and of endurance went on. And as it went on, longer and longer past the time expected by even the most optimistic, tension mounted higher and higher. Blood flowed crimson down the Gaul's bare leg and the crowd screamed its approval. Blood trickled out of the joints of the Thracian's armor and it became a frenzied mob. No human body could stand that pace for long. Both men were tiring fast, and slowing. With the drive of his weight and armor, Patroclus forced the Gaul to go where he wanted him to go. Then, apparently gathering his every resource for a final effort, the Thracian took one short, choppy step forward and swung straight down, with all his strength. The blood-smeared hilt turned in his hands; the blade struck flat and broke, its length whining viciously away. Fermius, although staggered by the sheer brute force of the abortive stroke, recovered almost instantly; dropping his sword and snatching at his gladius to take advantage of the wonderful opportunity thus given him. But that breaking had not been accidental; Patroclus made no attempt to recover his balance. Instead, he ducked past the surprised and shaken Gaul. Still stooping, he seized the mace, which everyone except he had forgotten, and swung; swung with all the totalized and synchronized power of hands, wrists, arms, shoulders, and magnificent body. The iron head of the ponderous weapon struck the center of the Gaul's cuirass, which crunched inward like so much cardboard. Fermius seemed to leave the ground and, folded around the mace, to fly briefly through the air. As he struck the ground, Patroclus was upon him. The Gaul was probably already dead--that blow would have killed an elephant--but that made no difference. If that mob knew that Fermius was dead, they might start yelling for his life, too. Hence, by lifting his head and poising his dirk high in air, he asked of Caesar his Imperial will. The crowd, already frantic, had gone stark mad at the blow. No thought of mercy could or did exist in that insanely bloodthirsty throng; no thought of clemency for the man who had fought such a magnificent fight. In cooler moments they would have wanted him to live, to thrill them again and yet again; but now, for almost half an hour, they had been loving the hot, the suffocating thrill of death in their throats. Now they wanted, and would have, the ultimate thrill. "Death!" The solid structure rocked to the crescendo roar of the demand. "_Death_! DEATH!" Nero's right thumb pressed horizontally against his chest. Every vestal was making the same sign. Pollice verso. Death. The strained and strident yelling of the mob grew even louder. Patroclus lowered his dagger and delivered the unnecessary and unfelt thrust; and-- "Peractum est!" arose one deafening yell. * * * * * Thus the red-haired Thracian lived; and also, somewhat to his own surprise, did Livius. "I'm glad to see you, Bronze-heart, by the white thighs of Ceres, I am!" that worthy exclaimed, when the two met, the following day. Patroclus had never seen the Bithynian so buoyant. "Pallas Athene covered you, like I asked her to. But by the red beak of Thoth and the sacred Zaimph of Tanit, it gave me the horrors when you made that throw so quick and missed it, and I went as crazy as the rest of them when you pulled the real coup. But now, curse it, I suppose that we'll all have to be on the lookout for it--or no, unlimiteds aren't common, thank Ninib the Smiter and his scarlet spears!" "I hear you didn't do so badly, yourself," Patroclus interrupted his friend's loquacity. "I missed your first two, but I saw you take Kalendios. He's a high-rater--one of the best of the locals--and I was afraid he might snare you, but from the looks of you, you got only a couple of stabs. Nice work." "Prayer, my boy. Prayer is the stuff. I prayed to 'em in order, and hit the jackpot with Shamash. My guts curled up again, like they belong, and I knew that the portents were all in my favor. Besides, when you were walking out to meet Fermius, did you notice that red-headed Greek posturer making passes at you?" "Huh? Don't be a fool. I had other things to think of." "So I figured. So did she, probably, because after a while she came around behind with a lanista and made eyes at me. I must have the next best shape to you here, I guess. What a wench! Anyway, I felt better and better, and before she left I knew that no damn retiarius that ever waved a trident could put a net past my guard. And they couldn't either. A couple more like that and I'll be a Grand Champion myself. But they're digging holes for the crosses and there's the horn that the feast is ready. This show is going to be really good." They ate, hugely and with unmarred appetite, of the heaped food which Nero had provided. They returned to their assigned places to see crosses, standing as close together as they could be placed and each bearing a suffering Christian, filling the whole vast expanse of the arena. And, if the truth must be told, those two men enjoyed thoroughly every moment of that long and sickeningly horrible afternoon. They were the hardest products of the hardest school the world has ever known: trained rigorously to deal out death mercilessly at command; to accept death unflinchingly at need. They should not and can not be judged by the higher, finer standards of a softer, gentler day. The afternoon passed; evening approached. All the gladiators then in Rome assembled in the Claudian Grove, around tables creaking under their loads of food and wine. Women, too, were there in profusion; women for the taking and yearning to be taken; and the tide of revelry ran open, wide, and high. Although all ate and apparently drank with abandon, most of the wine was in fact wasted. And as the sky darkened, most of the gladiators, one by one, began to get rid of their female companions upon one pretext or another and to drift toward the road which separated the festivities from the cloaked and curious throng of lookers-on. At full dark, a red glare flared into the sky from Caesar's garden and the gladiators, deployed now along the highway, dashed across it and seemed to wrestle briefly with cloaked figures. Then armed, more-or-less-armored men ran back to the scene of their reveling. Swords, daggers, and gladii thrust, stabbed, and cut. Tables and benches ran red; ground and grass grew slippery with blood. The conspirators turned then and rushed toward the Emperor's brilliantly torch-lit garden. Patroclus, however, was not in the van. He had had trouble in finding a cuirass big enough for him to get into. He had been delayed further by the fact that he had had to kill three strange lanistae before he could get at his owner, the man he really wanted to slay. He was therefore some little distance behind the other gladiators when Petronius rushed up to him and seized him by the arm. White and trembling, the noble was not now the exquisite Arbiter Elegantiae; nor the imperturbable Augustian. "Patroclus! In the name of Bacchus, Patroclus, why do the men go there now? No signal was given--I could not get to Nero!" "What?" the Thracian blazed. "Vulcan and his fiends! It _was_ given--I heard it myself! What went wrong?" "Everything." Petronius licked his lips. "I was standing right beside him. No one else was near enough to interfere. It was--should have been--easy. But after I got my knife out I couldn't move. It was his _eyes_, Patroclus--I swear it, by the white breasts of Venus! He has the evil eye--I couldn't move a muscle, I tell you! Then, although I didn't want to, I turned and ran!" "How did you find _me_ so quick?" "I--I--I--don't know," the frantic Arbiter stuttered. "I ran and ran, and there you were. But what are we--you--going to do?" Patroclus' mind raced. He believed implicitly that Jupiter guarded him personally. He believed in the other gods and goddesses of Rome. He more than half believed in the multitudinous deities of Greece, of Egypt, and even of Babylon. The other world was real and close; the evil eye only one of the many inexplicable facts of every-day life. Nevertheless, in spite of his credulity--or perhaps in part because of it--he also believed firmly in himself; in his own powers. Wherefore he soon came to a decision. "Jupiter, ward from me Ahenobarbus' evil eye!" he called aloud, and turned. "Where are you going?" Petronius, still shaking, demanded. "To do the job _you_ swore to do, of course--to kill that bloated toad. And then to give Tigellinus what I have owed him so long." At full run, he soon overtook his fellows, and waded resistlessly into the fray. He was Grand Champion Patroclus, working at his trade; the hard-learned trade which he knew so well. No Praetorian or ordinary soldier could stand before him save momentarily. He did not have all of his Thracian armor, but he had enough. Man after man faced him, and man after man died. And Nero, sitting at ease with a beautiful boy at his right and a beautiful harlot at his left, gazed appreciatively through his emerald lens at the flaming torches; the while, with a very small fraction of his Eddorian mind, he mused upon the matter of Patroclus and Tigellinus. Should he let the Thracian kill the Commander of his Guard? Or not? It didn't really matter, one way or the other. In fact, nothing about this whole foul planet--this ultra-microscopic, if offensive, speck of cosmic dust in the Eddorian Scheme of Things--really mattered at all. It would be mildly amusing to watch the gladiator consummate his vengeance by carving the Roman to bits. But, on the other hand, there was such a thing as pride of workmanship. Viewed in that light, the Thracian could not kill Tigellinus, because that bit of corruption had a few more jobs to do. He must descend lower and lower into unspeakable depravity, finally to cut his own throat with a razor. Although Patroclus would not know it--it was better technique not to let him know it--the Thracian's proposed vengeance would have been futility itself compared with that which the luckless Roman was to wreak on himself. Wherefore a shrewdly-placed blow knocked the helmet from Patroclus' head and a mace crashed down, spattering his brains abroad. * * * * * Thus ended the last significant attempt to save the civilization of Rome; in a fiasco so complete that even such meticulous historians as Tacitus and Suetonius mention it merely as a minor disturbance of Nero's garden party. * * * * * _The planet Tellus circled its sun some twenty hundred times. Sixty-odd generations of men were born and died, but that was not enough. The Arisian program of genetics required more. Therefore the Elders, after due deliberation, agreed that that Civilization, too, must be allowed to fall. And Gharlane of Eddore, recalled to duty from the middle of a much-too-short vacation, found things in very bad shape indeed and went busily to work setting them to rights. He had slain one fellow-member of the Innermost Circle, but there might very well have been more than one Master involved._ BOOK TWO THE WORLD WAR CHAPTER 4 1918 Sobbing furiously, Captain Ralph Kinnison wrenched at his stick--with half of his control surfaces shot away the crate was hellishly logy. He could step out, of course, the while saluting the victorious Jerries, but he wasn't on fire--yet--and hadn't been hit--yet. He ducked and flinched sidewise as another burst of bullets stitched another seam along his riddled fuselage and whanged against his dead engine. Afire? Not yet--good! Maybe he could land the heap, after all! Slowly--oh, _so_ sluggishly--the Spad began to level off, toward the edge of the wheatfield and that friendly, inviting ditch. If the krauts didn't get him with their next pass.... He heard a chattering beneath him--Brownings, by God!--and the expected burst did not come. He knew that he had been just about over the front when they conked his engine; it was a toss-up whether he would come down in enemy territory or not. But now, for the first time in ages, it seemed, there were machine-guns going that were not aimed at him! His landing-gear swished against stubble and he fought with all his strength of body and of will to keep the Spad's tail down. He almost succeeded; his speed was almost spent when he began to nose over. He leaped, then, and as he struck ground he curled up and rolled--he had been a motorcycle racer for years--feeling as he did so a wash of heat: a tracer had found his gas-tank at last! Bullets were thudding into the ground; one shrieked past his head as, stooping over, folded into the smallest possible target, he galloped awkwardly toward the ditch. The Brownings still yammered, filling the sky with cupro-nickeled lead; and while Kinnison was flinging himself full length into the protecting water and mud, he heard a tremendous crash. One of those Huns had been too intent on murder; had stayed a few seconds too long; had come a few meters too close. The clamor of the guns stopped abruptly. "We got one! We got one!" a yell of exultation. "Stay down! Keep low, you boneheads!" roared a voice of authority, quite evidently a sergeant's. "Wanna get your blocks shot off? Take down them guns; we gotta get to hell out of here. Hey, you flyer! Are you O.K., or wounded, or maybe dead?" Kinnison spat out mud until he could talk. "O.K.!" he shouted, and started to lift an eye above the low bank. He stopped, however, as whistling metal, sheeting in from the north, told him that such action would be decidedly unsafe. "But I ain't leaving this ditch right now--sounds mighty hot out there!" "You said it, brother. It's hotter than the hinges of hell, from behind that ridge over there. But ooze down that ditch a piece, around the first bend. It's pretty well in the clear there, and besides, you'll find a ledge of rocks running straight across the flat. Cross over there and climb the hill--join us by that dead snag up there. We got to get out of here. That sausage over there must have seen this shindig and they'll blow this whole damn area off the map. Snap it up! And you, you goldbricks, get the lead out of your pants!" Kinnison followed directions. He found the ledge and emerged, scraping thick and sticky mud from his uniform. He crawled across the little plain. An occasional bullet whined through the air, far above him; but, as the sergeant had said, this bit of terrain was "in the clear." He climbed the hill, approached the gaunt, bare tree-trunk. He heard men moving, and cautiously announced himself. "OK., fella," came the sergeant's deep bass. "Yeah, it's us. Shake a leg!" "That's easy!" Kinnison laughed for the first time that day. "I'm shaking already, like a hula-hula dancer's empennage. What outfit is this, and where are we?" "BRROOM!" The earth trembled, the air vibrated. Below and to the north, almost exactly where the machine-guns had been, an awe-inspiring cloud billowed majestically into the air; a cloud composed of smoke, vapor, pulverized earth, chunks of rock, and debris of what had been trees. Nor was it alone. "Crack! Bang! Tweet! Boom! Wham!" Shells of all calibers, high explosive and gas, came down in droves. The landscape disappeared. The little company of Americans, in complete silence and with one mind, devoted themselves to accumulating distance. Finally, when they had to stop for breath: "Section B, attached to the 76th Field Artillery," the sergeant answered the question as though it had just been asked. "As to where we are, somewhere between Berlin and Paris is about all I can tell you. We got hell knocked out of us yesterday, and have been running around lost ever since. They shot off a rally signal on top of this here hill, though, and we was just going to shove off when we seen the krauts chasing you." "Thanks. I'd better rally with you, I guess--find out where we are, and what's the chance of getting back to my own outfit." "Damn slim, I'd say. Boches are all around us here, thicker than fleas on a dog." They approached the summit, were challenged, were accepted. They saw a gray-haired man--an old man, for such a location--seated calmly upon a rock, smoking a cigarette. His smartly-tailored uniform, which fitted perfectly his not-so-slender figure, was muddy and tattered. One leg of his breeches was torn half away, revealing a blood-soaked bandage. Although he was very evidently an officer, no insignia were visible. As Kinnison and the gunners approached, a first lieutenant--practically spic-and-span--spoke to the man on the rock. "First thing to do is to settle the matter of rank," he announced, crisply. "I'm First Lieutenant Randolph, of...." "Rank, eh?" The seated one grinned and spat out the butt of his cigarette. "But then, it was important to me, too, when I was a first lieutenant--about the time that you were born. Slayton, Major-General." "Oh ... excuse me, sir...." "Skip it. How many men you got, and what are they?" "Seven, sir. We brought in a wire from Inf...." "A _wire_! Hellanddamnation, why haven't you got it with you, then? Get it!" The crestfallen officer disappeared; the general turned to Kinnison and the sergeant. "Have you got any ammunition, sergeant?" "Yes, sir. About thirty belts." "Thank God! We can use it, and you. As for you, Captain, I don't know...." The wire came up. The general seized the instrument and cranked. "Get me Spearmint ... Spearmint? Slayton--give me Weatherby.... This is Slayton ... yes, but ... No, but I want ... Hellanddamnation, Weatherby, shut up and let me talk--don't you know that this wire's apt to be cut any second? We're on top of Hill Fo-wer, Ni-yun, Sev-en--that's right--about two hundred men; maybe three. Composite--somebody, apparently, from half the outfits in France. Too fast and too far--both flanks wide open--cut off ... Hello! Hello! Hello!" He dropped the instrument and turned to Kinnison. "You want to go back, Captain, and I need a runner--bad. Want to try to get through?" "Yes, sir." "First phone you come to, get Spearmint--General Weatherby. Tell him Slayton says that we're cut off, but the Germans aren't in much force nor in good position, and for God's sake to get some air and tanks in here to keep them from consolidating. Just a minute. Sergeant, what's your name?" He studied the burly non-com minutely. "Wells, sir." "What would you say ought to be done with the machine-guns?" "Cover that ravine, there, first. Then set up to enfilade if they try to come up over there. Then, if I could find any more guns, I'd...." "Enough. Second Lieutenant Wells, from now. GHQ will confirm. Take charge of all the guns we have. Report when you have made disposition. Now, Kinnison, listen. I can probably hold out until tonight. The enemy doesn't know yet that we're here, but we are due for some action pretty quick now, and when they locate us--if there aren't too many of their own units here, too--they'll flatten this hill like a table. So tell Weatherby to throw a column in here as soon as it gets dark, and to advance Eight and Sixty, so as to consolidate this whole area. Got it?" "Yes, sir." "Got a compass?" "Yes, sir." "Pick up a tin hat and get going. A hair north of due west, about a kilometer and a half. Keep cover, because the going will be tough. Then you'll come to a road. It's a mess, but it's ours--or was, at last accounts--so the worst of it will be over. On that road, which goes south-west, about two kilometers further, you'll find a Post--you'll know it by the motorcycles and such. Phone from there. Luck!" Bullets began to whine and the general dropped to the ground and crawled toward a coppice, bellowing orders as he went. Kinnison crawled, too, straight west, availing himself of all possible cover, until he encountered a sergeant-major reclining against the south side of a great tree. "Cigarette, buddy?" that wight demanded. "Sure. Take the pack. I've got another that'll last me--maybe more. But what the hell goes on here? Who ever heard of a major general getting far enough up front to get shot in the leg, and he talks as though he were figuring on licking the whole German army. Is the old bird nuts, or what?" "Not so you would notice it. Didn'cha ever hear of 'Hellandamnation' Slayton? You will, buddy, you will. If Pershing doesn't give him three stars after this, he's crazier than hell. He ain't supposed to be on combat at all--he's from GHQ and can make or break anybody in the AEF. Out here on a look-see trip and couldn't get back. But you got to hand it to him--he's getting things organized in great shape. I came in with him--I'm about all that's left of them that did--just waiting for this breeze to die down, but its getting worse. We'd better duck--over there!" Bullets whistled and stormed, breaking more twigs and branches from the already shattered, practically denuded trees. The two slid precipitately into the indicated shell-hole, into stinking mud. Wells' guns burst into action. "Damn! I hated to do this," the sergeant grumbled, "On accounta I just got half dry." "Wise me up," Kinnison directed. "The more I know about things, the more apt I am to get through." "This is what is left of two battalions, and a lot of casuals. They made objective, but it turns out the outfits on their right and left couldn't, leaving their flanks right out in the open air. Orders come in by blinker to rectify the line by falling back, but by then it couldn't be done. Under observation." Kinnison nodded. He knew what a barrage would have done to a force trying to cross such open ground in daylight. "One man could prob'ly make it, though, if he was careful and kept his eyes wide open," the sergeant-major continued. "But you ain't got no binoculars, have you?" "No." "Get a pair easy enough. You saw them boots without any hobnails in 'em, sticking out from under some blankets?" "Yes. I get you." Kinnison knew that combat officers did not wear hobnails, and usually carried binoculars. "How come so many at once?" "Just about all the officers that got this far. Conniving, my guess is, behind old Slayton's back. Anyway, a kraut aviator spots 'em and dives. Our machine-guns got him, but not until after he heaved a bomb. Dead center. Christ, what a mess! But there's six-seven good glasses in there. I'd grab one myself, but the general would see it--he can see right through the lid of a mess-kit. Well, the boys have shut those krauts up, so I'll hunt the old man up and tell him what I found out. _Damn_ this mud!" Kinnison emerged sinuously and snaked his way to a row of blanket covered forms. He lifted a blanket and gasped: then vomited up everything, it seemed, that he had eaten for days. But he _had_ to have the binoculars. He got them. Then, still retching, white and shaken, he crept westward; availing himself of every possible item of cover. For some time, from a point somewhere north of his route, a machine-gun had been intermittently at work. It was close; but the very loudness of its noise, confused as it was by resounding echoes, made it impossible to locate at all exactly the weapon's position. Kinnison crept forward inchwise; scanning every foot of visible terrain through his powerful glass. He knew by the sound that it was German. More, since what he did not know about machine-guns could have been printed in bill-poster type upon the back of his hand, he knew that it was a Maxim, Model 1907--a mean, mean gun. He deduced that it was doing plenty of damage to his fellows back on the hill, and that they had not been able to do much of anything about it. And it was beautifully hidden; even he, close as he must be, couldn't see it. But damn it, there _had_ to be a.... Minute after minute, unmoving save for the traverse of his binoculars, he searched, and finally he found. A tiny plume--the veriest wisp--of vapor, rising from the surface of the brook. Steam! Steam from the cooling jacket of that Maxim 1907! And there was the tube! Cautiously he moved around until he could trace that tube to its business end--the carefully-hidden emplacement. There it was! He couldn't maintain his westward course without them spotting him; nor could he go around far enough. And besides ... and besides that, there would be at least a patrol, if it hadn't gone up the hill already. And there were grenades available, right close.... He crept up to one of the gruesome objects he had been avoiding, and when he crept away he half-carried, half-dragged three grenades in a canvas bag. He wormed his way to a certain boulder. He straightened up, pulled three pins, swung his arm three times. Bang! Bam! Pow! The camouflage disappeared; so did the shrubbery for yards around. Kinnison had ducked behind the rock, but he ducked still deeper as a chunk of something, its force pretty well spent, clanged against his steel helmet. Another object thudded beside him--a leg, gray-clad and wearing a heavy field boot! Kinnison wanted to be sick again, but he had neither the time nor the contents. And damn! What _lousy_ throwing! He had never been any good at baseball, but he supposed that he could hit a thing as big as that gun-pit--but not one of his grenades had gone in. The crew would probably be dead--from concussion, if nothing else--but the gun probably wasn't even hurt. He would have to go over there and cripple it himself. He went--not exactly boldly--forty-five in hand. The Germans looked dead. One of them sprawled on the parapet, right in his way. He gave the body a shove, watched it roll down the slope. As it rolled, however, it came to life and yelled; and at that yell there occurred a thing at which young Kinnison's hair stood straight up inside his iron helmet. On the gray of the blasted hillside hitherto unseen gray forms moved; moved toward their howling comrade. And Kinnison, blessing for the first time in his life his inept throwing arm, hoped fervently that the Maxim was still in good working order. A few seconds of inspection showed him that it was. The gun had practically a full belt and there was plenty more. He placed a box--he would have no Number Two to help him here--took hold of the grips, shoved off the safety, and squeezed the trip. The gun roared--what a gorgeous, what a heavenly racket that Maxim made! He traversed until he could see where the bullets were striking: then swung the stream of metal to and fro. One belt and the Germans were completely disorganized; two belts and he could see no signs of life. He pulled the Maxim's block and threw it away; shot the water-jacket full of holes. That gun was done. Nor had he increased his own hazard. Unless more Germans came very soon, nobody would ever know who had done what, or to whom. He slithered away; resumed earnestly his westward course: going as fast as--sometimes a trifle faster than--caution would permit. But there were no more alarms. He crossed the dangerously open ground; sulked rapidly through the frightfully shattered wood. He reached the road, strode along it around the first bend, and stopped, appalled. He had heard of such things, but he had never seen one; and mere description has always been and always will be completely inadequate. Now he was walking right into it--the thing he was to see in nightmare for all the rest of his ninety-six years of life. Actually, there was very little to see. The road ended abruptly. What had been a road, what had been wheatfields and farms, what had been woods, were practically indistinguishable, one from the other; were fantastically and impossibly the same. The entire area had been churned. Worse--it was as though the ground and its every surface object had been run through a gargantuan mill and spewed abroad. Splinters of wood, riven chunks of metal, a few scraps of bloody flesh. Kinnison screamed, then, and ran; ran back and around that blasted acreage. And as he ran, his mind built up pictures; pictures which became only the more vivid because of his frantic efforts to wipe them out. That road, the night before, had been one of the world's most heavily traveled highways. Motorcycles, trucks, bicycles. Ambulances. Kitchens. Staff-cars and other automobiles. Guns; from seventy-fives up to the big boys, whose tremendous weight drove their wide caterpillar treads inches deep into solid ground. Horses. Mules. And people--_especially_ people--like himself. Solid columns of men, marching as fast as they could step--there weren't trucks enough to haul them all. That road had been crowded--jammed. Like State and Madison at noon, only more so. Over-jammed with all the personnel, all the instrumentation and incidentalia, all the weaponry, of war. And upon that teeming, seething highway there had descended a rain of steel-encased high explosive. Possibly some gas, but probably not. The German High Command had given orders to pulverize that particular area at that particular time; and hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of German guns, in a micrometrically-synchronized symphony of firepower, had pulverized it. Just that. Literally. Precisely. No road remained; no farm, no field, no building, no tree or shrub. The bits of flesh might have come from horse or man or mule; few indeed were the scraps of metal which retained enough of their original shape to show what they had once been. Kinnison ran--or staggered--around that obscene blot and struggled back to the road. It was shell-pocked, but passable. He hoped that the shell-holes would decrease in number as he went along, but they did not. The enemy had put this whole road out of service. And that farm, the P.C., ought to be around the next bend. It was, but it was no longer a Post of Command. Either by directed fire--star-shell illumination--or by uncannily accurate chart-work, they had put some heavy shell exactly where they would do the most damage. The buildings were gone; the cellar in which the P.C. had been was now a gaping crater. Parts of motorcycles and of staff cars littered the ground. Stark tree trunks--all bare of leaves, some riven of all except the largest branches, a few stripped even of bark--stood gauntly. In a crotch of one, Kinnison saw with rising horror, hung the limp and shattered naked torso of a man; blown completely out of his clothes. Shells were--had been, right along--coming over occasionally. Big ones, but high; headed for targets well to the west. Nothing close enough to worry about. Two ambulances, a couple of hundred meters apart, were coming; working their way along the road, between the holes. The first one slowed ... stopped. "Seen anybody--Look out! Duck!" Kinnison had already heard that unmistakable, unforgettable screech, was already diving headlong into the nearest hole. There was a crash as though the world were falling apart. Something smote him; seemed to drive him bodily into the ground. His light went out. When he recovered consciousness he was lying upon a stretcher; two men were bending over him. "What hit me?" he gasped. "Am I...?" He stopped. He was afraid to ask: afraid even to try to move, lest he should find that he didn't have any arms or legs. "A wheel, and maybe some of the axle, of the other ambulance, is all," one of the men assured him. "Nothing much; you're practically as good as ever. Shoulder and arm bunged up a little and something--maybe shrapnel, though--poked you in the guts. But we've got you all fixed up, so take it easy and...." "What we want to know is," his partner interrupted, "Is there anybody else alive up here?" "Uh-huh," Kinnison shook his head. "O.K. Just wanted to be sure. Lots of business back there, and it won't do any harm to have a doctor look at you." "Get me to a 'phone, as fast as you can," Kinnison directed, in a voice which he thought was strong and full of authority, but which in fact was neither. "I've got an important message for General Weatherby, at Spearmint." "Better tell us what it is, hadn't you?" The ambulance was now jolting along what had been the road. "They've got phones at the hospital where we're going, but you might faint or something before we get there." Kinnison told, but fought to retain what consciousness he had. Throughout that long, rough ride he fought. He won. He himself spoke to General Weatherby--the doctors, knowing him to be a Captain of Aviation and realizing that his message should go direct, helped him telephone. He himself received the General's sizzlingly sulphurous assurance that relief would be sent and that that quadruply-qualified line would be rectified that night. Then someone jabbed him with a needle and he lapsed into a dizzy, fuzzy coma, from which he did not emerge completely for weeks. He had lucid intervals at times, but he did not, at the time or ever, know surely what was real and what was fantasy. There were doctors, doctors, doctors; operations, operations, operations. There were hospital tents, into which quiet men were carried; from which still quieter men were removed. There was a larger hospital, built of wood. There was a machine that buzzed and white-clad men who studied films and papers. There were scraps of conversation. "Belly wounds are bad," Kinnison thought--he was never sure--that he heard one of them say. "And such contusions and multiple and compound fractures as those don't help a bit. Prognosis unfavorable--distinctly so--but we'll soon see what we can do. Interesting case ... fascinating. What would you do, Doctor, if you were doing it?" "I'd let it alone!" A younger, stronger voice declared, fervently. "Multiple perforations, infection, extravasation, oedema--uh-uh! I am watching, Doctor, and learning!" Another interlude, and another. Another. And others. Until finally, orders were given which Kinnison did not hear at all. "Adrenalin! Massage! Massage hell out of him!" Kinnison again came to--partially to, rather--anguished in every fiber of his being. Somebody was sticking barbed arrows into every square inch of his skin; somebody else was pounding and mauling him all over, taking particular pains to pummel and to wrench at all the places where he hurt the worst. He yelled at the top of his voice; yelled and swore bitterly: "QUIT IT!" being the expurgated gist of his luridly profane protests. He did not make nearly as much noise as he supposed, but he made enough. "Thank God!" Kinnison heard a lighter, softer voice. Surprised, he stopped swearing and tried to stare. He couldn't see very well, either, but he was pretty sure that there was a middle-aged woman there. There was, and her eyes were not dry. "He is going to live, after all!" As the days passed, he began really to sleep, naturally and deeply. He grew hungrier and hungrier, and they would not give him enough to eat. He was by turns sullen, angry, and morose. In short, he was convalescent. For Captain Ralph K. Kinnison, THE WAR was over. CHAPTER 5 1941 Chubby, brownette Eunice Kinnison sat in a rocker, reading the Sunday papers and listening to her radio. Her husband Ralph lay sprawled upon the davenport, smoking a cigarette and reading the current issue of EXTRAORDINARY STORIES against an unheard background of music. Mentally, he was far from Tellus, flitting in his super-dreadnaught through parsec after parsec of vacuous space. The music broke off without warning and there blared out an announcement which yanked Ralph Kinnison back to Earth with a violence almost physical. He jumped up, jammed his hands into his pockets. "Pearl Harbor!" he blurted. "How in.... How could they have let them get _that_ far?" "But _Frank_!" the woman gasped. She had not worried much about her husband; but Frank, her son.... "He'll have to go...." Her voice died away. "Not a chance in the world." Kinnison did not speak to soothe, but as though from sure knowledge. "Designing Engineer for Lockwood? He'll want to, all right, but anyone who was ever even exposed to a course in aeronautical engineering will sit this war out." "But they say it can't last very long. It can't, can it?" "I'll say it can. Loose talk. Five years minimum is my guess--not that my guess is any better than anybody else's." He prowled around the room. His somber expression did not lighten. "I knew it," the woman said at length. "You, too--even after the last one.... You haven't said anything, so I thought, perhaps...." "I know I didn't. There was always the chance that we wouldn't get drawn into it. If you say so, though, I'll stay home." "Am I apt to? I let you go when you were really in danger...." "What do you mean by _that_ crack?" he interrupted. "Regulations. One year too old--Thank Heaven!" "So what? They'll need technical experts, bad. They'll make exceptions." "Possibly. Desk jobs. Desk officers don't get killed in action--or even wounded. Why, perhaps, with the children all grown up and married, we won't even have to be separated." "Another angle--financial." "Pooh! Who cares about that? Besides, for a man out of a job...." "From you, I'll let that one pass. Thanks, Eunie--you're an ace. I'll shoot 'em a wire." The telegram was sent. The Kinnisons waited. And waited. Until, about the middle of January, beautifully-phrased and beautifully-mimeographed letters began to arrive. "The War Department recognizes the value of your previous military experience and appreciates your willingness once again to take up arms in defense of the country ... Veteran Officer's Questionnaire ... please fill out completely ... Form 191A ... Form 170 in duplicate ... Form 315.... Impossible to forecast the extent to which the War Department may ultimately utilize the services which you and thousands of others have so generously offered ... Form ... Form.... Not to be construed as meaning that you have been permanently rejected ... Form ... Advise you that while at the present time the War Department is unable to use you...." "Wouldn't that fry you to a crisp?" Kinnison demanded. "What in hell have they got in their heads--sawdust? They think that because I'm fifty one years old I've got one foot in the grave--I'll bet four dollars that I'm in better shape than that cursed Major General and his whole damned staff!" "I don't doubt it, dear." Eunice's smile was, however, mostly of relief. "But here's an ad--it's been running for a week." "CHEMICAL ENGINEERS ... shell loading plant ... within seventy-five miles of Townville ... over five years experience ... organic chemistry ... technology ... explosives...." "They want _you_," Eunice declared, soberly. "Well, I'm a Ph.D. in Organic. I've had more than five years experience in both organic chemistry and technology. If I don't know something about explosives I did a smart job of fooling Dean Montrose, back at Gosh Whatta University. I'll write 'em a letter." He wrote. He filled out a form. The telephone rang. "Kinnison speaking ... yes ... Dr. Sumner? Oh, yes, Chief Chemist.... That's it--one year over age, so I thought.... Oh, that's a minor matter. We won't starve. If you can't pay a hundred and fifty I'll come for a hundred, or seventy five, or fifty.... That's all right, too. I'm well enough known in my own field so that a title of Junior Chemical Engineer wouldn't hurt me a bit ... O.K., I'll see you about one o'clock ... Stoner and Black, Inc., Operators, Entwhistle Ordnance Plant, Entwhistle, Missikota.... What! Well, maybe I could, at that.... Goodbye." He turned to his wife. "You know what? They want me to come down right away and go to work. Hot Dog! _Am_ I glad that I told that louse Hendricks exactly where he could stick that job of mine!" "He must have known that you wouldn't sign a straight-salary contract after getting a share of the profits so long. Maybe he believed what you always say just before or just after kicking somebody's teeth down their throats; that you're so meek and mild--a regular Milquetoast. Do you really think that they'll want you back, after the war?" It was clear that Eunice was somewhat concerned concerning Kinnison's joblessness; but Kinnison was not. "Probably. That's the gossip. And I'll come back--when hell freezes over." His square jaw tightened. "I've heard of outfits stupid enough to let their technical brains go because they could sell--for a while--anything they produced, but I didn't know that I was working for one. Maybe I'm not exactly a Timid Soul, but you'll have to admit that I never kicked anybody's teeth out unless they tried to kick mine out first." * * * * * Entwhistle Ordnance Plant covered twenty-odd square miles of more or less level land. Ninety-nine percent of its area was "Inside the fence." Most of the buildings within that restricted area, while in reality enormous, were dwarfed by the vast spaces separating them; for safety-distances are not small when TNT and tetryl by the ton are involved. Those structures were built of concrete, steel, glass, transite, and tile. "Outside the Fence" was different. This was the Administration Area. Its buildings were tremendous wooden barracks, relatively close together, packed with the executive, clerical, and professional personnel appropriate to an organization employing over twenty thousand men and women. Well inside the fence, but a safety-distance short of the One Line--Loading Line Number One--was a long, low building, quite inadequately named the Chemical Laboratory. "Inadequately" in that the Chief Chemist, a highly capable--if more than a little cantankerous--Explosives Engineer, had already gathered into his Chemical Section most of Development, most of Engineering, and all of Physics, Weights and Measures, and Weather. One room of the Chemical Laboratory--in the corner most distant from Administration--was separated from the rest of the building by a sixteen-inch wall of concrete and steel extending from foundation to roof without a door, window, or other opening. This was the laboratory of the Chemical Engineers, the boys who played with explosives high and low; any explosion occurring therein could not affect the Chemical Laboratory proper or its personnel. Entwhistle's main roads were paved; but in February of 1942, such minor items as sidewalks existed only on the blue-prints. Entwhistle's soil contained much clay, and at that time the mud was approximately six inches deep. Hence, since there were neither inside doors nor sidewalks, it was only natural that the technologists did not visit at all frequently the polished-tile cleanliness of the Laboratory. It was also natural enough for the far larger group to refer to the segregated ones as exiles and outcasts; and that some witty chemist applied to that isolated place the name "Siberia." The name stuck. More, the Engineers seized it and acclaimed it. They were Siberians, and proud of it, and Siberians they remained; long after Entwhistle's mud turned into dust. And within the year the Siberians were to become well and favorably known in every ordnance plant in the country, to many high executives who had no idea of how the name originated. Kinnison became a Siberian as enthusiastically as the youngest man there. The term "youngest" is used in its exact sense, for not one of them was a recent graduate. Each had had at least five years of responsible experience, and "Cappy" Sumner kept on building. He hired extravagantly and fired ruthlessly--to the minds of some, senselessly. But he knew what he was doing. He knew explosives, and he knew men. He was not liked, but he was respected. His building was good. Being one of the only two "old" men there--and the other did not stay long--Kinnison, as a Junior Chemical Engineer, was not at first accepted without reserve. Apparently he did not notice that fact, but went quietly about his assigned duties. He was meticulously careful with, but very evidently not in any fear of, the materials with which he worked. He pelleted and tested tracer, igniter, and incendiary compositions; he took his turn at burning out rejects. Whenever asked, he went out on the lines with any one of them. His experimental tetryls always "miked" to size, his TNT melt-pours--introductory to loading forty-millimeter on the Three Line--came out solid, free from checks and cavitations. It became evident to those young but keen minds that he, alone of them all, was on familiar ground. They began to discuss their problems with him. Out of his years of technological experience, and by bringing everyone present into the discussion, he either helped them directly or helped them to help themselves. His stature grew. Black-haired, black-eyed "Tug" Tugwell, two hundred pounds of ex-football-player in charge of tracer on the Seven Line, called him "Uncle" Ralph, and the habit spread. And in a couple of weeks--at about the same time that "Injun" Abernathy was slightly injured by being blown through a door by a minor explosion of his igniter on the Eight line--he was promoted to full Chemical Engineer; a promotion which went unnoticed, since it involved only changes in title and salary. Three weeks later, however, he was made Senior Chemical Engineer, in charge of Melt-Pour. At this there was a celebration, led by "Blondie" Wanacek, a sulphuric-acid expert handling tetryl on the Two. Kinnison searched minutely for signs of jealousy or antagonism, but could find none. He went blithely to work on the Six line, where they wanted to start pouring twenty-pound fragmentation bombs, ably assisted by Tug and by two new men. One of these was "Doc" or "Bart" Barton, who, the grapevine said, had been hired by Cappy to be his Assistant. His motto, like that of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, was to run and find out, and he did so with glee and abandon. He was a good egg. So was the other newcomer, "Charley" Charlevoix, a prematurely gray paint-and-lacquer expert who had also made the Siberian grade. A few months later, Sumner called Kinnison into the office. The latter went, wondering what the old hard-shell was going to cry about now; for to be called into that office meant only one thing--censure. "Kinnison, I like your work," the Chief Chemist began, gruffly, and Kinnison's mouth almost dropped open. "Anybody who ever got a Ph.D. under Montrose would have to know explosives, and the F.B.I. report on you showed that you had brains, ability, and guts. But none of that explains how you can get along so well with those damned Siberians. I want to make you Assistant Chief and put you in charge of Siberia. Formally, I mean--actually, you have been for months." "Why, no ... I didn't.... Besides, how about Barton? He's too good a man to kick in the teeth that way." "Admitted." This _did_ surprise Kinnison. He had never thought that the irascible and tempestuous Chief would ever confess to a mistake. This was a Cappy he had never known. "I discussed it with him yesterday. He's a damned good man--but it's decidedly questionable whether he has got whatever it is that made Tugwell, Wanacek and Charlevoix work straight through for seventy two hours, napping now and then on benches and grabbing coffee and sandwiches when they could, until they got that frag bomb straightened out." Sumner did not mention the fact that Kinnison had worked straight through, too. That was taken for granted. "Well, I don't know." Kinnison's head was spinning. "I'd like to check with Barton first. O.K.?" "I expected that. O.K." Kinnison found Barton and led him out behind the testing shed. "Bart, Cappy tells me that he figures on kicking you in the face by making me Assistant and that you O.K.'d it. One word and I'll tell the old buzzard just where to stick the job and exactly where to go to do it." "Reaction, perfect. Yield, one hundred percent." Barton stuck out his hand. "Otherwise, I would tell him all that myself and more. As it is, Uncle Ralph, smooth out the ruffled plumage. They'd go to hell for you, wading in standing straight up--they might do the same with me in the driver's seat, and they might not. Why take a chance? You're IT. Some things about the deal I don't like, of course--but at that, it makes me about the only man working for Stoner and Black who can get a release any time a good permanent job breaks. I'll stick until then. O.K.?" It was unnecessary for Barton to add that as long as he was there he would really work. "I'll say it's O.K.!" and Kinnison reported to Sumner. "All right, Chief, I'll try it--if you can square it with the Siberians." "That will not be too difficult." Nor was it. The Siberians' reaction brought a lump to Kinnison's throat. "Ralph the First, Czar of Siberia!" they yelled. "Long live the Czar! Kowtow, serfs and vassals, to Czar Ralph the First!" Kinnison was still glowing when he got home that night, to the Government Housing Project and to the three-room "mansionette" in which he and Eunice lived. He would never forget the events of that day. "What a gang! _What_ a gang! But listen, ace--they work under their own power--you couldn't _keep_ those kids from working. Why should I get the credit for what they do?" "I haven't the foggiest." Eunice wrinkled her forehead--and her nose--but the corners of her mouth quirked up. "Are you quite sure that you haven't had _anything_ to do with it? But supper is ready--let's eat." More months passed. Work went on. Absorbing work, and highly varied; the details of which are of no importance here. Paul Jones, a big, hard, top-drawer chicle technologist, set up the Four line to pour demolition blocks. Frederick Hinton came in, qualified as a Siberian, and went to work on Anti-Personnel mines. Kinnison was promoted again: to Chief Chemist. He and Sumner had never been friendly; he made no effort to find out why Cappy had quit, or had been terminated, whichever it was. This promotion made no difference. Barton, now Assistant, ran the whole Chemical Section save for one unit--Siberia--and did a superlative job. The Chief Chemist's secretary worked for Barton, not for Kinnison. Kinnison was the Czar of Siberia. The Anti-Personnel mines had been giving trouble. Too many men were being killed by prematures, and nobody could find out why. The problem was handed to Siberia. Hinton tackled it, missed, and called for help. The Siberians rallied round. Kinnison loaded and tested mines. So did Paul and Tug and Blondie. Kinnison was testing, out in the Firing Area, when he was called to Administration to attend a Staff Meeting. Hinton relieved him. He had not reached the gate, however, when a guard car flagged him down. "Sorry, sir, but there has been an accident at Pit Five and you are needed out there." "Accident! Fred Hinton! Is he...?" "I'm afraid so, sir." It is a harrowing thing to have to help gather up what fragments can be found of one of your best friends. Kinnison was white and sick as he got back to the firing station, just in time to hear the Chief Safety Officer say: "Must have been carelessness--rank carelessness. I warned this man Hinton myself, on one occasion." "Carelessness, hell!" Kinnison blazed. "You had the guts to warn _me_ once, too, and I've forgotten more about safety in explosives than you ever will know. Fred Hinton was _not_ careless--if I hadn't been called in, that would have been me." "What is it, then?" "I don't know--yet. I tell you now, though, Major Moulton, that I _will_ know, and the minute I find out I'll talk to you again." He went back to Siberia, where he found Tug and Paul, faces still tear-streaked, staring at something that looked like a small piece of wire. "This is it, Uncle Ralph," Tug said, brokenly. "Don't see how it could be, but it is." "What is what?" Kinnison demanded. "Firing pin. Brittle. When you pull the safety, the force of the spring must break it off at this constricted section here." "But damn it, Tug, it doesn't make sense. It's tension ... but wait--there'd be some horizontal component, at that. But they'd have to be brittle as glass." "I know it. It doesn't seem to make much sense. But we were there, you know--and I assembled every one of those God damned mines myself. Nothing else could possibly have made that mine go off just when it did." "O.K., Tug. We'll test 'em. Call Bart in--he can have the scale-lab boys rig us up a gadget by the time we can get some more of those pins in off the line." They tested a hundred, under the normal tension of the spring, and three of them broke. They tested another hundred. Five broke. They stared at each other. "That's it." Kinnison declared. "But this will stink to high Heaven--have Inspection break out a new lot and we'll test a thousand." Of that thousand pins, thirty two broke. "Bart, will you dictate a one-page preliminary report to Vera and rush it over to Building One as fast as you can? I'll go over and tell Moulton a few things." Major Moulton was, as usual, "in conference," but Kinnison was in no mood to wait. "Tell him," he instructed the Major's private secretary, who had barred his way, "that either he will talk to me right now or I will call District Safety over his head. I'll give him sixty seconds to decide which." Moulton decided to see him. "I'm very busy, Doctor Kinnison, but...." "I don't give a swivel-eyed tinker's damn how busy you are. I told you that the minute I found out what was the matter with the M2 mine I'd talk to you again. Here I am. Brittle firing pins. Three and two-tenths percent defective. So I'm...." "Very irregular, Doctor. The matter will have to go through channels...." "Not this one. The formal report is going through channels, but as I started to tell you, this is an emergency report to you as Chief of Safety. Since the defect is not covered by specs, neither Process nor Ordnance can reject except by test, and whoever does the testing will very probably be killed. Therefore, as every employee of Stoner and Black is not only authorized but positively instructed to do upon discovering an unsafe condition, I am reporting it direct to Safety. Since my whiskers are a trifle longer than an operator's, I am reporting it direct to the Head of the Safety Division; and I am telling you that if you don't do something about it damned quick--stop production and slap a HOLD order on all the M2AP's you can reach--I'll call District and make you personally responsible for every premature that occurs from now on." Since any safety man, anywhere, would much rather stop a process than authorize one, and since this particular safety man loved to throw his weight around, Kinnison was surprised that Moulton did not act instantly. The fact that he did not so act should have, but did not, give the naive Kinnison much information as to conditions existing Outside the Fence. "But they need those mines very badly; they are an item of very heavy production. If we stop them ... how long? Have you any suggestions?" "Yes. Call District and have them rush through a change of spec--include heat-treat and a modified Charpy test. In the meantime, we can get back into full production tomorrow if you have District slap a hundred-per-cent inspection onto those pins." "Excellent! We can do that--very fine work, Doctor! Miss Morgan, get District at once!" This, too, should have warned Kinnison, but it did not. He went back to the Laboratory. Tempus fugited. Orders came to get ready to load M67 H.E., A.T. (105 m/m High Explosive, Armor Tearing) shell on the Nine, and the Siberians went joyously to work upon the new load. The explosive was to be a mixture of TNT and a polysyllabic compound, everything about which was highly confidential and restricted. "But what the hell's so hush-hush about _that_ stuff?" demanded Blondie, who, with five or six others, was crowding around the Czar's desk. Unlike the days of Cappy Sumner, the private office of the Chief Chemist was now as much Siberia as Siberia itself. "The Germans developed it originally, didn't they?" "Yes, and the Italians used it against the Ethiopians--which was why their bombs were so effective. But it says 'hush-hush,' so that's the way it will be. And if you talk in your sleep, Blondie, tell Betty not to listen." The Siberians worked. The M67 was put into production. It was such a success that orders for it came in faster than they could be filled. Production was speeded up. Small cavitations began to appear. Nothing serious, since they passed Inspection. Nevertheless, Kinnison protested, in a formal report, receipt of which was formally acknowledged. General Somebody-or-other, Entwhistle's Commanding Officer, whom none of the Siberians had ever met, was transferred to more active duty, and a colonel--Snodgrass or some such name--took his place. Ordnance got a new Chief Inspector. An M67, Entwhistle loaded, prematured in a gun-barrel, killing twenty seven men. Kinnison protested again, verbally this time, at a staff meeting. He was assured--verbally--that a formal and thorough investigation was being made. Later he was informed--verbally and without witnesses--that the investigation had been completed and that the loading was not at fault. A new Commanding Officer--Lieutenant-Colonel Franklin--appeared. The Siberians, too busy to do more than glance at newspapers, paid very little attention to a glider-crash in which several notables were killed. They heard that an investigation was being made, but even the Czar did not know until later that Washington had for once acted fast in correcting a bad situation; that Inspection, which had been under Production, was summarily divorced therefrom. And gossip spread abroad that Stillman, then Head of the Inspection Division, was not a big enough man for the job. Thus it was an entirely unsuspecting Kinnison who was called into the innermost private office of Thomas Keller, the Superintendent of Production. "Kinnison, how in hell do you handle those Siberians? I never saw anything like them before in my life." "No, and you never will again. Nothing on Earth except a war could get them together or hold them together. I don't 'handle' them--they can't be 'handled'. I give them a job to do and let them do it. I back them up. That's all." "Umngpf." Keller grunted. "That's a hell of a formula--if I want anything done right I've got to do it myself. But whatever your system is, it works. But what I wanted to talk to you about is, how'd you like to be Head of the Inspection Division, which would be enlarged to include your present Chemical Section?" "Huh?" Kinnison demanded, dumbfounded. "At a salary well up on the confidential scale." Keller wrote a figure upon a piece of paper, showed it to his visitor, then burned it in an ash-tray. Kinnison whistled. "I'd like it--for more reasons than that. But I didn't know that you--or have you already checked with the General and Mr. Black?" "Naturally," came the smooth reply. "In fact, I suggested it to them and have their approval. Perhaps you are curious to know why?" "I certainly am." "For two reasons. First, because you have developed a crew of technical experts that is the envy of every technical man in the country. Second, you and your Siberians have done every job I ever asked you to, and done it fast. As a Division Head, you will no longer be under me, but I am right, I think, in assuming that you will work with me just as efficiently as you do now?" "I can't think of any reason why I wouldn't." This reply was made in all honesty; but later, when he came to understand what Keller had meant, how bitterly Kinnison was to regret its making! He moved into Stillman's office, and found there what he thought was ample reason for his predecessor's failure to make good. To his way of thinking it was tremendously over-staffed, particularly with Assistant Chief Inspectors. Delegation of authority, so widely preached throughout Entwhistle Ordnance Plant, had not been given even lip service here. Stillman had not made a habit of visiting the lines; nor did the Chief Line Inspectors, the boys who really knew what was going on, ever visit him. They reported to the Assistants, who reported to Stillman, who handed down his Jovian pronouncements. Kinnison set out, deliberately this time, to mold his key Chief Line Inspectors into just such a group as the Siberians already were. He released the Assistants to more productive work; retaining of Stillman's office staff only a few clerks and his private secretary, one Celeste de St. Aubin, a dynamic, vivacious--at times explosive--brunette. He gave the boys on the Lines full authority; the few who could not handle the load he replaced with men who could. At first the Chief Line Inspectors simply could not believe; but after the affair of the forty millimeter, in which Kinnison rammed the decision of his subordinate past Keller, past the General, past Stoner and Black, and clear up to the Commanding Officer before he made it stick, they were his to a man. Others of his Section Heads, however, remained aloof. Pettler, whose Technical Section was now part of Inspection, and Wilson, of Gages, were two of those who talked largely and glowingly, but acted obstructively if they acted at all. As weeks went on, Kinnison became wiser and wiser, but made no sign. One day, during a lull, his secretary hung out the "In Conference" sign and went into Kinnison's private office. "There isn't a reference to any such Investigation anywhere in Central Files." She paused, as if to add something, then turned to leave. "As you were, Celeste. Sit down. I expected that. Suppressed--if made at all. You're a smart girl, Celeste, and you know the ropes. You know that you can talk to me, don't you?" "Yes, but this is ... well, the word is going around that they are going to break you, just as they have broken every other good man on the Reservation." "I expected that, too." The words were quiet enough, but the man's jaw tightened. "Also, I know how they are going to do it." "How?" "This speed-up on the Nine. They know that I won't stand still for the kind of casts that Keller's new procedure, which goes into effect tonight, is going to produce ... and this new C.O. probably will." Silence fell, broken by the secretary. "General Sanford, our first C.O., was a soldier, and a good one," she declared finally. "So was Colonel Snodgrass. Lieutenant Colonel Franklin wasn't; but he was too much of a man to do the dir ..." "Dirty work," dryly. "Exactly. Go on." "And Stoner, the New York half--ninety five percent, really--of Stoner and Black, Inc., is a Big Time Operator. So we get this damned nincompoop of a major, who doesn't know a f-u-s-e from a f-u-z-e, direct from a Wall Street desk." "So what?" One must have heard Ralph Kinnison say those two words to realize how much meaning they can be made to carry. "So what!" the girl blazed, wringing her hands. "Ever since you have been over here I have been expecting you to blow up--to smash something--in spite of the dozens of times you have told me 'a fighter can not slug effectively, Celeste, until he gets both feet firmly planted.' When--_when_--are you going to get your feet planted?" "Never, I'm afraid," he said glumly, and she stared. "So I'll have to start slugging with at least one foot in the air." That startled her. "Explain, please?" "I wanted _proof_. Stuff that I could take to the District--that I could use to tack some hides out flat on a barn door with. Do I get it? I do not. Not a shred. Neither can you. What chance do you think there is of ever getting any real proof?" "Very little," Celeste admitted. "But you can at least smash Pettler, Wilson, and that crowd. _How_ I hate those slimy snakes! I wish that you could smash Tom Keller, the poisonous moron!" "Not so much moron--although he acts like one at times--as an ignorant puppet with a head swelled three sizes too big for his hat. But you can quit yapping about slugging--fireworks are due to start at two o'clock tomorrow afternoon, when Drake is going to reject tonight's run of shell." "Really? But I don't see how either Pettler or Wilson come in." "They don't. A fight with those small fry--even smashing them--wouldn't make enough noise. Keller." "Keller!" Celeste squealed. "But you'll...." "I know I'll get fired. So what? By tackling him I can raise enough hell so that the Big Shots will have to cut out at least some of the rough stuff. You'll probably get fired too, you know--you've been too close to me for your own good." "Not me." She shook her head vigorously. "The minute they terminate you, I quit. Poof! Who cares? Besides, I can get a better job in Townville." "Without leaving the Project. That's what I figured. It's the boys I'm worried about. I've been getting them ready for this for weeks." "But they will quit, too. Your Siberians--your Inspectors--of a surety they will quit, every one!" "They won't release them; and what Stoner and Black will do to them, even after the war, if they quit without releases, shouldn't be done to a dog. They won't quit, either--at least if they don't try to push them around too much. Keller's mouth is watering to get hold of Siberia, but he'll never make it, nor any one of his stooges.... I'd better dictate a memorandum to Black on that now, while I'm calm and collected; telling him what he'll have to do to keep my boys from tearing Entwhistle apart." "But do you think he will pay any attention to it?" "I'll say he will!" Kinnison snorted. "Don't kid yourself about Black, Celeste. He's a smart man, and before this is done he'll know that he'll have to keep his nose clean." "But you--how can you do it?" Celeste marveled. "Me, I would urge them on. Few would have the patriotism...." "Patriotism, hell! If that were all, I would have stirred up a revolution long ago. It's for the boys, in years to come. They've got to keep _their_ noses clean, too. Get your notebook, please, and take this down. Rough draft--I'm going to polish it up until it has teeth and claws in every line." And that evening, after supper, he informed Eunice of all the new developments. "Is it still O.K. with you," he concluded, "for me to get myself fired off of this high-salaried job of mine?" "Certainly. Being you, how can you do anything else? Oh, how I wish I could wring their necks!" That conversation went on and on, but additional details are not necessary here. Shortly after two o'clock of the following afternoon, Celeste took a call; and listened shamelessly. "Kinnison speaking." "Tug, Uncle Ralph. The casts sectioned just like we thought they would. Dead ringers for Plate D. So Drake hung a red ticket on every tray. Piddy was right there, waiting, and started to raise hell. So I chipped in, and he beat it so fast that I looked to see his coat-tail catch fire. Drake didn't quite like to call you, so I did. If Piddy keeps on going at the rate he left here, he'll be in Keller's office in nothing flat." "O.K., Tug. Tell Drake that the shell he rejected are going to stay rejected, and to come in right now with his report. Would you like to come along?" "_Would_ I!" Tugwell hung up and: "But do you want _him_ here, Doc?" Celeste asked, anxiously, without considering whether or not her boss would approve of her eavesdropping. "I certainly do. If I can keep Tug from blowing his top, the rest of the boys will stay in line." A few minutes later Tugwell strode in, bringing with him Drake, the Chief Line Inspector of the Nine Line. Shortly thereafter the office door was wrenched open. Keller had come to Kinnison, accompanied by the Superintendent whom the Siberians referred to, somewhat contemptuously, as "Piddy." "Damn your soul, Kinnison, come out here--I want to talk to you!" Keller roared, and doors snapped open up and down the long corridor. "Shut up, you God damned louse!" This from Tugwell, who, black eyes almost emitting sparks, was striding purposefully forward. "I'll sock you so damned hard that...." "Pipe down, Tug, I'll handle this." Kinnison's voice was not loud, but it had then a peculiarly carrying and immensely authoritative quality. "Verbally or physically; however he wants to have it." He turned to Keller, who had jumped backward into the hall to avoid the young Siberian. "As for you, Keller, if you had the brains that God gave bastard geese in Ireland, you would have had this conference in private. Since you started it in public, however, I'll finish it in public. How you came to pick _me_ for a yes-man I'll never know--just one more measure of your stupidity, I suppose." "Those shell are perfect!" Keller shouted. "Tell Drake here to pass them, right now. If you don't, by God I'll...." "Shut up!" Kinnison's voice cut. "I'll do the talking--you listen. The spec says quote shall be free from objectionable cavitation unquote. The Line Inspectors, who know their stuff, say that those cavitations are objectionable. So do the Chemical Engineers. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, they are objectionable. Those shell are rejected, and they will _stay_ rejected." "That's what _you_ think," Keller raged. "But there'll be a new Head of Inspection, who will pass them, tomorrow morning!" "In that you may be half right. When you get done licking Black's boots, tell him that I am in my office." Kinnison re-entered his suite. Keller, swearing, strode away with Piddy. Doors clicked shut. "I _am_ going to quit, Uncle Ralph, law or no law!" Tugwell stormed. "They'll run that bunch of crap through, and then...." "Will you promise not to quit until they do?" Kinnison asked, quietly. "Huh?" "What?" Tugwell's eyes--and Celeste's--were pools of astonishment. Celeste, being on the inside, understood first. "Oh--to keep his nose clean--I see!" she exclaimed. "Exactly. Those shell will not be accepted, nor any like them. On the surface, we got licked. I will get fired. You will find, however, that we won this particular battle. And if you boys stay here and hang together and keep on slugging you can win a lot more." "Maybe, if we raise enough hell, we can make them fire us, too?" Drake suggested. "I doubt it. But unless I'm wrong, you can just about write your own ticket from now on, if you play it straight." Kinnison grinned to himself, at something which the young people could not see. "You told me what Stoner and Black would do to us," Tugwell said, intensely. "What I'm afraid of is that they'll do it to you." "They can't. Not a chance in the world," Kinnison assured him. "You fellows are young--not established. But I'm well-enough known in my own field so that if they tried to black-ball me they'd just get themselves laughed at, and they know it. So beat it back to the Nine, you kids, and hang red tickets on everything that doesn't cross-section up to standard. Tell the gang goodbye for me--I'll keep you posted." In less than an hour Kinnison was called into the Office of the President. He was completely at ease; Black was not. "It has been decided to ... uh ... ask for your resignation," the President announced at last. "Save your breath," Kinnison advised. "I came down here to do a job, and the only way you can keep me from doing that job is to fire me." "That was not ... uh ... entirely unexpected. A difficulty arose, however, in deciding what reason to put on your termination papers." "I can well believe that. You can put down anything you like," Kinnison shrugged, "with one exception. Any implication of incompetence and you'll have to prove it in court." "Incompatibility, say?" "O.K." "Miss Briggs--'Incompatibility with the highest echelon of Stoner and Black, Inc.,' please. You may as well wait, Dr. Kinnison; it will take only a moment." "Fine. I've got a couple of things to say. First, I know as well as you do that you're between Scylla and Charybdis--damned if you do and damned if you don't." "Certainly not! Ridiculous!" Black blustered, but his eyes wavered. "Where did you get such a preposterous idea? What do you mean?" "If you ram those sub-standard H.E.A.T. shell through, you are going to have some more prematures. Not many--the stuff is actually almost good enough--one in ten thousand, say: perhaps one in fifty thousand. But you know damned well that you can't afford _any_. What my Siberians and Inspectors know about you and Keller and Piddy and the Nine Line would be enough; but to cap the climax that brainless jackal of yours let the cat completely out of the bag this afternoon, and everybody in Building One was listening. One more premature would blow Entwhistle wide open--would start something that not all the politicians in Washington could stop. On the other hand, if you scrap those lots and go back to pouring good loads, your Mr. Stoner, of New York and Washington, will be very unhappy and will scream bloody murder. I'm sure, however, that you won't offer any Plate D loads to Ordnance--in view of the temper of my boys and girls, and the number of people who heard your dumb stooge give you away, you won't dare to. In fact, I told some of my people that you wouldn't; that you are a smart enough operator to keep your nose clean." "You _told_ them!" Black shouted, in anger and dismay. "Yes? Why not?" The words were innocent enough, but Kinnison's expression was full of meaning. "I don't want to seem trite, but you are just beginning to find out that honesty and loyalty are a hell of a hard team to beat." "Get out! Take these termination papers and GET OUT!" And Doctor Ralph K. Kinnison, head high, strode out of President Black's office and out of Entwhistle Ordnance Plant. CHAPTER 6 19--? "Theodore K. Kinnison!" a crisp, clear voice snapped from the speaker of an apparently cold, ordinary-enough-looking radio-television set. A burly young man caught his breath sharply as he leaped to the instrument and pressed an inconspicuous button. "Theodore K. Kinnison acknowledging!" The plate remained dark, but he knew that he was being scanned. "Operation Bullfinch!" the speaker blatted. Kinnison gulped. "Operation Bullfinch--Off!" he managed to say. "Off!" He pushed the button again and turned to face the tall, trim honey-blonde who stood tensely poised in the archway. Her eyes were wide and protesting; both hands clutched at her throat. "Uh-huh, sweets, they're coming--over the Pole," he gritted. "Two hours, more or less." "Oh, Ted!" She threw herself into his arms. They kissed, then broke away. The man picked up two large suitcases, already packed--everything else, including food and water, had been in the car for weeks--and made strides. The girl rushed after him, not bothering even to close the door of the apartment, scooping up _en passant_ a leggy boy of four and a chubby, curly-haired girl of two or thereabouts. They ran across the lawn toward a big, low-slung sedan. "Sure you got your caffeine tablets?" he demanded as they ran. "Uh-huh." "You'll need 'em. Drive like the devil--_stay ahead_! You can--this heap has got the legs of a centipede and you've got plenty of gas and oil. Eleven hundred miles from anywhere and a population of one-tenth per square mile--you'll be safe there if anybody is." "It isn't us I'm worried about--it's you!" she panted. "Technos' wives get a few minutes' notice ahead of the H-blast--I'll be ahead of the rush and I'll stay ahead. It's you, Ted--_you_!" "Don't worry, keed. That popcycle of mine has got legs, too, and there won't be so much traffic, the way I'm going." "Oh, blast! I didn't mean that, and you know it!" They were at the car. While he jammed the two bags into an exactly-fitting space, she tossed the children into the front seat, slid lithely under the wheel, and started the engine. "I know you didn't, sweetheart. I'll be back." He kissed her and the little girl, the while shaking hands with his son. "Kidlets, you and mother are going out to visit Grand-dad Kinnison, like we told you all about. Lots of fun. I'll be along later. Now, Lady Lead-Foot, scram--and shovel on the coal!" The heavy vehicle backed and swung; gravel flew as the accelerator-pedal hit the floor. Kinnison galloped across the alley and opened the door of a small garage, revealing a long, squat motorcycle. Two deft passes of his hands and two of his three spotlights were no longer white--one flashed a brilliant purple, the other a searing blue. He dropped a perforated metal box into a hanger and flipped a switch--a peculiarly-toned siren began its ululating shriek. He took the alley turn at an angle of forty-five degrees; burned the pavement toward Diversey. The light was red. No matter--everybody had stopped--that siren could be heard for miles. He barreled into the intersection; his step-plate ground the concrete as he made a screaming left turn. A siren--creeping up from behind. City tone. Two red spots--city cop--so soon--good! He cut his gun a trifle, the other bike came alongside. "Is this IT?" the uniformed rider yelled, over the coughing thunder of the competing exhausts. "Yes!" Kinnison yelled back. "Clear Diversey to the Outer Drive, and the Drive south to Gary and north to Waukegan. Snap it up!" The white-and-black motorcycle slowed; shot over toward the curb. The officer reached for his microphone. Kinnison sped on. At Cicero Avenue, although he had a green light, traffic was so heavy that he had to slow down; at Pulaski two policemen waved him through a red. Beyond Sacramento nothing moved on wheels. Seventy ... seventy five ... he took the bridge at eighty, both wheels in air for forty feet. Eighty five ... ninety ... that was about all he could do and keep the heap on so rough a road. Also, he did not have Diversey all to himself any more; blue-and-purple-flashing bikes were coming in from every side-street. He slowed to a conservative fifty and went into close formation with the other riders. The H-blast--the city-wide warning for the planned and supposedly orderly evacuation of all Chicago--sounded, but Kinnison did not hear it. Across the Park, edging over to the left so that the boys going south would have room to make the turn--even such riders as those need _some_ room to make a turn at fifty miles per hour! Under the viaduct--biting brakes and squealing tires at that sharp, narrow, right-angle left turn--north on the wide, smooth Drive! That highway was made for speed. So were those machines. Each rider, as he got into the flat, lay down along his tank, tucked his chin behind the cross-bar, and twisted both throttles out against their stops. They were in a hurry. They had a long way to go; and if they did not get there in time to stop those trans-polar atomic missiles, all hell would be out for noon. Why was all this necessary? This organization, this haste, this split-second timing, this city-wide exhibition of insane hippodrome riding? Why were not all these motorcycle-racers stationed permanently at their posts, so as to be ready for any emergency? Because America, being a democracy, could not strike first, but had to wait--wait in instant readiness--until she was actually attacked. Because every good Techno in America had his assigned place in some American Defense Plan; of which Operation Bullfinch was only one. Because, without the presence of those Technos at their every-day jobs, all ordinary technological work in America would perforce have stopped. A branch road curved away to the right. Scarcely slowing down, Kinnison bulleted into the turn and through an open, heavily-guarded gate. Here his mount and his lights were passwords enough: the real test would come later. He approached a towering structure of alloy--jammed on his brakes--stopped beside a soldier who, as soon as Kinnison jumped off, mounted the motorcycle and drove it away. Kinnison dashed up to an apparently blank wall, turned his back upon four commissioned officers holding cocked forty-fives at the ready, and fitted his right eye into a cup. Unlike fingerprints, retinal patterns cannot be imitated, duplicated, or altered; any imposter would have died instantly, without arrest or question. For every man who belonged aboard that rocket had been checked and tested--_how_ he had been checked and tested!--since one spy, in any one of those Technos' chairs, could wreak damage untellable. The port snapped open. Kinnison climbed a ladder into the large, but crowded, Operations Room. "Hi, Teddy!" a yell arose. "Hi, Walt! Hi-ya, Red! What-ho, Baldy!" and so on. These men were friends of old. "Where are they?" he demanded. "Is our stuff getting away? Lemme take a peek at the Ball!" "I'll say it is! O.K., Ted, squeeze in here!" He squeezed in. It was not a ball, but a hemisphere, slightly oblate and centered approximately by the North Pole. A multitude of red dots moved slowly--a hundred miles upon that map was a small distance--northward over Canada; a closer-packed, less numerous group of yellowish-greens, already on the American side of the Pole, was coming south. As had been expected, the Americans had more missiles than did the enemy. The other belief, that America had more adequate defenses and better-trained, more highly skilled defenders, would soon be put to test. A string of blue lights blazed across the continent, from Nome through Skagway and Wallaston and Churchill and Kaniapiskau to Belle Isle; America's First Line of Defense. Regulars all. Ambers almost blanketed those blues; their combat rockets were already grabbing altitude. The Second Line, from Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver across to Halifax, also showed solid green, with some flashes of amber. Part Regulars; part National Guard. Chicago was in the Third Line, all National Guard, extending from San Francisco to New York. Green--alert and operating. So were the Fourth, the Fifth, and the Sixth. Operation Bullfinch was clicking; on schedule to the second. A bell clanged; the men sprang to their stations and strapped down. Every chair was occupied. Combat Rocket Number One Oh Six Eight Five, full-powered by the disintegrating nuclei of unstable isotopes, took off with a whooshing roar which even her thick walls could not mute. The Technos, crushed down into their form-fitting cushions by three G's of acceleration, clenched their teeth and took it. Higher! Faster! The rocket shivered and trembled as it hit the wall at the velocity of sound, but it did not pause. Higher! Faster! Higher! Fifty miles high. One hundred ... five hundred ... a thousand ... fifteen hundred ... two thousand! Half a radius--the designated altitude at which the Chicago Contingent would go into action. Acceleration was cut to zero. The Technos, breathing deeply in relief, donned peculiarly-goggled helmets and set up their panels. Kinnison stared into his plate with everything he could put into his optic nerve. This was not like the Ball, in which the lights were electronically placed, automatically controlled, clear, sharp, and steady. This was radar. A radar considerably different from that of 1948, of course, and greatly improved, but still pitifully inadequate in dealing with objects separated by hundreds of miles and traveling at velocities of thousands of miles per hour! Nor was this like the practice cruises, in which the targets had been harmless barrels or equally harmless dirigible rockets. This was the real thing; the targets today would be lethal objects indeed. Practice gunnery, with only a place in the Proficiency List at stake, had been exciting enough: this was too exciting--_much_ too exciting--for the keenness of brain and the quickness and steadiness of eye and of hand so soon to be required. A target? Or was it? Yes--three or four of them! "Target One--Zone Ten," a quiet voice spoke into Kinnison's ear and one of the white specks upon his plate turned yellowish green. The same words, the same lights, were heard and seen by the eleven other Technos of Sector A, of which Kinnison, by virtue of standing at the top of his Combat Rocket's Proficiency List, was Sector Chief. He knew that the voice was that of Sector A's Fire Control Officer, whose duty it was to determine, from courses, velocities, and all other data to be had from ground and lofty observers, the order in which his Sector's targets should be eliminated. And Sector A, an imaginary but sharply-defined cone, was in normal maneuvering the hottest part of the sky. Fire Control's "Zone Ten" had informed him that the object was at extreme range and hence there would be plenty of time. Nevertheless: "Lawrence--two! Doyle--one! Drummond--stand by with three!" he snapped, at the first word. In the instant of hearing his name each Techno stabbed down a series of studs and there flowed into his ears a rapid stream of figures--the up-to-the-second data from every point of observation as to every element of motion of his target. He punched the figures into his calculator, which would correct automatically for the motion of his own vessel--glanced once at the printed solution of the problem--tramped down upon a pedal once, twice, or three times, depending upon the number of projectiles he had been directed to handle. Kinnison had ordered Lawrence, a better shot than Doyle, to launch two torpedoes; neither of which, at such long range, was expected to strike its mark. His second, however, should come close; so close that the instantaneous data sent back to both screens--and to Kinnison's--by the torpedo itself would make the target a sitting duck for Doyle, the less proficient follower. Drummond, Kinnison's Number Three, would not launch his missiles unless Doyle missed. Nor could both Drummond and Harper, Kinnison's Number Two, be "out" at once. One of the two had to be "in" at all times, to take Kinnison's place in charge of the Sector if the Chief were ordered out. For while Kinnison could order either Harper or Drummond on target, he could not send himself. He could go out only when ordered to do so by Fire Control: Sector Chiefs were reserved for emergency use only. "Target Two--Zone Nine," Fire Control said. "Carney, two. French, one. Day, stand by with three!" Kinnison ordered. "Damn it--missed!" This from Doyle. "Buck fever--no end." "O.K., boy--that's why we're starting so soon. I'm shaking like a vibrator myself. We'll get over it...." The point of light which represented Target One bulged slightly and went out. Drummond had connected and was back "in". "Target Three--Zone Eight. Four--eight," Fire Control remarked. "Target Three--Higgins and Green; Harper stand by. Four--Case and Santos: Lawrence." After a minute or two of actual combat the Technos of Sector A began to steady down. Stand-by men were no longer required and were no longer assigned. "Target Forty-one--six," said Fire Control; and: "Lawrence, two. Doyle, two," ordered Kinnison. This was routine enough, but in a moment: "Ted!" Lawrence snapped. "Missed--wide--both barrels. Forty-one's dodging--manned or directed--coming like hell--watch it, Doyle--WATCH IT!" "Kinnison, take it!" Fire Control barked, voice now neither low nor steady, and without waiting to see whether Doyle would hit or miss. "It's in Zone Three already--collision course!" "Harper! Take over!" Kinnison got the data, solved the equations, launched five torpedoes at fifty gravities of acceleration. One ... two--three-four-five; the last three as close together as they could fly without setting off their proximity fuzes. Communications and mathematics and the electronic brains of calculating machines had done all that they could do; the rest was up to human skill, to the perfection of co-ordination and the speed of reaction of human mind, nerve, and muscle. Kinnison's glance darted from plate to panel to computer-tape to meter to galvanometer and back to plate; his left hand moved in tiny arcs the knobs whose rotation varied the intensities of two mutually perpendicular components of his torpedoes' drives. He listened attentively to the reports of triangulating observers, now giving him data covering his own missiles, as well as the target object. The fingers of his right hand punched almost constantly the keys of his computer; he corrected almost constantly his torpedoes' course. "Up a hair," he decided. "Left about a point." The target moved away from its predicted path. Down two--left three--down a hair--_Right_! The thing was almost through Zone Two; was blasting into Zone One. He thought for a second that his first torp was going to connect. It almost did--only a last-instant, full-powered side thrust enabled the target to evade it. Two numbers flashed white upon his plate; his actual error, exact to the foot of distance and to the degree on the clock, measured and transmitted back to his board by instruments in his torpedo. Working with instantaneous and exact data, and because the enemy had so little time in which to act, Kinnison's second projectile made a very near miss indeed. His third was a graze; so close that its proximity fuze functioned, detonating the cyclonite-packed war-head. Kinnison knew that his third went off, because the error-figures vanished, almost in the instant of their coming into being, as its detecting and transmitting instruments were destroyed. That one detonation might have been enough; but Kinnison had had one glimpse of his error--how small it was!--and had a fraction of a second of time. Hence Four and Five slammed home; dead center. Whatever that target had been, it was no longer a threat. "Kinnison, in," he reported briefly to Fire Control, and took over from Harper the direction of the activities of Sector A. The battle went on. Kinnison sent Harper and Drummond out time after time. He himself was given three more targets. The first wave of the enemy--what was left of it--passed. Sector A went into action, again at extreme range, upon the second. Its remains, too, plunged downward and onward toward the distant ground. The third wave was really tough. Not that it was actually any worse than the first two had been, but the CR10685 was no longer getting the data which her Technos ought to have to do a good job; and every man aboard her knew why. Some enemy stuff had got through, of course; and the observatories, both on the ground and above it--the eye of the whole American Defense--had suffered heavily. Nevertheless, Kinnison and his fellows were not too perturbed. Such a condition was not entirely unexpected. They were now veterans; they had been tried and had not been found wanting. They had come unscathed through a bath of fire the like of which the world had never before known. Give them any kind of computation at all--or no computation at all except old CR10685's own radar and their own torps, of which they still had plenty--and they could and would take care of anything that could be thrown at them. The third wave passed. Targets became fewer and fewer. Action slowed down ... stopped. The Technos, even the Sector Chiefs, knew nothing whatever of the progress of the battle as a whole. They did not know where their rocket was, or whether it was going north, east, south, or west. They knew when it was going up or down only by the "seats of their pants." They did not even know the nature of the targets they destroyed, since upon their plates all targets looked alike--small, bright, greenish-yellow spots. Hence: "Give us the dope, Pete, if we've got a minute to spare," Kinnison begged of his Fire Control Officer. "You know more than we do--give!" "It's coming in now," came the prompt reply. "Six of those targets that did such fancy dodging were atomics, aimed at the Lines. Five were dirigibles, with our number on 'em. You fellows did a swell job. Very little of their stuff got through--not enough, they say, to do much damage to a country as big as the U.S.A. On the other hand, they stopped scarcely any of ours--they apparently didn't have anything to compare with you Technos. "But all hell seems to be busting loose, all over the world. Our east and west coasts are both being attacked, they say; but are holding. Operation Daisy and Operation Fairfield are clicking, just like we did. Europe, they say, is going to hell--everybody is taking pot-shots at everybody else. One report says that the South American nations are bombing each other ... Asia, too ... nothing definite; as straight dope comes in I'll relay it to you. "We came through in very good shape, considering ... losses less than anticipated, only seven percent. The First Line--as you know already--took a God-awful shellacking; in fact, the Churchill-Belcher section was practically wiped out, which was what lost us about all of our Observation.... We are now just about over the southern end of Hudson Bay, heading down and south to join in making a vertical Fleet Formation ... no more waves coming, but they say to expect attacks from low-flying combat rockets--there goes the alert! On your toes, fellows--but there isn't a thing on Sector A's screen...." There wasn't. Since the CR10685 was diving downward and southward, there wouldn't be. Nevertheless, some observer aboard that rocket saw that atomic missile coming. Some Fire Control Officer yelled orders; some Technos did their best--and failed. And such is the violence of nuclear fission; so utterly incomprehensible is its speed, that Theodore K. Kinnison died without realizing that anything whatever was happening to his ship or to him. * * * * * _Gharlane of Eddore looked upon ruined Earth, his handiwork, and found it good. Knowing that it would be many of hundreds of Tellurian years before that planet would again require his personal attention, he went elsewhere; to Rigel Four, to Palain Seven, and to the solar system of Velantia, where he found that his creatures the Overlords were not progressing according to schedule. He spent quite a little time there, then searched minutely and fruitlessly for evidence of inimical activity within the Innermost Circle._ _And upon far Arisia a momentous decision was made: the time had come to curb sharply the hitherto unhampered Eddorians._ "_We are ready, then, to war openly upon them?" Eukonidor asked, somewhat doubtfully. "Again to cleanse the planet Tellus of dangerous radioactives and of too-noxious forms of life is of course a simple matter. From our protected areas in North America a strong but democratic government can spread to cover the world. That government can be extended easily enough to include Mars and Venus. But Gharlane, who is to operate as Roger, who has already planted, in the Adepts of North Polar Jupiter, the seeds of the Jovian Wars...._" "_Your visualization is sound, youth. Think on._" "_Those interplanetary wars are of course inevitable, and will serve to strengthen and to unify the government of the Inner Planets ... provided that Gharlane does not interfere.... Oh, I see. Gharlane will not at first know; since a zone of compulsion will be held upon him. When he or some Eddorian fusion perceives that compulsion and breaks it--at some such time of high stress as the Nevian incident--it will be too late. Our fusions will be operating. Roger will be allowed to perform only such acts as will be for Civilization's eventual good. Nevia was selected as Prime Operator because of its location in a small region of the galaxy which is almost devoid of solid iron and because of its watery nature; its aquatic forms of life being precisely those in which the Eddorians are least interested. They will be given partial neutralization of inertia; they will be able to attain velocities a few times greater than that of light. That covers the situation, I think?_" "_Very good, Eukonidor," the Elders approved. "A concise and accurate summation._" _Hundreds of Tellurian years passed. The aftermath. Reconstruction. Advancement. One world--two worlds--three worlds--united, harmonious, friendly. The Jovian Wars. A solid, unshakeable union._ _Nor did any Eddorian know that such fantastically rapid progress was being made. Indeed, Gharlane knew, as he drove his immense ship of space toward Sol, that he would find Tellus inhabited by peoples little above savagery._ _And it should be noted in passing that not once, throughout all those centuries, did a man named Kinnison marry a girl with red-bronze-auburn hair and gold-flecked, tawny eyes._ BOOK THREE TRIPLANETARY CHAPTER 7 PIRATES OF SPACE Apparently motionless to her passengers and crew, the Interplanetary liner _Hyperion_ bored serenely onward through space at normal acceleration. In the railed-off sanctum in one corner of the control room a bell tinkled, a smothered whirr was heard, and Captain Bradley frowned as he studied the brief message upon the tape of the recorder--a message flashed to his desk from the operator's panel. He beckoned, and the second officer, whose watch it now was, read aloud: "Reports of scout patrols still negative." "Still negative." The officer scowled in thought. "They've already searched beyond the widest possible location of wreckage, too. Two unexplained disappearances inside a month--first the _Dione_, then the _Rhea_--and not a plate nor a lifeboat recovered. Looks bad, sir. One might be an accident; two might possibly be a coincidence...." His voice died away. "But at three it would get to be a habit," the captain finished the thought. "And whatever happened, happened quick. Neither of them had time to say a word--their location recorders simply went dead. But of course they didn't have our detector screens nor our armament. According to the observatories we're in clear ether, but I wouldn't trust them from Tellus to Luna. You have given the new orders, of course?" "Yes, sir. Detectors full out, all three courses of defensive screen on the trips, projectors manned, suits on the hooks. Every object detected to be investigated immediately--if vessels, they are to be warned to stay beyond extreme range. Anything entering the fourth zone is to be rayed." "Right--we are going through!" "But no known type of vessel could have made away with them without detection," the second officer argued. "I wonder if there isn't something in those wild rumors we've been hearing lately?" "Bah! Of course not!" snorted the captain. "Pirates in ships faster than light--sub-ethereal rays--nullification of gravity mass without inertia--ridiculous! Proved impossible, over and over again. No, sir, if pirates are operating in space--and it looks very much like it--they won't get far against a good big battery full of kilowatt-hours behind three courses of heavy screen, and good gunners behind multiplex projectors. They're good enough for anybody. Pirates, Neptunians, angels, or devils--in ships or on broomsticks--if they tackle the _Hyperion_ we'll burn them out of the ether!" Leaving the captain's desk, the watch officer resumed his tour of duty. The six great lookout plates into which the alert observers peered were blank, their far-flung ultra-sensitive detector screens encountering no obstacle--the ether was empty for thousands upon thousands of kilometers. The signal lamps upon the pilot's panel were dark, its warning bells were silent. A brilliant point of white light in the center of the pilot's closely ruled micrometer grating, exactly upon the cross-hairs of his directors, showed that the immense vessel was precisely upon the calculated course, as laid down by the automatic integrating course plotters. Everything was quiet and in order. "All's well, sir," he reported briefly to Captain Bradley--but all was not well. Danger--more serious by far in that it was not external--was even then, all unsuspected, gnawing at the great ship's vitals. In a locked and shielded compartment, deep down in the interior of the liner, was the great air purifier. Now a man leaned against the primary duct--the aorta through which flowed the stream of pure air supplying the entire vessel. This man, grotesque in full panoply of space armor, leaned against the duct, and as he leaned a drill bit deeper and deeper into the steel wall of the pipe. Soon it broke through, and the slight rush of air was stopped by the insertion of a tightly fitting rubber tube. The tube terminated in a heavy rubber balloon, which surrounded a frail glass bulb. The man stood tense, one hand holding before his silica-and-steel-helmeted head a large pocket chronometer, the other lightly grasping the balloon. A sneering grin was upon his face as he waited the exact second of action--the carefully predetermined instant when his right hand, closing, would shatter the fragile flask and force its contents into the primary air stream of the _Hyperion_! * * * * * Far above, in the main saloon, the regular evening dance was in full swing. The ship's orchestra crashed into silence, there was a patter of applause, and Clio Marsden, radiant belle of the voyage, led her partner out onto the promenade and up to one of the observation plates. "Oh, we can't see the Earth any more!" she exclaimed. "Which way do you turn this, Mr. Costigan?" "Like this," and Conway Costigan, burly young First Officer of the liner, turned the dials. "There--this plate is looking back, or down, at Tellus; this other one is looking ahead." Earth was a brilliantly shining crescent far beneath the flying vessel. Above her, ruddy Mars and silvery Jupiter blazed in splendor ineffable against a background of utterly indescribable blackness--a background thickly besprinkled with dimensionless points of dazzling brilliance which were the stars. "Oh, isn't it wonderful!" breathed the girl, awed. "Of course, I suppose that it's old stuff to you, but I'm a ground-gripper, you know, and I could look at it forever, I think. That's why I want to come out here after every dance. You know, I...." Her voice broke off suddenly, with a queer, rasping catch, as she seized his arm in a frantic clutch and as quickly went limp. He stared at her sharply, and understood instantly the message written in her eyes--eyes now enlarged, staring, hard, brilliant, and full of soul-searing terror as she slumped down, helpless but for his support. In the act of exhaling as he was, lungs almost entirely empty, yet he held his breath until he had seized the microphone from his belt and had snapped the lever to "emergency." "Control room!" he gasped then, and every speaker throughout the great cruiser of the void blared out the warning as he forced his already evacuated lungs to absolute emptiness. "Vee-Two Gas! Get tight!" Writhing and twisting in his fierce struggle to keep his lungs from gulping in a draft of that noxious atmosphere, and with the unconscious form of the girl draped limply over his left arm, Costigan leaped toward the portal of the nearest lifeboat. Orchestra instruments crashed to the floor and dancing couples fell and sprawled inertly while the tortured First Officer swung the door of the lifeboat open and dashed across the tiny room to the air-valves. Throwing them wide open, he put his mouth to the orifice and let his laboring lungs gasp their eager fill of the cold blast roaring from the tanks. Then, air-hunger partially assuaged, he again held his breath, broke open the emergency locker, donned one of the space-suits always kept there, and opened its valves wide in order to flush out of his uniform any lingering trace of the lethal gas. He then leaped back to his companion. Shutting off the air, he released a stream of pure oxygen, held her face in it, and made shift to force some of it into her lungs by compressing and releasing her chest against his own body. Soon she drew a spasmodic breath, choking and coughing, and he again changed the gaseous stream to one of pure air, speaking urgently as she showed signs of returning consciousness. "Stand up!" he snapped. "Hang onto this brace and keep your face in this air-stream until I get a suit around you! Got me?" She nodded weakly, and, assured that she could hold herself at the valve, it was the work of only a minute to encase her in one of the protective coverings. Then, as she sat upon a bench, recovering her strength, he flipped on the lifeboat's visiphone projector and shot its invisible beam up into the control room, where he saw space-armored figures furiously busy at the panels. "Dirty work at the cross-roads!" he blazed to his captain, man to man--formality disregarded, as it so often was in the Triplanetary service. "There's skulduggery afoot somewhere in our primary air! Maybe that's the way they got those other two ships--pirates! Might have been a timed bomb--don't see how anybody could have stowed away down there through the inspections, and nobody but Franklin can neutralize the shield of the air room--but I'm going to look around, anyway. Then I'll join you fellows up there." "What was it?" the shaken girl asked. "I think that I remember your saying 'Vee-Two gas.' That's forbidden! Anyway, I owe you my life, Conway, and I'll never forget it--never. Thanks--but the others--how about all the rest of us?" "It was Vee-Two, and it is forbidden," Costigan replied grimly, eyes fast upon the flashing plate, whose point of projection was now deep in the bowels of the vessel. "The penalty for using it or having it is death on sight. Gangsters and pirates use it, since they have nothing to lose, being on the death list already. As for your life, I haven't saved it yet--you may wish I'd let it ride before we get done. The others are too far gone for oxygen--couldn't have brought even you around in a few more seconds, quick as I got to you. But there's a sure antidote--we all carry it in a lock-box in our armor--and we all know how to use it, because crooks all use Vee-Two and so we're always expecting it. But since the air will be pure again in half an hour we'll be able to revive the others easily enough if we can get by with whatever is going to happen next. There's the bird that did it, right in the air-room. It's the Chief Engineer's suit, but that isn't Franklin that's in it. Some passenger--disguised--slugged the Chief--took his suit and projectors--hole in duct--p-s-s-t! All washed out! Maybe that's all he was scheduled to do to us in this performance, but he'll do nothing else in his life!" "Don't go down there!" protested the girl. "His armor is so much better than that emergency suit you are wearing, and he's got Mr. Franklin's Lewiston, besides!" "Don't be an idiot!" he snapped. "We can't have a live pirate aboard--we're going to be altogether too busy with outsiders directly. Don't worry, I'm not going to give him a break. I'll take a Standish--I'll rub him out like a blot. Stay right here until I come back after you," he commanded, and the heavy door of the lifeboat clanged shut behind him as he leaped out into the promenade. Straight across the saloon he made his way, paying no attention to the inert forms scattered here and there. Going up to a blank wall, he manipulated an almost invisible dial set flush with its surface, swung a heavy door aside, and lifted out the Standish--a fearsome weapon. Squat, huge, and heavy, it resembled somewhat an overgrown machine rifle, but one possessing a thick, short telescope, with several opaque condensing lenses and parabolic reflectors. Laboring under the weight of the thing, he strode along corridors and clambered heavily down short stairways. Finally he came to the purifier room, and grinned savagely as he saw the greenish haze of light obscuring the door and walls--the shield was still in place; the pirate was still inside, still flooding with the terrible Vee Two the _Hyperion's_ primary air. He set his peculiar weapon down, unfolded its three massive legs, crouched down behind it, and threw in a switch. Dull red beams of frightful intensity shot from the reflectors and sparks, almost of lightning proportions, leaped from the shielding screen under their impact. Roaring and snapping, the conflict went on for seconds, then, under the superior force of the Standish, the greenish radiance gave way. Behind it the metal of the door ran the gamut of color--red, yellow, blinding white--then literally exploded; molten, vaporized, burned away. Through the aperture thus made Costigan could plainly see the pirate in the space-armor of the chief engineer--an armor which was proof against rifle fire and which could reflect and neutralize for some little time even the terrific beam Costigan was employing. Nor was the pirate unarmed--a vicious flare of incandescence leaped from his Lewiston, to spend its force in spitting, crackling pyrotechnics against the ether-wall of the squat and monstrous Standish. But Costigan's infernal engine did not rely only upon vibratory destruction. At almost the first flash of the pirate's weapon the officer touched a trigger, there was a double report, ear-shattering in that narrowly confined space, and the pirate's body literally flew into mist as a half-kilogram shell tore through his armor and exploded. Costigan shut off his beam, and with not the slightest softening of one hard lineament stared around the air-room; making sure that no serious damage had been done to the vital machinery of the air-purifier--the very lungs of the great space-ship. Dismounting the Standish, he lugged it back up to the main saloon, replaced it in its safe, and again set the combination lock. Thence to the lifeboat, where Clio cried out in relief as she saw that he was unhurt. "Oh, Conway, I've been so afraid something would happen to you!" she exclaimed, as he led her rapidly upward toward the control room. "Of course you ..." she paused. "Sure," he replied, laconically. "Nothing to it. How do you feel--about back to normal?" "All right, I think, except for being scared to death and just about out of control. I don't suppose that I'll be good for anything, but whatever I can do, count me in on." "Fine--you may be needed, at that. Everybody's out, apparently, except those like me, who had a warning and could hold their breath until they got to their suits." "But how did you know what it was? You can't see it, nor smell it, nor anything." "You inhaled a second before I did, and I saw your eyes. I've been in it before--and when you see a man get a jolt of that stuff just once, you never forget it. The engineers down below got it first, of course--it must have wiped them out. Then we got it in the saloon. Your passing out warned me, and luckily I had enough breath left to give the word. Quite a few of the fellows up above should have had time to get away--we'll see 'em all in the control room." "I suppose that was why you revived me--in payment for so kindly warning you of the gas attack?" The girl laughed; shaky, but game. "Something like that, probably," he answered, lightly. "Here we are--now we'll soon find out what's going to happen next." In the control room they saw at least a dozen armored figures; not now rushing about, but seated at their instruments, tense and ready. Fortunate it was that Costigan--veteran of space as he was, though young in years--had been down in the saloon; fortunate that he had been familiar with that horrible outlawed gas; fortunate that he had had presence of mind enough and sheer physical stamina enough to send his warning without allowing one paralyzing trace to enter his own lungs. Captain Bradley, the men on watch, and several other officers in their quarters or in the wardrooms--space-hardened veterans all--had obeyed instantly and without question the amplifiers' gasped command to "get tight". Exhaling or inhaling, their air-passages had snapped shut as that dread "Vee-Two" was heard, and they had literally jumped into their armored suits of space--flushing them out with volume after volume of unquestionable air; holding their breath to the last possible second, until their straining lungs could endure no more. Costigan waved the girl to a vacant bench, cautiously changing into his own armor from the emergency suit he had been wearing, and approached the captain. "Anything in sight, sir?" he asked, saluting. "They should have started something before this." "They've started, but we can't locate them. We tried to send out a general sector alarm, but had hardly started when they blanketed our wave. Look at that!" Following the captain's eyes, Costigan stared at the high powered set of the ship's operator. Upon the plate, instead of a moving, living, three-dimensional picture, there was a flashing glare of blinding white light; from the speaker, instead of intelligible speech, was issuing a roaring, crackling stream of noise. "It's impossible!" Bradley burst out, violently. "There's not a gram of metal inside the fourth zone--within a hundred thousand kilometers--and yet they must be close to send such a wave as that. But the Second thinks not--what do you think, Costigan?" The bluff commander, reactionary and of the old school as was his breed, was furious--baffled, raging inwardly to come to grips with the invisible and indetectable foe. Face to face with the inexplicable, however, he listened to the younger men with unusual tolerance. "It's not only possible; it's quite evident that they've got something we haven't." Costigan's voice was bitter. "But why shouldn't they have? Service ships never get anything until it's been experimented with for years, but pirates and such always get the new stuff as soon as it's discovered. The only good thing I can see is that we got part of a message away, and the scouts can trace that interference out there. But the pirates know that, too--it won't be long now," he concluded, grimly. He spoke truly. Before another word was said the outer screen flared white under a beam of terrific power, and simultaneously there appeared upon one of the lookout plates a vivid picture of the pirate vessel--a huge, black torpedo of steel, now emitting flaring offensive beams of force. Instantly the powerful weapons of the _Hyperion_ were brought to bear, and in the blast of full-driven beams the stranger's screens flamed incandescent. Heavy guns, under the recoil of whose fierce salvos the frame of the giant globe trembled and shuddered, shot out their tons of high-explosive shell. But the pirate commander had known accurately the strength of the liner, and knew that her armament was impotent against the forces at his command. His screens were invulnerable, the giant shells were exploded harmlessly in mid-space, miles from their objective. And suddenly a frightful pencil of flame stabbed brilliantly from the black hulk of the enemy. Through the empty ether it tore, through the mighty defensive screens, through the tough metal of the outer and inner walls. Every ether-defense of the _Hyperion_ vanished, and her acceleration dropped to a quarter of its normal value. "Right through the battery room!" Bradley groaned. "We're on the emergency drive now. Our rays are done for, and we can't seem to put a shell anywhere near her with our guns!" But ineffective as the guns were, they were silenced forever as a frightful beam of destruction stabbed relentlessly through the control room, whiffing out of existence the pilot, gunnery, and lookout panels and the men before them. The air rushed into space, and the suits of the three survivors bulged out into drum-head tightness as the pressure in the room decreased. Costigan pushed the captain lightly toward a wall, then seized the girl and leaped in the same direction. "Let's get out of here, quick!" he cried, the miniature radio instruments of the helmets automatically taking up the duty of transmitting speech as the sound disks refused to function. "They can't see us--our ether wall is still up and their spy-rays can't get through it from the outside, you know. They're working from blue-prints, and they'll probably take your desk next," and even as they bounded toward the door, now become the outer seal of an airlock, the pirates' beam tore through the space which they had just quitted. Through the airlock, down through several levels of passengers' quarters they hurried, and into a lifeboat, whose one doorway commanded the full length of the third lounge--an ideal spot, either for defense or for escape outward by means of the miniature cruiser. As they entered their retreat they felt their weight begin to increase. More and more force was applied to the helpless liner, until it was moving at normal acceleration. "What do you make of that, Costigan?" asked the captain. "Tractor beams?" "Apparently. They've got something, all right. They're taking us somewhere, fast. I'll go get a couple of Standishes, and another suit of armor--we'd better dig in," and soon the small room became a veritable fortress, housing as it did those two formidable engines of destruction. Then the first officer made another and longer trip, returning with a complete suit of Triplanetary space armor, exactly like those worn by the two men, but considerably smaller. "Just as an added factor of safety, you'd better put this on, Clio--those emergency suits aren't good for much in a battle. I don't suppose that you ever fired a Standish, did you?" "No, but I can soon learn how to do it," she replied pluckily. "Two is all that can work here at once, but you should know how to take hold in case one of us goes out. And while you're changing suits you'd better put on some stuff I've got here--Service Special phones and detectors. Stick this little disk onto your chest with this bit of tape; low down, out of sight. Just under your wishbone is the best place. Take off your wrist-watch and wear this one _continuously_--never take it off for a second. Put on these pearls, and wear them all the time, too. Take this capsule and hide it against your skin, some place where it can't be found except by the most rigid search. Swallow it in an emergency--it goes down easily and works just as well inside as outside. It is the most important thing of all--you can get along with it alone if you lose everything else, but without that capsule the whole system's shot to pieces. With that outfit, if we should get separated, you can talk to us--we're both wearing 'em, although in somewhat different forms. You don't need to talk loud--just a mutter will be enough. They're handy little outfits--almost impossible to find, and capable of a lot of things." "Thanks, Conway--I'll remember that, too," Clio replied, as she turned toward the tiny locker to follow his instructions. "But won't the scouts and patrols be catching us pretty quick? The operator sent a warning." "Afraid the ether's empty, as far as we're concerned." Captain Bradley had stood by in silent astonishment during this conversation. His eyes had bulged slightly at Costigan's "we're both wearing 'em," but he had held his peace and as the girl disappeared a look of dawning comprehension came over his face. "Oh, I see, sir," he said, respectfully--far more respectfully than he had ever before addressed a mere first officer. "Meaning that we both _will be_ wearing them shortly, I assume. 'Service Specials'--but you didn't specify exactly _what_ Service, did you?" "Now that you mention it, I don't believe that I did," Costigan grinned. "That explains several things about you--particularly your recognition of Vee-Two and your uncanny control and speed of reaction. But aren't you...." "No," Costigan interrupted. "This situation is apt to get altogether too serious to overlook any bets. If we get away, I'll take them away from her and she'll never know that they aren't routine equipment. As for you, I know that you can and do keep your mouth shut. That's why I'm hanging this junk on you--I had a lot of stuff in my kit, but I flashed it all with the Standish except what I brought in here for us three. Whether you think so or not, we're in a real jam--our chance of getting away is mighty close to zero...." He broke off as the girl came back, now to all appearances a small Triplanetary officer, and the three settled down to a long and eventless wait. Hour after hour they flew through the ether, but finally there was a lurching swing and an abrupt increase in their acceleration. After a short consultation Captain Bradley turned on the visiray set and, with the beam at its minimum power, peered cautiously downward, in the direction opposite to that in which he knew the pirate vessel must be. All three stared into the plate, seeing only an infinity of emptiness, marked only by the infinitely remote and coldly brilliant stars. While they stared into space a vast area of the heavens was blotted out and they saw, faintly illuminated by a peculiar blue luminescence, a vast ball--a sphere so large and so close that they seemed to be dropping downward toward it as though it were a world! They came to a stop--paused, weightless--a vast door slid smoothly aside--they were drawn _upward_ through an airlock and floated quietly in the air above a small, but brightly-lighted and orderly city of metallic buildings! Gently the _Hyperion_ was lowered, to come to rest in the embracing arms of a regulation landing cradle. "Well, wherever it is, we're here," remarked Captain Bradley, grimly, and: "And now the fireworks start," assented Costigan, with a questioning glance at the girl. "Don't mind me," she answered his unspoken question. "I don't believe in surrendering, either." "Right," and both men squatted down behind the ether-walls of their terrific weapons; the girl prone behind them. They had not long to wait. A group of human beings--men and to all appearances Americans--appeared unarmed in the little lounge. As soon as they were well inside the room, Bradley and Costigan released upon them without compunction the full power of their frightful projectors. From the reflectors, through the doorway, there tore a concentrated double beam of pure destruction--but that beam did not reach its goal. Yards from the men it met a screen of impenetrable density. Instantly the gunners pressed their triggers and a stream of high-explosive shells issued from the roaring weapons. But shells, also, were futile. They struck the shield and vanished--vanished without exploding and without leaving a trace to show that they had ever existed. Costigan sprang to his feet, but before he could launch his intended attack a vast tunnel appeared beside him--something had gone through the entire width of the liner, cutting effortlessly a smooth cylinder of emptiness. Air rushed in to fill the vacuum, and the three visitors felt themselves seized by invisible forces and drawn into the tunnel. Through it they floated, up to and over buildings, finally slanting downward toward the door of a great high-towered structure. Doors opened before them and closed behind them, until at last they stood upright in a room which was evidently the office of a busy executive. They faced a desk which, in addition to the usual equipment of the business man, carried also a bewilderingly complete switchboard and instrument panel. Seated impassively at the desk there was a gray man. Not only was he dressed entirely in gray, but his heavy hair was gray, his eyes were gray, and even his tanned skin seemed to give the impression of grayness in disguise. His overwhelming personality radiated an aura of grayness--not the gentle gray of the dove, but the resistless, driving gray of the super-dreadnought; the hard, inflexible, brittle gray of the fracture of high-carbon steel. "Captain Bradley, First Officer Costigan, Miss Marsden," the man spoke quietly, but crisply. "I had not intended you two men to live so long. That is a detail, however, which we will pass by for the moment. You may remove your suits." Neither officer moved, but both stared back at the speaker, unflinchingly. "I am not accustomed to repeating instructions," the man at the desk continued; voice still low and level, but instinct with deadly menace. "You may choose between removing those suits and dying in them, here and now." Costigan moved over to Clio and slowly took off her armor. Then, after a flashing exchange of glances and a muttered word, the two officers threw off their suits simultaneously and fired at the same instant; Bradley with his Lewiston, Costigan with a heavy automatic pistol whose bullets were explosive shells of tremendous power. But the man in gray, surrounded by an impenetrable wall of force, only smiled at the fusillade, tolerantly and maddeningly. Costigan leaped fiercely, only to be hurled backward as he struck that unyielding, invisible wall. A vicious beam snapped him back into place, the weapons were snatched away, and all three captives were held to their former positions. "I permitted that, as a demonstration of futility," the gray man said, his hard voice becoming harder, "but I will permit no more foolishness. Now I will introduce myself. I am known as Roger. You probably have heard nothing of me: very few Tellurians have, or ever will. Whether or not you two live depends solely upon yourselves. Being something of a student of men, I fear that you will both die shortly. Able and resourceful as you have just shown yourselves to be, you could be valuable to me, but you probably will not--in which case you shall, of course, cease to exist. That, however, in its proper time--you shall be of some slight service to me in the process of being eliminated. In your case, Miss Marsden, I find myself undecided between two courses of action; each highly desirable, but unfortunately mutually exclusive. Your father will be glad to ransom you at an exceedingly high figure, but in spite of that fact I may decide to use you in a research upon sex." "Yes?" Clio rose magnificently to the occasion. Fear forgotten, her courageous spirit flashed from her clear young eyes and emanated from her taut young body, erect in defiance. "You may think that you can do anything with me that you please, but you can't!" "Peculiar--highly perplexing--why should that one stimulus, in the case of young females, produce such an entirely disproportionate reaction?" Roger's eyes bored into Clio's; the girl shivered and looked away. "But sex itself, primal and basic, the most widespread concomitant of life in this continuum, is completely illogical and paradoxical. Most baffling--decidedly, this research on sex must go on." Roger pressed a button and a tall, comely woman appeared--a woman of indefinite age and of uncertain nationality. "Show Miss Marsden to her apartment," he directed, and as the two women went out a man came in. "The cargo is unloaded, sir," the newcomer reported. "The two men and the five women indicated have been taken to the hospital." "Very well, dispose of the others in the usual fashion." The minion went out, and Roger continued, emotionlessly: "Collectively, the other passengers may be worth a million or so, but it would not be worthwhile to waste time upon them." "What are you, anyway?" blazed Costigan, helpless but enraged beyond caution. "I have heard of mad scientists who tried to destroy the Earth, and of equally mad geniuses who thought themselves Napoleons capable of conquering even the Solar System. Whichever you are, you should know that you can't get away with it." "I am neither. I am, however, a scientist, and I direct many other scientists. I am not mad. You have undoubtedly noticed several peculiar features of this place?" "Yes, particularly the artificial gravity and those screens. An ordinary ether-wall is opaque in one direction, and doesn't bar matter--yours are transparent both ways and something more than impenetrable to matter. How do you do it?" "You could not understand them if I explained them to you, and they are merely two of our smaller developments. I do not intend to destroy your planet Earth; I have no desire to rule over masses of futile and brainless men. I have, however, certain ends of my own in view. To accomplish my plans I require hundreds of millions in gold and other hundreds of millions in uranium, thorium, and radium; all of which I shall take from the planets of this Solar System before I leave it. I shall take them in spite of the puerile efforts of the fleets of your Triplanetary League. "This structure was designed by me and built under my direction. It is protected from meteorites by forces of my devising. It is indetectable and invisible--ether waves are bent around it without loss or distortion. I am discussing these points at such length so that you may realize exactly your position. As I have intimated, you can be of assistance to me if you will." "Now just what could you offer any _man_ to make him join your outfit?" demanded Costigan, venomously. "Many things," Roger's cold tone betrayed no emotion, no recognition of Costigan's open and bitter contempt. "I have under me many men, bound to me by many ties. Needs, wants, longings, and desires differ from man to man, and I can satisfy practically any of them. Many men take delight in the society of young and beautiful women, but there are other urges which I have found quite efficient. Greed, thirst for fame, longing for power, and so on, including many qualities usually regarded as 'noble.' And what I promise, I deliver. I demand only loyalty to me, and that only in certain things and for a relatively short period. In all else, my men do as they please. In conclusion, I can use you two conveniently, but I do not need you. Therefore you may choose now between my service and--the alternative." "Exactly what is the alternative?" "We will not go into that. Suffice it to say that it has to do with a minor research, which is not progressing satisfactorily. It will result in your extinction, and perhaps I should mention that that extinction will not be particularly pleasant." "I say NO, you...." Bradley roared. He intended to give an unexpurgated classification, but was rudely interrupted. "Hold on a minute!" snapped Costigan. "How about Miss Marsden?" "She has nothing to do with this discussion," returned Roger, icily. "I do not bargain--in fact, I believe that I shall keep her for a time. She has it in mind to destroy herself if I do not allow her to be ransomed, but she will find that door closed to her until I permit it to open." "In that case, I string along with the Chief--take what he started to say about you and run it clear across the board for me!" barked Costigan. "Very well. That decision was to be expected from men of your type." The gray man touched two buttons and two of his creatures entered the room. "Put these men into two separate cells on the second level," he ordered. "Search them; all their weapons may not have been in their armor. Seal the doors and mount special guards, tuned to me here." Imprisoned they were, and carefully searched; but they bore no arms, and nothing had been said concerning communicators. Even if such instruments could be concealed, Roger would detect their use instantly. At least, so ran his thought. But Roger's men had no inkling of the possibility of Costigan's "Service Special" phones, detectors, and spy-ray--instruments of minute size and of infinitesimal power, but yet instruments which, working as they were below the level of the ether, were effective at great distances and caused no vibrations in the ether by which their use could be detected. And what could be more innocent than the regulation personal equipment of every officer of space? The heavy goggles, the wrist-watch and its supplementary pocket chronometer, the flash-lamp, the automatic lighter, the sender, the money-belt? All these items of equipment were examined with due care; but the cleverest minds of the Triplanetary Service had designed those communicators to pass any ordinary search, however careful, and when Costigan and Bradley were finally locked into the designated cells they still possessed their ultra-instruments. CHAPTER 8 IN ROGER'S PLANETOID In the hall Clio glanced around her wildly, seeking even the narrowest avenue of escape. Before she could act, however, her body was clamped as though in a vise, and she struggled, motionless. "It is useless to attempt to escape, or to do anything except what Roger wishes," the guide informed her somberly, snapping off the instrument in her hand and thus restoring to the thoroughly cowed girl her freedom of motion. "His lightest wish is law," she continued as they walked down a long corridor. "The sooner you realize that you must do exactly as he pleases, in all things, the easier your life will be." "But I wouldn't _want_ to keep on living!" Clio declared, with a flash of spirit. "And I can _always_ die, you know." "You will find that you cannot," the passionless creature returned, monotonously. "If you do not yield, you will long and pray for death, but you will not die unless Roger wills it. Look at me: I cannot die. Here is your apartment. You will stay here until Roger gives further orders concerning you." The living automaton opened a door and stood silent and impassive while Clio, staring at her in horror, shrank past her and into the sumptuously furnished suite. The door closed soundlessly and utter silence descended as a pall. Not an ordinary silence, but the indescribable perfection of the absolute silence, complete absence of all sound. In that silence Clio stood motionless. Tense and rigid, hopeless, despairing, she stood there in that magnificent room, fighting an almost overwhelming impulse to scream. Suddenly she heard the cold voice of Roger, speaking from the empty air. "You are over-wrought, Miss Marsden. You can be of no use to yourself or to me in that condition. I command you to rest; and, to insure that rest, you may pull that cord, which will establish about this room an ether wall: a wall to cut off even this my voice...." The voice ceased as she pulled the cord savagely and threw herself upon a divan in a torrent of gasping, strangling, but rebellious sobs. Then again came a voice, but not to her ears. Deep within her, pervading every bone and muscle, it made itself felt rather than heard. "Clio?" it asked. "Don't talk yet...." "Conway!" she gasped in relief, every fiber of her being thrilled into new hope at the deep, well-remembered voice of Conway Costigan. "Keep still!" he snapped. "Don't act so happy! He may have a spy-ray on you. He can't hear me, but he may be able to hear you. When he was talking to you you must have noticed a sort of rough, sandpapery feeling under that necklace I gave you? Since he's got an ether-wall around you the beads are dead now. If you feel anything like that under the wrist-watch, breathe deeply, twice. If you don't feel anything there, it's safe for you to talk, as loud as you please." "I don't feel anything, Conway!" she rejoiced. Tears forgotten, she was her old, buoyant self again. "So that wall _is_ real, after all? I only about half believed it." "Don't trust it too much, because he can cut it off from the outside any time he wants to. Remember what I told you: that necklace will warn you of any spy-ray in the ether, and the watch will detect anything below the level of the ether. It's dead now, of course, since our three phones are direct-connected; I'm in touch with Bradley, too. Don't be too scared; we've got a lot better chance than I thought we had." "What? You don't mean it!" "Absolutely. I'm beginning to think that maybe we've got something he doesn't know exists--our ultra-wave. Of course I wasn't surprised when his searchers failed to find our instruments, but it never occurred to me that I might have a clear field to use them in! I can't quite believe it yet, but I haven't been able to find any indication that he can even detect the bands we are using. I'm going to look around over there with my spy-ray ... I'm looking at you now--feel it?" "Yes, the watch feels that way, now." "Fine! Not a sign of interference over here, either. I can't find a trace of ultra-wave--anything below ether-level, you know--anywhere in the whole place. He's got so much stuff that we've never heard of that I supposed of course he'd have ultra-wave, too; but if he hasn't, that gives us the edge. Well, Bradley and I've got a lot of work to do.... Wait a minute, I just had a thought. I'll be back in about a second." There was a brief pause, then the soundless, but clear voice went on: "Good hunting! That woman that gave you the blue willies isn't alive--she's full of the prettiest machinery and circuits you ever saw!" "Oh, Conway!" and the girl's voice broke in an engulfing wave of thanksgiving and relief. "It was so unutterably horrible, thinking of what must have happened to her and to others like her!" "He's running a colossal bluff, I think. He's good, all right, but he lacks quite a lot of being omnipotent. But don't get too cocky, either. Plenty has happened to plenty of women here, and men too--and plenty may happen to us unless we put out a few jets. Keep a stiff upper lip, and if you want us, yell. 'Bye!" The silent voice ceased, the watch upon Clio's wrist again became an unobtrusive timepiece, and Costigan, in his solitary cell far below her tower room, turned his peculiarly goggled eyes toward other scenes. His hands, apparently idle in his pockets, manipulated tiny controls; his keen, highly-trained eyes studied every concealed detail of mechanism of the great globe. Finally, he took off the goggles and spoke in a low voice to Bradley, confined in another windowless room across the hall. "I think I've got dope enough, Captain. I've found out where he put our armor and guns, and I've located all the main leads, controls, and generators. There are no ether-walls around us here, but every door is shielded, and there are guards outside our doors--one to each of us. They're robots, not men. That makes it harder, since they're undoubtedly connected direct to Roger's desk and will give an alarm at the first hint of abnormal performance. We can't do a thing until he leaves his desk. See that black panel, a little below the cord-switch to the right of your door? That's the conduit cover. When I give you the word, tear that off and you'll see one red wire in the cable. It feeds the shield-generator of your door. Break that wire and join me out in the hall. Sorry I had only one of these ultra-wave spies, but once we're together it won't be so bad. Here's what I thought we could do," and he went over in detail the only course of action which his survey had shown to be possible. "There, he's left his desk!" Costigan exclaimed after the conversation had continued for almost an hour. "Now as soon as we find out where he's going, we'll start something ... he's going to see Clio, the swine! This changes things, Bradley!" His hard voice was a curse. "Somewhat!" blazed the captain. "I know how you two have been getting on all during the cruise. I'm with you, but what can we do?" "We'll do something," Costigan declared grimly. "If he makes a pass at her I'll get him if I have to blow this whole sphere out of space, with us in it!" "Don't do that, Conway," Clio's low voice, trembling but determined, was felt by both men. "If there's a chance for you to get away and do anything about fighting him, don't mind me. Maybe he only wants to talk about the ransom, anyway." "He wouldn't talk ransom to _you_--he's going to talk something else entirely," Costigan gritted, then his voice changed suddenly. "But say, maybe it's just as well this way. They didn't find our specials when they searched us, you know, and we're going to do plenty of damage right soon now. Roger probably isn't a fast worker--more the cat-and-mouse type, I'd say--and after we get started he'll have something on his mind besides you. Think you can stall him off and keep him interested for about fifteen minutes?" "I'm sure I can--I'll do _anything_ to help us, or you, get away from this horrible...." Her voice ceased as Roger broke the ether-wall of her apartment and walked toward the divan, upon which she crouched in wide-eyed, helpless, trembling terror. "Get ready, Bradley!" Costigan directed tersely. "He left Clio's ether-wall off, so that any abnormal signals would be relayed to him from his desk--he knows that there's no chance of anyone disturbing him in that room. But I'm holding a beam on that switch, so that the wall is on, full strength. No matter what we do now, he can't get a warning. I'll have to hold the beam exactly in place, though, so you'll have to do the dirty work. Tear out that red wire and kill those two guards. You know how to kill a robot, don't you?" "Yes--break his eye-lenses and his ear-drums and he'll stop whatever he's doing and send out distress calls.... Got 'em both. Now what?" "Open my door--the shield switch is to the right." Costigan's door flew open and the Triplanetary captain leaped into the room. "Now for our armor!" he cried. "Not yet!" snapped Costigan. He was standing rigid, goggled eyes staring immovably at a spot on the ceiling. "I can't move a millimeter until you've closed Clio's ether-wall switch. If I take this ray off it for a second we're sunk. Five floors up, straight ahead down a corridor--fourth door on right. When you're at the switch you'll feel my ray on your watch. Snap it up!" "Right," and the captain leaped away at a pace to be equalled by few men of half his years. Soon he was back, and after Costigan had tested the ether-wall of the "bridal suite" to make sure that no warning signal from his desk or his servants could reach Roger within it, the two officers hurried away toward the room in which their space-armor was. "Too bad they don't wear uniforms," panted Bradley, short of breath from the many flights of stairs. "Might have helped some as disguise." "I doubt it--with so many robots around, they've probably got signals that we couldn't understand anyway. If we meet anybody it'll mean a battle. Hold it!" Peering through walls with his spy-ray, Costigan had seen two men approaching, blocking an intersecting corridor into which they must turn. "Two of 'em, a man and a robot--the robot's on your side. We'll wait here, right at the corner--when they round it take 'em!" and Costigan put away his goggles in readiness for strife. All unsuspecting, the two pirates came into view, and as they appeared the two officers struck. Costigan, on the inside, drove a short, hard right low into the human pirate's abdomen. The fiercely-driven fist sank to the wrist into the soft tissues and the stricken man collapsed. But even as the blow landed Costigan had seen that there was a third enemy, following close behind the two he had been watching, a pirate who was even then training a ray projector upon him. Reacting automatically, Costigan swung his unconscious opponent around in front of him, so that it was into an enemy's body that the vicious ray tore, and not into his own. Crouching down into the smallest possible compass, he straightened out with the lashing force of a mighty steel spring, hurling the corpse straight at the flaming mouth of the projector. The weapon crashed to the floor and dead pirate and living went down in a heap. Upon that heap Costigan hurled himself, feeling for the pirate's throat. But the fellow had wriggled clear, and countered with a gouging thrust that would have torn out the eyes of a slower man, following it up instantly with a savage kick for the groin. No automaton this, geared and set to perform certain fixed duties with mechanical precision, but a lithe, strong man in hard training, fighting with every foul trick known to his murderous ilk. But Costigan was no tyro in the art of dirty fighting. Few indeed were the maiming tricks of foul combat unknown to even the rank and file of the highly efficient under-cover branch of the Triplanetary Service; and Costigan, a Sector Chief, knew them all. Not for pleasure, sportsmanship, nor million-dollar purses did those secret agents use Nature's weapons. They came to grips only when it could not possibly be avoided, but when they were forced to fight in that fashion they went in with but one grim purpose--to kill, and to kill in the shortest possible space of time. Thus it was that Costigan's opening soon came. The pirate launched a vicious _coup de sabot_, which Costigan avoided by a lightning shift. It was a slight shift, barely enough to make the kicker miss, and two powerful hands closed upon that flying foot in midair like the sprung jaws of a bear-trap. Closed and twisted viciously, in the same fleeting instant. There was a shriek, smothered as a heavy boot crashed to its carefully predetermined mark--the pirate was out, definitely and permanently. The struggle had lasted scarcely ten seconds, coming to its close just as Bradley finished blinding and deafening the robot. Costigan picked up the projector, again donned his spy-ray goggles, and the two hurried on. "Nice work, Chief--it must be a gift to rough-house the way you do," Bradley exclaimed. "That's why you took the live one?" "Practice helps some, too--I've been in brawls before, and I'm a lot younger and maybe a bit faster than you are," Costigan explained briefly, penetrant gaze rigidly to the fore as they ran along one corridor after another. Several more guards, both living and mechanical, were encountered on the way, but they were not permitted to offer any opposition. Costigan saw them first. In the furious beam of the projector of the dead pirate they were riven into nothingness, and the two officers sped on to the room which Costigan had located from afar. The three suits of Triplanetary space armor had been locked up in a cabinet; a cabinet whose doors Costigan literally blew off with a blast of force rather than consume time in tracing the power leads. "I feel like something now!" Costigan, once more encased in his own armor, heaved a great sigh of relief. "Rough-and-tumble's all right with one or two, but that generator room is full of grief, and we won't have any too much stuff as it is. We've got to take Clio's suit along--we'll carry it down to the door of the power room, drop it there, and pick it up on the way back." Contemptuous now of possible guards, the armored pair strode toward the power plant--the very heart of the immense fortress of space. Guards were encountered, and captains--officers who signaled frantically to their chief, since he alone could unleash the frightful forces at his command, and who profanely wondered at his unwonted silence--but the enemy beams were impotent against the ether walls of that armor; and the pirates, without armor in the security of their own planetoid as they were, vanished utterly in the ravening beams of the twin Lewistons. As they paused before the door of the power room, both men felt Clio's voice raised in her first and last appeal, an appeal wrung from her against her will by the extremity of her position. "Conway! Hurry! His eyes--they're tearing me apart! Hurry, dear!" In the horror-filled tones both men read clearly--however inaccurately--the girl's dire extremity. Each saw plainly a happy, carefree young Earth-girl, upon her first trip into space, locked inside an ether-wall with an over-brained, under-conscienced human machine--a super-intelligent, but lecherous and unmoral mechanism of flesh and blood, acknowledging no authority, ruled by nothing save his own scientific drivings and the almost equally powerful urges of his desires and passions! She must have fought with every resource at her command. She must have wept and pleaded, stormed and raged, feigned submission and played for time--and her torment had not touched in the slightest degree the merciless and gloating brain of the being who called himself Roger. Now his tantalizing, ruthless cat-play would be done, the horrible gray-brown face would be close to hers--she wailed her final despairing message to Costigan and attacked that hideous face with the fury of a tigress. Costigan bit off a bitter imprecation. "Hold him just a second longer, sweetheart!" he cried, and the power room door vanished. Through the great room the two Lewistons swept at full aperture and at maximum power, two rapidly-opening fans of death and destruction. Here and there a guard, more rapid than his fellows, trained a futile projector--a projector whose magazine exploded at the touch of that frightful field of force, liberating instantaneously its thousands upon thousands of kilowatt-hours of-stored-up energy. Through the delicately adjusted, complex mechanisms the destroying beams tore. At their touch armatures burned out, high-tension leads volatilized in crashing, high-voltage arcs, masses of metal smoked and burned in the path of vast forces now seeking the easiest path to neutralization, delicate instruments blew up, copper ran in streams. As the last machine subsided into a semi-molten mass of metal the two wreckers, each grasping a brace, felt themselves become weightless and knew that they had accomplished the first part of their program. Costigan leaped for the outer door. His the task to go to Clio's aid--Bradley would follow more slowly, bringing the girl's armor and taking care of any possible pursuit. As he sailed through the air he spoke. "Coming, Clio! All right, girl?" Questioningly, half fearfully. "All right, Conway." Her voice was almost unrecognizable, broken in retching agony. "When everything went crazy he ... found out that the ether-wall was up and ... forgot all about me. He shut it off ... and seemed to go crazy too ... he is floundering around like a wild man now ... I'm trying to keep ... him from ... going downstairs." "Good girl--keep him busy one minute more--he's getting all the warnings at once and wants to get back to his board. But what's the matter with you? Did he ... hurt you, after all?" "Oh, no, not that--he didn't do anything but look at me--but that was bad enough--but I'm sick--horribly sick. I'm falling ... I'm so dizzy that I can scarcely see ... my head is breaking up into little pieces ... I just _know_ I'm going to die, Conway! Oh ... oh!" "Oh, is _that_ all!" In his sheer relief that they had been in time, Costigan did not think of sympathizing with Clio's very real present distress of mind and body. "I forgot that you're a ground-gripper--that's just a little touch of space-sickness. It'll wear off directly.... All right, I'm coming! Let go of him and get as far away from him as you can!" He was now in the street. Perhaps two hundred feet distant and a hundred feet above him was the tower room in which were Clio and Roger. He sprang directly toward its large window, and as he floated "upward" he corrected his course and accelerated his pace by firing backward at various angles with his heavy service pistol, uncaring that at the point of impact of each of those shells a small blast of destruction erupted. He missed the window a trifle, but that did not matter--his flaming Lewiston opened a way for him, partly through the window, partly through the wall. As he soared through the opening he trained projector and pistol upon Roger, now almost to the door, noticing as he did so that Clio was clinging convulsively to a lamp-bracket upon the wall. Door and wall vanished in the Lewiston's terrific beam, but the pirate stood unharmed. Neither ravening ray nor explosive shell could harm him--he had snapped on the protective shield whose generator was always upon his person. * * * * * When Clio reported that Roger seemed to go crazy and was floundering around like a wild man, she had no idea of how she was understanding the actual situation; for Gharlane of Eddore, then energizing the form of flesh that was Roger, had for the first time in his prodigiously long life met in direct conflict with an overwhelming superior force. Roger had been sublimely confident that he could detect the use, anywhere in or around his planetoid, of ultra-wave. He had been equally sure that he could control directly and absolutely the physical activities of any number of these semi-intelligent "human beings". But four Arisians in fusion--Drounli, Brolenteen, Nedanillor, and Kriedigan--had been on guard for weeks. When the time came to act, they acted. Roger's first thought, upon discovering what tremendous and inexplicable damage had already been done, was to destroy instantly the two men who were doing it. He could not touch them. His second was to blast out of existence this supposedly human female, but no more could he touch her. His fiercest mental bolts spent themselves harmlessly three millimeters away from her skin; she gazed into his eyes completely unaware of the torrents of energy pouring from them. He could not even aim a weapon at her! His third was to call for help to Eddore. He could not. The sub-ether was closed; nor could he either discover the manner of its closing or trace the power which was keeping it closed! His Eddorian body, even if he could recreate it here, could not withstand the environment--this Roger-thing would have to do whatever it could, unaided by Gharlane's mental powers. And, physically, it was a very capable body indeed. Also, it was armed and armored with mechanisms of Gharlane's own devising; and Eddore's second-in-command was in no sense a coward. But Roger, while not exactly a ground-gripper, did not know how to handle himself without weight; whereas Costigan, given six walls against which to push, was even more efficient in weightless combat than when handicapped by the force of gravitation. Keeping his projector upon the pirate, he seized the first club to hand--a long, slender pedestal of metal--launched himself past the pirate chief. With all the momentum of his mass and velocity and all the power of his good right arm he swung the bar at the pirate's head. That fiercely-driven mass of metal should have taken head from shoulders, but it did not. Roger's shield of force was utterly rigid and impenetrable; the only effect of the frightful blow was to set him spinning, end over end, like the flying baton of an acrobatic drum-major. As the spinning form crashed against the opposite wall of the room Bradley floated in, carrying Clio's armor. Without a word the captain loosened the helpless girl's grip upon the bracket and encased her in the suit. Then, supporting her at the window, he held his Lewiston upon the captive's head while Costigan propelled him toward the opening. Both men knew that Roger's shield of force must be threatened every instant--that if he were allowed to release it he probably would bring to bear a hand-weapon even superior to their own. Braced against the wall, Costigan sighted along Roger's body toward the most distant point of the lofty dome of the artificial planet and gave him a gentle push. Then, each grasping Clio by an arm, the two officers shoved mightily with their feet and the three armored forms darted away toward their only hope of escape--an emergency boat which could be launched through the shell of the great globe. To attempt to reach the _Hyperion_ and to escape in one of her lifeboats would have been useless; they could not have forced the great gates of the main airlocks and no other exits existed. As they sailed onward through the air, Costigan keeping the slowly-floating form of Roger enveloped in his beam, Clio began to recover. "Suppose they get their gravity fixed?" she asked, apprehensively. "And they're raying us and shooting at us!" "They may have it fixed already. They undoubtedly have spare parts and duplicate generators, but if they turn it on the fall will kill Roger too, and he wouldn't like that. They'll have to get him down with a helicopter or something, and they know that we'll get them as fast as they come up. They can't hurt us with hand-weapons, and before they can bring up any heavy stuff they'll be afraid to use it, because well be too close to their shell. "I wish we could have brought Roger along," he continued, savagely, to Bradley. "But you were right, of course--it'd be altogether too much like a rabbit capturing a wildcat. My Lewiston's about done right now, and there can't be much left of yours--what he'd do to us would be a sin and a shame." Now at the great wall, the two men heaved mightily upon a lever, the gate of the emergency port swung slowly open, and they entered the miniature cruiser of the void. Costigan, familiar with the mechanism of the craft from careful study from his prison cell, manipulated the controls. Through gate after massive gate they went, until finally they were out in open space, shooting toward distant Tellus at the maximum acceleration of which their small craft was capable. Costigan cut the other two phones out of circuit and spoke, his attention fixed upon some extremely distant point. "Samms!" he called sharply. "Costigan. We're out ... all right ... yes ... sure ... absolutely ... you tell 'em, Sammy, I've got company here." Through the sound-disks of their helmets the girl and the captain had heard Costigan's share of the conversation. Bradley stared at his erstwhile first officer in amazement, and even Clio had often heard that mighty, half-mythical name. Surely that bewildering young man must rank high, to speak so familiarly to Virgil Samms, the all-powerful head of the space-pervading Service of the Triplanetary League! "You've turned in a general call-out," Bradley stated, rather than asked. "Long ago--I've been in touch right along," Costigan answered. "Now that they know what to look for and know that ether-wave detectors are useless, they can find it. Every vessel in seven sectors, clear down to the scout patrols, is concentrating on this point, and the call is out for all battleships and cruisers afloat. There are enough operatives out there with ultra-waves to locate that globe, and once they spot it they'll point it out to all the other vessels." "But how about the other prisoners?" asked the girl. "They'll be killed, won't they?" "Hard telling," Costigan shrugged. "Depends on how things turn out. We lack a lot of being safe ourselves yet." "What's worrying me mostly is our own chance," Bradley assented. "They will chase us, of course." "Sure, and they'll have more speed than we have. Depends on how far away the nearest Triplanetary vessels are. But we've done everything we can do, for now." Silence fell, and Costigan cut in Clio's phone and came over to the seat upon which she was reclining, white and stricken--worn out by the horrible and terrifying ordeals of the last few hours. As he seated himself beside her she blushed vividly, but her deep blue eyes met his gray ones steadily. "Clio, I ... we ... you ... that is," he flushed hotly and stopped. This secret agent, whose clear, keen brain no physical danger could cloud; who had proved over and over again that he was never at a loss in any emergency, however desperate--this quick-witted officer floundered in embarrassment like any schoolboy; but continued, doggedly: "I'm afraid that I gave myself away back there, but...." "We gave ourselves away, you mean," she filled in the pause. "I did my share, but I won't hold you to it if you don't want--but I _know_ that you love me, Conway!" "_Love_ you!" the man groaned, his face lined and hard, his whole body rigid. "That doesn't half tell it, Clio. You don't need to hold me--I'm held for life. There never was a woman who meant anything to me before, and there never will be another. You're the only woman that ever existed. It isn't that. Can't you see that it's impossible?" "Of course I can't--it isn't impossible, at all." She released her shields, four hands met and tightly clasped, and her low voice thrilled with feeling as she went on: "You love me and I love you. That is all that matters." "I wish it were," Costigan returned bitterly, "but you don't know what you'd be letting yourself in for. It's who and what you are and who and what I am that's griping me. You, Clio Marsden, Curtis Marsden's daughter. Nineteen years old. You think you've been places and done things. You haven't. You haven't seen or done anything--you don't know what it's all about. And whom am I to love a girl like you? A homeless spacehound who hasn't been on any planet three weeks in three years. A hard-boiled egg. A trouble-shooter and a brawler by instinct and training. A sp ..." he bit off the word and went on quickly: "Why, you don't know me at all, and there's a lot of me that you never _will_ know--that I can't let you know! You'd better lay off me, girl, while you can. It'll be best for you, believe me." "But I can't, Conway, and neither can you," the girl answered softly, a glorious light in her eyes. "It's too late for that. On the ship it was just another of those things, but since then we've come really to know each other, and we're sunk. The situation is out of control, and we both know it--and neither of us would change it if we could, and you know that, too. I don't know very much, I admit, but I do know what you thought you'd have to keep from me, and I admire you all the more for it. We all honor the Service, Conway dearest--it is only you men who have made and are keeping the Three Planets fit places to live in--and I know that any one of Virgil Samms' assistants would have to be a man in a thousand million...." "What makes you think that?" he demanded sharply. "You told me so yourself, indirectly. Who else in the three worlds could possibly call him 'Sammy?' You are hard, of course, but you must be so--and I never did like soft men, anyway. And you brawl in a good cause. You are very much a _man_, my Conway; a real, _real_ man, and I love you! Now, if they catch us, all right--we'll die together, at least!" she finished, intensely. "You're right, sweetheart, of course," he admitted. "I don't believe that I _could_ really let you let me go, even though I know you ought to," and their hands locked together even more firmly than before. "If we ever get out of this jam I'm going to kiss you, but this is no time to be taking off your helmet. In fact, I'm taking too many chances with you in keeping your shields off. Snap 'em on again--they ought to be getting fairly close by this time." Hands released and armor again tight, Costigan went over to join Bradley at the control board. "How are they coming, Captain?" he asked. "Not so good. Quite a ways off yet. At least an hour, I'd say, before a cruiser can get within range." "I'll see if I can locate any of the pirates chasing us. If I do it'll be by accident; this little spy-ray isn't good for much except close work. I'm afraid the first warning we'll have will be when they take hold of us with a tractor or spear us with a needle. Probably a beam, though; this is one of their emergency lifeboats and they wouldn't want to destroy it unless they have to. Also, I imagine that Roger wants us alive pretty badly. He has unfinished business with all three of us, and I can well believe that his 'not particularly pleasant extinction' will be even less so after the way we rooked him." "I want you to do me a favor, Conway." Clio's face was white with horror at the thought of facing again that unspeakable creature of gray. "Give me a gun or something, please. I don't want him ever to look at me that way again, to say nothing of what else he might do, while I'm alive." "He won't," Costigan assured her, narrow of eye and grim of jaw. He was, as she had said, hard. "But you don't want a gun. You might get nervous and use it too soon. I'll take care of you at the last possible moment, because if he gets hold of us we won't stand a chance of getting away again." For minutes there was silence, Costigan surveying the ether in all directions with his ultra-wave device. Suddenly he laughed, and the others stared at him in surprise. "No, I'm not crazy," he told them. "This is really funny; it had never occurred to me that the ether-walls of all these ships make them invisible. I can see them, of course, with this sub-ether spy, but they can't see us! I knew that they should have overtaken us before this. I've finally found them. They've passed us, and are now tacking around, waiting for us to do something so that they can see us! They're heading right into the Fleet--they think they're safe, of course, but what a surprise they've got coming to them!" But it was not only the pirates who were to be surprised. Long before the pirate ship had come within extreme visibility range of the Triplanetary Fleet it lost its invisibility and was starkly outlined upon the lookout plates of the three fugitives. For a few seconds the pirate craft seemed unchanged, then it began to glow redly, with a red that seemed to become darker as it grew stronger. Then the sharp outlines blurred, puffs of air burst outward, and the metal of the hull became a viscous, fluid-like something, flowing away in a long, red streamer into seemingly empty space. Costigan turned his ultra-gaze into that space and saw that it was actually far from empty. There lay a vast something, formless and indefinite even to his sub-etheral vision; a something into which the viscid stream of transformed metal plunged. Plunged and vanished. Powerful interference blanketed his ultra-wave and howled throughout his body; but in the hope that some parts of his message might get through he called Samms, and calmly and clearly he narrated everything that had just happened. He continued his crisp report, neglecting not the smallest detail, while their tiny craft was drawn inexorably toward a redly impermeable veil; continued it until their lifeboat, still intact, shot through that veil and he found himself unable to move. He was conscious, he was breathing normally, his heart was beating; but not a voluntary muscle would obey his will! CHAPTER 9 FLEET AGAINST PLANETOID One of the newest and fleetest of the patrol vessels of the Triplanetary League, the heavy cruiser _Chicago_ of the North American Division of the Tellurian Contingent, plunged stolidly through interplanetary vacuum. For five long weeks she had patrolled her allotted volume of space. In another week she would report back to the city whose name she bore, where her space-weary crew, worn by their long "tour" in the awesomely oppressive depths of the limitless void, would enjoy to the full their fortnight of refreshing planetary leave. She was performing certain routine tasks--charting meteorites, watching for derelicts and other obstructions to navigation, checking in constantly with all scheduled space-ships in case of need, and so on--but primarily she was a warship. She was a mighty engine of destruction, hunting for the unauthorized vessels of whatever power or planet it was that had not only defied the Triplanetary League, but was evidently attempting to overthrow it; attempting to plunge the Three Planets back into the ghastly sink of bloodshed and destruction from which they had so recently emerged. Every space-ship within range of her powerful detectors was represented by two brilliant, slowly-moving points of light; one upon a greater micrometer screen, the other in the "tank," the immense, three-dimensional, minutely cubed model of the entire Solar System. A brilliantly intense red light flared upon a panel and a bell clanged brazenly the furious signals of the sector alarm. Simultaneously a speaker roared forth its message of a ship in dire peril. "Sector alarm! N.A.T. _Hyperion_ gassed with Vee-Two. Nothing detectable in space, but...." The half-uttered message was drowned out in a crackling roar of meaningless noise, the orderly signals of the bell became a hideous clamor, and the two points of light which had marked the location of the liner disappeared in widely spreading flashes of the same high-powered interference. Observers, navigators, and control officers were alike dumbfounded. Even the captain, in the shell-proof, shock-proof, and doubly ray-proof retreat of his conning compartment, was equally at a loss. No ship or thing could _possibly_ be close enough to be sending out interfering waves of such tremendous power--yet there they were! "Maximum acceleration, straight for the point where the _Hyperion_ was when her tracers went out," the captain ordered, and through the fringe of that widespread interference he drove a solid beam, reporting concisely to GHQ. Almost instantly the emergency call-out came roaring in--every vessel of the Sector, of whatever class or tonnage, was to concentrate upon the point in space where the ill-fated liner had last been known to be. Hour after hour the great globe drove on at maximum acceleration, captain and every control officer alert and at high tension. But in Quartermasters' Department, deep down below the generator rooms, no thought was given to such minor matters as the disappearance of a _Hyperion_. The inventory did not balance, and two Q.M. privates were trying, profanely and without success, to find the discrepancy. "Charged calls for Mark Twelve Lewistons, none requisitioned, on hand eighteen thous...." The droning voice broke off short in the middle of a word and the private stood rigid, in the act of reaching for another slip, every faculty concentrated upon something imperceptible to his companion. "Come on, Cleve--snap it up!" the second commanded, but was silenced by a vicious wave of the listener's hand. "What!" the rigid one exclaimed. "Reveal ourselves! Why, it's.... Oh, all right.... Oh, that's it ... uh-huh ... I see ... yes, I've got it solid. So long!" The inventory sheets fell unheeded from his hand, and his fellow private stared after him in amazement as he strode over to the desk of the officer in charge. That officer also stared as the hitherto easy-going and gold-bricking Cleve saluted crisply, showed him something flat in the palm of his left hand, and spoke. "I've just got some of the funniest orders ever put out, lieutenant, but they came from 'way, 'way up. I'm to join the brass hats in the Center. You'll know all about it directly, I imagine. Cover me up as much as you can, will you?" and he was gone. Unchallenged he made his way to the control room, and his curt "urgent report for the Captain" admitted him there without question. But when he approached the sacred precincts of the captain's own and inviolate room, he was stopped in no uncertain fashion by no less a personage than the Officer of the Day. "... and report yourself under arrest immediately!" the O.D. concluded his brief but pointed speech. "You were right in stopping me, of course," the intruder conceded, unmoved. "I wanted to get in there without giving everything away, if possible, but it seems that I can't. Well, I've been ordered by Virgil Samms to report to the Captain, at once. See this? Touch it!" He held out a flat, insulated disk, cover thrown back to reveal a tiny golden meteor, at the sight of which the officer's truculent manner altered markedly. "I've heard of them, of course, but I never saw one before," and the officer touched the shining symbol lightly with his finger, jerking backward as there shot through his whole body a thrilling surge of power, shouting into his very bones an unpronounceable syllable--the password of the Triplanetary Service. "Genuine or not, it gets you to the Captain. He'll know, and if it's a fake you'll be breathing space in five minutes." Projector at the ready, the Officer of the Day followed Cleve into the Holy of Holies. There the grizzled four-striper touched the golden meteor lightly, then drove his piercing gaze deep into the unflinching eyes of the younger man. But that captain had won his high rank neither by accident nor by "pull"--he understood at once. "It _must_ be an emergency," he growled, half-audibly, still staring at his lowly Q-M clerk, "to make Samms uncover this way." He turned and curtly dismissed the wondering O.D. Then: "All right! Out with it!" "Serious enough so that every one of us afloat has just received orders to reveal himself to his commanding officer and to anyone else, if necessary to reach that officer at once--orders never before issued. The enemy have been located. They have built a base, and have ships better than our best. Base and ships cannot be seen or detected by any ether wave. However, the Service has been experimenting for years with a new type of communicator beam; and, while pretty crude yet, it was given to us when the _Dione_ went out without leaving a trace. One of our men was in the _Hyperion_, managed to stay alive, and has been sending data. I am instructed to attach my new phone set to one of the universal plates in your conning room, and to see what I can find." "Go to it!" The captain waved his hand and the operative bent to his task. "Commanders of all vessels of the Fleet!" The Headquarters speaker, receiver sealed upon the wave-length of the Admiral of the Fleet, broke the long silence. "All vessels in sectors L to R, inclusive, will interlock location signals. Some of you have received, or will receive shortly, certain communications from sources which need not be mentioned. Those commanders will at once send out red K4 screens. Vessels so marked will act as temporary flagships. Unmarked vessels will proceed at maximum to the nearest flagship, grouping about it in the regulation squadron cone in order of arrival. Squadrons most distant from objective point designated by flagship observers will proceed toward it at maximum; squadrons nearest it will decelerate or reverse velocity--that point must not be approached until full Fleet formation has been accomplished. Heavy and light cruisers of all other sectors inside the orbit of Mars...." The orders went on, directing the mobilization of the stupendous forces of the League, so that they would be in readiness in the highly improbable event of the failure of the massed power of seven sectors to reduce the pirate base. In those seven sectors perhaps a dozen vessels threw out enormous spherical screens of intense red light, and as they did so their tracer points upon all the interlocked lookout plates also became ringed about with red. Toward those crimson markers the pilots of the unmarked vessels directed their courses at their utmost power; and while the white lights upon the lookout plates moved slowly toward and clustered about the red ones the ultra-instruments of the Service operatives were probing into space, sweeping the neighborhood of the computed position of the pirate's stronghold. But the object sought was so far away that the small spy-ray sets of the Service men, intended as they were for close range work, were unable to make contact with the invisible planetoid for which they were seeking. In the captain's sanctum of the _Chicago_, the operative studied his plate for only a minute or two, then shut off his power and fell into a brown study, from which he was rudely aroused. "Aren't you even going to _try_ to find them?" demanded the captain. "No," Cleve returned shortly. "No use--not half enough power or control. I'm trying to think ... maybe ... say, Captain, will you please have the Chief Electrician and a couple of radio men come in here?" They came, and for hours, while the other ultra-wave men searched the apparently empty ether with their ineffective beams, the three technical experts and the erstwhile Quartermaster's clerk labored upon a huge and complex ultra-wave projector--the three blindly and with doubtful questions; the one with sure knowledge at least of what he was trying to do. Finally the thing was done, the crude, but efficient graduated circles were set, and the tubes glowed redly as their massed output drove into a tight beam of ultra-vibration. "There it is, sir," Cleve reported, after some ten minutes of manipulation, and the vast structure of the miniature world flashed into being upon his plate. "You may notify the fleet--coordinates H 11.62, RA 124-31-16, and Dx about 173.2." The report made and the assistants out of the room, the captain turned to the observer and saluted gravely. "We have always known, sir, that the Service had _men_; but I had no idea that any one man could possibly do, on the spur of the moment, what you have just done--unless that man happened to be Lyman Cleveland." "Oh, it doesn't...." the observer began, but broke off, muttering unintelligibly at intervals; then swung the visiray beam toward the Earth. Soon a face appeared upon the plate; the keen, but careworn face of Virgil Samms! "Hello, Lyman," his voice came clearly from the speaker, and the Captain gasped--his ultra-wave observer and sometime clerk was Lyman Cleveland himself, probably the greatest living expert in beam transmission! "I knew that you'd do something, if it could be done. How about it--can the others install similar sets on their ships? I'm betting that they can't." "Probably not," Cleveland frowned in thought. "This is a patchwork affair, made of gunny sacks and hay-wire. I'm holding it together by main strength and awkwardness, and even at that, it's apt to go to pieces any minute." "Can you rig it up for photography?" "I think so. Just a minute--yes, I can. Why?" "Because there's something going on out there that neither we nor apparently the pirates know anything about. The Admiralty seems to think that it's the Jovians again, but we don't see how it can be--if it is, they have developed a lot of stuff that none of our agents has even suspected," and he recounted briefly what Costigan had reported to him, concluding: "Then there was a burst of interference--on the _ultra-band_, mind you--and I've heard nothing from him since. Therefore I want you to stay out of the battle entirely. Stay as far away from it as you can and still get good pictures of everything that happens. I will see that orders are issued to the _Chicago_ to that effect." "But listen...." "Those are orders!" snapped Samms. "It is of the utmost importance that we know every detail of what is going to happen. The answer is pictures. The only possibility of obtaining pictures is that machine you have just developed. If the fleet wins, nothing will be lost. If the fleet loses--and I am not half as confident of success as the Admiral is--the _Chicago_ doesn't carry enough power to decide the issue, and we will have the pictures to study, which is all-important. Besides, we have probably lost Conway Costigan today, and we don't want to lose _you_, too." Cleveland remained silent, pondering this startling news, but the grizzled Captain, veteran of the Fourth Jovian War that he was, was not convinced. "We'll blow them out of space, Mr. Samms!" he declared. "You just think you will, Captain. I have suggested, as forcibly as possible, that the general attack be withheld until after a thorough investigation is made, but the Admiralty will not listen. They see the advisability of withdrawing a camera ship, but that is as far as they will go." "And that's plenty far enough!" growled the _Chicago's_ commander, as the beam snapped off. "Mr. Cleveland, I don't like the idea of running away under fire, and I won't do it without direct orders from the Admiral." "Of course you won't--that's why you are going...." He was interrupted by a voice from the Headquarters speaker. The captain stepped up to the plate and, upon being recognized, he received the exact orders which had been requested by the Chief of the Triplanetary Service. Thus it was that the _Chicago_ reversed her acceleration, cut off her red screen, and fell rapidly behind, while the vessels following her shot away toward another crimson-flaring loader. Farther and farther back she dropped, back to the limiting range of the mechanism upon which Cleveland and his highly-trained assistants were hard at work. And during all this time the forces of the seven sectors had been concentrating. The pilot vessels, with their flaming red screens, each followed by a cone of space-ships, drew closer and closer together, approaching the _Fearless_--the British super-dreadnought which was to be the flagship of the Fleet--the mightiest and heaviest space-ship which had yet lifted her stupendous mass into the ether. Now, systematically and precisely, the great Cone of Battle was coming into being; a formation developed during the Jovian Wars while the forces of the Three Planets were fighting in space for their very civilizations' existence, and one never used since the last space-fleets of Jupiter's murderous hordes had been wiped out. The mouth of that enormous hollow cone was a ring of scout patrols, the smallest and most agile vessels of the fleet. Behind them came a somewhat smaller ring of light cruisers, then rings of heavy cruisers and of light battleships, and finally of heavy battleships. At the apex of the cone, protected by all the other vessels of the formation and in best position to direct the battle, was the flagship. In this formation every vessel was free to use her every weapon, with a minimum of danger to her sister ships; and yet, when the gigantic main projectors were operated along the axis of the formation, from the entire vast circle of the cone's mouth there flamed a cylindrical field of force of such intolerable intensity that in it no conceivable substance could endure for a moment! The artificial planet of metal was now close enough so that it was visible to the ultra-vision of the Service men, so plainly visible that the cigar-shaped warships of the pirates were seen issuing from the enormous airlocks. As each vessel shot out into space it sped straight for the approaching fleet without waiting to go into any formation--gray Roger believed his structures invisible to Triplanetary eyes, thought that the presence of the fleet was the result of mathematical calculations, and was convinced that his mighty vessels of the void would destroy even that vast fleet without themselves becoming known. He was wrong. The foremost vessels were allowed actually to enter the mouth of that conical trap before an offensive move was made. Then the vice-admiral in command of the fleet touched a button, and simultaneously every generator in every Triplanetary vessel burst into furious activity. Instantly the hollow volume of the immense cone became a coruscating hell of resistless energy, an inferno which with the velocity of light extended itself into a far-reaching cylinder of rapacious destruction. Ether-waves they were, it is true, but vibrations driven with such fierce intensity that the screens of deflection surrounding the pirate vessels could not handle even a fraction of their awful power. Invisibility lost, their defensive screens flared briefly; but even the enormous force backing Roger's inventions, far greater than that of any single Triplanetary vessel, could not hold off the incredible violence of the massed attack of the hundreds of mighty vessels composing the Fleet. Their defensive screens flared briefly, then went down; their great hulls first glowing red, then shining white, then in a brief moment exploding into flying masses of red hot, molten, and gaseous metal. A full two-thirds of Roger's force was caught in that raging, incandescent beam; caught and obliterated: but the remainder did not retreat to the planetoid. Darting out around the edge of the cone at a stupendous acceleration, they attacked its flanks and the engagement became general. But now, since enough beams were kept upon each ship of the enemy so that invisibility could not be restored, each Triplanetary war vessel could attack with full efficiency. Magnesium flares and star-shells illuminated space for a thousand miles, and from every unit of both fleets was being hurled every item of solid, explosive and vibratory destruction known to the warfare of that age. Offensive beams, rods and daggers of frightful power struck and were neutralized by defensive screens equally capable; the long range and furious dodging made ordinary solid, or even atomic-explosive projectiles useless; and both sides were filling all space with such a volume of blanketing frequencies that such radio-dirigible atomics as were launched could not be controlled, but darted madly and erratically hither and thither, finally to be exploded or volatilized harmlessly in mid-space by the touch of some fiercely insistant, probing beam of force. Individually, however, the pirate vessels were far more powerful than those of the fleet, and that superiority soon began to make itself felt. The power of the smaller ships began to fail as their accumulators became discharged under the awful drain of the battle, and vessel after vessel of the Triplanetary fleet was hurled into nothingness by the concentrated blasts of the pirates' rays. But the Triplanetary forces had one great advantage. In furious haste the Service men had been altering the controls of the dirigible atomic torpedoes, so that they would respond to ultra-wave control; and, few in number though they were, each was highly effective. A hard-eyed observer, face almost against his plate and both hands and both feet manipulating controls, hurled the first torpedo. Propelling rockets viciously aflame, it twisted and looped around the incandescent rods of destruction so thickly and starkly outlined, under perfect control; unaffected by the hideous distortion of all ether-borne signals. Through a pirate screen it went, and under the terrific blast of its detonation the entire midsection of the stricken battleship vanished. It should have been out, cold--but to the amazement of the observers, both ends kept on fighting with scarcely lessened power! Two more of the frightful bombs had to be launched--each remaining section had to be blown to bits--before those terrible beams went out! Not a man in that great fleet had even an inkling of the truth; that those great vessels, those awful engines of destruction, did not contain a single living creature: that they were manned and fought by automatons; robots controlled by keen-eyed, space-hardened veterans inside the pirates' planetoid! But they were to receive an inkling of it. As ship after ship of the pirate fleet was destroyed, Roger realized that his navy was beaten, and forthwith all his surviving vessels darted toward the apex of the cone, where the heaviest battleships were stationed. There each hurled itself upon a Triplanetary warship, crashing to its own destruction, but in that destruction insuring the loss of one of the heaviest vessels of the enemy. Thus passed the _Fearless_, and twenty of the finest space-ships of the fleet as well. But the ranking officer assumed command, the war-cone was re-formed, and, yawning maw to the fore, the great formation shot toward the pirate stronghold, now near at hand. It again launched its stupendous cylinder of annihilation, but even as the mighty defensive screens of the planetoid flared into incandescently furious defense, the battle was interrupted and pirates and Triplanetarians learned alike that they were not alone in the ether. Space became suffused with a redly impenetrable opacity, and through that indescribable pall there came reaching huge arms of force incredible; writhing, coruscating beams of power which glowed a baleful, although almost imperceptible, red. A vessel of unheard-of armament and power, hailing from the then unknown solar system of Nevia, had come to rest in that space. For months her commander had been searching for one ultra-precious substance. Now his detectors had found it; and, feeling neither fear of Triplanetarian weapons nor reluctance to sacrifice those thousands of Triplanetarian lives, he was about to take it! CHAPTER 10 WITHIN THE RED VEIL Nevia, the home planet of the marauding space-ship, would have appeared peculiar indeed to Terrestrial senses. High in the deep red heavens a fervent blue sun poured down its flood of brilliant purplish light upon a world of water. Not a cloud was to be seen in that flaming sky, and through that dustless atmosphere the eye could see the horizon--a horizon three times as distant as the one to which we are accustomed--with a distinctness and clarity impossible in our Terra's dust-filled air. As that mighty sun dropped below the horizon the sky would fill suddenly with clouds and rain would fall violently and steadily until midnight. Then the clouds would vanish as suddenly as they had come into being, the torrential downpour would cease, and through that huge world's wonderfully transparent gaseous envelope the full glory of the firmament would be revealed. Not the firmament as we know it--for that hot blue sun and Nevia, her one planet-child, were light-years distant from Old Sol and his numerous brood--but a strange and glorious firmament containing few constellations familiar to Earthly eyes. Out of the vacuum of space a fish-shaped vessel of the void--the vessel that was to attack so boldly both the massed fleet of Triplanetary and Roger's planetoid--plunged into the rarefied outer atmosphere, and crimson beams of force tore shriekingly through the thin air as it braked its terrific speed. A third of the circumference of Nevia's mighty globe was traversed before the velocity of the craft could be reduced sufficiently to make a landing possible. Then, approaching the twilight zone, the vessel dived vertically downward, and it became evident that Nevia was neither entirely aqueous nor devoid of intelligent life. For the blunt nose of the space-ship was pointing toward what was evidently a half-submerged city, a city whose buildings were flat-topped, hexagonal towers, exactly alike in size, shape, color, and material. These buildings were arranged as the cells of a honeycomb would be if each cell were separated from its neighbors by a relatively narrow channel of water, and all were built of the same white metal. Many bridges and more tubes extended through the air from building to building, and the watery "streets" teemed with swimmers, with surface craft, and with submarines. The pilot, stationed immediately below the conical prow of the space-ship, peered intently through thick windows which afforded unobstructed vision in every direction. His four huge and contractile eyes were active, each operating independently in sending its own message to his peculiar but capable brain. One was watching the instruments, the others scanned narrowly the immense, swelling curve of the ship's belly, the water upon which his vessel was to land, and the floating dock to which it was to be moored. Four hands--if hands they could be called--manipulated levers and wheels with infinite delicacy of touch, and with scarcely a splash the immense mass of the Nevian vessel struck the water and glided to a stop within a foot of its exact berth. Four mooring bars dropped neatly into their sockets and the captain-pilot, after locking his controls in neutral, released his safety straps and leaped lightly from his padded bench to the floor. Scuttling across the floor and down a runway upon his four short, powerful, heavily scaled legs, he slipped smoothly into the water and flashed away, far below the surface. For Nevians are true amphibians. Their blood is cold; they use with equal comfort and efficiency gills and lungs for breathing; their scaly bodies are equally at home in the water or in the air; their broad, flat feet serve equally well for running about upon a solid surface or for driving their streamlined bodies through the water at a pace few fishes can equal. Through the water the Nevian commander darted along, steering his course accurately by means of his short, vaned tail. Through an opening in a wall he sped and along a submarine hallway, emerging upon a broad ramp. He scurried up the incline and into an elevator which lifted him to the top of the hexagon, directly into the office of the Secretary of Commerce of all Nevia. "Welcome, Captain Nerado!" The Secretary waved a tentacular arm and the visitor sprang lightly upon a softly cushioned bench, where he lay at ease, facing the official across his low, flat "desk." "We congratulate you upon the success of your final trial flight. We received all your reports, even while you were traveling at ten times the velocity of light. With the last difficulties overcome, you are now ready to start?" "We are ready," the captain-scientist replied, soberly. "Mechanically, the ship is as nearly perfect as our finest minds can make her. She is stocked for two years. All the iron-bearing suns within reach have been plotted. Everything is ready except the iron. Of course the Council refused to allow us any of the national supply--how much were you able to purchase for us in the market?" "Nearly ten pounds...." "Ten pounds! Why, the securities we left with you could not have bought two pounds, even at the price then prevailing!" "No, but you have friends. Many of us believe in you, and have dipped into our own resources. You and your fellow scientists of the expedition have each contributed his entire personal fortune; why should not some of the rest of us also contribute, as private citizens?" "Wonderful--we thank you. Ten pounds!" The captain's great triangular eyes glowed with an intense violet light. "At least a year of cruising. But ... what if, after all, we should be wrong?" "In that case you shall have consumed ten pounds of irreplaceable metal." The Secretary was unmoved. "That is the viewpoint of the Council and of almost everyone else. It is not the waste of treasure they object to; it is the fact that ten pounds of iron will be forever lost." "A high price, truly," the Columbus of Nevia assented. "And after all, I may be wrong." "You probably are wrong," his host made startling answer. "It is practically certain--it is almost a demonstrable mathematical fact--that no other sun within hundreds of thousands of light-years of our own has a planet. In all probability Nevia is the only planet in the entire Universe. We are very probably the only intelligent life in the Universe. There is only one chance in numberless millions that anywhere within the cruising range of your newly perfected space-ship there may be an iron-bearing planet upon which you can effect a landing. There is a larger chance, however, that you may be able to find a small, cold, iron-bearing cosmic body--small enough so that you can capture it. Although there are no mathematics by which to evaluate the probability of such an occurrence, it is upon that larger chance that some of us are staking a portion of our wealth. We expect no return whatever, but if you _should_ by some miracle happen to succeed, what then? Deep seas being made shallow, civilization extending itself over the globe, science advancing by leaps and bounds, Nevia becoming populated as she should be peopled--that, my friend, is a chance well worth taking!" The Secretary called in a group of guards, who escorted the small package of priceless metal to the space-ship. Before the massive door was sealed the friends bade each other farewell. "... I will keep in touch with you on the ultra-wave," the Captain concluded. "After all, I do not blame the Council for refusing to allow the other ship to go out. Ten pounds of iron will be a fearful loss to the world. If we _should_ find iron, however, see to it that she loses no time in following us." "No fear of that! If you find iron she will set out at once, and all space will soon be full of vessels. Goodbye." The last opening was sealed and Nerado shot the great vessel into the air. Up and up, out beyond the last tenuous trace of atmosphere, on and on through space it flew with ever-increasing velocity until Nevia's gigantic blue sun had been left so far behind that it became a splendid blue-white star. Then, projectors cut off to save the precious iron whose disintegration furnished them power, for week after week Captain Nerado and his venturesome crew of scientists drifted idly through the illimitable void. There is no need to describe in detail Nerado's tremendous voyage. Suffice it to say that he found a G-type dwarf star possessing planets--not one planet only, but six ... seven ... eight ... yes, at least nine! And most of those worlds were themselves centers of attraction around which were circling one or more worldlets! Nerado thrilled with joy as he applied a full retarding force, and every creature aboard that great vessel had to peer into a plate or through a telescope before he could believe that planets other than Nevia did in reality exist! Velocity checked to the merest crawl, as space-speeds go, and with electro-magnetic detector screens full out, the Nevian vessel crept toward our sun. Finally the detectors encountered an obstacle, a conductive substance which the patterns showed conclusively to be practically pure iron. Iron--an enormous mass of it--floating alone out in space! Without waiting to investigate the nature, appearance, or structure of the precious mass, Nerado ordered power into the converters and drove an enormous softening field of force upon the object--a force of such a nature that it would condense the metallic iron into an allotropic modification of much smaller bulk; a red, viscous, extremely dense and heavy liquid which could be stored conveniently in his tanks. No sooner had the precious fluid been stored away than the detectors again broke into an uproar. In one direction was an enormous mass of iron, scarcely detectable; in another a great number of smaller masses; in a third an isolated mass, comparatively small in size. Space seemed to be full of iron, and Nerado drove his most powerful beam toward distant Nevia and sent an exultant message. "We have found iron--easily obtained and in unthinkable quantity--not in fractions of milligrams, but in millions upon unmeasured millions of tons! Send our sister ship here at once!" "Nerado!" The captain was called to one of the observation plates as soon as he had opened his key. "I have been investigating the mass of iron now nearest us, the small one. It is an artificial structure, a small space-boat, and there are three creatures in it--monstrosities certainly, but they must possess some intelligence or they could not be navigating space." "What? Impossible!" exclaimed the chief explorer. "Probably, then, the other was--but no matter, we had to have the iron. Bring the boat in without converting it, so that we may study at our leisure both the beings and their mechanisms," and Nerado swung his own visiray beam into the emergency boat, seeing there the armored figures of Clio Marsden and the two Triplanetary officers. "They are indeed intelligent," Nerado commented, as he detected and silenced Costigan's ultra-beam communicator. "Not, however, as intelligent as I had supposed," he went on, after studying the peculiar creatures and their tiny space-ship more in detail. "They have immense stores of iron, yet use it for nothing other than building material. They make little and inefficient use of atomic energy. They apparently have a rudimentary knowledge of ultra-waves, but do not use them intelligently--they cannot neutralize even these ordinary forces we are now employing. They are of course more intelligent than the lower ganoids, or even than some of the higher fishes, but by no stretch of the imagination can they be compared to us. I am quite relieved--I was afraid that in my haste I might have slain members of a highly developed race." The helpless boat, all her forces neutralized, was brought up close to the immense flying fish. There flaming knives of force sliced her neatly into sections and the three rigid armored figures, after being bereft of their external weapons, were brought through the airlocks and into the control room, while the pieces of their boat were stored away for future study. The Nevian scientists first analyzed the air inside the space-suits of the Terrestrials, then carefully removed the protective coverings of the captives. Costigan--fully conscious through it all and now able to move a little, since the peculiar temporary paralysis was wearing off--braced himself for he knew not what shock, but it was needless; their grotesque captors were not torturers. The air, while somewhat more dense than Earth's and of a peculiar odor, was eminently breathable, and even though the vessel was motionless in space an almost-normal gravitation gave them a large fraction of their usual weight. After the three had been relieved of their pistols and other articles which the Nevians thought might prove to be weapons, the strange paralysis was lifted entirely. The Earthly clothing puzzled the captors immensely, but so strenuous were the objections raised to its removal that they did not press the point, but fell back to study their find in detail. Then faced each other the representatives of the civilizations of two widely separated solar systems. The Nevians studied the human beings with interest and curiosity blended largely with loathing and repulsion; the three Terrestrials regarded the unmoving, expressionless "faces"--if those coned heads could be said to possess such thing--with horror and disgust, as well as with other emotions, each according to his type and training. For to human eyes the Nevian is a fearful thing. Even today there are few Terrestrials--or Solarians, for that matter--who can look at a Nevian, eye to eye, without feeling a creeping of the skin and experiencing a "gone" sensation in the pit of the stomach. The horny, wrinkled, drought-resisting Martian, whom we all know and rather like, is a hideous being indeed. The bat-eyed, colorless, hairless, practically skinless Venerian is worse. But they both are, after all, remote cousins of Terra's humanity, and we get along with them quite well whenever we are compelled to visit Mars or Venus. But the Nevians-- The horizontal, flat, fish-like body is not so bad, even supported as it is by four short, powerful, scaly, flat-footed legs; and terminating as it does in the weird, four-vaned tail. The neck, even, is endurable, although it is long and flexible, heavily scaled, and is carried in whatever eye-wringing loops or curves the owner considers most convenient or ornamental at the time. Even the smell of a Nevian--a malodorous reek of over-ripe fish--does in time become tolerable, especially if sufficiently disguised with creosote, which purely Terrestrial chemical is the most highly prized perfume of Nevia. But the head! It is that member that makes the Nevian so appalling to Earthly eyes, for it is a thing utterly foreign to all Solarian history or experience. As most Tellurians already know, it is fundamentally a massive cone, covered with scales, based spearhead-like upon the neck. Four great sea-green, triangular eyes are spaced equidistant from each other about half way up the cone. The pupils are contractile at will, like the eyes of the cat, permitting the Nevian to see equally well in any ordinary extreme of light or darkness. Immediately below each eye springs out a long, jointless, boneless, tentacular arm; an arm which at its extremity divides into eight delicate and sensitive, but very strong, "fingers." Below each arm is a mouth: a beaked, needle-tusked orifice of dire potentialities. Finally, under the overhanging edge of the cone-shaped head are the delicately-frilled organs which serve either as gills or as nostrils and lungs, as may be desired. To other Nevians the eyes and other features are highly expressive, but to us they appear utterly cold and unmoving. Terrestrial senses can detect no changes of expression in a Nevian's "face." Such were the frightful beings at whom the three prisoners stared with sinking hearts. But if we human beings have always considered Nevians grotesque and repulsive, the feeling has always been mutual. For those "monstrous" beings are a highly intelligent and extremely sensitive race, and our--to us--trim and graceful human forms seem to them the very quintessence of malformation and hideousness. "Good Heavens, Conway!" Clio exclaimed, shrinking against Costigan as his left arm flashed around her. "What horrible monstrosities! And they can't talk--not one of them has made a sound--suppose they can be deaf and dumb?" But at the same time Nerado was addressing his fellows. "What hideous, deformed creatures they are! Truly a low form of life, even though they do possess some intelligence. They cannot talk, and have made no signs of having heard our words to them--do you suppose that they communicate by sight? That those weird contortions of their peculiarly placed organs serve as speech?" Thus both sides, neither realizing that the other had spoken. For the Nevian voice is pitched so high that the lowest note audible to them is far above our limit of hearing. The shrillest note of a Terrestrial piccolo is to them so profoundly low that it cannot be heard. "We have much to do." Nerado turned away from the captives. "We must postpone further study of the specimens until we have taken aboard a full cargo of the iron which is so plentiful here." "What shall we do with them, sir?" asked one of the Nevian officers. "Lock them in one of the storage rooms?" "Oh, no! They might die there, and we must by all means keep them in good condition, to be studied most carefully by the fellows of the College of Science. What a commotion there will be when we bring in this group of strange creatures, living proof that there are other suns possessing planets; planets which are supporting organic and intelligent life! You may put them in three communicating rooms, say in the fourth section--they will undoubtedly require light and exercise. Lock all the exits, of course, but it would be best to leave the doors between the rooms unlocked, so that they can be together or apart, as they choose. Since the smallest one, the female, stays so close to the larger male, it may be that they are mates. But since we know nothing of their habits or customs, it will be best to give them all possible freedom compatible with safety." Nerado turned back to his instruments and three of the frightful crew came up to the human beings. One walked away, waving a couple of arms in an unmistakable signal that the prisoners were to follow him. The three obediently set out after him, the other two guards falling behind. "Now's our best chance!" Costigan muttered, as they passed through a low doorway and entered a narrow corridor. "Watch that one ahead of you, Clio--hold him for a second if you can. Bradley, you and I will take the two behind us--now!" Costigan stooped and whirled. Seizing a cable-like arm, he pulled the outlandish head down, the while the full power of his mighty right leg drove a heavy service boot into the place where scaly neck and head joined. The Nevian fell, and instantly Costigan leaped at the leader, ahead of the girl. Leaped; but dropped to the floor, again paralyzed. For the Nevian leader had been alert, his four eyes covering the entire circle of vision, and he had acted rapidly. Not in time to stop Costigan's first berserk attack--the First Officer's reactions were practically instantaneous and he moved fast--but in time to retain command of the situation. Another Nevian appeared, and while the stricken guard was recovering, all four arms wrapped tightly around his convulsively looping, writhing neck, the three helpless Terrestrials were lifted into the air and carried bodily into the quarters to which Nerado had assigned them. Not until they had been placed upon cushions in the middle room and the heavy metal doors had been locked upon them did they again find themselves able to use arms or legs. "Well, that's another round we lose," Costigan commented, cheerfully. "A guy can't mix it very well when he can neither kick, strike, nor bite. I expected those lizards to rough me up then, but they didn't." "They don't want to hurt us. They want to take us home with them, wherever that is, as curiosities, like wild animals or something," decided the girl, shrewdly. "They're pretty bad, of course, but I like them a lot better than I do Roger and his robots, anyway." "I think you have the right idea, Miss Marsden," Bradley rumbled. "That's it, exactly. I feel like a bear in a cage. I should think you'd feel worse than ever. What chance has an animal of escaping from a menagerie?" "These animals, lots. I'm feeling better and better all the time," Clio declared, and her serene bearing bore out her words. "You two got us out of that horrible place of Roger's, and I'm pretty sure that you will get us away from here, somehow or other. They may think we're stupid animals, but before you two and the Triplanetary Patrol and the Service get done with them they'll have another think coming." "That's the old fight, Clio!" cheered Costigan. "I haven't got it figured out as close as you have, but I get about the same answer. These four-legged fish carry considerably heavier stuff than Roger did, I'm thinking; but they'll be up against something themselves pretty quick that is _no_ light-weight, believe me!" "Do you know something, or are you just whistling in the dark?" Bradley demanded. "I know a little; not much. Engineering and Research have been working on a new ship for a long time; a ship to travel so much faster than light that it can go anywhere in the Galaxy and back in a month or so. New sub-ether drive, new atomic power, new armament, new everything. Only bad thing about it is that it doesn't work so good yet--it's fuller of bugs than a Venerian's kitchen. It has blown up five times that I know of, and has killed twenty-nine men. But when they get it licked they'll _have something_!" "When, or if?" asked Bradley, pessimistically. "I said _when_!" snapped Costigan, his voice cutting. "When the Service goes after anything they get it, and when they get it it _stays_...." He broke off abruptly and his voice lost its edge. "Sorry. Didn't mean to get high, but I think we'll have help, if we can keep our heads up a while. And it looks good--these are first-class cages they've given us. All the comforts of home, even to lookout plates. Let's see what's going on, shall we?" After some experimenting with the unfamiliar controls Costigan learned how to operate the Nevian visiray, and upon the plate they saw the Cone of Battle hurling itself toward Roger's planetoid. They saw the pirate fleet rush out to do battle with Triplanetary's massed forces, and with bated breath they watched every maneuver of that epic battle to its savagely sacrificial end. And that same battle was being watched, also with the most intense interest, by the Nevians in their control room. "It is indeed a bloodthirsty combat," mused Nerado at his observation plate. "And it is peculiar--or rather, probably only to be expected from a race of such a low stage of development--that they employ only ether-borne forces. Warfare seems universal among primitive types--indeed, it is not so long ago that our own cities, few in number though they are, ceased fighting each other and combined against the semicivilized fishes of the greater deeps." He fell silent, and for many minutes watched the furious battle between the two navies of the void. That conflict ended, he watched the Triplanetary fleet reform its battle cone and rush upon the planetoid. "Destruction, always destruction," he sighed, adjusting his power switches. "Since they are bent upon mutual destruction I can see no purpose in refraining from destroying all of them. We need the iron, and they are a useless race." He launched his softening, converting field of dull red energy. Vast as that field was, it could not encompass the whole fleet, but half of the lip of the gigantic cone soon disappeared, its component vessels subsiding into a sluggishly flowing stream of allotropic iron. The fleet, abandoning its attack upon the planetoid, swung its cone around, to bring the flame-erupting axis to bear upon the formless something dimly perceptible to the ultra-vision of Samms' observers. Furiously the gigantic composite beam of the massed fleet was hurled, nor was it alone. For Gharlane had known, ever since the easy escape of his human prisoners, that something was occurring which was completely beyond his experience, although not beyond his theoretical knowledge. He had found the sub-ether closed; he had been unable to make his sub-ethereal weapons operative against either the three captives or the war-vessels of the Triplanetary Patrol. Now, however, he could work in the sub-ethereal murk of the newcomers; a light trial showed him that if he so wished he could use sub-ethereal offenses against them. What was the real meaning of those facts? He had become convinced that those three persons were no more human than was Roger himself. Who or what was activating them? It was definitely not Eddorian workmanship; no Eddorian would have developed those particular techniques, nor could possibly have developed them without his knowledge. What, then? To do what had been done necessitated the existence of a race as old and as capable as the Eddorians, but of an entirely different nature; and, according to Eddore's vast Information Center, no such race existed or ever had existed. Those visitors, possessing mechanisms supposedly known only to the science of Eddore, would also be expected to possess the mental powers which had been exhibited. Were they recent arrivals from some other space-time continuum? Probably not--Eddorian surveys had found no trace of any such life in any reachable plenum. Since it would be utterly fantastic to postulate the unheralded appearance of two such races at practically the same moment, the conclusion seemed unavoidable that these as yet unknown beings were the protectors--the activators, rather--of the two Triplanetary officers and the woman. This view was supported by the fact that while the strangers had attacked Triplanetary's fleet and had killed thousands of Triplanetary's men, they had actually rescued those three supposedly human beings. The planetoid, then would be attacked next. Very well, he would join Triplanetary in attacking them--with weapons no more dangerous to them than Triplanetary's own--the while preparing his real attack, which would come later. Roger issued orders; and waited; and thought more and more intensely upon one point which remained obscure--why, when the strangers themselves destroyed Triplanetary's fleet, had Roger been unable to use his most potent weapons against that fleet? Thus, then, for the first time in Triplanetary's history, the forces of law and order joined hands with those of piracy and banditry against a common foe. Rods, beams, planes, and stilettos of unbearable energy the doomed fleet launched, in addition to its terrifically destructive main beam: Roger hurled every material weapon at his command. But bombs, high-explosive shells, even the ultra-deadly atomic torpedoes, alike were ineffective; alike simply vanished in the redly murky veil of nothingness. And the fleet was being melted. In quick succession the vessels flamed red, shrank together, gave out their air, and merged their component iron into the intensely crimson, sullenly viscous stream which was flowing through the impenetrable veil against which both Triplanetarians and pirates were directing their terrific offense. The last vessel of the attacking cone having been converted and the resulting metal stored away, the Nevians--as Roger had anticipated--turned their attention toward the planetoid. But that structure was no feeble warship. It had been designed by, and built under the personal supervision of, Gharlane of Eddore. It was powered, equipped, and armed to meet any emergency which Gharlane's tremendous mind had been able to envision. Its entire bulk was protected by the shield whose qualities had so surprised Costigan; a shield far more effective than any Tellurian scientist or engineer would have believed possible. The voracious converting beam of the Nevians, below the level of the ether though it was, struck that shield and rebounded; defeated and futile. Struck again, again rebounded; then struck and clung hungrily, licking out over that impermeable surface in darting tongues of flame as the surprised Nerado doubled and then quadrupled his power. Fiercer and fiercer the Nevian flood of force drove in. The whole immense globe of the planetoid became one scintillant ball of raw, red energy; but still the pirates' shield remained intact. Gray Roger sat coldly motionless at his great desk, the top of which was now swung up to become a panel of massed and tiered instruments and controls. He could carry this load forever--but unless he was very wrong, this load would change shortly. What then? The essence that was Gharlane could not be killed--could not even be hurt--by any physical, chemical, or nuclear force. Should he stay with the planetoid to its end, and thus perforce return to Eddore with no material evidence whatever? He would not. Too much remained undone. Any report based upon his present information could be neither complete nor conclusive, and reports submitted by Gharlane of Eddore to the coldly cynical and ruthlessly analytical innermost Circle had always been and always would be both. It was a fact that there existed at least one non-Eddorian mind which was the equal of his own. If one, there would be a race of such minds. The thought was galling; but to deny the existence of a fact would be the essence of stupidity. Since power of mind was a function of time, that race must be of approximately the same age as his own. Therefore the Eddorian Information Center, which by the inference of its completeness denied the existence of such a race, was wrong. It was not complete. Why was it not complete? The only possible reason for two such races remaining unaware of the existence of each other would be the deliberate intent of one of them. Therefore, at some time in the past, the two races had been in contact for at least an instant of time. All Eddorian knowledge of that meeting had been suppressed and no more contacts had been allowed to occur. The conclusion reached by Gharlane was a disturbing thing indeed; but, being an Eddorian, he faced it squarely. He did not have to wonder how such a suppression could have been accomplished--he knew. He also knew that his own mind contained everything known to his every ancestor since the first Eddorian was: the probability was exceedingly great that if any such contact had ever been made his mind would still contain at least some information concerning it, however carefully suppressed that knowledge had been. He thought. Back ... back ... farther back ... farther still.... And as he thought, an interfering force began to pluck at him; as though palpable tongs were pulling out of line the mental probe with which he was exploring the hitherto unplumbed recesses of his mind. "Ah ... so you do not want me to remember?" Roger asked aloud, with no change in any lineament of his hard, gray face. "I wonder ... do you really believe that you can keep me from remembering? I must abandon this search for the moment, but rest assured that I shall finish it very shortly." * * * * * "Here is the analysis of his screen, sir." A Nevian computer handed his chief a sheet of metal, bearing rows of symbols. "Ah, a polycyclic ... complete coverage ... a screen of that type was scarcely to have been expected from such a low form of life," Nerado commented, and began to adjust dials and controls. As he did so the character of the clinging mantle of force changed. From red it flamed quickly through the spectrum, became unbearably violet, then disappeared; and as it disappeared the shielding wall began to give way. It did not cave in abruptly, but softened locally, sagging into a peculiar grouping of valleys and ridges--contesting stubbornly every inch of position lost. Roger experimented briefly with inertialessness. No use. As he had expected, they were prepared for that. He summoned a few of the ablest of his scientist-slaves and issued instructions. For minutes a host of robots toiled mightily, then a portion of the shield bulged out and became a tube extending beyond the attacking layers of force; a tube from which there erupted a beam of violence incredible. A beam behind which was every erg of energy that the gigantic mechanisms of the planetoid could yield. A beam that tore a hole through the redly impenetrable Nevian field and hurled itself upon the inner screen of the fish-shaped cruiser in frenzied incandescence. And was there, or was there not, a lesser eruption upon the other side--an almost imperceptible flash, as though something had shot from the doomed planetoid out into space? Nerado's neck writhed convulsively as his tortured drivers whined and shrieked at the terrific overload; but Roger's effort was far too intense to be long maintained. Generator after generator burned out, the defensive screen collapsed, and the red converter beam attacked voraciously the unresisting metal of those prodigious walls. Soon there was a terrific explosion as the pent-up air of the planetoid broke through its weakening container, and the sluggish river of allotropic iron flowed in an ever larger stream, ever faster. "It is well that we had an unlimited supply of iron." Nerado almost tied a knot in his neck as he spoke in huge relief. "With but the seven pounds remaining of our original supply, I fear that it would have been difficult to parry that last thrust." "Difficult?" asked the second in command. "We would now be free atoms in space. But what shall I do with this iron? Our reservoirs will not hold more than half of it. And how about that one ship which remains untouched?" "Jettison enough supplies from the lower holds to make room for this lot. As for that one ship, let it go. We will be overloaded as it is, and it is of the utmost importance that we get back to Nevia as soon as possible." This, if Gharlane could have heard it, would have answered his question. All Arisia knew that it was _necessary_ for the camera-ship to survive. The Nevians were interested only in iron; but the Eddorian, being a perfectionist, would not have been satisfied with anything less than the complete destruction of every vessel of Triplanetary's fleet. The Nevian space-ship moved away, sluggishly now because of its prodigious load. In their quarters in the fourth section the three Terrestrials, who had watched with strained attention the downfall and absorption of the planetoid, stared at each other with drawn faces. Clio broke the silence. "Oh, Conway, this is ghastly! It's ... it's just simply too damned perfectly horrible!" she gasped, then recovered a measure of her customary spirit as she stared in surprise at Costigan's face. For it was thoughtful, his eyes were bright and keen--no trace of fear or disorganization was visible in any line of his hard young face. "It's not so good," he admitted frankly. "I wish I wasn't such a dumb cluck--if Lyman Cleveland or Fred Rodebush were here they could help a lot, but I don't know enough about any of their stuff to flag a hand-car. I can't even interpret that funny flash--if it really was a flash--that we saw." "Why bother about one little flash, after all that really did happen?" asked Clio, curiously. "You think Roger launched something? He couldn't have--I didn't see a thing," Bradley argued. "I don't know what to think. I've never seen anything material sent out so fast that I couldn't trace it with an ultra-wave--but on the other hand, Roger's got a lot of stuff that I never saw anywhere else. However, I don't see that it has anything to do with the fix we're in right now--but at that, we might be worse off. We're still breathing air, you notice, and if they don't blanket my wave I can still talk." He put both hands into his pockets and spoke. "Samms? Costigan. Put me on a recorder, quick--I probably haven't got much time," and for ten minutes he talked, concisely and as rapidly as he could utter words, reporting clearly and exactly everything that had transpired. Suddenly he broke off, writhing in agony. Frantically he tore his shirt open and hurled a tiny object across the room. "Wow!" he exclaimed. "They may be deaf, but they can certainly detect an ultra-wave, and what an interference they can set up on it! No, I'm not hurt," he reassured the anxious girl, now at his side, "but it's a good thing I had you out of circuit--it would have jolted you loose from six or seven of your back teeth." "Have you any idea where they're taking us?" she asked soberly. "No," he answered flatly, looking deep into her steadfast eyes. "No use lying to you--if I know you at all you'd rather take it standing up. That talk of Jovians or Neptunians is the bunk--nothing like that ever grew in our Solarian system. All the signs say that we're going for a long ride." CHAPTER 11 NEVIAN STRIFE The Nevian space-ship was hurtling upon its way. Space-navigators both, the two Terrestrial officers soon discovered that it was even then moving with a velocity far above that of light and that it must be accelerating at a high rate, even though to them it seemed stationary--they could feel only a gravitational force somewhat less than that of their native Earth. Bradley, seasoned old campaigner that he was, had retired promptly as soon as he had completed a series of observations, and was sleeping soundly upon a pile of cushions in the first of the three inter-connecting rooms. In the middle room, which was to be Clio's, Costigan was standing very close to the girl, but was not touching her. His body was rigid, his face was tense and drawn. "You are wrong, Conway; all wrong," Clio was saying, very seriously. "I know how you feel, but it's false chivalry." "That isn't it, at all," he insisted, stubbornly. "It isn't only that I've got you out here in space, in danger and alone, that's stopping me. I know you and I know myself well enough to know that what we start now we'll go through with for life. It doesn't make any difference, that way, whether I start making love to you now or whether I wait until we're back on Tellus; but I'm telling you that for your own good you'd better pass me up entirely. I've got enough horsepower to keep away from you if you tell me to--not otherwise." "I know it, both ways, dear, but...." "But nothing!" he interrupted. "Can't you get it into your skull what you'll be letting yourself in for if you marry me? Assume that we get back, which isn't sure, by any means. But even if we do, some day--and maybe soon, too, you can't tell--somebody is going to collect fifty grams of radium for my head." "Fifty grams--and everybody knows that Samms himself is rated at only sixty? I _knew_ that you were somebody, Conway!" Clio exclaimed, undeterred. "But at that, something tells me that any pirate will earn even that much reward several times over before he collects it. Don't be silly, my dear--goodnight." She tipped her head back, holding up to him her red, sweetly curved, smiling lips, and his arms swept around her. Her arms went up around his neck and they stood, clasped together in the motionless ecstasy of love's first embrace. "Girl, girl, how I love you!" Costigan's voice was husky, his usually hard eyes were glowing with a tender light. "That settles that. I'll really _live_ now, anyway, while...." "Stop it!" she commanded, sharply. "You're going to live until you die of old age--see if you don't. You'll simply _have_ to, Conway!" "That's so, too--no percentage in dying now. All the pirates between Tellus and Andromeda couldn't take me after this--I've got too much to live for. Well, goodnight, sweetheart, I'd better beat it--you need some sleep." The lovers' parting was not as simple and straightforward a procedure as Costigan's speech would indicate, but finally he did seek his own room and relaxed upon a pile of cushions, his stern visage transformed. Instead of the low metal ceiling he saw a beautiful, oval, tanned young face, framed in a golden-blonde corona of hair. His gaze sank into the depths of loyal, honest, dark blue eyes; and looking deeper and deeper into those blue wells he fell asleep. Upon his face, too set and grim by far for a man of his years--the lives of Sector Chiefs of the Triplanetary Service were not easy, nor as a rule were they long--there lingered as he slept that newly-acquired softness of expression, the reflection of his transcendent happiness. For eight hours he slept soundly, as was his wont, then, also according to his habit and training he came wide awake, with no intermediate stage of napping. "Clio?" he whispered. "Awake, girl?" "Awake!" her voice come through the ultra phone, relief in every syllable. "Good heavens, I thought you were going to sleep until we got to wherever it is that we're going! Come on in, you two--I don't see how you can possibly sleep, just as though you were home in bed." "You've got to learn to sleep anywhere if you expect to keep in...." Costigan broke off as he opened the door and saw Clio's wan face. She had evidently spent a sleepless and wracking eight hours. "Good Lord, Clio, why didn't you call me?" "Oh, I'm all right, except for being a little jittery. No need of asking how _you_ feel, is there?" "No--I feel hungry," he answered cheerfully. "I'm going to see what we can do about it--or say, guess I'll see whether they're still interfering on Samms' wave." He took out the small, insulated case and touched the contact stud lightly with his finger. His arm jerked away powerfully. "Still at it," he gave the unnecessary explanation. "They don't seem to want us to talk outside, but his interference is as good as my talking--they can trace it, of course. Now I'll see what I can find out about our breakfast." He stepped over to the plate and shot its projector beam forward into the control room, where he saw Nerado lying, doglike, at his instrument panel. As Costigan's beam entered the room a blue light flashed on and the Nevian turned an eye and an arm toward his own small observation plate. Knowing that they were now in visual communication, Costigan beckoned an invitation and pointed to his mouth in what he hoped was the universal sign of hunger. The Nevian waved an arm and fingered controls, and as he did so a wide section of the floor of Clio's room slid aside. The opening thus made revealed a table which rose upon its low pedestal, a table equipped with three softly-cushioned benches and spread with a glittering array of silver and glassware. Bowls and platters of a dazzlingly white metal, narrow-waisted goblets of sheerest crystal; all were hexagonal, beautifully and intricately carved or etched in apparently conventional marine designs. And the table utensils of this strange race were peculiar indeed. There were tearing forceps of sixteen needle-sharp curved teeth; there were flexible spatulas; there were deep and shallow ladles with flexible edges; there were many other peculiarly-curved instruments at whose uses the Terrestrials could not even guess; all having delicately-fashioned handles to fit the long slender fingers of the Nevians. But if the table and its appointments were surprising to the Terrestrials, revealing as they did a degree of culture which none of them had expected to find in a race of beings so monstrous, the food was even more surprising, although in another sense. For the wonderful crystal goblets were filled with a grayish-green slime of a nauseous and over-powering odor, the smaller bowls were full of living sea spiders and other such delicacies; and each large platter contained a fish fully a foot long, raw and whole, garnished tastefully with red, purple, and green strands of seaweed! Clio looked once, then gasped, shutting her eyes and turning away from the table, but Costigan flipped the three fish into a platter and set it aside before he turned back to the visiplate. "They'll go good fried," he remarked to Bradley, signaling vigorously to Nerado that the meal was not acceptable and that he wanted to talk to him, _in person_. Finally he made himself clear, the table sank down out of sight, and the Nevian commander cautiously entered the room. At Costigan's insistence, he came up to the visiplate, leaving near the door three alert and fully-armed guards. The man then shot the beam into the galley of the pirate's lifeboat, suggesting that they should be allowed to live there. For some time the argument of arms and fingers raged--though not exactly fluent conversation, both sides managed to convey their meanings quite clearly. Nerado would not allow the Terrestrials to visit their own ship--he was taking no chances--but after a thorough ultra-ray inspection he did finally order some of his men to bring into the middle room the electric range and a supply of Terrestrial food. Soon the Nevian fish were sizzling in a pan and the appetizing odors of coffee and browning biscuit permeated the room. But at the first appearance of those odors the Nevians departed hastily, content to watch the remainder of the curious and repulsive procedure in their visiray plates. Breakfast over and everything made tidy and ship-shape, Costigan turned to Clio. "Look here, girl; you've got to learn how to sleep. You're all in. Your eyes look like you've been on a Martian picnic and you didn't eat half enough breakfast. You've got to sleep and eat to keep fit. We don't want you passing out on us, so I'll put out this light, and you'll lie down here and sleep until noon." "Oh, no, don't bother. I'll sleep tonight. I'm quite...." "You'll sleep now," he informed her, levelly. "I never thought of you being nervous, with Bradley and me on each side of you. We're both right here now, though, and we'll stay here. We'll watch over you like a couple of old hens with one chick between them. Come on; lie down and go bye-bye." Clio laughed at the simile, but lay down obediently. Costigan sat upon the edge of the great divan holding her hand, and they chatted idly. The silences grew longer, Clio's remarks became fewer, and soon her long-lashed eyelids fell and her deep, regular breathing showed that she was sound asleep. The man stared at her, his very heart in his eyes. So young, so beautiful, so lovely--and _how_ he did love her! He was not formally religious, but his every thought was a prayer. If he could only get her out of this mess ... he wasn't fit to live on the same planet with her, but ... just give him one chance, God ... just one! But Costigan had been laboring for days under a terrific strain, and had been going very short on sleep. Half hypnotized by his own mixed emotions and by his staring at the smooth curves of Clio's cheek, his own eyes closed and, still holding her hand, he sank down into the soft cushions beside her and into oblivion. Thus sleeping hand in hand like two children Bradley found them, and a tender, fatherly expression came over his face as he looked down at them. "Nice little girl, Clio," he mused, "and when they made Costigan they broke the mold. They'll do--about as fine a couple of kids as old Tellus ever produced. I could do with some more sleep myself." He yawned prodigiously, lay down at Clio's left, and in minutes was himself asleep. Hours later, both men were awakened by a merry peal of laughter. Clio was sitting up, regarding them with sparkling eyes. She was refreshed, buoyant, ravenously hungry and highly amused. Costigan was amazed and annoyed at what he considered a failure in a self-appointed task; Bradley was calm and matter-of-fact. "Thanks for being such a nice body-guard, you two." Clio laughed again, but sobered quickly. "I slept wonderfully well, but I wonder if I can sleep tonight without making you hold my hand all night?" "Oh, he doesn't mind doing that," Bradley commented. "Mind it!" Costigan exclaimed, and his eyes and his tone spoke volumes. They prepared and ate another meal, one to which Clio did full justice. Rested and refreshed, they had begun to discuss possibilities of escape when Nerado and his three armed guards entered the room. The Nevian scientist placed a box upon a table and began to make adjustments upon its panels, eyeing the Terrestrials attentively after each setting. After a time a staccato burst of articulate speech issued from the box, and Costigan saw a great light. "You've got it--hold it!" he exclaimed, waving his arms excitedly. "You see, Clio, their voices are pitched either higher or lower than ours--probably higher--and they've built an audio-frequency changer. He's nobody's fool, that lizard!" Nerado heard Costigan's voice, there was no doubt of that. His long neck looped and twisted in Nevian gratification; and although neither side could understand the other, both knew that intelligent speech and hearing were attributes common to the two races. This fact altered markedly the relations between captors and captives. The Nevians admitted among themselves that the strange bipeds might be quite intelligent, after all; and the Terrestrials at once became more hopeful. "It isn't so bad, if they can talk," Costigan summed up the situation. "We might as well take it easy and make the best of it, particularly since we haven't been able to figure out any possible way of getting away from them. They can talk and hear, and we can learn their language in time. Maybe we can make some kind of a deal with them to take us back to our own system, if we can't make a break." The Nevians being as eager as the Terrestrials to establish communication, Nerado kept the newly devised frequency changer in constant use. There is no need of describing at length the details of that interchange of languages. Suffice it to say that starting at the very bottom they learned as babies learn, but with the great advantage over babies of possessing fully developed and capable brains. And while the human beings were learning the tongue of Nevia, several of the amphibians (and incidentally Clio Marsden) were learning Triplanetarian; the two officers knowing well that it would be much easier for the Nevians to learn the logically-built common language of the Three Planets than to master the senseless intricacies of English. In a short time the two parties were able to understand each other after a fashion, by using a weird mixture of both languages. As soon as a few ideas had been exchanged, the Nevian scientists built transformers small enough to be worn collar-like by the Terrestrials, and the captives were allowed to roam at will throughout the great vessel; only the compartment in which was stored the dismembered pirate lifeboat being sealed to them. Thus it was that they were not left long in doubt when another fish-shaped cruiser of the void was revealed upon their lookout plates in the awful emptiness of interstellar space. "This is our sister-ship going to your Solarian system for a cargo of the iron which is so plentiful there," Nerado explained to his involuntary guests. "I hope the gang has got the bugs worked out of our super-ship!" Costigan muttered savagely to his companions as Nerado turned away. "If they have, that outfit will get something more than a load of iron when they get there!" More time passed, during which a blue-white star separated itself from the infinitely distant firmament and began to show a perceptible disk. Larger and larger it grew, becoming bluer and bluer as the flying space-ship approached it, until finally Nevia could be seen, apparently close beside her parent orb. Heavily laden though the vessel was, such was her power that she was soon dropping vertically downward toward a large lagoon in the middle of the Nevian city. That bit of open water was devoid of life, for this was to be no ordinary landing. Under the terrific power of the beams braking the descent of that unimaginable load of allotropic iron the water seethed and boiled; and instead of floating gracefully upon the surface of the sea, this time the huge ship of space sank like a plummet to the bottom. Having accomplished the delicate feat of docking the vessel safely in the immense cradle prepared for her, Nerado turned to the Tellurians, who, now under guard, had been brought before him. "While our cargo of iron is being discharged, I am to take you three specimens to the College of Science, where you are to undergo a thorough physical and psychological examination. Follow me." "Wait a minute!" protested Costigan, with a quick and furtive wink at his companions. "Do you expect us to go through _water_, and at this frightful depth?" "Certainly," replied the Nevian, in surprise. "You are air-breathers, of course, but you must be able to swim a little, and this slight depth--but little more than thirty of your meters--will not trouble you." "You are wrong, twice," declared the Terrestrial, convincingly. "If by 'swimming' you mean propelling yourself in or through the water, we know nothing of it. In water over our heads we drown helplessly in a minute or two, and the pressure at this depth would kill us instantly." "Well, I could take a lifeboat, of course, but that ..." the Nevian Captain began, doubtfully, but broke off at the sound of a staccato call from his signal panel. "Captain Nerado, attention!" "Nerado," he acknowledged into a microphone. "The Third City is being attacked by the fishes of the greater deeps. They have developed new and powerful mobile fortresses mounting unheard-of weapons and the city reports that it cannot long withstand their attack. They are asking for all possible help. Your vessel not only has vast stores of iron, but also mounts weapons of power. You are requested to proceed to their aid at the earliest possible moment." Nerado snapped out orders and the liquid iron fell in streams from wide-open ports, forming a vast, red pool in the bottom of the dock. In a short time the great vessel was in equilibrium with the water she displaced, and as soon as she had attained a slight buoyancy the ports snapped shut and Nerado threw on the power. "Go back to your own quarters and stay there until I send for you," the Nevian directed, and as the Terrestrials obeyed the curt orders the cruiser tore herself from the water and flashed up into the crimson sky. "What a barefaced liar!" Bradley exclaimed. The three, transformers cut off, were back in the middle room of their suite. "You can outswim an otter, and I happen to know that you came up out of the old DZ83 from a depth of...." "Maybe I did exaggerate a trifle," Costigan interrupted, "but the more helpless he thinks we are the better for us. And we want to stay out of any of their cities as long as we can, because they may be hard places to get out of. I've got a couple of ideas, but they aren't ripe enough to pick yet.... Wow! How this bird's been traveling! We're there already! If he hits the water going like this, he'll split himself, sure!" With undiminished velocity they were flashing downward in a long slant toward the beleaguered Third City, and from the flying vessel there was launched toward the city's central lagoon a torpedo. No missile this, but a capsule containing a full ton of allotropic iron, which would be of more use to the Nevian defenders than millions of men. For the Third City was sore pressed indeed. Around it was one unbroken ring of boiling, exploding water--water billowing upward in searing, blinding bursts of super-heated steam, or being hurled bodily in all directions in solid masses by the cataclysmic forces being released by the embattled fishes of the greater deeps. Her outer defenses were already down, and even as the Terrestrials stared in amazement another of the immense hexagonal buildings burst into fragments; its upper structure flying wildly into scrap metal, its lower half subsiding drunkenly below the surface of the boiling sea. The three Earth-people seized whatever supports were at hand as the Nevian space-ship struck the water with undiminished speed, but the precaution was needless--Nerado knew thoroughly his vessel, its strength and its capabilities. There was a mighty splash, but that was all. The artificial gravity was unchanged by the impact; to the passengers the vessel was still motionless and on even keel as, now a submarine, she snapped around like a very fish and attacked the rear of the nearest fortress. For fortresses they were; vast structures of green metal, plowing forward implacably upon immense caterpillar treads. And as they crawled they destroyed, and Costigan, exploring the strange submarine with his visiray beam, watched and marveled. For the fortresses were full of water; water artificially cooled and aerated, entirely separate from the boiling flood through which they moved. They were manned by fish some five feet in length. Fish with huge, goggling eyes; fish plentifully equipped with long, armlike tentacles; fish poised before control panels or darting about intent upon their various duties. Fish with brains, waging war! Nor was their warfare ineffectual. Their heat-rays boiled the water for hundreds of yards before them and their torpedoes were exploding against the Nevian defenses in one appallingly continuous concussion. But most potent of all was a weapon unknown to Triplanetary warfare. From a fortress there would shoot out, with the speed of a meteor, a long, jointed, telescopic rod; tipped with a tiny, brilliantly-shining ball. Whenever that glowing tip encountered any obstacle, that obstacle disappeared in an explosion world-wracking in its intensity. Then what was left of the rod, dark now, would be retracted into the fortress-only to emerge again in a moment with a tip once more shining and potent. Nerado, apparently as unfamiliar with the peculiar weapon as were the Terrestrials, attacked cautiously; sending out far to the fore his murkily impenetrable screens of red. But the submarine was entirely non-ferrous, and its officers were apparently quite familiar with Nevian beams which licked at and clung to the green walls in impotent fury. Through the red veil came stabbing ball after ball, and only the most frantic dodging saved the space-ship from destruction in those first few furious seconds. And now the Nevian defenders of the Third City had secured and were employing the vast store of allotropic iron so opportunely delivered by Nerado. From the city there pushed out immense nets of metal, extending from the surface of the ocean to its bottom; nets radiating such terrific forces that the very water itself was beaten back and stood motionless in vertical, glassy walls. Torpedoes were futile against that wall of energy. The most fiercely driven rays of the fishes flamed incandescent against it, in vain. Even the incredible violence of a concentration of every available force-ball against one point could not break through. At that unimaginable explosion water was hurled for miles. The bed of the ocean was not only exposed, but in it there was blown a crater at whose dimensions the Terrestrials dared not even guess. The crawling fortresses themselves were thrown backward violently and the very world was rocked to its core by the concussion, but that iron-driven wall held. The massive nets swayed and gave back, and tidal waves hurled their mountainously destructive masses through the Third City, but the mighty barrier remained intact. And Nerado, still attacking two of the powerful tanks with his every weapon, was still dodging those flashing balls charged with the quintessence of destruction. The fishes could not see through the sub-ethereal veil, but all the gunners of the two fortresses were combing it thoroughly with ever-lengthening, ever-thrusting rods, in a desperate attempt to wipe out the new and apparently all-powerful Nevian submarine whose sheer power was slowly but inexorably crushing even their gigantic walls. "Well, I think that right now's the best chance we'll ever have of doing something for ourselves." Costigan turned away from the absorbing scenes pictured upon the visiplate and faced his two companions. "But what can we possibly do?" asked Clio. "Whatever it is, we'll try it!" Bradley exclaimed. "Anything's better than staying here and letting them analyze us--no telling what they'd do to us," Costigan went on. "I know a lot more about things than they think I do. They never did catch me using my spy-ray--it's on an awfully narrow beam, you know, and uses almost no power at all--so I've been able to dope out quite a lot of stuff. I can open most of their locks, and I know how to run their small boats. This battle, fantastic as it is, is deadly stuff, and it isn't one-sided, by any means, either, so that every one of them, from Nerado down, seems to be on emergency duty. There are no guards watching us, or stationed where we want to go--our way out is open. And once out, this battle is giving us our best possible chance to get away from them. There's so much emission out there already that they probably couldn't detect the driving force of the lifeboat, and they'll be too busy to chase us, anyway." "Once out, then what?" asked Bradley. "We'll have to decide that before we start, of course. I'd say make a break back for Earth. We know the direction and we'll have plenty of power." "But good Heavens, Conway, it's so far!" exclaimed Clio. "How about food, water, and air--would we ever get there?" "You know as much about that as I do. I think so, but of course anything might happen. This ship is none too big, is considerably slower than the big space-ship, and we're a long ways from home. Another bad thing is the food question. The boat is well stocked according to Nevian ideas, but it's pretty foul stuff for us to eat. However, it's nourishing, and we'll have to eat it, since we can't carry enough of our own supplies to the boat to last long. Even so, we may have to go on short rations, but I think that we'll be able to make it. On the other hand, what happens if we stay here? They will find us sooner or later, and we don't know any too much about these ultra-weapons. We are land-dwellers, and there is little if any land on this planet. Then, too, we don't know where to look for what land there may be, and even if we could find it, we know that it is all over-run with amphibians already. There's a lot of things that might be better, but they might be a lot worse, too. How about it? Do we try or do we stay here?" "We try it!" exclaimed Clio and Bradley, as one. "All right. I'd better not waste any more time talking--let's go!" Stepping up to the locked and shielded door, he took out a peculiarly built torch and pointed it at the Nevian lock. There was no light, no noise, but the massive portal swung smoothly open. They stepped out and Costigan relocked and reshielded the entrance. "How ... what...." Clio demanded. "I've been going to school for the last few weeks," Costigan grinned, "and I've picked up quite a few things here and there--literally, as well as figuratively. Snap it up, guys! Our armor is stored with the pieces of the pirates' lifeboat, and I'll feel a lot better when we've got it on and have hold of a few Lewistons." They hurried down corridors, up ramps, and along hallways, with Costigan's spy-ray investigating the course ahead for chance Nevians. Bradley and Clio were unarmed, but the operative had found a piece of flat metal and had ground it to a razor edge. "I think I can throw this thing straight enough and fast enough to chop off a Nevian's head before he can put a paralyzing ray on us," he explained grimly, but he was not called upon to show his skill with the improvised cleaver. As he had concluded from his careful survey, every Nevian was at some control or weapon, doing his part in that frightful combat with the denizens of the greater deeps. Their path was open; they were neither molested nor detected as they ran toward the compartment within which was sealed all their belongings. The door of that room opened, as had the other, to Costigan's knowing beam; and all three set hastily to work. They made up packs of food, filled their capacious pockets with emergency rations, buckled on Lewistons and automatics, donned their armor, and clamped into their external holsters a full complement of additional weapons. "Now comes the ticklish part of the business," Costigan informed the others. His helmet was slowly turning this way and that, and the others knew that through his spy-ray goggles he was studying their route. "There's only one boat we stand a chance of reaching, and somebody's mighty apt to see us. There's a lot of detectors up there, and we'll have to cross a corridor full of communicator beams. There, that line's off--scoot!" At his word they dashed out into the hall and hurried along for minutes, dodging sharply to right or left as the leader snapped out orders. Finally he stopped. "Here's those beams I told you about. We'll have to roll under 'em. They're less than waist high--right there's the lowest one. Watch me do it, and when I give you the word, one at a time, you do the same. _Keep low_--don't let an arm or a leg get up into a ray or they may see us." He threw himself flat, rolled upon the floor a yard or so, and scrambled to his feet. He gazed intently at the blank wall for a space. "Bradley--now!" he snapped, and the captain duplicated his performance. But Clio, unused to the heavy and cumbersome space-armor she was wearing, could not roll in it with any degree of success. When Costigan barked his order she tried, but stopped, floundering almost directly below the network of invisible beams. As she struggled one mailed arm went up, and Costigan saw in his ultra-goggles the faint flash as the beam encountered the interfering field. But already he had acted. Crouching low, he struck down the arm, seized it, and dragged the girl out of the zone of visibility. Then in furious haste he opened a nearby door and all three sprang into a tiny compartment. "Shut off all the fields of your suits, so that they can't interfere!" he hissed into the utter darkness. "Not that I'd mind killing a few of them, but if they start an organized search we're sunk. But even if they did get a warning by touching your glove, Clio, they probably won't suspect us. Our rooms are still shielded, and the chances are that they're too busy to bother much about us, anyway." He was right. A few beams darted here and there, but the Nevians saw nothing amiss and ascribed the interference to the falling into the beam of some chance bit of charged metal. With no further misadventures the fugitives gained entrance to the Nevian lifeboat, where Costigan's first act was to disconnect one steel boot from his armor of space. With a sigh of relief he pulled his foot out of it, and from it carefully poured into the small power-tank of the craft fully thirty pounds of allotropic iron! "I pinched it off them," he explained, in answer to amazed and inquiring looks, "and maybe you don't think it's a relief to get it out of that boot! I couldn't steal a flask to carry it in, so this was the only place I could put it. These lifeboats are equipped with only a couple of grams of iron apiece, you know, and we couldn't get half-way back to Tellus on that, even with smooth going; and we may have to fight. With this much to go on, though, we could go to Andromeda, fighting all the way. Well, we'd better break away." Costigan watched his plate closely; and, when the maneuvering of the great vessel brought his exit port as far away as possible from the Third City and the warring tanks, he shot the little cruiser out and away. Straight out into the ocean it sped, through the murky red veil, and darted upward toward the surface. The three wanderers sat tense, hardly daring to breathe, staring into the plates--Clio and Bradley pushing at mental levers and stepping down hard upon mental brakes in unconscious efforts to help Costigan dodge the beams and rods of death flashing so appallingly close upon all sides. Out of the water and into the air the darting, dodging lifeboat flashed in safety; but in the air, supposedly free from menace, came disaster. There was a crunching, grating shock and the vessel was thrown into a dizzy spiral, from which Costigan finally leveled it into headlong flight away from the scene of battle. Watching the pyrometers which recorded the temperature of the outer shell, he drove the lifeboat ahead at the highest safe atmospheric speed while Bradley went to inspect the damage. "Pretty bad, but better than I thought," the captain reported. "Outer and inner plates broken away on a seam. We wouldn't hold cotton waste, let alone air. Any tools aboard?" "Some--and what we haven't got we'll make," Costigan declared. "We'll put a lot of distance behind us, then we'll fix her up and get away from here." "What are those fish, anyway, Conway?" Clio asked, as the lifeboat tore along. "The Nevians are bad enough, Heaven knows, but the very idea of intelligent and educated _fish_ is enough to drive one mad!" "You know Nerado mentioned several times the 'semicivilized fishes of the greater deeps'?" he reminded her. "I gather that there are at least three intelligent races here. We know two--the Nevians, who are amphibians, and the fishes of the greater deeps. The fishes of the lesser deeps are also intelligent. As I get it, the Nevian cities were originally built in very shallow water, or perhaps were upon islands. The development of machinery and tools gave them a big edge on the fish; and those living in the shallow seas, nearest the Islands, gradually became tributary nations, if not actually slaves. Those fish not only serve as food, but work in the mines, hatcheries, and plantations, and do all kinds of work for the Nevians. Those so-called 'lesser deeps' were conquered first, of course, and all their races of fish are docile enough now. But the deep-sea breeds, who live in water so deep that the Nevians can hardly stand the pressure down there, were more intelligent to start with, and more stubborn besides. But the most valuable metals here are deep down--this planet is very light for its size, you know--so the Nevians kept at it until they conquered some of the deep-sea fish, too, and put 'em to work. But those high-pressure boys were nobody's fools. They realized that as time went on the amphibians would get further and further ahead of them in development, so they let themselves be conquered, learned how to use the Nevians' tools and everything else they could get hold of, developed a lot of new stuff of their own, and now they're out to wipe the amphibians off the map completely, before they get too far ahead of them to handle." "And the Nevians are afraid of them, and want to kill them all, as fast as they possibly can," guessed Clio. "That would be the logical thing, of course," commented Bradley. "Got pretty nearly enough distance now, Costigan?" "There isn't enough distance on the planet to suit me," Costigan replied. "We'll need all we can get. A full diameter away from that crew of amphibians is too close for comfort--their detectors are keen." "Then they can detect us?" Clio asked. "Oh, I wish they hadn't hit us--we'd have been away from here long ago." "So do I," Costigan agreed, feelingly. "But they did--no use squawking. We can rivet and weld those seams, and things could be a lot worse--we are still breathing air!" In silence the lifeboat flashed onward, and half of Nevia's mighty globe was traversed before it was brought to a halt. Then in furious haste the two officers set to work, again to make their small craft sound and spaceworthy. CHAPTER 12 WORM, SUBMARINE, AND FREEDOM Since both Costigan and Bradley had often watched their captors at work during the long voyage from the Solar System to Nevia, they were quite familiar with the machine tools of the amphibians. Their stolen lifeboat, being an emergency craft, of course carried full repair equipment; and to such good purpose did the two officers labor that even before their air-tanks were fully charged, all the damage had been repaired. The lifeboat lay motionless upon the mirror-smooth surface of the ocean. Captain Bradley had opened the upper port and the three stood in the opening, gazing in silence toward the incredibly distant horizon, while powerful pumps were forcing the last possible ounces of air into the storage cylinders. Mile upon strangely flat mile stretched that waveless, unbroken expanse of water, merging finally into the violent redness of the Nevian sky. The sun was setting; a vast ball of purple flame dropping rapidly toward the horizon. Darkness came suddenly as that seething ball disappeared, and the air became bitterly cold, in sharp contrast to the pleasant warmth of a moment before. And as suddenly clouds appeared in blackly banked masses and a cold, driving rain began to beat down. "Br-r-r, it's cold! Let's go in--Oh! _Shut the door!_" Clio shrieked, and leaped wildly down into the compartment below, out of Costigan's way, for he and Bradley had also seen slithering toward them the frightful arm of the Thing. Almost before the girl had spoken Costigan had leaped to the controls, and not an instant too soon; for the tip of that horrible tentacle flashed into the rapidly narrowing crack just before the door clanged shut. As the powerful toggles forced the heavy wedges into engagement and drove the massive disk home, that grisly tip fell severed to the floor of the compartment and lay there, twitching and writhing with a loathesome and unearthly vigor. Two feet long the piece was, and larger than a strong man's leg. It was armed with spiked and jointed metallic scales, and instead of sucking disks it was equipped with a series of _mouths_--mouths filled with sharp metallic teeth which gnashed and ground together furiously, even though sundered from the horrible organism which they were designed to feed. The little submarine shuddered in every plate and member as monstrous coils encircled her and tightened inexorably in terrific, rippling surges eloquent of mastodonic power; and a strident vibration smote sickeningly upon Terrestrial ear-drums as the metal spikes of the monstrosity crunched and ground upon the outer plating of their small vessel. Costigan stood unmoved at the plate, watching intently; hands ready upon the controls. Due to the artificial gravity of the lifeboat it seemed perfectly stationary to its occupants. Only the weird gyrations of the pictures upon the lookout screens showed that the craft was being shaken and thrown about like a rat in the jaws of a terrier; only the gauges revealed that they were almost a mile below the surface of the ocean already, and were still going downward at an appalling rate. Finally Clio could stand no more. "Aren't you going to do something, Conway?" she cried. "Not unless I have to," he replied, composedly. "I don't believe that he can really hurt us, and if I use force of any kind I'm afraid that it will kick up enough disturbance to bring Nerado down on us like a hawk onto a chicken. However, if he takes us much deeper I'll have to go to work on him. We're getting down pretty close to our limit, and the bottom's a long ways down yet." Deeper and deeper the lifeboat was dragged by its dreadful opponent, whose spiked teeth still tore savagely at the tough outer plating of the craft, until Costigan reluctantly threw in his power switches. Against the full propellant thrust the monster could draw them no lower, but neither could the lifeboat make any headway toward the surface. The pilot then turned on his beams, but found that they were ineffective. So closely was the creature wrapped around the submarine that his weapons could not be brought to bear upon it. "What can it possibly be, anyway, and what can we do about it?" Clio asked. "I thought at first it was something like a devilfish, or possibly an overgrown starfish, but it isn't," Costigan made answer. "It must be a kind of flat worm. That doesn't sound reasonable--the thing must be all of a hundred meters long--but there it is. The only thing left to do that I can think of is to try to boil him alive." He closed other circuits, diffusing a terrific beam of pure heat, and the water all about them burst into furious clouds of steam. The boat leaped upward as the metallic fins of the gigantic worm fanned vapor instead of water, but the creature neither released its hold nor ceased its relentlessly grinding attack. Minute after minute went by, but finally the worm dropped limply away--cooked through and through; vanquished only by death. "Now we've put our foot in it, clear to the neck!" Costigan exclaimed, as he shot the lifeboat upward at its maximum power. "Look at that! I knew that Nerado could trace us, but I didn't have any idea that _they_ could!" Staring with Costigan into the plate, Bradley and the girl saw, not the Nevian sky-rover they had expected, but a fast submarine cruiser, manned by the frightful fishes of the greater deeps. It was coming directly toward the lifeboat, and even as Costigan hurled the little vessel off at an angle and then sped upward into the air, one of the deadly offensive rods, tipped with its glowing ball of pure destruction, flashed through the spot where they would have been had they held their former course. But powerful as were the propellant forces of the lifeboat and fiercely though Costigan applied them, the denizens of the deep clamped a tractor beam upon the flying vessel before it had gained a mile of altitude. Costigan aligned his every driving projector as his vessel came to an abrupt halt in the invisible grip of the beam, then experimented with various dials. "There ought to be some way of cutting that beam," he pondered audibly, "but I don't know enough about their system to do it, and I'm afraid to monkey around with things too much, because I might accidentally release the screens we've already got out, and they're stopping altogether too much stuff for us to do without them right now." He frowned as he studied the flaring defensive screens, now radiating an incandescent violet under the concentration of forces being hurled against them by the warlike fishes, then stiffened suddenly. "I thought so--they _can_ shoot 'em!" he exclaimed, throwing the lifeboat into a furious corkscrew turn, and the very air blazed into flaming splendor as a dazzlingly scintillating ball of energy sped past them and high into the air beyond. Then for minutes a spectacular battle raged. The twisting, turning, leaping airship, small as she was and agile, kept on eluding the explosive projectiles of the fishes, and her screens neutralized and re-radiated the full power of the attacking beams. More--since Costigan did not need to think of sparing his iron, the ocean around the great submarine began furiously to boil under the full-driven offensive beams of the tiny Nevian ship. But escape Costigan could not. He could not cut that tractor beam and the utmost power of his drivers could not wrest the lifeboat from its tenacious clutch. And slowly but inexorably the ship of space was being drawn downward toward the ship of ocean's depths. Downward, in spite of the utmost possible effort of every projector and generator; and Clio and Bradley, sick at heart, looked once at each other. Then they looked at Costigan, who, jaw hard set and eyes unflinchingly upon his plate, was concentrating his attack upon one turret of the green monster as they settled lower and lower. "If this is ... if our number is going up, Conway," Clio began, unsteadily. "Not yet, it isn't!" he snapped. "Keep a stiff upper lip, girl. We're still breathing air, and the battle's not over yet!" Nor was it; but it was not Costigan's efforts, mighty though they were, that ended the attack of the fishes of the greater deeps. The tractor beams snapped without warning, and so prodigious were the forces being exerted by the lifeboat that as it hurled itself away the three passengers were thrown violently to the floor, in spite of the powerful gravity controls. Scrambling up on hands and knees, bracing himself as best he could against the terrific forces, Costigan managed finally to force a hand up to his panel. He was barely in time; for even as he cut the driving power to its normal value the outer shell of the lifeboat was blazing at white heat from the friction of the atmosphere through which it had been tearing with such an insane acceleration! "Oh, I see--Nerado to the rescue," Costigan commented, after a glance into the plate. "I hope that those fish blow him clear out of the Galaxy!" "Why?" demanded Clio. "I should think that you'd...." "Think again," he advised her. "The worse Nerado gets licked the better for us. I don't really expect that, but if they can keep him busy long enough, we can get far enough away so that he won't bother about us any more." As the lifeboat tore upward through the air at the highest permissible atmospheric velocity Bradley and Clio peered over Costigan's shoulders into the plate, watching in fascinated interest the scene which was being kept in focus upon it. The Nevian ship of space was plunging downward in a long, slanting dive, her terrific beams of force screaming out ahead of her. The beams of the little lifeboat had boiled the waters of the ocean; those of the parent craft seemed literally to blast them out of existence. All about the green submarine there had been volumes of furiously-boiling water and dense clouds of vapor; now water and fog alike disappeared, converted into transparent super-heated steam by the blasts of Nevian energy. Through that tenuous gas the enormous mass of the submarine fell like a plummet, her defensive screens flaming an almost invisible violet, her every offensive weapon vomiting forth solid and vibratory destruction toward the Nevian cruiser so high in the angry, scarlet heavens. For miles the submarine dropped, until the frightful pressure of the depth drove water into Nerado's beam faster than his forces could volatilize it. Then in that seething funnel there was waged a starkly fantastic conflict. At its wildly turbulent bottom lay the submarine, now apparently trying to escape, but held fast by the tractors of the space-ship; at its top, smothered almost to the point of invisibility by billowing masses of steam, hung poised the Nevian cruiser. As the atmosphere had grown thinner and thinner with increasing altitude Costigan had regulated his velocity accordingly, keeping the outer shell of the vessel at the highest temperature consistent with safety. Now beyond measurable atmospheric pressure, the shell cooled rapidly and he applied full touring acceleration. At an appalling and constantly increasing speed the miniature space-ship shot away from the strange, red planet; and smaller and smaller upon the plate became its picture. The great vessel of the void had long since plunged beneath the surface of the sea, to come more closely to grips with the vessel of the fishes; for a long time nothing of the battle had been visible save immense clouds of steam, blanketing hundreds of square miles of the ocean's surface. But just before the picture became too small to reveal details a few tiny dark spots appeared above the banks of cloud, now brilliantly illuminated by the rays of the rising sun--dots which might have been fragments of either vessel, blown bodily from the depths of the ocean and, riven asunder, hurled high into the air by the incredible forces at the command of the other. Nevia a tiny moon and the fierce blue sun rapidly growing smaller in the distance, Costigan swung his visiray beam into the line of travel and turned to his companions. "Well, we're off," he said, scowling. "I hope it was Nerado that got blown up back there, but I'm afraid it wasn't. He whipped two of those submarines that we know of, and probably half their fleet besides. There's no particular reason why that one should be able to take him, so it's my idea that we should get ready for great gobs of trouble. They'll chase us, of course; and I'm afraid that with their power, they'll catch us." "But what can we do, Conway?" asked Clio. "Several things," he grinned. "I managed to get quite a lot of dope on that paralyzing ray and some of their other stuff, and we can install the necessary equipment in our suits easily enough." They removed their armor, and Costigan explained in detail the changes which must be made in the Triplanetary field generators. All three set vigorously to work--the two officers deftly and surely; Clio uncertainly and with many questions, but with undaunted spirit. Finally, having done everything they could do to strengthen their position, they settled down to the watchful routine of the flight, with every possible instrument set to detect any sign of the pursuit they so feared. CHAPTER 13 THE HILL The heavy cruiser Chicago hung motionless in space, thousands of miles distant from the warring fleets of space-ships so viciously attacking and so stubbornly defending Roger's planetoid. In the captain's sanctum Lyman Cleveland crouched tensely above his ultracameras, his sensitive fingers touching lightly their micrometric dials. His body was rigid, his face was set and drawn. Only his eyes moved; flashing back and forth between his instruments and the smoothly-running strands of spring-steel wire upon which were being recorded the frightful scenes of carnage and destruction. Silent and bitterly absorbed, though surrounded by staring officers whose fervent, almost unconscious cursing was prayerful in its intensity, the visiray expert kept his ultra-instruments upon that awful struggle to its dire conclusion. Flawlessly those instruments noted every detail of the destruction of Roger's fleet, of the transformation of the armada of Triplanetary into an unknown fluid, and finally of the dissolution of the gigantic planetoid itself. Then furiously Cleveland drove his beam against the crimsonly opaque obscurity into which the peculiar, viscous stream of substance was disappearing. Time after time he applied his every watt of power, with no result. A vast volume of space, roughly ellipsoidal in shape, was closed to him by forces entirely beyond his experience or comprehension. But suddenly, while his rays were still trying to pierce that impenetrable murk, it disappeared instantly and without warning: the illimitable infinity of space once more lay revealed upon his plates and his beams flashed unimpeded through the void. "Back to Tellus, sir?" The _Chicago's_ captain broke the strained silence. "I wouldn't say so, if I had the say." Cleveland, baffled and frustrated, straightened up and shut off his cameras. "We should report back as soon as possible, of course, but there seems to be a lot of wreckage out there yet that we can't photograph in detail at this distance. A close study of it might help us a lot in understanding what they did and how they did it. I'd say that we should get close-ups of whatever is left, and do it right away, before it gets scattered all over space; but of course I can't give you orders." "You can, though," the captain made surprising answer. "My orders are that you are in command of this vessel." "In that case we will proceed at full emergency acceleration to investigate the wreckage," Cleveland replied, and the cruiser--sole survivor of Triplanetary's supposedly invincible force--shot away with every projector delivering its maximum blast. As the scene of the disaster was approached there was revealed upon the plates a confused mass of debris; a mass whose individual units were apparently moving at random, yet which was as a whole still following the orbit of Roger's planetoid. Space was full of machine parts, structural members, furniture, flotsam of all kinds; and everywhere were the bodies of men. Some were encased in space-suits, and it was to these that the rescuers turned first--space-hardened veterans though the men of the _Chicago_ were, they did not care even to look at the others. Strangely enough, however, not one of the floating figures spoke or moved, and space-line men were hurriedly sent out to investigate. "All dead." Quickly the dread report came back. "Been dead a long time. The armor is all stripped off the suits, and all the generators and other apparatus are all shot. Something funny about it, too--none of them seem to have been touched, but the machinery of the suits seems to be about half missing." "I've got it all on the reels, sir." Cleveland, his close-up survey of the wreckage finished, turned to the captain. "What they've just reported checks up with what I have photographed everywhere. I've got an idea of what might have happened, but it's so new that I'll have to have some evidence before I'll believe it myself. You might have them bring in a few of the armored bodies, a couple of those switchboards and panels floating around out there, and half a dozen miscellaneous pieces of junk--the nearest things they get hold of, whatever they happen to be." "Then back to Tellus at maximum?" "Right--back to Tellus, as fast as we can possibly get there." While the _Chicago_ hurtled through space at full power, Cleveland and the ranking officers of the vessel grouped themselves about the salvaged wreckage. Familiar with space-wrecks as were they all, none of them had ever seen anything like the material before them. For every part and instrument was weirdly and meaninglessly disintegrated. There were no breaks, no marks of violence, and yet nothing was intact. Bolt-holes stared empty, cores, shielding cases and needles had disappeared, the vital parts of every instrument hung awry, disorganization reigned rampant and supreme. "I never imagined such a mess," the captain said, after a long and silent study of the objects. "If you have a theory to cover _that_, Cleveland, I would like to hear it!" "I want you to notice something first," the expert replied. "But don't look for what's there--look for what _isn't_ there." "Well, the armor is gone. So are the shielding cases, shafts, spindles, the housings and stems ..." the captain's voice died away as his eyes raced over the collection. "Why everything that was made of wood, bakelite, copper, aluminum, silver, bronze, or anything but steel hasn't been touched, and every bit of that is gone. But that doesn't make sense--what does it mean?" "I don't know--yet," Cleveland replied, slowly. "But I'm afraid that there's more, and worse." He opened a space-suit reverently, revealing the face; a face calm and peaceful, but utterly, sickeningly white. Still reverently, he made a deep incision in the brawny neck, severing the jugular vein, then went on, soberly: "You never imagined such a thing as _white_ blood, either, but it all checks up. Someway, somehow, every atom of free or combined iron in this whole volume of space was made off with." "Huh? How come? And above all, _why_?" from the amazed and staring officers. "You know as much as I do," grimly, ponderingly. "If it were not for the fact that there are solid asteroids of iron out beyond Mars, I would say that somebody wanted iron badly enough to wipe out the fleet and the planetoid to get it. But anyway, whoever they were, they carried enough power so that our armament didn't bother them at all. They simply took the metal they wanted and went away with it--so fast that I couldn't trace them with an ultra-beam. There's only one thing plain; but that's so plain that it scares me stiff. This whole affair spells intelligence, with a capital 'I', and that intelligence is anything but friendly. I want to put Fred Rodebush at work on this just as fast as I can get him." He stepped over to his ultra-projector and put in a call for Virgil Samms, whose face soon appeared upon his screen. "We got it all, Virgil," he reported. "It's something extraordinary--bigger, wider, and deeper than any of us dreamed. It may be urgent, too, so I think I had better shoot the stuff in on an ultra-beam and save some time. Fred has a telemagneto recorder there that he can synchronize with this outfit easily enough. Right?" "Right. Good work, Lyman--thanks," came back terse approval and appreciation, and soon the steel wires were again flashing from reel to reel. This time, however, their varying magnetic charges were so modulating ultra-waves that every detail of that calamitous battle of the void was being screened and recorded in the innermost private laboratory of the Triplanetary Service. Eager though he naturally was to join his fellow-scientists, Cleveland was not impatient during the long, but uneventful journey back to Earth. There was much to study, many improvements to be made in his comparatively crude first ultra-camera. Then, too, there were long conferences with Samms, and particularly with Rodebush, the nuclear physicist, who would have to do much of the work involved in solving the riddles of the energies and weapons of the Nevians. Thus it did not seem long before green Terra grew large beneath the flying sphere of the _Chicago_. "Going to have to circle it once, aren't you?" Cleveland asked the chief pilot. He had been watching that officer closely for minutes, admiring the delicacy and precision with which the great vessel was being maneuvered preliminary to entering the Earth's atmosphere. "Yes," the pilot replied. "We had to come in in the shortest possible time, and that meant a velocity here that we can't check without a spiral. However, even at that we saved a lot of time. You can save quite a bit more, though, by having a rocket-plane come out to meet us somewhere around fifteen or twenty thousand kilometers, depending upon where you want to land. With their drives they can match our velocity and still make the drop direct." "Guess I'll do that--thanks," and the operative called his chief, only to learn that his suggestion had already been acted upon. "We beat you to it, Lyman," Samms smiled. "The _Silver Sliver_ is out there now, looping to match your course, acceleraction, and velocity at twenty two thousand kilometers. You'll be ready to transfer?" "I'll be ready," and the Quartermaster's ex-clerk went to his quarters and packed his dunnage-bag. In due time the long, slender body of the rocket-plane came into view, creeping "down" upon the space-ship from "above," and Cleveland bade his friends goodbye. Donning a space-suit, he stationed himself in the starboard airlock. Its atmosphere was withdrawn, the outer door opened, and he glanced across a bare hundred feet of space at the rocket-plane which, keel ports fiercely aflame, was braking her terrific speed to match the slower pace of the gigantic sphere of war. Shaped like a toothpick, needle-pointed fore and aft, with ultra-stubby wings and vanes, with flush-set rocket ports everywhere, built of a lustrous, silvery alloy of noble and almost infusible metals--such was the private speedboat of Triplanetary's head man. The fastest thing known, whether in planetary air, the stratosphere, or the vacuous depth of interplanetary space, her first flashing trial spins had won her the nickname of the _Silver Sliver_. She had had a more formal name, but that title had long since been buried in the Departmental files. Lower and lower dropped the speedboat, her rockets flaming ever brighter, until her slender length lay level with the airlock door. Then her blasting discharges subsided to the power necessary to match exactly the _Chicago's_ acceleration. "Ready to cut, _Chicago_! Give me a three-second call!" snapped from the pilot room of the _Sliver_. "Ready to cut!" the pilot of the _Chicago_ replied. "Seconds! Three! Two! One! CUT!" At the last word the power of both vessels was instantly cut off and everything in them became weightless. In the tiny airlock of the slender plane crouched a space-line man with coiled cable in readiness, but he was not needed. As the flaring exhausts ceased Cleveland swung out his heavy bag and stepped lightly off into space, and in a right line he floated directly into the open port of the rocket-plane. The door clanged shut behind him and in a matter of moments he stood in the control room of the racer, divested of his armor and shaking hands with his friend and co-laborer, Frederick Rodebush. "Well, Fritz, what do you know?" Cleveland asked, as soon as greetings had been exchanged. "How do the various reports dovetail together? I know that you couldn't tell me anything on the wave, but there's no danger of eavesdroppers _here_." "You can't tell," Rodebush soberly replied. "We're just beginning to wake up to the fact that there are a lot of things we don't know anything about. Better wait until we're back at the Hill. We have a full set of ultra screens around there now. There's a couple of other good reasons, too--it would be better for both of us to go over the whole thing with Virgil, from the ground up; and we can't do any more talking, anyway. Our orders are to get back there at maximum, and you know what that means aboard the _Sliver_. Strap yourself solid in that shock-absorber there, and here's a pair of ear-plugs." "When the _Sliver_ really cuts loose it means a rough party, all right," Cleveland assented, snapping about his body the heavy spring-straps of his deeply cushioned seat, "but I'm just as anxious to get back to the Hill as anybody can be to get me there. All set." Rodebush waved his hand at the pilot and the purring whisper of the exhausts changed instantly to a deafening, continuous explosion. The men were pressed deeply into their shock-absorbing chairs as the _Silver Sliver_ spun around her longitudinal axis and darted away from the _Chicago_ with such a tremendous acceleration that the spherical warship seemed to be standing still in space. In due time the calculated midpoint was reached, the slim space-plane rolled over again, and, mad acceleration now reversed, rushed on toward the Earth, but with constantly diminishing speed. Finally a measurable atmospheric pressure was encountered, the needle prow dipped downward, and the _Silver Sliver_ shot forward upon her tiny wings and vanes, nose-rockets now drumming in staccato thunder. Her metal grew hot; dull red, bright red, yellow, blinding white; but it neither melted nor burned. The pilot's calculations had been sound, and though the limiting point of safety of temperature was reached and steadily held, it was not exceeded. As the density of the air increased so decreased the velocity of the man-made meteorite. So it was that a dazzling lance of fire sped high over Seattle, lower over Spokane, and hurled itself eastward, a furiously flaming arrow; slanting downward in a long, screaming dive toward the heart of the Rockies. As the now rapidly cooling greyhound of the skies passed over the western ranges of the Bitter Roots it became apparent that her goal was a vast, flat-topped, conical mountain, shrouded in violet light; a mountain whose height awed even its stupendous neighbors. While not artificial, the Hill had been altered markedly by the engineers who had built into it the headquarters of the Triplanetary Service. Its mile-wide top was a jointless expanse of gray armor steel; the steep, smooth surface of the truncated cone was a continuation of the same immensely thick sheet of metal. No known vehicle could climb that smooth, hard, forbidding slope of steel; no known projectile could mar that armor; no known craft could even approach the Hill without detection. Could not approach it at all, in fact, for it was constantly inclosed in a vast hemisphere of lambent violet flame through which neither material substance nor destructive ray could pass. As the _Silver Sliver_, crawling along at a bare five hundred miles an hour, approached that transparent, brilliantly violet wall of destruction, a light of the same color filled her control room and as suddenly went out; flashing on and off again and again. "Giving us the once-over, eh?" Cleveland asked. "That's something new, isn't it?" "Yes, it's a high-powered ultra-wave spy," Rodebush returned. "The light is simply a warning, which can be carried if desired. It can also carry voice and vision...." "Like this," Samms' voice interrupted from a speaker upon the pilot's panel and his clear-cut face appeared upon the television screen. "I don't suppose Fred thought to mention it, but this is one of his inventions of the last few days. We are just trying it out on you. It doesn't mean a thing though, as far as the _Sliver_ is concerned. Come ahead!" A circular opening appeared on the wall of force, an opening which disappeared as soon as the plane had darted through it; and at the same time her landing-cradle rose into the air through a great trap-door. Slowly and gracefully the space-plane settled downward into that cushioned embrace. Then cradle and nestled _Sliver_ sank from view and, turning smoothly upon mighty trunnions, the plug of armor drove solidly back into its place in the metal pavement of the mountain's lofty summit. The cradle-elevator dropped rapidly, coming to rest many levels down in the heart of the Hill, and Cleveland and Rodebush leaped lightly out of their transport, through her still hot outer walls. A door opened before them and they found themselves in a large room of unshadowed daylight illumination; the office of the Chief of the Triplanetary Service. Calmly efficient executives sat at their desks, concentrating upon problems or at ease, according to the demands of the moment; agents, secretaries, and clerks, men and women, went about their wonted tasks; televisotypes and recorders flashed busily but silently--each person and machine an integral part of the Service which for so many years had been carrying an ever-increasing share of the load of governing the three planets. "Right of way, Norma?" Rodebush paused before the desk of Virgil Samms' private secretary. She pressed a button and the door behind her swung wide. "You two do not need to be announced," the attractive young woman smiled. "Go right in." Samms met them at the door eagerly, shaking hands particularly vigorously with Cleveland. "Congratulations on that camera, Lyman!" he exclaimed. "You did a wonderful piece of work on that. Help yourselves to smokes and sit down--there are a lot of things we want to talk over. Your pictures carried most of the story, but they would have left us pretty much at sea without Costigan's reports. But as it was, Fred here and his crew worked out most of the answers from the dope the two of you got; and what few they haven't got yet they soon will have." "Nothing new on Conway?" Cleveland was almost afraid to ask the question. "No." A shadow came over Samms' face. "I'm afraid ... but I'm hoping it's only that those creatures, whatever they are, have taken him so far away he can't reach us." "They certainly are so far away that we can't reach them," Rodebush volunteered. "We can't even get their ultra-wave interference any more." "Yes, that's a hopeful sign," Samms went on. "I hate to think of Conway Costigan checking out. There, fellows, was a real observer. He was the only man I have ever known who combined the two qualities of the perfect witness. He could actually see everything he looked at, and could report it truly, to the last, least detail. Take all this stuff, for instance; especially their ability to transform iron into a fluid allotrope, and in that form to use its atomic--nuclear?--energy as power. Something brand new, and yet he described their converters and projectors so minutely that Fred was able to work out the underlying theory in three days, and to tie it in with our own super-ship. My first thought was that we'd have to rebuild it iron-free, but Fred showed me my error--you found it first yourself, of course." "It wouldn't do any good to make the ship non-ferrous unless you could so change our blood chemistry that we could get along without hemoglobin, and that would be quite a feat," Cleveland agreed. "Then, too, our most vital electrical machinery is built around iron cores. We'll also have to develop a screen for those forces--screens, rather, so powerful that they can't drive anything through them." "We've been working along those lines ever since you reported," Rodebush said, "and we're beginning to see light. And in that same connection it's no wonder that we couldn't handle our super-ship. We had some good ideas, but they were wrongly applied. However, things look quite promising now. We have the transformation of iron all worked out in theory, and as soon as we get a generator going we can straighten out everything else in short order. And think what that unlimited power means! All the power we want--power enough even to try out such hitherto purely theoretical possibilities as the neutralization of the inertia of matter!" "Hold on!" protested Samms. "You certainly can't do _that_! Inertia is--_must_ be--a basic attribute of matter, and surely cannot be done away with without destroying the matter itself. Don't start anything like that, Fred--I don't want to lose you and Lyman, too." "Don't worry about us, Chief," Rodebush replied with a smile. "If you will tell me what matter is, fundamentally, I may agree with you.... No? Well, then, don't be surprised at anything that happens. We are going to do a lot of things that nobody on the Three Planets ever thought of doing before." Thus for a long time the argument and discussion went on, to be interrupted by the voice of the secretary. "Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Samms, but some things have come up that you will have to handle. Knobos is calling from Mars. He has caught the _Endymion_, and has killed about half her crew doing it. Milton has finally reported from Venus, after being out of touch for five days. He trailed the Wintons into Thalleron swamp. They crashed him there, and he won out and has what he went after. And just now I got a flash from Fletcher, in the asteroid belt. I think that he has finally traced that dope line. But Knobos is on now--what do you want him to do about the _Endymion_?" "Tell him to--no, put him on here, I'd better tell him myself," Samms directed, and his face hardened in ruthless decision as the horny, misshapen face of the Martian lieutenant appeared upon the screen. "What do you think, Knobos? Shall they come to trial or not?" "Not." "I don't think so, either. It is better that a few gangsters should disappear in space than that the Patrol should have to put down another uprising. See to it." "Right." The screen darkened and Samms spoke to his secretary. "Put Milton and Fletcher on whenever they come in." He turned to his guests. "We've covered the ground quite thoroughly. Goodbye--I wish I could go with you, but I'll be pretty well tied up for the next week or two." "'Tied up' doesn't half express it," Rodebush remarked as the two scientists walked along a corridor toward an elevator. "He probably is the busiest man on three planets." "As well as the most powerful," Cleveland supplemented. "And very few men could use his power as fairly--but he's welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned. I'd have the pink fantods for a month if I had to do only once what he's just done--and to him it's just part of a day's work." "You mean the _Endymion_? What else could he do?" "Nothing--that's the hell of it. It had to be done, since bringing them to trial would mean killing half the people of Morseca; but at the same time it's a ghastly thing to order a job of deliberate, cold-blooded, and illegal murder." "You're right, of course, but you would ..." he broke off, unable to put his thoughts into words. For while inarticulate, man-like, concerning their deepest emotions, in both men was ingrained the code of the organization; both knew that to every man chosen for it THE SERVICE was everything, himself nothing. "But enough of that, we'll have plenty of grief of our own right here." Rodebush changed the subject abruptly as they stepped into a vast room, almost filled by the immense bulk of the _Boise_--the sinister space-ship which, although never flown, had already lined with black so many pages of Triplanetary's roster. She was now, however, the center of a furious activity. Men swarmed over her and through her, in the orderly confusion of a fiercely driven but carefully planned program of reconstruction. "I hope your dope is right, Fritz!" Cleveland called, as the two scientists separated to go to their respective laboratories. "If it is, we'll make a perfect lady out of this unmanageable man-killer yet!" CHAPTER 14 THE SUPER-SHIP IS LAUNCHED After weeks of ceaseless work, during which was lavished upon her every resource of mind and material afforded by three planets, the _Boise_ was ready for her maiden flight. As nearly ready, that is, as the thought and labor of man could make her. Rodebush and Cleveland had finished their last rigid inspection of the aircraft and, standing beside the center door of the main airlock, were talking with their chief. "You say that you think that it's safe, and yet you won't take a crew," Samms argued. "In that case it isn't safe enough for you two, either. We need you too badly to permit you to take such chances." "You've _got_ to let us go, because we are the only ones who are at all familiar with her theory," Rodebush insisted. "I said, and I still say, that I _think_ it is safe. I can't prove it, however, even mathematically; because she's altogether too full of too many new and untried mechanisms, too many extrapolations beyond all existing or possible data. Theoretically, she is sound, but you know that theory can go only so far, and that mathematically negligible factors may become operative at those velocities. We do not need a crew for a short trip. We can take care of any minor mishaps, and if our fundamental theories are wrong, all the crews between here and Jupiter wouldn't do any good. Therefore we two are going--alone." "Well, be very careful, anyway. I wish that you could start out slow and take it easy." "In a way, so do I, but she wasn't designed to neutralize half of gravity, nor half of the inertia of matter--it's got to be everything or nothing, as soon as the neutralizers go on. We could start out on the projectors, of course, instead of on the neutralizers, but that wouldn't prove anything and would only prolong the agony." "Well, then, be as careful as you can." "We'll do that, Chief," Cleveland put in. "We think as much of us as anybody else does--maybe more--and we aren't committing suicide if we can help it. And remember about everybody staying inside when we take off--it's barely possible that we'll take up a lot of room. Goodbye!" "Goodbye, fellows!" The massive insulating doors were shut, the metal side of the mountain opened, and huge, squat caterpillar tractors came roaring and clanking into the room. Chains and cables were made fast and, mighty steel rails groaning under the load, the space-ship upon her rolling ways was dragged out of the Hill and far out upon the level floor of the valley before the tractors cast off and returned to the fortress. "Everybody is under cover," Samms informed Rodebush. The Chief was staring intently into his plate, upon which was revealed the control room of the untried super-ship. He heard Rodebush speak to Cleveland; heard the observer's brief reply; saw the navigator push the switch-button--then the communicator plate went blank. Not the ordinary blankness of a cut-off, but a peculiarly disquieting fading out into darkness. And where the great space-ship had rested there was for an instant nothing. Exactly nothing--a vacuum. Vessel, falsework, rollers, trucks, the enormous steel I-beams of the tracks, even the deep-set concrete piers and foundations and a vast hemisphere of the solid ground; all disappeared utterly and instantaneously. But almost as suddenly as it had been formed the vacuum was filled by a cyclonic rush of air. There was a detonation as of a hundred vicious thunderclaps made one, and through the howling, shrieking blasts of wind there rained down upon valley, plain, and metaled mountain a veritable avalanche of debris; bent, twisted, and broken rails and beams, splintered timbers, masses of concrete, and thousands of cubic yards of soil and rock. For the atomic-powered "Rodebush-Cleveland" neutralizers were more powerful by far, and had a vastly greater radius of action, than the calculations of their designers had shown; and for a moment everything within a hundred yards or so of the _Boise_ behaved as though it were an integral part of the vessel. Then, left behind immediately by the super-ship's almost infinite velocity, all this material had again become subject to all of Nature's every-day laws and had crashed back to the ground. "Could you hold your beam, Randolph?" Samms' voice cut sharply through the daze of stupefaction which held spellbound most of the denizens of the Hill. But all were not so held--no conceivable emergency could take the attention of the chief ultra-wave operator from his instruments. "No, sir," Radio Center shot back. "It faded out and I couldn't recover it. I put everything I've got behind a tracer on that beam, but haven't been able to lift a single needle off the pin." "And no wreckage of the vessel itself," Samms went on, half audibly. "Either they have succeeded far beyond their wildest hopes or else ... more probably...." He fell silent and switched off the plate. Were his two friends, those intrepid scientists, alive and triumphant, or had they gone to lengthen the list of victims of that man-killing space-ship? Reason told him that they were gone. They _must_ be gone, or else the ultra-beams--energies of such unthinkable velocity of propagation that man's most sensitive instruments had never been able even to estimate it--would have held the ship's transmitter in spite of any velocity attainable by matter under any conceivable conditions. The ship must have been disintegrated as soon as Rodebush released his forces. And yet, had not the physicist dimly foreseen the possibility of such an actual velocity--or had he? However, individuals could come and go, but the Service went on. Samms squared his shoulders unconsciously; and slowly, grimly, made his way back to his private office. "Mr. Fairchild would like to have a moment as soon as possible, sir," his secretary informed him even before he sat down. "Senator Morgan has been here all day, you know, and he insists on seeing you personally." "Oh, that kind, eh? All right, I'll see him. Get Fairchild, please ... Dick? Can you talk, or is he there listening?" "No, he's heckling Saunders at the moment. He's been here long enough. Can you take a minute and throw him out?" "Of course, if you say so, but why not throw the hooks into him yourself, as usual?" "He wants to lay down the law to you, personally. He's a Big Shot, you know, and his group is kicking up quite a row, so it might be better to have it come straight from the top. Besides, you've got a unique knack--when you throw a harpoon, the harpoonee doesn't forget it." "All right. He's the uplifter and leveler-off. Down with Triplanetary, up with National Sovereignty. We're power-mad dictators--iron-heel-on-the- necks-of-the-people, and so on. But what's he like, personally? Thick-skinned, of course--got a brain?" "Rhinoceros. He's got a brain, but it's definitely weaseloid. Bear down--sink it in full length, and then twist it." "O.K. You've got a harpoon, of course?" "Three of 'em!" Fairchild, Head of Triplanetary's Public Relations, grinned with relish. "Boss Jim Towne owns him in fee simple. The number of his hot lock box is N469T414. His subbest sub-rosa girl-friend is Fi-Chi le Bay ... yes, everything that the name implies. She got a super-deluxe fur coat--Martian tekkyl, no less--out of that Mackenzie River power deal. Triple play, you might say--Clander to Morgan to le Bay." "Nice. Bring him in." "Senator Morgan, Mr. Samms," Fairchild made the introduction and the two men sized each other up in lightning glances. Samms saw a big man, florid, somewhat inclined toward corpulence, with the surface geniality--and the shrewd calculating eyes--of the successful politician. The senator saw a tall, hard-trained man in his forties; a lean, keen, smooth-shaven face; a shock of red-bronze-auburn hair a couple of weeks overdue for a cutting; a pair of gold-flecked tawny eyes too penetrant for comfort. "I trust, Senator, that Fairchild has taken care of you satisfactorily?" "With one or two exceptions, yes." Since Samms did not ask what the exceptions could be, Morgan was forced to continue. "I am here, as you know, in my official capacity as Chairman of the Pernicious Activities Committee of the North American Senate. It has been observed for years that the published reports of your organization have left much unsaid. It is common knowledge that high-handed outrages have been perpetrated; if not by your men themselves, in such circumstances that your agents could not have been ignorant of them. Therefore it has been decided to make a first-hand and comprehensive investigation, in which matter your Mr. Fairchild has not been at all cooperative." "Who decided to make this investigation?" "Why, the North American Senate, of course, through its Pernicious Activities...." "I thought so." Samms interrupted. "Don't you know, Senator, that the Hill is not a part of the North American Continent? That the Triplanetary Service is responsible only to the Triplanetary Council?" "Quibbling, sir, and outmoded! This, sir, is a democracy!" the Senator began to orate. "All that will be changed very shortly, and if you are as smart as you are believed to be, I need only say that you and those of your staff who cooperate...." "You need say nothing at all." Samms' voice cut. "It has not been changed yet. The Government of North America rules its continent, as do the other Continental Governments. The combined Continental Governments of the Three Planets form the Triplanetary Council, which is a non-political body, the members of which hold office for life and which is the supreme authority in any matter, small or large, affecting more than one Continental Government. The Council has two principal operating agencies; the Triplanetary Patrol, which enforces its decisions, rules, and regulations, and the Triplanetary Service, which performs such other tasks as the Council directs. We have no interest in the purely internal affairs of North America. Have you any information to the contrary?" "More quibbling!" the Senator thundered. "This is not the first time in history that a ruthless dictatorship has operated in the disguise of a democracy. Sir, I _demand_ full access to your files, so that I can spread before the North American Senate the full facts of the various matters which I mentioned to Fairchild--one of which was the affair of the _Pelarion_. In a democracy, sir, facts should not be hidden; the people must and shall be kept completely informed upon any matter which affects their welfare or their political lives!" "Is that so? If I should ask, then, for the purpose of keeping the Triplanetary Council, and through it your constituents, fully informed as to the political situation in North America, you would undoubtedly give me the key to safe-deposit box N469T414? For it is common knowledge, in the Council at least, that there is a certain amount of--shall we say turbidity?--in the supposedly pellucid reaches of North American politics." "What? Preposterous!" Morgan made a heroic effort, but could not quite maintain his poise. "Private papers only, sir!" "Perhaps. Certain of the Councillors believe, however mistakenly, that there are several things of interest there: such as the record of certain transactions involving one James F. Towne; references to and details concerning dealings--not to say deals--with Mackenzie Power, specifically with Mackenzie Power's Mr. Clander; and perhaps a juicy bit or two concerning a person known as le Bay and a tekkyl coat. Of interest no end, don't you think, to the dear people of North America?" As Samms drove the harpoon in and twisted it, the big man suffered visibly. Nevertheless: "You refuse to cooperate, eh?" he blustered. "Very well, I will go--but you have not heard the last of me, Samms!" "No? Probably not. But remember, before you do any more rabble-rousing, that this lock-box thing is merely a sample. We of the Service know a lot of things that we do not mention to anybody--except in self-defense." "I am holding Fletcher, Mr. Samms. Shall I put him on now?" Norma asked, as the completely deflated Morgan went out. "Yes, please.... Hello, Sid; mighty glad to see you--we were scared for a while. How did you make out, and what was it?" "Hi, Chief! Mostly hadive. Some heroin, and quite a bit of Martian ladolian. Lousy job, though--three of the gang got away, and took about a quarter of the loot with them. That was what I want to talk to you about in such a hurry--fake meteors; the first I ever saw." Samms straightened up in his chair. "Just a second. Norma, put Redmond on here with us.... Listen, Harry. Now, Fletcher, did you see that fake meteor yourself? Touch it?" "Both. In fact, I've still got it. One of the runners, pretending to be a Service man, flashed it on _me_. It's really good, too, Chief. Even now, I can't tell it from my own except that mine is in my pocket. Shall I send it in?" "By all means; to Dr. H.D. Redmond, Head of Research. Keep on slugging, Sid--goodbye. Now, Harry, what do you think? It _could_ be one of our own, you know." "Could be, but probably isn't. We'll know as soon as we get it in the lab. Chances are, though, that they have caught up with us again. After all, that was to be expected--anything that science can synthesize, science can analyze; and whatever the morals and ethics of the pirates may be, they have got brains." "And you haven't been able to devise anything better?" "Variations only, which wouldn't take much time to solve. Fundamentally, the present meteor is the best we know." "Got anybody you would like to put on it, immediately?" "Of course. One of the new boys will be perfect for the job, I think. Name of Bergenholm. Quite a character. Brilliant, erratic, flashes of sheer genius that he can't explain, even to us. I'll put him on it right away." "Thanks a lot. And now, Norma, please keep everybody off my neck that you can. I want to think." And think he did; keen eyes clouded, staring unseeingly at the papers littering his desk. Triplanetary needed a symbol--a something--which would identify a Service man anywhere, at any time, under any circumstances, without doubt or question ... something that could not be counterfeited or imitated, to say nothing of being duplicated ... something that no scientist not of Triplanetary Service could _possibly_ imitate ... better yet, something that no one not of Triplanetary could even wear.... Samms grinned fleetingly at that thought. A tall order one calling for a _deus ex machina_ with a vengeance.... But damn it, there ought to be _some_ way to.... "Excuse me, sir." His secretary's voice, usually so calm and cool, trembled as she broke in on his thinking. "Commissioner Kinnison is calling. Something terrible is going on again, out toward Orion. Here he is," and there appeared upon Samms' screen the face of the Commissioner of Public Safety, the commander-in-chief of Triplanetary's every armed force; whether of land or of water, of air or of empty space. "They've come back, Virgil!" The Commissioner rapped out without preliminary or greeting. "Four vessels gone--a freighter and a passenger liner, with her escort of two heavy cruisers. All in Sector M, Dx about 151. I have ordered all traffic out of space for the duration of the emergency, and since even our warships seem useless, every ship is making for the nearest dock at maximum. How about that new flyer of yours--got anything that will do us any good?" No one beyond the "Hill's" shielding screens knew that the _Boise_ had already been launched. "I don't know. We don't even know whether we have a super-ship or not," and Samms described briefly the beginning--and very probably the ending--of the trial flight, concluding: "It looks bad, but if there was any possible way of handling her, Rodebush and Cleveland did it. All our tracers are negative yet, so nothing definite has...." He broke off as a frantic call came in from the Pittsburgh station for the Commissioner; a call which Samms both heard and saw. "The city is being attacked!" came the urgent message. "We need all the reenforcements you can send us!" and a picture of the beleaguered city appeared in ghastly detail upon the screens of the observers; a view being recorded from the air. It required only seconds for the commissioner to order every available man and engine of war to the seat of conflict; then, having done everything they could do, Kinnison and Samms stared in helpless, fascinated horror into their plates, watching the scenes of carnage and destruction depicted there. The Nevian vessel--the sister-ship, the craft which Costigan had seen in mid-space as it hurtled Earthward in response to Nerado's summons--hung poised in full visibility high above the metropolis. Scornful of the pitiful weapons wielded by man, she hung there, her sinister beauty of line sharply defined against the cloudless sky. From her shining hull there reached down a tenuous but rigid rod of crimson energy; a rod which slowly swept hither and thither as the Nevians searched out the richest deposits of the precious metal for which they had come so far. Iron, once solid, now a viscous red liquid, was sluggishly flowing in an ever-thickening stream up that intangible crimson duct and into the capacious storage tanks of the Nevian raider; and wherever that flaming beam went there went also ruin, destruction and death. Office buildings, skyscrapers towering majestically in their architectural symmetry and beauty, collapsed into heaps of debris as their steel skeletons were abstracted. Deep into the ground the beam bored; flood, fire, and explosion following in its wake as the mazes of underground piping disappeared. And the humanity of the buildings died: instantaneously and painlessly, never knowing what struck them, as the life-bearing iron of their bodies went to swell the Nevian stream. Pittsburgh's defenses had been feeble indeed. A few antiquated railway rifles had hurled their shells upward in futile defiance, and had been quietly absorbed. The district planes of Triplanetary, newly armed with iron-driven ultra-beams, had assembled hurriedly and had attacked the invader in formation, with but little more success. Under the impact of their beams, the stranger's screens had flared white, then poised ship and flying squadron had alike been lost to view in a murkily opaque shroud of crimson flame. The cloud had soon dissolved, and from the place where the planes had been there floated or crashed down a litter of non-ferrous wreckage. And now the cone of space-ships from the Buffalo base of Triplanetary was approaching Pittsburgh hurling itself toward the Nevian plunderer and toward known, gruesome, and hopeless defeat. "Stop them, Rod!" Samms cried. "It's sheer slaughter! They haven't got a thing--they aren't even equipped yet with the iron drive!" "I know it," the commissioner groaned, "and Admiral Barnes knows it as well as we do, but it can't be helped--wait a minute! The Washington cone is reporting. They're as close as the other, and they have the new armament. Philadelphia is close behind, and so is New York. Now perhaps we can do something!" The Buffalo flotilla slowed and stopped, and in a matter of minutes the detachments from the other bases arrived. The cone was formed and, iron-driven vessels in the van, the old-type craft far in the rear, it bore down upon the Nevian, vomiting from its hollow front a solid cylinder of annihilation. Once more the screens of the Nevian flared into brilliance, once more the red cloud of destruction was flung abroad. But these vessels were not entirely defenseless. Their iron-driven ultra-generators threw out screens of the Nevians' own formulae, screens of prodigious power to which the energies of the amphibians clung and at which they clawed and tore in baffled, wildly coruscant displays of power unthinkable. For minutes the furious conflict raged, while the inconceivable energy being dissipated by those straining screens hurled itself in terribly destructive bolts of lightning upon the city far beneath. No battle of such incredible violence could long endure. Triplanetary's ships were already exerting their utmost power, while the Nevians, contemptuous of Solarian science, had not yet uncovered their full strength. Thus the last desperate effort of mankind was proved futile as the invaders forced their beams deeper and deeper into the overloaded defensive screens of the war-vessels; and one by one the supposedly invincible space-ships of humanity dropped in horribly dismembered ruin upon the ruins of what had once been Pittsburgh. CHAPTER 15 SPECIMENS Only too well founded was Costigan's conviction that the submarine of the deep-sea fishes had not been able to prevail against Nerado's formidable engines of destruction. For days the Nevian lifeboat with its three Terrestrial passengers hurtled through the interstellar void without incident, but finally the operative's fears were realized--his far flung detector screens reacted; upon his observation plate they could see Nerado's mammoth space-ship, in full pursuit of its fleeing lifeboat! "On your toes, folks--it won't be long now!" Costigan called, and Bradley and Clio hurried into the tiny control room. Armor donned and tested, the three Terrestrials stared into the observation plates, watching the rapidly-enlarging picture of the Nevian space-ship. Nerado had traced them and was following them, and such was the power of the great vessel that the now inconceivable velocity of the lifeboat was the veriest crawl in comparison to that of the pursuing cruiser. "And we've hardly started to cover the distance back to Tellus. Of course you couldn't get in touch with anybody yet?" Bradley stated, rather than asked. "I kept trying, of course, until they blanketed my wave, but all negative. Thousands of times too far for my transmitter. Our only hope of reaching anybody was the mighty slim chance that our super-ship might be prowling around out here already, but it isn't, of course. Here they are!" Reaching out to the control panel, Costigan viciously shot out against the great vessel wave after wave of lethal vibrations, under whose fiercely clinging impacts the Nevian defensive screens flared white; but, strangely enough, their own screens did not radiate. As if contemptuous of any weapons the lifeboat might wield, the mother ship simply defended herself from the attacking beams, in much the same fashion as a wildcat mother wards off the claws and teeth of her spitting, snarling kitten who is resenting a touch of needed maternal discipline. "They probably wouldn't fight us, at that," Clio first understood the situation. "This is their own lifeboat, and they want us alive, you know." "There's one more thing we can try--hang on!" Costigan snapped, as he released his screens and threw all his power into one enormous pressor beam. The three were thrown to the floor and held there by an awful weight as the lifeboat darted away at the stupendous acceleration of the beam's reaction against the unimaginable mass of the Nevian sky-rover; but the flight was of short duration. Along that pressor beam there crept a dull red rod of energy, which surrounded the fugitive shell and brought it slowly to a halt. Furiously then Costigan set and reset his controls, launching his every driving force and his every weapon, but no beam could penetrate that red murk, and the lifeboat remained motionless in space. No, not motionless--the red rod was shortening, drawing the truant craft back toward the launching port from which she had so hopefully emerged a few days before. Back and back it was drawn; Costigan's utmost efforts futile to affect by a hair's breadth its line of motion. Through the open port the boat slipped neatly, and as it came to a halt in its original position within the multi-layered skin of the monster, the prisoners heard the heavy doors clang shut behind them, one after another. And then sheets of blue fire snapped and crackled about the three suits of Triplanetary armor--the two large human figures and the small ones were outlined starkly in blinding blue flame. "That's the first thing that has come off according to schedule." Costigan laughed, a short, fierce bark. "That is their paralyzing ray, we've got it stopped cold, and we've each got enough iron to hold it forever." "But it looks as though the best we can do is a stalemate," Bradley argued. "Even if they can't paralyze us, we can't hurt them, and we are heading back for Nevia." "I think Nerado will come in for a conference, and we'll be able to make terms of some kind. He must know what these Lewistons will do, and he knows that we'll get a chance to use them, some way or other, before he gets to us again," Costigan asserted, confidently--but again he was wrong. The door opened, and through it there waddled, rolled, or crawled a metal-clad monstrosity--a thing with wheels, legs and writhing tentacles of jointed bronze; a thing possessed of defensive screens sufficiently powerful to absorb the full blast of the Triplanetary projectors without effort. Three brazen tentacles reached out through the ravening beams of the Lewistons, smashed them to bits, and wrapped themselves in unbreakable shackles about the armored forms of the three human beings. Through the door the machine or creature carried its helpless load, and out into and along a main corridor. And soon the three Terrestrials, without arms, without armor, and almost without clothing, were standing in the control room, again facing the calm and unmoved Nerado. To the surprise of the impetuous Costigan, the Nevian commander was entirely without rancor. "The desire for freedom is perhaps common to all forms of animate life," he commented, through the transformer. "As I told you before, however, you are specimens to be studied by the College of Science, and you shall be so studied in spite of anything you may do. Resign yourselves to that." "Well, say that we don't try to make any more trouble; that we cooperate in the examination and give you whatever information we can," Costigan suggested. "Then you will probably be willing to give us a ship and let us go back to our own world?" "You will not be allowed to cause any more trouble," the amphibian declared, coldly. "Your cooperation will not be required. We will take from you whatever knowledge and information we wish. In all probability you will never be allowed to return to your own system, because as specimens you are too unique to lose. But enough of this idle chatter--take them back to their quarters!" Back to their three inter-communicating rooms the prisoners were led under heavy guard; and, true to his word, Nerado made certain that they had no more opportunities to escape. To Nevia the space-ship sped without incident, and in manacles the Terrestrials were taken to the College of Science, there to undergo the physical and psychical examinations which Nerado had promised them. Nor had the Nevian scientist-captain erred in stating that their cooperation was neither needed nor desired. Furious but impotent, the human beings were studied in laboratory after laboratory by the coldly analytical, unfeeling scientists of Nevia, to whom they were nothing more or less than specimens; and in full measure they came to know what it meant to play the part of an unknown, lowly organism in a biological research. They were photographed, externally and internally. Every bone, muscle, organ, vessel, and nerve was studied and charted. Every reflex and reaction was noted and discussed. Meters registered every impulse and recorders filmed every thought, every idea, and every sensation. Endlessly, day after day, the nerve-wracking torture went on, until the frantic subjects could bear no more. White-faced and shaking, Clio finally screamed wildly, hysterically, as she was being strapped down upon a laboratory bench; and at the sound Costigan's nerves, already at the breaking point, gave way in an outburst of berserk fury. The man's struggles and the girl's shrieks were alike futile, but the surprised Nevians, after a consultation, decided to give the specimens a vacation. To that end they were installed, together with their Earthly belongings, in a three-roomed structure of transparent metal, floating in the large central lagoon of the city. There they were left undisturbed for a time--undisturbed, that is, except by the continuous gaze of the crowd of hundreds of amphibians which constantly surrounded the floating cottage. "First we're bugs under a microscope," Bradley growled, "then we're goldfish in a bowl. I don't know that...." He broke off as two of their jailers entered the room. Without a word into the transformers they seized Bradley and Clio. As those tentacular arms stretched out toward the girl, Costigan leaped. A vain attempt. In midair the paralyzing beam of the Nevians touched him and he crashed heavily to the crystal floor; and from that floor he looked on in helpless, raging fury while his sweetheart and his captain were carried out of their prison and into a waiting submarine. CHAPTER 16 SUPER-SHIP IN ACTION Doctor Frederick Rodebush sat at the control panel of Triplanetary's newly reconstructed super-ship; one finger poised over a small black button. Facing the unknown though the physicist was, yet he grinned whimsically at his friend. "Something, whatever it is, is about to occur. The _Boise_ is about to take off. Ready, Cleve?" "Shoot!" laconically. Cleveland also was constitutionally unable to voice his deeper sentiments in time of stress. Rodebush drove his finger down, and instantly over both men there came a sensation akin to a tremendously intensified vertigo; but a vertigo as far beyond the space-sickness of weightlessness as that horrible sensation is beyond mere Earthly dizziness. The pilot reached weakly toward the board, but his leaden hands refused utterly to obey the dictates of his reeling mind. His brain was a writhing, convulsive mass of torment indescribable; expanding, exploding, swelling out with an unendurable pressure against its confining skull. Fiery spirals, laced with streaming, darting lances of black and green, flamed inside his bursting eyeballs. The Universe spun and whirled in mad gyrations about him as he reeled drunkenly to his feet, staggering and sprawling. He fell. He realized that he was falling, yet he could not fall! Thrashing wildly, grotesquely in agony, he struggled madly and blindly across the room, directly toward the thick steel wall. The tip of one hair of his unruly thatch touched the wall, and the slim length of that single hair did not even bend as its slight strength brought to an instant halt the hundred-and-eighty-odd pounds of mass--mass now entirely without inertia--that was his body. But finally the sheer brain power of the man began to triumph over his physical torture. By force of will he compelled his grasping hands to seize a life-line, almost meaningless to his dazed intelligence; and through that nightmare incarnate of hellish torture he fought his way back to the control board. Hooking one leg around a standard, he made a seemingly enormous effort and depressed a red button; then fell flat upon the floor, weakly but in a wave of relief and thankfulness, as his racked body felt again the wonted phenomena of weight and of inertia. White, trembling, frankly and openly sick, the two men stared at each other in half-amazed joy. "It worked," Cleveland smiled wanly as he recovered sufficiently to speak, then leaped to his feet. "Snap it up, Fred! We must be falling fast--we'll be wrecked when we hit!" "We're not falling anywhere." Rodebush, foreboding in his eyes, walked over to the main observation plate and scanned the heavens. "However, it's not as bad as I was afraid it might be. I can still recognize a few of the constellations, even though they are all pretty badly distorted. That means that we can't be more than a couple of light-years or so away from the Solar System. Of course, since we had so little thrust on, practically all of our energy and time was taken up in getting out of the atmosphere. Even at that, though, it's a good thing that space isn't a perfect vacuum, or we would have been clear out of the Universe by this time." "Huh? What are you talking about? Impossible! Where are we, anyway? Then we must be making mil.... Oh, I see!" Cleveland exclaimed, somewhat incoherently, as he also stared into the plate. "Right. We aren't traveling at all--_now_." Rodebush replied. "We are perfectly stationary relative to Tellus, since we made that hop without inertia. We must have attained one hundred percent neutralization--one hundred point oh oh oh oh oh--which we didn't quite expect. Therefore we must have stopped instantaneously when our inertia was restored. Incidentally, that original, pre-inertialess velocity 'intrinsic' velocity, suppose we could call it?--is going to introduce plenty of complications, but we don't have to worry about them right now. Also, it isn't _where_ we are that is worrying me--we can get fixes on enough recognizable stars to find that out in short order--it's _when_." "That's right, too. Say we're two light years away from home. You think maybe that we're two years older now than we were ten minutes ago? Interesting no end--and distinctly possible. Maybe even probable--I wouldn't know--there's been a lot of discussion on that theory, and as far as I know we're the first ones who ever had a chance to prove or disprove it absolutely. Let's snap back to Tellus and find out, right now." "We'll do that, after a little more experimenting. You see, I had no intention of giving us such a long push. I was going to throw the switches in and out, but you know what happened. However, there's one good thing about it--it's worth two years of anybody's life to settle that relativity-time thing definitely, one way or the other." "I'll say it is. But say, we've got a lot of power on our ultra-wave; enough to reach Tellus, I think. Let's locate the sun and get in touch with Samms." "Let's work on these controls a little first, so we'll have something to report. Out here's a fine place to try the ship out--nothing in the way." "All right with me. But I _would_ like to find out whether I'm two years older than I think I am, or not!" Then for four hours they put the great super-ship through her paces, just as test-pilots check up on every detail of performance of an airplane of new and radical design. They found that the horrible vertigo could be endured, perhaps in time even conquered as space-sickness could be conquered, by a strong will in a sound body; and that their new conveyance had possibilities of which even Rodebush had never dreamed. Finally, their most pressing questions answered, they turned their most powerful ultra-beam communicator toward the yellowish star which they knew to be Old Sol. "Samms ... Samms." Cleveland spoke slowly and distinctly. "Rodebush and Cleveland reporting from the 'Space-Eating Wampus', now directly in line with Beta Ursae Minoris from the sun, distance about two point two light years. It will take six bands of tubes on your tightest beam, LSV3, to reach us. Barring a touch of an unusually severe type of space-sickness, everything worked beautifully; even better than either of us dared to believe. There's something we want to know right away--have we been gone four hours and some odd minutes, or better than two years?" He turned to Rodebush and went on: "Nobody knows how fast this ultra-wave travels, but if it goes as fast as we did coming out it's no creeper. I'll give him about thirty minutes, then shoot in another...." But, interrupting Cleveland's remark, the care-ravaged face of Virgil Samms appeared sharp and clear upon the plate and his voice snapped curtly from the speaker. "Thank God you're alive, and twice that that the ship works!" he exclaimed. "You've been gone four hours, eleven minutes, and forty one seconds, but never mind about abstract theorizing. Get back here, to Pittsburgh, as fast as you can drive. That Nevian vessel or another one like her is mopping up the city, and has destroyed half the Fleet already!" "We'll be back there in nine minutes!" Rodebush snapped into the transmitter. "Two to get from here to atmosphere, four from Atmosphere down to the Hill, and three to cool off. Notify the full four-shift crew--everybody we've picked out. Don't need anybody else. Ship, equipment, and armament are _ready_!" "Two minutes to atmosphere? Think you can do it?" Cleveland asked, as Rodebush flipped off the power and leaped to the control panel. "You might, though, at that." "We could do it in less than that if we had to. We used scarcely any power at all coming out, and I'm going to use quite a lot going back," the physicist explained rapidly, as he set the dials which would determine their flashing course. The master switches were thrown and the pangs of inertialessness again assailed them--but weaker far this time than ever before--and upon their lookout plates they beheld a spectacle never before seen by eye of man. For the ultra-beam, with its heterodyned vision, is not distorted by any velocity yet attained, as are the ether-borne rays of light. Converted into light only at the plate, it showed their progress as truly as though they had been traveling at a pace to be expressed in the ordinary terms of miles per hour. The yellow star that was the sun detached itself from the firmament and leaped toward them, swelling visibly, momently, into a blinding monster of incandescence. And toward them also flung the Earth, enlarging with such indescribable rapidity that Cleveland protested involuntarily, in spite of his knowledge of the peculiar mechanics of the vessel in which they were. "Hold it, Fred, hold it! Way 'nuff!" he exclaimed. "I'm using only a few thousand kilograms of thrust, and I'll cut that as soon as we touch atmosphere, long before she can even begin to heat," Rodebush explained. "Looks bad, but we'll stop without a jar." "What would you call this kind of flight, Fritz?" Cleveland asked. "What's the opposite of 'inert'?" "Damned if I know. Isn't any, I guess. Light? No ... how would 'free' be?" "Not bad. 'Free' and 'Inert' maneuvering, eh? O.K." Flying "free", then, the super-ship came from her practically infinite velocity to an almost instantaneous halt in the outermost, most tenuous layer of the Earth's atmosphere. Her halt was but momentary. Inertia restored, she dropped at a sharp angle downward. More than dropped; she was forced downward by one full battery of projectors; projectors driven by iron-powered generators. Soon they were over the Hill, whose violet screens went down at a word. Flaming a dazzling white from the friction of the atmosphere through which she had torn her way, the _Boise_ slowed abruptly as she neared the ground, plunging toward the surface of the small but deep artificial lake below the Hill's steel apron. Into the cold waters the space-ship dove, and even before they could close over her, furious geysers of steam and boiling water erupted as the stubborn alloy gave up its heat to the cooling liquid. Endlessly the three necessary minutes dragged their slow way into time, but finally the water ceased boiling and Rodebush tore the ship from the lake and hurled her into the gaping doorway of her dock. The massive doors of the airlocks opened, and while the full crew of picked men hurried aboard with their personal equipment, Samms talked earnestly to the two scientists in the control room. "... and about half the fleet is still in the air. They aren't attacking; they are just trying to keep her from doing much more damage until you can get there. How about your take-off? We can't launch you again--the tracks are gone--but you handled her easily enough coming in?" "That was all my fault," Rodebush admitted. "I had no idea that the fields would extend beyond the hull. We'll take her out on the projectors this time, though, the same as we brought her in--she handles like a bicycle. The projector blast tears things up a little, but nothing serious. Have you got that Pittsburgh beam for me yet? We're about ready to go." "Here it is, Doctor Rodebush," came Norma's voice, and upon the screen there flashed into being the view of the events transpiring above that doomed city. "The dock is empty and sealed against your blast." "Goodbye, and power to your tubes!" came Samms' ringing voice. As the words were being spoken mighty blasts of power raved from the driving projectors, and the immense mass of the super-ship shot out through the portals and upward into the stratosphere. Through the tenuous atmosphere the huge globe rushed with ever-mounting speed, and while the hope of Triplanetary drove eastward Rodebush studied the ever-changing scene of battle upon his plate and issued detailed instructions to the highly trained specialists manning every offensive and defensive weapon. But the Nevians did not wait to join battle until the newcomers arrived. Their detectors were sensitive--operative over untold thousands of miles--and the ultra-screen of the Hill had already been noted by the invaders as the Earth's only possible source of trouble. Thus the departure of the _Boise_ had not gone unnoticed, and the fact that not even with his most penetrant rays could he see into her interior had already given the Nevian commander some slight concern. Therefore as soon as it was determined that the great globe was being directed toward Pittsburgh the fish-shaped cruiser of the void went into action. High in the stratosphere, speeding eastward, the immense mass of the _Boise_ slowed abruptly, although no projector had slackened its effort. Cleveland, eyes upon interferometer grating and spectrophotometer charts, fingers flying over calculator keys, grinned as he turned toward Rodebush. "Just as you thought, Skipper; an ultra-band pusher. C4V63L29. Shall I give him a little pull?" "Not yet; let's feel him out a little before we force a close-up. We've got plenty of mass. See what he does when I put full push on the projectors." As the full power of the Tellurian vessel was applied the Nevian was forced backward, away from the threatened city, against the full drive of her every projector. Soon, however, the advance was again checked, and both scientists read the reason upon their plates. The enemy had put down reenforcing rods of tremendous power. Three compression members spread out fanwise behind her, bracing her against a low mountainside, while one huge tractor beam was thrust directly downward, holding in an unbreakable grip a cylinder of earth extending deep down into bedrock. "Two can play at that game!" and Rodebush drove down similar beams, and forward-reaching tractors as well. "Strap yourselves in solid, everybody!" he sounded in general warning. "Something is going to give way somewhere soon, and when it does we'll get a jolt!" And the promised jolt did indeed come soon. Prodigiously massive and powerful as the Nevian was, the _Boise_ was even more massive and more powerful; and as the already enormous energy feeding the tractors, pushers, and projectors was raised to its inconceivable maximum, the vessel of the enemy was hurled upward, backward; and that of Earth shot ahead with a bounding leap that threatened to strain even her mighty members. The Nevian anchor rods had not broken; they had simply pulled up the vast cylinders of solid rock that had formed their anchorages. "Grab him now!" Rodebush yelled, and even while an avalanche of falling rock was burying the countryside Cleveland snapped a tractor ray upon the flying fish and pulled tentatively. Nor did the Nevian now seem averse to coming to grips. The two warring super-dreadnoughts darted toward each other, and from the invader there flooded out the dread crimson opacity which had theretofore meant the doom of all things Solarian. Flooded out and engulfed the immense globe of humanity's hope in its spreading cloud of redly impenetrable murk. But not for long. Triplanetary's super-ship boasted no ordinary Terrestrial defense, but was sheathed in screen after screen of ultra-vibrations: imponderable walls, it is true, but barriers impenetrable to any unfriendly wave. To the outer screen the red veil of the Nevians clung tenaciously, licking greedily at every square inch of the shielding sphere of force, but unable to find an opening through which to feed upon the steel of the _Boise's_ armor. "Get back--'way back! Go back and help Pittsburgh!" Rodebush drove an ultra communicator beam through the murk to the instruments of the Terrestrial admiral; for the surviving warships of the fleet--its most powerful units--were hurling themselves forward, to plunge into that red destruction. "None of you will last a second in this red field. And watch out for a violet field pretty soon--it'll be worse than this. We can handle them alone, I think; but if we can't, there's nothing in the System that can help us!" And now the hitherto passive screen of the super-ship became active. At first invisible, it began to glow in fierce violet light, and as the glow brightened to unbearable intensity the entire spherical shield began to increase in size. Driven outward from the super-ship as a center, its advancing surface of seething energy consumed the crimson murk as a billow of blast-furnace heat consumes the cloud of snowflakes in the air above its cupola. Nor was the red death-mist all that was consumed. Between that ravening surface and the armor skin of the _Boise_ there was nothing. No debris, no atmosphere, no vapor, no single atom of material substance--the first time in Terrestrial experience that an absolute vacuum had ever been attained! Stubbornly contesting every foot of way lost, the Nevian fog retreated before the violet sphere of nothingness. Back and back it fell, disappearing altogether from all space as the violet tide engulfed the enemy vessel; but the flying fish did not disappear. Her triple screens flashed into furiously incandescent splendor and she entered unscathed that vacuous sphere, which collapsed instantly into an enormously elongated ellipsoid, at each focus a madly warring ship of space. Then in that tube of vacuum was waged a spectacular duel of ultra-weapons--weapons impotent in air, but deadly in empty space. Beams, rays, and rods of Titanic power smote crackingly against ultra-screens equally capable. Time after time each contestant ran the gamut of the spectrum with his every available ultra-force, only to find all channels closed. For minutes the terrible struggle went on, then: "Cooper, Adlington, Spencer, Dutton!" Rodebush called into his transmitter. "Ready? Can't touch him on the ultra, so I'm going onto the macro-bands. Give him everything you have as soon as I collapse the violet. Go!" At the word the violet barrier went down, and with a crash as of a disrupting Universe the atmosphere rushed into the void. And through the hurricane there shot out the deadliest material weapons of Triplanetary. Torpedoes--non-ferrous, ultra-screened, beam-dirigible torpedoes charged with the most effective forms of material destruction known to man. Cooper hurled his canisters of penetrating gas, Adlington his allotropic-iron atomic bombs, Spencer his indestructible armor-piercing projectiles, and Dutton his shatterable flasks of the quintessence of corrosion--a sticky, tacky liquid of such dire potency that only one rare Solarian element could contain it. Ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred were thrown as fast as the automatic machinery could launch them; and the Nevians found them adversaries not to be despised. Size for size, their screens were quite as capable as those of the _Boise_. The Nevians' destructive rays glanced harmlessly from their shields, and the Nevians' elaborate screens, neutralized at impact by those of the torpedoes, were impotent to impede their progress. Each projectile must needs be caught and crushed individually by beams of the most prodigious power; and while one was being annihilated dozens more were rushing to the attack. Then while the twisting, dodging invader was busiest with the tiny but relentless destroyers, Rodebush launched his heaviest weapon. The macro-beams! Prodigious streamers of bluish-green flame which tore savagely through course after course of Nevian screen! Malevolent fangs, driven with such power and velocity that they were biting into the very walls of the enemy vessel before the amphibians knew that their defensive shells of force had been punctured! And the emergency screens of the invaders were equally futile. Course after course was sent out, only to flare viciously through the spectrum and to go black. Outfought at every turn, the now frantically dodging Nevian leaped away in headlong flight, only to be brought to a staggering, crashing halt as Cleveland nailed her with a tractor beam. But the Tellurians were to learn that the Nevians held in reserve a means of retreat. The tractor snapped--sheared off squarely by a sizzling plane of force--and the fish-shaped cruiser faded from Cleveland's sight, just as the _Boise_ had disappeared from the communicator plates of Radio Center, back in the Hill, when she was launched. But though the plates in the control room could not hold the Nevian, she did not vanish beyond the ken of Randolph, now Communications Officer in the super-ship. For, warned and humiliated by his losing one speeding vessel from his plates in Radio Center, he was now ready for any emergency. Therefore as the Nevian fled Randolph's spy-ray held her, automatically behind it as there was the full output of twelve special banks of iron-driven power tubes; and thus it was that the vengeful Earthmen flashed immediately along the Nevians' line of flight. Inertialess now, pausing briefly from time to time to enable the crew to accustom themselves to the new sensations, Triplanetary's super-ship pursued the invader; hurtling through the void with a velocity unthinkable. "He was easier to take than I thought he would be," Cleveland grunted, staring into the plate. "I thought he had more stuff, too," Rodebush assented, "but I guess Costigan got almost everything they had. If so, with all our own stuff and most of theirs besides, we should be able to take them. Conway's data indicated that they have only partial neutralization of inertia--if it's one hundred percent we'll never catch them--but it isn't--there they are!" "And this time I'm going to hold her or burn out all our generators trying," Cleveland declared, grimly. "Are you fellows down there able to handle yourselves yet? Fine! Start throwing out your cans!" Space-hardened veterans, all, the other Tellurian officers had fought off the horrible nausea of inertialessness, just as Rodebush and Cleveland had done. Again the ravening green macro-beams tore at the flying cruiser, again the mighty frames of the two space-ships shuddered sickeningly as Cleveland clamped on his tractor rod, again the highly dirigible torpedoes dashed out with their freights of death and destruction. And again the Nevian shear-plane of force slashed at the _Boise's_ tractor beam; but this time the mighty puller did not give way. Sparkling and spitting high-tension sparks, the plane bit deeply into the stubborn rod of energy. Brighter, thicker, and longer grew the discharges as the gnawing plane drew more and more power; but in direct ratio to that power the rod grew larger, denser, and ever harder to cut. More and more vivid became the pyrotechnic display, until suddenly the entire tractor rod disappeared. At the same instant a blast of intolerable flame erupted from the _Boise's_ flank and the whole enormous fabric of her shook and quivered under the force of a terrific detonation. "Randolph! I don't see them! Are they attacking or running?" Rodebush demanded. He was the first to realize what had happened. "Running--fast!" "Just as well, perhaps, but get their line. Adlington!" "Here!" "Good! Was afraid you were gone--that was one of your bombs, wasn't it?" "Yes. Well launched, just inside the screens. Don't see how it could have detonated unless something hot and hard struck it in the tube; it would need about that much time to explode. Good thing it didn't go off any sooner, or none of us would have been here. As it is, Area Six is pretty well done in, but the bulkheads held the damage to Six. What happened?" "We don't know, exactly. Both generators on the tractor beam went out. At first, I thought that was all, but my neutralizers are dead and I don't know what else. When the G-4's went out the fusion must have shorted the neutralizers. They would make a mess; it must have burned a hole down into number six tube. Cleveland and I will come down, and we'll all look around." Donning space-suits, the scientists let themselves into the damaged compartment through the emergency airlocks, and what a sight they saw! Both outer and inner walls of alloy armor had been blown away by the awful force of the explosion. Jagged plates hung awry; bent, twisted and broken. The great torpedo tube, with all its intricate automatic machinery, had been driven violently backward and lay piled in hideous confusion against the backing bulkheads. Practically nothing remained whole in the entire compartment. "Nothing much we can do here," Rodebush said finally, through his transmitter. "Let's go see what number four generator looks like." That room, although not affected by the explosion from without, had been quite as effectively wrecked from within. It was still stiflingly hot; its air was still reeking with the stench of burning lubricant, insulation, and metal; its floor was half covered by a semi-molten mass of what had once been vital machinery. For with the burning out of the generator bars the energy of the disintegrating allotropic iron had had no outlet, and had built up until it had broken through its insulation and in an irresistible flood of power had torn through all obstacles in its path to neutralization. "Hm ... m ... m. Should have had an automatic shut-off--one detail we overlooked," Rodebush mused. "The electricians can rebuild this stuff here, though--that hole in the hull is something else again." "I'll say it's something else," the grizzled Chief Engineer agreed. "She's lost all her spherical strength--anchoring a tractor with this ship now would turn her inside out. Back to the nearest Triplanetary shop for us, I would say." "Come again, Chief!" Cleveland advised the engineer. "None of us would live long enough to get there. We can't travel inertialess until the repairs are made, so if they can't be made without very much traveling, it's just too bad." "I don't see how we could support our jacks ..." the engineer paused, then went on: "If you can't give me Mars or Tellus, how about some other planet? I don't care about atmosphere, or about anything but mass. I can stiffen her up in three or four days if I can sit down on something heavy enough to hold our jacks and presses; but if we have to rig up space-cradles around the ship herself it'll take a long time--months, probably. Haven't got a spare planet on hand, have you?" "We might have, at that," Rodebush made surprising answer. "A couple of seconds before we engaged we were heading toward a sun with at least two planets. I was just getting ready to dodge them when we cut the neutralizers, so they should be fairly close somewhere--yes, there's the sun, right over there. Rather pale and small; but it's close, comparatively speaking. We'll go back up into the control room and find out about the planets." The strange sun was found to have three large and easily located children, and observation showed that the crippled space-ship could reach the nearest of these in about five days. Power was therefore fed to the driving projectors, and each scientist, electrician, and mechanic bent to the task of repairing the ruined generators; rebuilding them to handle any load which the converters could possibly put upon them. For two days the _Boise_ drove on, then her acceleration was reversed, and finally a landing was effected upon the forbidding, rocky soil of the strange world. It was larger than the Earth, and of a somewhat stronger gravitation. Although its climate was bitterly cold, even in its short daytime, it supported a luxuriant but outlandish vegetation. Its atmosphere, while rich enough in oxygen and not really poisonous, was so rank with indescribably fetid vapors as to be scarcely breatheable. But these things bothered the engineers not at all. Paying no attention to temperature or to scenery and without waiting for chemical analysis of the air, the space-suited mechanics leaped to their tasks; and in only a little more time than had been mentioned by the chief engineer the hull and giant frame of the super-ship were as staunch as of yore. "All right, Skipper!" came finally the welcome word. "You might try her out with a fast hop around this world before you shove off in earnest." Under the fierce blast of her projectors the vessel leaped ahead, and time after time, as Rodebush hurled her mass upon tractor beam or pressor, the engineers sought in vain for any sign of weakness. The strange planet half girdled and the severest tests passed flawlessly, Rodebush reached for his neutralizer switches. Reached and paused, dumbfounded, for a brilliant purple light had sprung into being upon his panel and a bell rang out insistently. "What the hell!" Rodebush shot out an exploring beam along the detector line and gasped. He stared, mouth open, then yelled: "_Roger_ is here, rebuilding his planetoid! STATIONS ALL!" CHAPTER 17 ROGER CARRIES ON As has been intimated, gray Roger did not perish in the floods of Nevian energy which destroyed his planetoid. While those terrific streamers of force emanating from the crimson obscurity surrounding the amphibians' space-ship were driving into his defensive screens he sat impassive and immobile at his desk, his hard gray eyes moving methodically over his instruments and recorders. When the clinging mantle of force changed from deep red into shorter and even shorter wave-lengths, however: "Baxter, Hartkopf, Chatelier, Anandrusung, Penrose, Nishimura, Mirsky ..." he called off a list of names. "Report to me here at once!" "The planetoid is lost," he informed his select group of scientists when they had assembled, "and we must abandon it in exactly fifteen minutes, which will be the time required for the robots to fill this first section with our most necessary machinery and instruments. Pack each of you one box of the things he most wishes to take with him, and report back here in not more than thirteen minutes. Say nothing to anyone else." They filed out calmly, and as they passed out into the hall Baxter, perhaps a trifle less case-hardened than his fellows, at least voiced a thought for those they were so brutally deserting. "I say, it seems a bit thick to dash off this way and leave the rest of them; but still, I suppose...." "You suppose correctly." Bland and heartless Nishimura filled in the pause. "A small part of the planetoid may be able to escape; which, to me at least, is pleasantly surprising news. It cannot carry all our men and mechanisms, therefore only the most important of both are saved. What would you? For the rest it is simply what you call 'the fortune of war,' no?" "But the beautiful ..." began the amorous Chatelier. "Hush, fool!" snorted Hartkopf. "One word of that to the ear of Roger and you too left behind are. Of such non-essentials the Universe full is, to be collected in times of ease, but in times hard to be disregarded. Und this is a time of _schrecklichkeit_ indeed!" The group broke up, each man going to his own quarters; to meet again in the First Section a minute or so before the zero time. Roger's "office" was now packed so tightly with machinery and supplies that but little room was left for the scientists. The gray monstrosity still sat unmoved behind his dials. "But of what use is it, Roger?" the Russian physicist demanded. "Those waves are of some ultra-band, of a frequency immensely higher than anything heretofore known. Our screens should not have stopped them for an instant. It is a mystery that they have held so long, and certainly this single section will not be permitted to leave the planetoid without being destroyed." "There are many things you do not know, Mirsky," came the cold and level answer. "Our screens, which you think are of your own devising, have several improvements of my own in the formulae, and would hold forever had I the power to drive them. The screens of this section, being smaller, can be held as long as will be found necessary." "Power!" the dumbfounded Russian exclaimed. "Why, we have almost infinite power--unlimited--sufficient for a lifetime of high expenditure!" But Roger made no reply, for the time of departure was at hand. He pressed down a tiny lever, and a mechanism in the power room threw in the gigantic plunger switches which launched against the Nevians the stupendous beam which so upset the complacence of Nerado the amphibian--the beam into which was poured recklessly every resource of power afforded by the planetoid, careless alike of burnout and of exhaustion. Then, while all of the attention of the Nevians and practically all of their maximum possible power output was being devoted to the neutralization of that last desperate thrust, the metal wall of the planetoid opened and the First Section shot out into space. Full-driven as they were, Roger's screens flared white as he drove through the temporarily lessened attack of the Nevians; but in their preoccupation the amphibians did not notice the additional disturbance and the section tore on, unobserved and undetected. Far out in space, Roger raised his eyes from the instrument panel and continued the conversation as though it had not been interrupted. "Everything is relative, Mirsky, and you have misused gravely the term 'unlimited.' Our power was, and is, very definitely limited. True, it then seemed ample for our needs, and is far superior to that possessed by the inhabitants of any solar system with which I am familiar; but the beings behind that red screen, whoever they are, have sources of power as far above ours as ours are above those of the Solarians." "How do you know?" "That power, what is it?" "We have, then, the analyses of those fields recorded!" came simultaneous questions and exclamations. "Their source of power is the intra-atomic energy of iron. Complete; not the partial liberation incidental to the nuclear fission of such unstable isotopes as those of thorium, uranium, plutonium, and so on. Therefore much remains to be done before I can proceed with my plan--I must have the most powerful structure in the macrocosmic universe." Roger thought for minutes, nor did any one of his minions break the silence. Gharlane of Eddore did not have to wonder why such incredible advancement could have been made without his knowledge: after the fact, he knew. He had been and was still being hampered by a mind of power; a mind with which, in due time, he would come to grips. "I now know what to do," he went on presently. "In the light of what I have learned, the losses of time, life, and treasure--even the loss of the planetoid--are completely insignificant." "But what can you do about it?" growled the Russian. "Many things. From the charts of the recorders we can compute their fields of force, and from that point it is only a step to their method of liberating the energy. We shall build robots. They shall build other robots, who shall in turn construct another planetoid; one this time that, wielding the theoretical maximum of power, will be suited to my needs." "And where will you build it? We are marked. Invisibility now is useless. Triplanetary will find us, even if we take up an orbit beyond that of Pluto!" "We have already left your Solarian system far behind. We are going to another system; one far enough removed so that the spy-rays of Triplanetary will never find us, and yet one that we can reach in a reasonable length of time with the energies at our command. Some five days will be required for the journey, however, and our quarters are cramped. Therefore make places for yourselves wherever you can, and lessen the tedium of those days by working upon whatever problems are most pressing in your respective researches." The gray monster fell silent, immersed in what thoughts no one knew, and the scientists set out to obey his orders. Baxter, the British chemist, followed Penrose, the lantern-jawed, saturnine American engineer and inventor, as he made his way to the furthermost cubicle of the section. "I say, Penrose, I'd like to ask you a couple of questions, if you don't mind?" "Go ahead. Ordinarily it's dangerous to be a cackling hen anywhere around _him_, but I don't imagine that he can hear anything here now. His system must be pretty well shot to pieces. You want to know all I know about Roger?" "Exactly so. You have been with him so much longer than I have, you know. In some ways he impresses one as being scarcely human, if you know what I mean. Ridiculous, of course, but of late I have been wondering whether he really _is_ human. He knows too much, about too many things. He seems to be acquainted with many solar systems, to visit which would require lifetimes. Then, too, he has dropped remarks which would imply that he actually saw things that happened long before any living man could possibly have been born. Finally, he looks--well, peculiar--and certainly does not act human. I have been wondering, and have been able to learn nothing about him; as you have said, such talk as this aboard the planetoid was not advisable." "You needn't worry about being paid your price; that's one thing. If we live--and that was part of the agreement, you know--we will get what we sold out for. You will become a belted earl. I have already made millions, and shall make many more. Similarly, Chatelier has had and will have his women, Anandrusung and Nishimura their cherished revenges, Hartkopf his power, and so on." He eyed the other speculatively, then went on: "I might as well spill it all, since I'll never have a better chance and since you should know as much as the rest of us do. You're in the same boat with us and tarred with the same brush. There's a lot of gossip, that may or may not be true, but I know one very startling fact. Here it is. My great-great-grandfather left some notes which, taken in connection with certain things I myself saw on the planetoid, prove beyond question that our Roger went to Harvard University at the same time he did. Roger was a grown man then, and the elder Penrose noted that he was marked, like this," and the American sketched a cabalistic design. "What!" Baxter exclaimed. "An adept of North Polar Jupiter--_then_?" "Yes. That was before the First Jovian War, you know, and it was those medicine-men--really high-caliber scientists--that prolonged that war so...." "But I say, Penrose, that's really a bit thick. When they were wiped out it was proved a lot of hocus-pocus...." "_If_ they were wiped out," Penrose interrupted in turn. "Some of it may have been hocus-pocus, but most of it certainly was not. I'm not asking you to believe anything except that one fact; I'm just telling you the rest of it. But it is also a fact that those adepts knew things and did things that take a lot of explaining. Now for the gossip, none of which is guaranteed. Roger is supposed to be of Tellurian parentage, and the story is that his father was a moon-pirate, his mother a Greek adventuress. When the pirates were chased off the moon they went to Ganymede, you know, and some of them were captured by the Jovians. It seems that Roger was born at an instant of time sacred to the adepts, so they took him on. He worked his way up through the Forbidden Society as all adepts did, by various kinds of murder and job lots of assorted deviltries, until he got clear to the top--the seventy-seventh mystery...." "The secret of eternal youth!" gasped Baxter, awed in spite of himself. "Right, and he stayed Chief Devil, in spite of all the efforts of all his ambitious sub-devils to kill him, until the turning-point of the First Jovian War. He cut away then in a space-ship, and ever since then he has been working--and working hard--on some stupendous plan of his own that nobody else has ever got even an inkling of. That's the story. True or not, it explains a lot of things that no other theory can touch. And now I think you'd better shuffle along; enough of this is a great plenty!" Baxter went to his own cubby, and each man of gray Roger's cold-blooded crew methodically took up his task. True to prediction, in five days a planet loomed beneath them and their vessel settled through a reeking atmosphere toward a rocky and forbidding plain. Then for hours they plunged along, a few thousand feet above the surface of that strange world, while Roger with his analytical detectors sought the most favorable location from which to wrest the materials necessary for his program of construction. It was a world of cold; its sun was distant, pale, and wan. It had monstrous forms of vegetation, of which each branch and member writhed and fought with a grotesque and horrible individual activity. Ever and anon a struggling part broke from its parent plant and darted away in independent existence; leaping upon and consuming or being consumed by a fellow creature equally monstrous. This flora was of a uniform color, a lurid, sickly yellow. In form some of it was fern-like, some cactus-like, some vaguely tree-like; but it was all outrageous, inherently repulsive to all Solarian senses. And no less hideous were the animal-like forms of life which slithered and slunk rapaciously through that fantastic pseudo-vegetation. Snake-like, reptile-like, bat-like, the creatures squirmed, crawled, and flew; each covered with a dankly oozing yellow hide and each motivated by twin common impulses--to kill and insatiably and indiscriminately to devour. Over this reeking wilderness Roger drove his vessel, untouched by its disgusting, its appalling ferocity and horror. "There should be intelligence, of a kind," he mused, and swept the surface of the planet with an exploring beam. "Ah, yes, there is a city, of sorts," and in a few minutes the outlaws were looking down upon a metal-walled city of roundly conical buildings. Inside these structures and between and around them there scuttled formless blobs of matter, one of which Roger brought up into his vessel by means of a tractor. Held immovable by the beam it lay upon the floor, a strangely extensile, amoeba-like, metal-studded mass of leathery substance. Of eyes, ears, limbs, or organs it apparently had none, yet it radiated an intensely hostile aura; a mental effluvium concentrated of rage and of hatred. "Apparently the ruling intelligence of the planet," Roger commented. "Such creatures are useless to us; we can build machines in half the time that would be required for their subjugation and training. Still, it should not be permitted to carry back what it may have learned of us." As he spoke the adept threw the peculiar being out into the air and dispassionately rayed it out of existence. "That thing reminds me of a man I used to know, back in Penobscot." Penrose was as coldly callous as his unfeeling master. "The evenest-tempered man in town--mad all the time!" Eventually Roger found a location which satisfied his requirements of raw materials, and made a landing upon that unfriendly soil. Sweeping beams denuded a great circle of life, and into that circle leaped robots. Robots requiring neither rest nor food, but only lubricants and power; robots insensible alike to that bitter cold and to that noxious atmosphere. But the outlaws were not to win a foothold upon that inimical planet easily, nor were they to hold it without effort. Through the weird vegetation of the circle's bare edge there scuttled and poured along a horde of the metal-studded men--if "men" they might be called--who, ferocity incarnate, rushed the robot line. Mowed down by hundreds, still they came on; willing, it seemed to spend any number of lives in order that one living creature might once touch a robot with one outthrust metallic stud. Whenever that happened there was a flash of lightning, the heavy smoke of burning insulation, grease, and metal, and the robot went down out of control. Recalling his remaining automatons, Roger sent out a shielding screen, against which the defenders of their planet raged in impotent fury. For days they hurled themselves and their every force against that impenetrable barrier, then withdrew: temporarily stopped, but by no means acknowledging defeat. Then while Roger and his cohorts directed affairs from within their comfortable and now sufficiently roomy vessel, there came into being around it an industrial city of metal peopled by metallic and insensate mechanisms. Mines were sunk, furnaces were blown in, smelters belched forth into the already unbearable air their sulphurous fumes, rolling mills and machine shops were built and were equipped; and as fast as new enterprises were completed additional robots were ready to man them. In record time the heavy work of girders, members, and plates was well under way; and shortly thereafter light, deft, multi-fingered mechanisms began to build and to install the prodigious amount of precise machinery required by the vastness of the structure. As soon as he was sure that he would be completely free for a sufficient length of time, Roger-Gharlane assembled, boiled down and concentrated, his every mental force. He probed then, very gently, for whatever it was that had been and was still blocking him. He found it--synchronized with it--and in the instant hurled against it the fiercest thrust possible for his Eddorian mind to generate: a bolt whose twin had slain more than one member of Eddore's Innermost Circle; a bolt whose energies, he had previously felt sure, would slay any living thing save only His Ultimate Supremacy, the All-Highest of Eddore. Now, however, and not completely to his surprise, that blast of force was ineffective; and the instantaneous riposte was of such intensity as to require for its parrying everything that Gharlane had. He parried it, however barely, and directed a thought at his unknown opponent. "You, whoever you may be, have found out that you cannot kill me. No more can I kill you. So be it. Do you still believe that you can keep me from remembering whatever it was that my ancestor was compelled to forget?" "Now that you have obtained a focal point we cannot prevent you from remembering; and merely to hinder you would be pointless. You may remember in peace." Back and back went Gharlane's mind. Centuries ... millenia ... cycles ... eons. The trace grew dim, almost imperceptible, deeply buried beneath layer upon layer of accretions of knowledge, experience, and sensation which no one of many hundreds of his ancestors had even so much as disturbed. But every iota of knowledge that any of his progenitors had ever had was still his. However dim, however deeply buried, however suppressed and camouflaged by inimical force, he could now find it. He found it, and in the instant of its finding it was as though Enphilistor the Arisian spoke directly to him; as though the fused Elders of Arisia tried--vainly now--to erase from his own mind all knowledge of Arisia's existence. The fact that such a race as the Arisians had existed so long ago was bad enough. That the Arisians had been aware throughout all those ages of the Eddorians, and had been able to keep their own existence secret, was worse. The crowning fact that the Arisians had had all this time in which to work unopposed against his own race made even Gharlane's indomitable ego quail. This was _important_. Such minor matters as the wiping out of non-conforming cultures--the extraordinarily rapid growth of which was now explained--must wait. Eddore must revise its thinking completely; the pooled and integrated mind of the Innermost Circle must scrutinize every fact, every implication and connotation, of this new-old knowledge. Should he flash back to Eddore, or should he wait and take the planetoid, with its highly varied and extremely valuable contents? He would wait; a few moments more would be a completely negligible addition to the eons of time which had already elapsed since action should have been begun. The rebuilding of the planetoid, then, went on. Roger had no reason to suspect that there was anything physically dangerous within hundreds of millions of miles. Nevertheless, since he knew that he could no longer depend upon his own mental powers to keep him informed as to all that was going on around him, it was his custom to scan, from time to time, all nearby space by means of ether-borne detectors. Thus it came about that one day, as he sent out his beam, his hard gray eyes grew even harder. "Mirsky! Nishimura! Penrose! Come here!" he ordered, and showed them upon his plate an enormous sphere of steel, its offensive beams flaming viciously. "Is there any doubt whatever in your minds as to the System to which that ship belongs?" "None at all--Solarian," replied the Russian. "To narrow it still further, Triplanetarian. While larger than any I have ever seen before, its construction is unmistakable. They managed to trace us, and are testing out their weapons before attacking. Do we attack or do we run away?" "If Triplanetarian, and it surely is, we attack," coldly. "This one section is armed and powered to defeat Triplanetary's entire navy. We shall take that ship, and shall add its slight resources to our own. And it may even be that they have picked up the three who escaped me ... I have never been balked for long. Yes, we shall take that vessel. And those three sooner or later. Except for the fact that their escape from me is a matter which should be corrected, I care nothing whatever about either Bradley or the woman. Costigan, however, is in a different category ... Costigan _handled_ me...." Diamond-hard eyes glared balefully at the urge of thoughts to a clean and normal mind unthinkable. "To your posts," he ordered. "The machines will continue to function under their automatic controls during the short time it will require to abate this nuisance." "One moment!" A strange voice roared from the speakers. "Consider yourselves under arrest, by order of the Triplanetary Council! Surrender and you shall receive impartial hearing; fight us and you shall never come to trial. From what we have learned of Roger, we do not expect him to surrender, but if any of you other men wish to avoid immediate death, leave your vessel at once. We will come back for you later." "Any of you wishing to leave this vessel have my full permission to do so," Roger announced, disdaining any reply to the challenge of the _Boise_. "Any such, however, will not be allowed inside the planetoid area after the rest of us return from wiping out that patrol. We attack in one minute." "Would not one do better by stopping on?" Baxter, in the quarters of the American, was in doubt as to the most profitable course to pursue. "I should leave immediately if I thought that that ship could win; but I do not fancy that it can, do you?" "That ship? _One_ Triplanetary ship against _us_?" Penrose laughed raucously. "Do as you please. I'd go in a minute if I thought that there was any chance of us losing; but there isn't, so I'm staying. I know which side _my_ bread's buttered on. Those cops are bluffing, that's all. Not bluffing exactly, either, because they'll go through with it as long as they last. Foolish, but it's a way they have--they'll die trying every time instead of running away, even when they know they're licked before they start. They don't use good judgment." "None of you are leaving? Very well, you each know what to do," came Roger's emotionless voice. The stipulated minute having elapsed, he advanced a lever and the outlaw cruiser slid quietly into the air. Toward the poised _Boise_ Roger steered. Within range, he flung out a weapon new-learned and supposedly irresistible to any ferrous thing or creature, the red converter-field of the Nevians. For Roger's analytical detector had stood him in good stead during those frightful minutes in the course of which the planetoid had borne the brunt of Nerado's super-human attack; in such good stead that from the records of those ingenious instruments he and his scientists had been able to reconstruct not only the generators of the attacking forces, but also the screens employed by the amphibians in the neutralization of similar beams. With a vastly inferior armament the smallest of Roger's vessels had defeated the most powerful battleships of Triplanetary; what had he to fear in such a heavy craft as the one he now was driving, one so superlatively armed and powered? It was just as well for his peace of mind that he had no inkling that the harmless-looking sphere he was so blithely attacking was in reality the much-discussed, half-mythical super-ship upon which the Triplanetary Service had been at work so long; nor that its already unprecedented armament had been reenforced, thanks to that hated Costigan, with Roger's own every worthwhile idea, as well as with every weapon and defense known to that arch-Nevian, Nerado! Unknowing and contemptuous, Roger launched his converter field, and instantly found himself fighting for his very life. For from Rodebush at the controls down, the men of the _Boise_ countered with wave after wave and with salvo after salvo of vibratory and material destruction. No thought of mercy for the men of the pirate ship could enter their minds. The outlaws had each been given a chance to surrender, and each had refused it. Refusing, they knew, as the Triplanetarians knew and as all modern readers know, meant that they were staking their lives upon victory. For with modern armaments few indeed are the men who live through the defeat in battle of a war-vessel of space. Roger launched his field of red opacity, but it did not reach even the _Boise's_ screens. All space seemed to explode into violet splendor as Rodebush neutralized it, drove it back with his obliterating zone of force; but even that all-devouring zone could not touch Roger's peculiarly efficient screen. The outlaw vessel stood out, unharmed. Ultra-violet, infra-red, pure heat, infra-sound, solid beams of high-tension, high-frequency stuff in whose paths the most stubborn metals would be volatilized instantly, all iron-driven; every deadly and torturing vibration known was hurled against that screen: but it, too, was iron-driven, and it held. Even the awful force of the macro-beam was dissipated by it--reflected, hurled away on all sides in coruscating torrents of blinding, dazzling energy. Cooper, Adlington, Spencer, and Dutton hurled against it their bombs and torpedoes--and still it held. But Roger's fiercest blasts and heaviest projectiles were equally impotent against the force-shields of the super-ship. The adept, having no liking for a battle upon equal terms, then sought safety in flight, only to be brought to a crashing, stunning halt by a massive tractor beam. "That must be that polycyclic screen that Conway reported on." Cleveland frowned in thought. "I've been doing a lot of work on that, and I think I've calculated an opener for it, Fred, but I'll have to have number ten projector and the whole output of number ten power room. Can you let me play with that much juice for a while? All right, Blake, tune her up to fifty-five thousand--there, hold it! Now, you other fellows, listen! I'm going to try to drill a hole through that screen with a hollow, quasi-solid beam; like a diamond drill cutting out a core. You won't be able to shove anything into the hole from outside the beam, so you'll have to steer your cans out through the central orifice of number ten projector--that'll be cold, since I'm going to use only the outer ring. I don't know how long I'll be able to hold the hole open, though, so shoot them along as fast as you can. Ready? Here goes!" He pressed a series of contacts. Far below, in number ten converter room, massive switches drove home and the enormous mass of the vessel quivered under the terrific reaction of the newly-calculated, semi-material beam of energy that was hurled out, backed by the mightiest of all the mighty converters and generators of Triplanetary's super-dreadnaught. That beam, a pipe-like hollow cylinder of intolerable energy, flashed out, and there was a rending, tearing crash as it struck Roger's hitherto impenetrable wall. Struck and clung, grinding, boring in, while from the raging inferno that marked the circle of contact of cylinder and shield the pirate's screen radiated scintillating torrents of crackling, streaming sparks, lightning like in length and in intensity. Deeper and deeper the gigantic drill was driven. It was through! Pierced Roger's polycyclic screen; exposed the bare metal of Roger's walls! And now, concentrated upon one point, flamed out in seemingly redoubled fury Triplanetary's raging beams--in vain. For even as they could not penetrate the screen, neither could they penetrate the wall of Cleveland's drill, but rebounded from it in the cascaded brilliance of thwarted lightning. "Oh, what a dumb-bell I am!" groaned Cleveland. "Why, oh _why_ didn't I have somebody rig up a secondary SX7 beam on Ten's inner rings? Hop to it, will you, Blake, so that we'll have it in case they are able to stop the cans?" But the pirates could not stop all of Triplanetary's projectiles, now hurrying along inside the pipe as fast as they could be driven. In fact, for a few minutes gray Roger, knowing that he faced the first real defeat of his long life, paid no attention to them at all, nor to any of his useless offensive weapons: he struggled only to break away from the savage grip of the _Boise's_ tractor rod. Futile. He could neither cut nor stretch that inexorably anchoring beam. Then he devoted his every resource to the closing of that unbelievable breach in his shield. Equally futile. His most desperate efforts resulted only in more frenzied displays of incandescence along the curved surface of contact of that penetrant cylinder. And through that terrific conduit came speeding package after package of destruction. Bombs, armor-piercing shells, gas shells of poisonous and corrosive fluids followed each other in close succession. The surviving scientists of the planetoid, expert gunners and ray-men all, destroyed many of the projectiles, but it was not humanly possible to cope with them all. And the breach could not be forced shut against the all but irresistible force of Cleveland's "opener". And with all his power Roger could not shift his vessel's position in the grip of Triplanetary's tractors sufficiently to bring a projector to bear upon the super-ship along the now unprotected axis of that narrow, but deadly tube. Thus it was that the end came soon. A war-head touched steel plating and there ensued a space-wracking explosion of atomic iron. Gaping wide, helpless, with all defenses down, other torpedoes entered the stricken hulk and completed its destruction even before they could be recalled. Atomic bombs literally volatilized most of the pirate vessel; vials of pure corrosion began to dissolve the solid fragments of her substance into dripping corruption. Reeking gasses filled every cranny of circumambient space as what was left of Roger's battle cruiser began the long plunge to the ground. The super-ship followed the wreckage down, and Rodebush sent out an exploring spy-ray. "... resistance was such that it was necessary to employ corrosive, and ship and contents were completely disintegrated," he dictated, a little later, into his vessel's log. "While there were of course no remains recognizable as human, it is certain that Roger and his last eleven men died; since it is clear that the circumstances and conditions were such that no life could possibly have survived." * * * * * It is true that the form of flesh which had been known as Roger was destroyed. The solids and liquids of its substance were resolved into their component molecules or atoms. That which had energized that form of flesh, however, could not be harmed by any physical force, however applied. Therefore that which made Roger what he was; the essence which was Gharlane of Eddore; was actually back upon his native planet even before Rodebush completed his study of what was left of the pirates' vessel. The Innermost Circle met, and for a space of time which would have been very long indeed for any Earthly mind those monstrous being considered as one multi-ply intelligence every newly-exposed phase and facet of the truth. At the end, they knew the Arisians as well as the Arisians knew them. The All-Highest then called a meeting of all the minds of Eddore. "... hence it is clear that these Arisians, while possessing minds of tremendous latent capability, are basically soft, and therefore inefficient," he concluded. "Not weak, mind you, but scrupulous and unrealistic; and it is by taking advantage of these characteristics that we shall ultimately triumph." "A few details, All-Highest, if Your Ultimate Supremacy would deign," a lesser Eddorian requested. "Some of us have not been able to perceive at all clearly the optimum lines of action." "While detailed plans of campaign have not yet been worked out, there will be several main lines of attack. A purely military undertaking will of course be one, but it will not be the most important. Political action, by means of subversive elements and obstructive minorities, will prove much more useful. Most productive of all, however, will be the operations of relatively small but highly organized groups whose functions will be to negate, to tear down and destroy, every bulwark of what the weak and spineless adherents of Civilization consider the finest things in life--love, truth, honor, loyalty, purity, altruism, decency, and so on." "Ah, love ... extremely interesting. Supremacy, this thing they call sex," Gharlane offered. "What a silly, what a meaningless thing it is! I have studied it intensively, but am not yet fully enough informed to submit a complete and conclusive report. I do know, however, that we can and will use it. In our hands, vice will become a potent weapon indeed. Vice ... drugs ... greed ... gambling ... extortion ... blackmail ... lust ... abduction ... assassination ... ah-h-h!" "Exactly. There will be room, and need, for the fullest powers of every Eddorian. Let me caution you all, however, that little or none of this work is to be done by any of us in person. We must work through echelon upon echelon of higher and lower executives and supervisors if we are to control efficiently the activities of the thousands of billions of operators which we must and will have at work. Each echelon of control will be vastly greater in number than the one immediately above it, but correspondingly lower in the individual power of its component personnel. The sphere of activity of each supervisor, however small or great, will be clearly and sharply defined. Rank, from the operators at planetary-population levels up to and including the Eddorian Directorate, will be a linear function of ability. Absolute authority will be delegated. Full responsibility will be assumed. Those who succeed will receive advancement and satisfaction of desire; those who fail will die. "Since the personnel of the lower echelons will be of small value and easy of replacement, it is of little moment whether or not they become involved in reverses affecting the still lower echelons whose activities they direct. The echelon immediately below us of Eddore, however--and incidentally, it is my thought that the Ploorans will best serve as our immediate underlings--must never, under any conditions, allow any hint of any of its real business to become known either to any member of any lower echelon or to any adherent of Civilization. This point is vital; everyone here must realize that only in that way can our own safety remain assured, and must take pains to see to it that any violator of this rule is put instantly to death. "Those of you who are engineers will design ever more powerful mechanisms to use against the Arisians. Psychologists will devise and put into practice new methods and techniques, both to use against the able minds of the Arisians and to control the activities of mentally weaker entities. Each Eddorian, whatever his field or his ability, will be given the task he is best fitted to perform. That is all." * * * * * And upon Arisia, too, while there was no surprise, a general conference was held. While some of the young Watchmen may have been glad that the open conflict for which they had been preparing so long was now about to break, Arisia as a whole was neither glad nor sorry. In the Great Scheme of Things which was the Cosmic All, this whole affair was an infinitesimal incident. It had been foreseen. It had come. Each Arisian would do to the fullest extent of his ability that which the very fact of his being an Arisian would compel him to do. It would pass. "In effect, then, our situation has not really changed," Eukonidor stated, rather than asked, after the Elders had again spread their Visualization for public inspection and discussion. "This killing, it seems, must go on. This stumbling, falling, and rising; this blind groping; this futility; this frustration; this welter of crime, disaster, and bloodshed. Why? It seems to me that it would be much better--cleaner, simpler, faster, more efficient, and involving infinitely less bloodshed and suffering--for us to take now a direct and active part, as the Eddorians have done and will continue to do." "Cleaner, youth, yes; and simpler. Easier; less bloody. It would not, however, be better; or even good; because no end-point would ever be attained. Young civilizations advance only by overcoming obstacles. Each obstacle surmounted, each step of progress made, carries its suffering as well as its reward. We could negate the efforts of any echelon below the Eddorians themselves, it is true. We could so protect and shield each one of our protege races that not a war would be waged and not a law would be broken. But to what end? Further contemplation will show you immature thinkers that in such a case not one of our races would develop into what the presence of the Eddorians has made it necessary for them to become. "From this it follows that we would never be able to overcome Eddore; nor would our conflict with that race remain indefinitely at stalemate. Given sufficient time during which to work against us, they will be able to win. However, if every Arisian follows his line of action as it is laid out in this Visualization, all will be well. Are there any more questions?" "None. The blanks which you may have left can be filled in by a mind of very moderate power." * * * * * "Look here, Fred." Cleveland called attention to the plate, upon which was pictured a horde of the peculiar inhabitants of that ghastly planet, wreaking their frenzied electrical wrath upon everything within the circle bared of native life by Roger's destructive beams. "I was just going to suggest that we clean up the planetoid that Roger started to build, but I see that the local boys and girls are attending to it." "Just as well, perhaps. I would like to stay and study these people a little while, but we must get back onto the trail of the Nevians," and the _Boise_ leaped away into space, toward the line of flight of the amphibians. They reached that line and along it they traveled at full normal blast. As they traveled their detecting receivers and amplifiers were reaching out with their utmost power; ultra-instruments capable of rendering audible any signal originating within many light-years of them, upon any possible communications band. And constantly at least two men, with every sense concentrated in their ears, were listening to those instruments. Listening--straining to distinguish in the deafening roar of background noise from the over-driven tubes any sign of voice or of signal: Listening--while, millions upon millions of miles beyond even the prodigious reach of those ultra-instruments, three human beings were even then sending out into empty space an almost hopeless appeal for the help so desperately needed! CHAPTER 18 THE SPECIMENS ESCAPE Knowing well that conversation with its fellows is one of the greatest needs of any intelligent being, the Nevians had permitted the Terrestrial specimens to retain possession of their ultra-beam communicators. Thus it was that Costigan had been able to keep in touch with his sweetheart and with Bradley. He learned that each had been placed upon exhibition in a different Nevian city; that the three had been separated in response to an insistent popular demand for such a distribution of the peculiar, but highly interesting creatures from a distant solar system. They had not been harmed. In fact, each was visited daily by a specialist, who made sure that his charge was being kept in the pink of condition. As soon as he became aware of this condition of things Costigan became morose. He sat still, drooped, and pined away visibly. He refused to eat, and of the worried specialist he demanded liberty. Then, failing in that as he knew he would fail, he demanded something to _do_. They pointed out to him, reasonably enough, that in such a civilization as theirs there was nothing he could do. They assured him that they would do anything they could to alleviate his mental suffering, but that since he was a museum piece he must see, himself, that he must be kept on display for a short time. Wouldn't he please behave himself and eat, as a reasoning being should? Costigan sulked a little longer, then wavered. Finally he agreed to compromise. He would eat and exercise if they would fit up a laboratory in his apartment, so that he could continue the studies he had begun upon his own native planet. To this they agreed, and thus it came about that one day the following conversation was held: "Clio? Bradley? I've got something to tell you this time. Haven't said anything before, for fear things might not work out, but they did. I went on a hunger strike and made them give me a complete laboratory. As a chemist I'm a damn good electrician; but luckily, with the sea-water they've got here, it's a very simple thing to make...." "Hold on!" snapped Bradley. "Somebody may be listening in on us!" "They aren't. They can't, without my knowing it, and I'll cut off the second anybody tries to synchronize with my beam. To resume--making Vee-Two is a very simple process, and I've got everything around here that's hollow clear full of it...." "How come they let you?" asked Clio. "Oh, they don't know what I'm doing. They watched me for a few days, and all I did was make up and bottle the weirdest messes imaginable. Then I finally managed to separate oxygen and nitrogen, after trying hard all of one day; and when they saw that I didn't know anything about either one of them or what to do with them after I had them, they gave me up in disgust as a plain dumb ape and haven't paid any attention to me since. So I've got me plenty of kilograms of liquid Vee-Two, all ready to touch off. I'm getting out of here in about three minutes and a half, and I'm coming over after you folks, in a new, iron-powered space-speedster that they don't know I know anything about. They've just given it its final tests, and it's the slickest thing you ever saw." "But Conway, dearest, you can't possibly rescue me," Clio's voice broke. "Why, there are thousands of them, all around here. If you can get away, go, dear, but don't...." "I said I was coming after you, and if I get away I'll be there. A good whiff of this stuff will lay out a thousand of them just as easily as it will one. Here's the idea. I've made a gas mask for myself, since I'll be in it where it's thick, but you two won't need any. It's soluble enough in water so that three or four thicknesses of wet cloth over your noses will be enough. I'll tell you when to wet down. We're going to break away or go out trying--there aren't enough amphibians between here and Andromeda to keep us humans cooped up like menagerie animals forever! But here comes my specialist with the keys to the city; time for the overture to start. See you later!" The Nevian physician directed his key tube upon the transparent wall of the chamber and an opening appeared, an opening which vanished as soon as he had stepped through it; Costigan kicked a valve open; and from various innocent tubes there belched forth into the water of the central lagoon and into the air over it a flood of deadly vapor. As the Nevian turned toward the prisoner there was an almost inaudible hiss and a tiny jet of the frightful, outlawed stuff struck his open gills, just below his huge, conical head. He tensed momentarily, twitched convulsively just once, and fell motionless to the floor. And outside, the streams of avidly soluble liquefied gas rushed out into air and into water. It spread, dissolved, and diffused with the extreme mobility which is one of its characteristics; and as it diffused and was borne outward the Nevians in their massed hundreds died. Died not knowing what killed them, not knowing even that they died. Costigan, bitterly resentful of the inhuman treatment accorded the three and fiercely anxious for the success of his plan of escape, held his breath and, grimly alert, watched the amphibians die. When he could see no more motion anywhere he donned his gas-mask, strapped upon his back a large canister of the poison--his capacious pockets were already full of smaller containers--and two savagely exultant sentences escaped him. "I am a poor, ignorant specimen of ape that can be let play with apparatus, am I?" he rasped, as he picked up the key tube of the specialist and opened the door of his prison. "They'll learn now that it ain't safe to judge by the looks of a flea how far he can jump!" He stepped out through the opening into the water, and, burdened as he was, made shift to swim to the nearest ramp. Up it he ran, toward a main corridor. But ahead of him there was wafted a breath of dread Vee-Two, and where that breath went, went also unconsciousness--an unconsciousness which would deepen gradually into permanent oblivion save for the prompt intervention of one who possessed, not only the necessary antidote, but the equally important knowledge of exactly how to use it. Upon the floor of that corridor were strewn Nevians, who had dropped in their tracks. Past or over their bodies Costigan strode, pausing only to direct a jet of lethal vapor into whatever branching corridor or open door caught his eye. He was going to the intake of the city's ventilation plant, and no unmasked creature dependent for life upon oxygen could bar his path. He reached the intake, tore the canister from his back, and released its full, vast volume of horrid contents into the primary air stream of the entire city. And all throughout that doomed city Nevians dropped; quietly and without a struggle, unknowing. Busy executives dropped upon their cushioned, flat-topped desks; hurrying travelers and messengers dropped upon the floors of the corridors or relaxed in the noxious waters of the ways; lookouts and observers dropped before their flashing screens; central operators of communications dropped under the winking lights of their panels. Observers and centrals in the outlying sections of the city wondered briefly at the unwonted universal motionlessness and stagnation; then the racing taint in water and in air reached them, too, and they ceased wondering--forever. Then through those quiet halls Costigan stalked to a certain storage room, where with all due precaution he donned his own suit of Triplanetary armor. Making an ungainly bundle of the other Solarian equipment stored there, he dragged it along behind him as he clanked back toward his prison, until he neared the dock at which was moored the Nevian space-speedster which he was determined to take. Here, he knew, was the first of many critical points. The crew of the vessel was aboard, and, with its independent air-supply, unharmed. They had weapons, were undoubtedly alarmed, and were very probably highly suspicious. They, too, had ultra-beams and might see him, but his very closeness to them would tend to protect him from ultra-beam observation. Therefore he crouched tensely behind a buttress, staring through his spy-ray goggles, waiting for a moment when none of the Nevians would be near the entrance, but grimly resolved to act instantly should he feel any touch of a spying ultra-beam. "Here's where the pinch comes," he growled to himself. "I know the combinations, but if they're suspicious enough and act quick enough they can seal that door on me before I can get it open, and then rub me out like a blot; but ... ah!" The moment had arrived, before the touch of any revealing ray. He trained the key-tube, the entrance opened, and through that opening in the instant of its appearance there shot a brittle bulb of glass, whose breaking meant death. It crashed into fragments against a metallic wall and Costigan, entering the vessel, consigned its erstwhile crew one by one to the already crowded waters of the lagoon. He then leaped to the controls and drove the captured speedster through the air, to plunge it down upon the surface of the lagoon beside the door of the isolated structure which had for so long been his prison. Carefully he transferred to the vessel the motley assortment of containers of Vee-Two, and after a quick check-up to make sure that he had overlooked nothing, he shot his craft straight up into the air. Then only did he close his ultra-wave circuits and speak. "Clio, Bradley--I got away clean, without a bit of trouble. Now I'm coming after you, Clio." "Oh, it's wonderful that you got away, Conway!" the girl exclaimed. "But hadn't you better get Captain Bradley first? Then, if anything should happen, he would be of some use, while I...." "I'll knock him into an outside loop if he does!" the captain snorted, and Costigan went on: "You won't need to. You come first, Clio, of course. But you're too far away for me to see you with my spy, and I don't want to use the high-powered beam of this boat for fear of detection; so you'd better keep on talking, so that I can trace you." "That's one thing I _am_ good at!" Clio laughed in sheer relief. "If talking were music, I'd be a full brass band!" and she kept up a flow of inconsequential chatter until Costigan told her that it was no longer necessary; that he had established the line. "Any excitement around there yet?" he asked her then. "Nothing unusual that I can see," she replied. "Why? Should there be some?" "I hope not, but when I made my getaway I couldn't kill them all, of course, and I thought maybe they might connect things up with my jail-break and tell the other cities to take steps about you two. But I guess they're pretty well disorganized back there yet, since they can't know who hit them, or what with, or why. I must have got about everybody that wasn't sealed up somewhere, and it doesn't stand to reason that those who are left can check up very closely for a while yet. But they're nobody's fools--they'll certainly get conscious when I snatch you, maybe before ... there, I see your city, I think." "What are you going to do?" "Same as I did back there, if I can. Poison their primary air and all the water I can reach...." "Oh, Conway!" Her voice rose to a scream. "They must know--they're all getting out of the water and are rushing inside the buildings as fast as they possibly can!" "I see they are," grimly. "I'm right over you now, 'way up. Been locating their primary intake. They've got a dozen ships around it, and have guards posted all along the corridors leading to it; and _those guards are wearing masks_! They're clever birds, all right, those amphibians--they know what they got back there and how they got it. That changes things, girl! If we use gas here we won't stand a chance in the world of getting old Bradley. Stand by to jump when I open that door!" "Hurry, dear! They are coming out here after me!" "Sure they are." Costigan had already seen the two Nevians swimming out toward Clio's cage, and had hurled his vessel downward in a screaming power dive. "You're too valuable a specimen for them to let you be gassed, but if they can get there before I do they're traveling fools!" He miscalculated slightly, so that instead of coming to a halt at the surface of the liquid medium the speedster struck with a crash that hurled solid masses of water for hundreds of yards. But no ordinary crash could harm that vessel's structure, her gravity controls were not overloaded, and she shot back to the surface; gallant ship and reckless pilot alike unharmed. Costigan trained his key-tube upon the doorway of Clio's cell, then tossed it aside. "Different combination over here!" he barked. "Got to cut you out--lie down in that far corner!" His hands flashed over the panel, and as Clio fell prone without hesitation or question a heavy beam literally blasted away a large portion of the roof of the structure. The speedster shot into the air and dropped down until she rested upon the tops of opposite walls; walls still glowing, semi-molten. The girl piled a stool upon the table and stood upon it, reached upward and seized the mailed hands extended downward toward her. Costigan heaved her up into the vessel with a powerful jerk, slammed the door shut, leaped to the controls, and the speedster darted away. "Your armor's in that bundle there. Better put it on, and check your Lewistons and pistols--no telling what kind of jams we'll get into," he snapped, without turning. "Bradley, start talking ... all right, I've got your line. Better get your wet rags ready and get organized generally--every second will count by the time we get there. We're coming so fast that our outer plating's white hot, but it may not be fast enough, at that." "It isn't fast enough, quite," Bradley announced, calmly. "They're coming out after me now." "Don't fight them and probably they won't paralyze you. Keep on talking, so that I can find out where they take you." "No good, Costigan." The voice of the old spacehound did not reveal a sign of emotion as he made his dread announcement. "They have it all figured out. They're not taking any chances at all--they're going to paral...." His voice broke off in the middle of the word. With a bitter imprecation Costigan flashed on the powerful ultra-beam projector of the speedster and focused the plate upon Bradley's prison; careless now of detection, since the Nevians were already warned. Upon that plate he watched the Nevians carry the helpless body of the captain into a small boat, and continued to watch as they bore it into one of the largest buildings of the city. Up a series of ramps they took the still form, placing it finally upon a soft couch in an enormous and heavily guarded central hall. Costigan turned to his companion, and even through the helmets she could see plainly the white agony of his expression. He moistened his lips and tried twice to speak--tried and failed; but he made no move either to cut off their power or to change their direction. "Of course," she approved steadily. "We are going through. I know that you _want_ to run with me, but if you actually did it I would never want to see you or hear of you again, and you would hate me forever." "Hardly that." The anguish did not leave his eyes and his voice was hoarse and strained, but his hands did not vary the course of the speedster by so much as a hair's breadth. "You're the finest little fellow that ever waved a plume, and I would love you no matter what happened. I'd trade my immortal soul to the devil if it would get you out of this mess, but we're both in it up to our necks and we can't back out now. If they kill him we beat it--he and I both knew that it was on the chance of that happening that I took you first--but as long as all three of us are alive it's all three or none." "Of course," she said again, as steadily, thrilled this time to the depths of her being by the sheer manhood of him who had thus simply voiced his Code; a man of such fiber that neither love of life nor his infinitely greater love for her could make him lower its high standard. "We are going through. Forget that I am a woman. We are three human beings, fighting a world full of monsters. I am simply one of us three. I will steer your ship, fire your projectors, or throw your bombs. What can I do best?" "Throw bombs," he directed, briefly. He knew what must be done were they to have even the slightest chance of winning clear. "I'm going to blast a hole down into that auditorium, and when I do you stand by that port and start dropping bottles of perfume. Throw a couple of big ones right down the shaft I make, and the rest of them most anywhere, after I cut the wall open. They'll do good wherever they hit, land or water." "But Captain Bradley--he'll be gassed, too." Her fine eyes were troubled. "Can't be helped. I've got the antidote, and it'll work any time under an hour. That'll be lots of time--if we aren't gone in less than ten minutes we'll be staying here. They're bringing in platoons of militia in full armor, and if we don't beat those boys to it we're in for plenty of grief. All right--start throwing!" The speedster had come to a halt directly over the imposing edifice within which Bradley was incarcerated, and a mighty beam had flared downward, digging a fiery well through floor after floor of stubborn metal. The ceiling of the amphitheater was pierced. The beam expired. Down into that assembly hall there dropped two canisters of Vee-Two, to crash and to fill its atmosphere with imperceptible death. Then the beam flashed on again, this time at maximum power, and with it Costigan burned away half of the entire building. Burned it away until room above room gaped open, shelf-like, to outer atmosphere; the great hall now resembling an over-size pigeon-hole surrounded by smaller ones. Into that largest pigeon-hole the speedster darted, and cushioned desks and benches crashed down; crushed flat under its enormous weight as it came to rest upon the floor. Every available guard had been thrown into that room, regardless of customary occupation or of equipment. Most of them had been ordinary watchmen, not even wearing masks, and all such were already down. Many, however, were masked, and a few were dressed in full armor. But no portable armor could mount defenses of sufficient power to withstand the awful force of the speedster's weapons, and one flashing swing of a projector swept the hall almost clear of life. "Can't shoot very close to Bradley with this big beam, but I'll mop up on the rest of them by hand. Stay here and cover me, Clio!" Costigan ordered, and went to open the port. "I can't--I won't!" Clio replied instantly. "I don't know the controls well enough. I'd kill you or Captain Bradley, sure; but I _can_ shoot, and I'm going to!" and she leaped out, close upon his heels. Thus, flaming Lewiston in one hand and barking automatic in the other, the two mailed figures advanced toward Bradley, now doubly helpless; paralyzed by his enemies and gassed by his friends. For a time the Nevians melted away before them, but as they approached more nearly the couch upon which the captain was they encountered six figures encased in armor fully as capable as their own. The beams of the Lewistons rebounded from that armor in futile pyrotechnics, the bullets of the automatics spattered and exploded impotently against it. And behind that single line of armored guards were massed perhaps twenty unarmored, but masked, soldiers; and scuttling up the ramps leading into the hall were coming the platoons of heavily armored figures which Costigan had previously seen. Decision instantly made, Costigan ran back toward the speedster, but he was not deserting his companions. "Keep the good work up!" he instructed the girl as he ran. "I'll pick those jaspers off with a pencil and then stand off the bunch that's coming while you rub out the rest of that crew there and drag Bradley back here." Back at the control panel, he trained a narrow, but intensely dense beam--quasi-solid lightning--and one by one the six armored figures fell. Then, knowing that Clio could handle the remaining opposition, he devoted his attention to the reenforcements so rapidly approaching from the sides. Again and again the heavy beam lashed out, now upon this side, now upon that, and in its flaming path Nevians disappeared. And not only Nevians--in the incredible energy of that beam's blast floor, walls, ramps, and every material thing vanished in clouds of thick and brilliant vapor. The room temporarily clear of foes, he sprang again to Clio's assistance, but her task was nearly done. She had "rubbed out" all opposition and, tugging lustily at Bradley's feet, had already dragged him almost to the side of the speedster. "At-a-girl, Clio!" cheered Costigan, as he picked up the burly captain and tossed him through the doorway. "Highly useful, girl of my dreams, as well as ornamental. In with you, and we'll go places!" But getting the speedster out of the now completely ruined hall proved to be much more of a task than driving it in had been, for scarcely had Costigan closed his locks than a section of the building collapsed behind them, cutting off their retreat. Nevian submarines and airships were beginning to arrive upon the scene, and were beaming the building viciously in an attempt to entrap or to crush the foreigners in its ruins. Costigan managed finally to blast his way out, but the Nevians had had time to assemble in force and he was met by a concentrated storm of beams and of metal from every inimical weapon within range. But not for nothing had Conway Costigan selected for his dash for liberty the craft which, save only for the two immense interstellar cruisers, was the most powerful vessel ever built upon red Nevia. And not for nothing had he studied minutely and to the last, least detail every item of its controls and of its armament during wearily long days and nights of solitary imprisonment. He had studied it under test, in action, and at rest; studied it until he knew thoroughly its every possibility--and what a ship it was! The atomic-powered generators of his shielding screens handled with ease the terrific load of the Nevians' assault, his polycyclic screens were proof against any material projectile, and the machines supplying his offensive weapons with power were more than equal to their tasks. Driven now at full rating those frightful beams lashed out against the Nevians blocking the way, and under their impacts her screens flared brilliantly through the spectrum and went down. And in the instant of their failure the enemy vessel was literally blown into nothingness--no unprotected metal, however resistant, could exist for a moment in the pathway of those iron-driven tornadoes of pure energy. Ship after ship of the Nevians plunged toward the speedster in desperately suicidal attempts to ram her down, but each met the same flaming fate before it could reach its target. Then from the grouped submarines far below there reached up red rods of force, which seized the space-ship and began relentlessly to draw her down. "What are they doing that for, Conway? _They_ can't fight us!" "They don't want to fight us. They want to hold us, but I know what to do about that, too," and the powerful tractor rods snapped as a plane of pure force knifed through them. Upward now at the highest permissible velocity the speedster leaped, and past the few ships remaining above her she dodged; nothing now between her and the freedom of boundless space. "You did it, Conway; you did it!" Clio exulted. "Oh, Conway, you're just simply wonderful!" "I haven't done it yet," Costigan cautioned her. "The worst is yet to come. Nerado. He's why they wanted to hold us back, and why I was in such a hurry to get away. That boat of his is bad medicine, girl, and we want to put plenty of kilometers behind us before he gets started." "But do you think he will chase us?" "_Think_ so? I _know_ so! The mere facts that we are rare specimens and that he told us that we were going to stay there all the rest of our lives would make him chase us clear to Lundmark's Nebula. Besides that, we stepped on their toes pretty heavily before we left. We know altogether too much now to be let get back to Tellus; and finally, they'd all die of acute enlargement of the spleen if we get away with this prize ship of theirs. I hope to tell you they'll chase us!" He fell silent, devoting his whole attention to his piloting, driving his craft onward at such velocity that its outer plating held steadily at the highest point of temperature compatible with safety. Soon they were out in open space, hurtling toward the sun under the drive of every possible watt of power, and Costigan took off his armor and turned toward the helpless body of the captain. "He looks so ... so ... so _dead_, Conway! Are you really sure that you can bring him to?" "Absolutely. Lots of time yet. Just three simple squirts in the right places will do the trick." He took from a locked compartment of his armor a small steel box, which housed a surgeon's hypodermic and three vials. One, two, three, he injected small, but precisely measured amounts of the fluids into the three vital localities, then placed the inert form upon a deeply cushioned couch. "There! That'll take care of the gas in five or six hours. The paralysis will wear off long before that, so he'll be all right when he wakes up; and we're going away from here with everything we can put out. I've done everything I know how to do, for the present." Then only did Costigan turn and look down, directly into Clio's eyes. Wide, eloquent blue eyes that gazed back up into his, tender and unafraid; eyes freighted with the oldest message of woman to chosen man. His hard young face softened wonderfully as he stared at her; there were two quick steps and they were in each other's arms. Lips upon eager lips, blue eyes to gray, motionless they stood clasped in ecstasy; thinking nothing of the dreadful past, nothing of the fearful future, conscious only of the glorious, wonderful present. "Clio mine ... darling ... girl, girl, how I love you!" Costigan's deep voice was husky with emotion. "I haven't kissed you for seven thousand years! I don't rate you, by a million steps; but if I can just get you out of this mess, I swear by all the gods of interplanetary space...." "You needn't, lover. Rate _me_? Good Heavens, Conway! It's just the other way...." "Stop it!" he commanded in her ear. "I'm still dizzy at the idea of your loving me at all, to say nothing of loving me _this_ way! But you do, and that's all I ask, here or hereafter." "Love you? _Love_ you!" Their mutual embrace tightened and her low voice thrilled brokenly as she went on: "Conway dearest ... I can't say a thing, but you know.... Oh, Conway!" After a time Clio drew a long and tremulous, but supremely happy breath as the realities of their predicament once more obtruded themselves upon her consciousness. She released herself gently from Costigan's arms. "Do you really think that there is a chance of us getting back to the Earth, so that we can be together ... always?" "A chance, yes. A probability, no," he replied, unequivocally. "It depends upon two things. First, how much of a start we got on Nerado. His ship is the biggest and fastest thing I ever saw, and if he strips her down and drives her--which he will--he'll catch us long before we can make Tellus. On the other hand, I gave Rodebush a lot of data, and if he and Lyman Cleveland can add it to their own stuff and get that super-ship of ours rebuilt in time, they'll be out here on the prowl; and they'll have what it takes to give even Nerado plenty of argument. No use worrying about it, anyway. We won't know anything until we can detect one or the other of them, and then will be the time to do something about it." "If Nerado catches us, will you...." She paused. "Rub you out? I will not. Even if he does catch us, and takes us back to Nevia, I won't. There's lots more time coming onto the clock. Nerado won't hurt either of us badly enough to leave scars, either physical, mental, or moral. I'd kill you in a second if it were Roger; he's dirty. He's mean--he's thoroughly bad. But Nerado's a good enough old scout, in his way. He's big and he's clean. You know, I could really like that fish if I could meet him on terms of equality sometime?" "_I_ couldn't!" she declared vigorously. "He's crawly and scaly and snaky; and he smells so ... so...." "So rank and fishy?" Costigan laughed deeply. "Details, girl; mere details. I've seen people who looked like money in the bank and who smelled like a bouquet of violets that you couldn't trust half the length of Nerado's neck." "But look what he did to us!" she protested. "And they weren't trying to recapture us back there; they were trying to kill us." "That was perfectly all right, what he did and what they did--what else could they have done?" he wanted to know. "And while you're looking, look at what we did to them--plenty, I'd say. But we all had it to do, and neither side will blame the other for doing it. He's a square shooter, I tell you." "Well, maybe, but I don't like him a bit, and let's not talk about him any more. Let's talk about us. Remember what you said once, when you advised me to 'let you lay,' or whatever it was?" Woman-like, she wished to dip again lightly into the waters of pure emotion, even though she had such a short time before led the man out of their profoundest depths. But Costigan, into whose hard life love of woman had never before entered, had not yet recovered sufficiently from his soul-shaking plunge to follow her lead. Inarticulate, distrusting his newly found supreme happiness, he must needs stay out of those enchanted waters or plunge again. And he was afraid to plunge--diffident, still deeming himself unworthy of the miracle of this wonder-girl's love--even though every fiber of his being shrieked its demand to feel again that slender body in his arms. He did not consciously think those thoughts. He acted them without thinking; they were prime basics in that which made Conway Costigan what he was. "I do remember, and I still think it's a sound idea, even though I am too far gone now to let you put it into effect," he assured her, half seriously. He kissed her, tenderly and reverently, then studied her carefully. "But you look as though you'd been on a Martian picnic. When did you eat last?" "I don't remember, exactly. This morning, I think." "Or maybe last night, or yesterday morning? I thought so! Bradley and I can eat anything that's chewable, and drink anything that will pour, but you can't. I'll scout around and see if I can't fix up something that you'll be able to eat." He rummaged through the store-rooms, emerging with sundry viands from which he prepared a highly satisfactory meal. "Think you can sleep now, sweetheart?" After supper, once more within the circle of Costigan's arms, Clio nodded her head against his shoulder. "Of course I can, dear. Now that you are with me, out here alone, I'm not a bit afraid any more. You will get us back to Earth some way, sometime; I just know that you will. Good-night, Conway." "Good-night, Clio ... little sweetheart," he whispered, and went back to Bradley's side. In due time the captain recovered consciousness, and slept. Then for days the speedster flashed on toward our distant solar system; days during which her wide-flung detector screens remained cold. "I don't know whether I'm afraid they'll hit something or afraid that they won't," Costigan remarked more than once, but finally those tenuous sentinels did in fact encounter an interfering vibration. Along the detector line a visibeam sped, and Costigan's face hardened as he saw the unmistakable outline of Nerado's interstellar cruiser, far behind them. "Well, a stern chase always was a long one," Costigan said finally. "He can't catch us for plenty of days yet ... now what?" for the alarms of the detectors had broken out anew. There was still another point of interference to be investigated. Costigan traced it, and there, almost dead ahead of them, between them and their sun, nearing them at the incomprehensible rate of the sum of the two vessels' velocities, came another cruiser of the Nevians! "Must be the sister-ship, coming back from our System with a load of iron," Costigan deduced. "Heavily loaded as she is, we may be able to dodge her; and she's coming so fast that if we can stay out of her range we'll be all right--he won't be able to stop for probably three or four days. But if our super-ship is anywhere in these parts, now's the time for her to rally 'round!" He gave the speedster all the side-thrust she would take; then, putting every available communicator tube behind a tight beam, he aimed it at Sol and began sending out a long-continued call to his fellows of the Triplanetary Service. Nearer and nearer the Nevian flashed, trying with all her power to intercept the speedster; and it soon became evident that, heavily laden though she was, she could make enough sideway to bring her within range at the time of meeting. "Of course, they've got partial neutralization of inertia, the same as we have," Costigan cogitated, "and by the way he's coming I'd say that he had orders to blow us out of the ether--he knows as well as we do that he can't capture us alive at anything like the relative velocities we've got now. I can't give her any more side thrust without overloading the gravity controls, so overloaded they've got to be. Strap down, you two, because they may go out entirely!" "Do you think that you can pull away from them, Conway?" Clio was staring in horrified fascination into the plate, watching the pictured vessel increase in size, moment by moment. "I don't know whether I can or not, but I'm going to try. Just in case we don't, though, I'm going to keep on yelling for help. In solid? All right, boat, DO YOUR STUFF!" CHAPTER 19 GIANTS MEET "Check your blast, Fred, I think that I hear something trying to come through!" Cleveland called out, sharply. For days the _Boise_ had torn through the illimitable reaches of empty space, and now the long vigil of the keen-eared listeners was to be ended. Rodebush cut off his power, and through the crackling roar of tube noise an almost inaudible voice made itself heard. "... all the help you can give us. Samms--Cleveland--Rodebush--anybody of Triplanetary who can hear me, listen! This is Costigan, with Miss Marsden and Captain Bradley, heading for where we think the sun is, from right ascension about six hours, declination about plus fourteen degrees. Distance unknown, but probably a good many light-years. Trace my call. One Nevian ship is overhauling us slowly, another is coming toward us from the sun. We may or may not be able to dodge it, but we need all the help you can give us. Samms--Rodebush--Cleveland--anybody of Triplanetary...." Endlessly the faint, faint voice went on, but Rodebush and Cleveland were no longer listening. Sensitive ultra-loops had been swung, and along the indicated line shot Triplanetary's super-ship at a velocity which she had never before even approached; the utterly incomprehensible, almost incalculable velocity attained by inertialess matter driven through an almost perfect vacuum by the _Boise's_ maximum projector blasts--a blast which would lift her stupendous normal tonnage against a gravity five times that of Earth. At the full frightful measure of that velocity the super-ship literally annihilated distance, while ahead of her the furiously driven spy-ray beam fanned out in quest of the three Triplanetarians who were calling for help. "Got any idea how fast we're going?" Rodebush demanded, glancing up for an instant from the observation plate. "We should be able to see him, since we could hear him, and our range is certainly as great as anything he can have." "No. Can't figure velocity without any reliable data on how many atoms of matter exist per cubic meter out here." Cleveland was staring at the calculator. "It's constant, of course, at the value at which the friction of the medium is equal to our thrust. Incidentally, we can't hold it too long. We're running a temperature, which shows that we're stepping along faster than anybody ever computed before. Also, it points out the necessity for something that none of us ever anticipated needing in an open-space drive--refrigerators or radiating wall-shields or repellers or something of the sort. But to get back to our velocity--taking Throckmorton's estimates it figures somewhere near the order of magnitude of ten to the twenty-seventh. Fast enough, anyway, so that you'd better bend an eye on that plate. Even after you see them you won't know where they really are, because we don't know any of the velocities involved--our own, theirs, or that of the beam--and we may be right on top of them." "Or, if we happen to be outrunning the beam, we won't see them at all. That makes it nice piloting." "How are you going to handle things when we get there?" "Lock to them and take them aboard, if we're in time. If not, if they are fighting already--_there they are_!" The picture of the speedster's control room flashed upon the speaker. "Hi, Fritz! Hi, Cleve! Welcome to our city! Where are you?" "We don't know," Cleveland snapped back, "and we don't know where you are, either. Can't figure anything without data. I see you're still breathing air. Where are the Nevians? How much time have we got yet?" "Not enough, I'm afraid. By the looks of things they will be within range of us in a couple of hours, and you haven't even touched our detector screen yet." "A couple of _hours_!" In his relief Cleveland shouted the words. "That's time to burn--we can be just about out of the Galaxy in that...." He broke off at a yell from Rodebush. "Broadcast, Spud, BROADCAST!" the physicist had cried, as Costigan's image had disappeared utterly from his plate. He cut off the _Boise's_ power, stopping her instantaneously in mid-space, but the connection had been broken. Costigan could not possibly have heard the orders to change his beam signal to a broadcast, so that they could pick it up; nor would it have done any good if he had heard and had obeyed. So immeasurably great had been their velocity that they had flashed past the speedster and were now unknown thousands--or millions--of miles beyond the fugitives they had come so far to help; far beyond the range of any possible broadcast. But Cleveland understood instantly what had happened. He now had a little data upon which to work, and his hands flew over the keys of the calculator. "Back blast, at maximum, seventeen seconds!" he directed crisply. "Not exact, of course, but that will put us close enough so that we can find 'em with our detectors." For the calculated seventeen seconds the super-ship retraced her path, at the same awful speed with which she had come so far. The blast expired and there, plainly limned upon the observation plates, was the Nevian speedster. "As a computer, you're good, Cleve," Rodebush applauded. "So close that we can't use the neutralizers to catch him. If we use one dyne of drive we'll overshoot a million kilometers before I could snap the switch." "And yet he's so far away and going so fast that if we keep our inertia on it'll take all day at full blast to overtake--no, wait a minute--we could _never_ catch him." Cleveland was puzzled. "What to do? Shunt in a potentiometer?" "No, we don't need it." Rodebush turned to the transmitter. "Costigan! We are going to take hold of you with a very light tractor--a tracer, really--and whatever you do, DON'T CUT IT, or we can't reach you in time. It may look like a collision, but it won't be--we'll just touch you, without even a jar." "A tractor--inertialess?" Cleveland wondered. "Sure. Why not?" Rodebush set up the beam at its absolute minimum of power and threw in the switch. While hundreds of thousands of miles separated the two vessels and the attractor was exerting the least effort of which it was capable, yet the super-ship leaped toward the smaller craft at a pace which covered the intervening distance in almost no time at all. So rapidly were the objectives enlarging upon the plates that the automatic focusing devices could scarcely function rapidly enough to keep them in place. Cleveland flinched involuntarily and seized his arm-rests in a spasmodic clutch as he watched this, the first inertialess space-approach; and even Rodebush, who knew better than anyone else what to expect, held his breath and swallowed hard at the unbelievable rate at which the two vessels were rushing together. And if these two, who had rebuilt the super-ship, could hardly control themselves, what of the three in the speedster, who knew nothing whatever of the wonder-craft's potentialities? Clio, staring into the plate with Costigan, uttered one piercing shriek as she sank her fingers into his shoulders. Bradley swore a mighty deep-space oath and braced himself against certain annihilation. Costigan stared for an instant, unable to believe his eyes; then, in spite of the warning, his hand darted toward the studs which would cut the beam. Too late. Before his flying fingers could reach the buttons the _Boise_ was upon them; had struck the speedster in direct central impact. Moving at the full measure of her unthinkable velocity though the super-ship was in the instant of impact, yet the most delicate recording instruments of the speedster could not detect the slightest shock as the enormous globe struck the comparatively tiny torpedo and clung to it; accommodating instantaneously and effortlessly her own terrific pace to that of the smaller and infinitely slower craft. Clio sobbed in relief and Costigan, one arm around her, sighed hugely. "Hey, you spacelugs!" he cried. "Glad to see you, and all that, but you might as well kill a man outright as scare him to death! So _that's_ the super-ship, huh? _Some_ ship!" "Hi-ya, Murf! Hi, Spud!" came from the speaker. "Murf? Spud? How come?" Clio, practically recovered now, glanced upward questioningly. It was plain that she did not quite know whether or not to like the nicknames which the rescuers were calling her Conway. "My middle name is Murphy, so they've called me things like that ever since I was so high." Costigan indicated a length of approximately twelve inches. "And now you'll probably live long enough--I hope--to hear me called a lot worse stuff than that." "Don't _talk_ that way--we're safe now, Con ... Spud? It's nice that they like you so much--but they would, of course." She snuggled even closer, and both listened to what Rodebush was saying. "... realize myself that it would look so bad; it scared me as much as it did anybody. Yes, this is IT. She really works--thanks more than somewhat to Conway Costigan, by the way. But you had better transfer. If you'll get your things...." "'Things' is good!" Costigan laughed, and Clio giggled sunnily. "We've made so many transfers already that what you see is all we've got," Bradley explained. "We'll bring ourselves, and we'll hurry. That Nevian is coming up fast." "Is there anything on this ship you fellows want?" Costigan asked. "There may be, but we haven't any locks big enough to let her inside and we haven't time to study her now. You might leave her controls in neutral, so that we can calculate her position if we should want her later on." "All right." The three armor-clad figures stepped into the _Boise's_ open lock, the tractor beam was cut off, and the speedster flashed away from the now stationary super-ship. "Better let formalities go for a while," Captain Bradley interrupted the general introductions taking place. "I was scared out of nine years' growth when I saw you coming at us, and maybe I've still got the humps; but that Nevian is coming up fast, and if you don't already know it I can tell you that she's _no_ light cruiser." "That's so, too," Costigan agreed. "Have you fellows got enough stuff so that you think you can take him? You've got the legs on him, anyway--you can certainly run if you want to!" "Run?" Cleveland laughed. "We have a bone of our own to pick with that ship. We licked her to a standstill once, until we burned out a set of generators, and since we got them fixed we've been chasing her all over space. We were chasing her when we picked up your call. See there? She's doing the running." The Nevian was running, in truth. Her commander had seen and had recognized the great vessel which had flashed out of nowhere to the rescue of the three fugitives from Nevia; and, having once been at grips with that vengeful super-dreadnaught, he had little stomach for another encounter. Therefore his side-thrust was now being exerted in the opposite direction; he was frankly trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and Triplanetary's formidable warship. In vain. A light tractor was clamped on and the _Boise_ flashed up to close range before Rodebush restored her inertia and Cleveland brought the two vessels relatively to rest by increasing gradually his tractor's pull. And this time the Nevian could not cut the tractor. Again that shearing plane of force bit into it and tore at it, but it neither yielded nor broke. The rebuilt generators of Number Four were designed to carry the load, and they carried it. And again Triplanetary's every mighty weapon was brought into play. The "cans" were thrown, ultra-and infra-beams were driven, the furious macro-beam gnawed hungrily at the Nevian's defenses; and one by one those defenses went down. In desperation the enemy commander threw his every generator behind a polycyclic screen; only to see Cleveland's even more powerful drill bore relentlessly through it. After that puncturing, the end came soon. A secondary SX7 beam was now in place on mighty Ten's inner rings, and one fierce blast blew a hole completely through the Nevian cruiser. Into that hole entered Adlington's terrific bombs and their gruesome fellows, and where they entered, life departed. All defenses vanished, and under the blasts of the _Boise's_ batteries, now unopposed, the metal of the Nevian vessel exploded into a widely spreading cloud of vapor. Sparkling vapor, with perhaps here and there a droplet or two of material which had been only liquefied. So passed the sister-ship, and Rodebush turned his plates upon the vessel of Nerado. But that highly intelligent amphibian had seen all that had occurred. He had long since given over the pursuit of the speedster, and he did not rush in to do hopeless battle beside his fellow Nevians against the Tellurians. His analytical detectors had written down each detail of every weapon and of every screen employed; and even while prodigious streamers of force were raving out from his vessel, braking her terrific progress and swinging her around in an immense circle back toward far Nevia, his scientists and mechanics were doubling and redoubling the power of his already Titanic installations, to match and if possible to overmatch those of Triplanetary's super-dreadnaught. "Do we kill him now or do we let him suffer a while longer?" Costigan demanded. "I don't think so, yet," Rodebush replied. "Would you, Cleve?" "Not yet," said Cleveland, grimly, reading the other's thought and agreeing with it. "Let him pilot us to Nevia; we might not be able to find it without a guide. While we're at it we want to so pulverize that crowd that if they never come near the Solarian system again they'll think it's twenty minutes too soon." Thus it was that the _Boise_, increasing her few dynes of driving force at a rate just sufficient to match her quarry's acceleration, pursued the Nevian ship. Apparently exerting every effort, she never came quite within range of the fleeing raider; yet never was she so far behind that the Nevian space-ship was not in clear register upon her observation plates. Nor was Nerado alone in strengthening his vessel. Costigan knew well and respected highly the Nevian scientist-captain, and at his suggestion much time was spent in reenforcing the super-ship's armament to the iron-driven limit of theoretical and mechanical possibility. In mid-space, however, the Nevian slowed down. "What gives?" Rodebush demanded of the group at large. "Not turn-over time already, is it?" "No." Cleveland shook his head. "Not for at least a day yet." "Cooking up something on Nevia, is my guess," Costigan put in. "If I know that lizard at all, he wired ahead--specifications for the welcoming committee. We're getting there too fast, so he's stalling. Check?" "Check." Rodebush agreed. "But there's no use of us waiting, if you're sure you know which one of those stars up ahead is Nevia. Do you, Cleve?" "Definitely." "The only other thing is, then, shall we blow them out of the ether first?" "You might try," Costigan remarked. "That is, if you're damned sure that you can run if you have to." "Huh? _Run_?" demanded Rodebush. "Just that. It's spelled R-U-N, run. I know those freaks better than you do. Believe me, Fritz, they've got what it takes." "Could be, at that," Rodebush admitted. "We'll play it safe." The _Boise_ leaped upon the Nevian, every weapon aflame. But, as Costigan had expected, Nerado's vessel was completely ready for any emergency. And, unlike her sister-ship, she was manned by scientists well versed in the fundamental theory of the weapons with which they fought. Beams, rods, and lances of energy flamed and flared; planes and pencils cut, slashed, and stabbed; defensive screens glowed redly or flashed suddenly into intensely brilliant, coruscating incandescence. Crimson opacity struggled sullenly against violet curtain of annihilation. Material projectiles and torpedoes were launched under full beam control; only to be exploded harmlessly in mid-space, to be blasted into nothingness, or to disappear innocuously against impenetrable polycyclic screens. Even Cleveland's drill was ineffective. Both vessels were equipped completely with iron-driven mechanisms; both were manned by scientists capable of wringing the highest possible measure of power from their installations. Neither could harm the other. The _Boise_ flashed away; reached Nevia in minutes. Down into the crimson atmosphere she dropped, down toward the city which Costigan knew was Nerado's home port. "Hold up a bit!" Costigan cautioned, sharply. "There's something down there that I don't like!" As he spoke there shot upward from the city a multitude of flashing balls. The Nevians had mastered the secret of the explosive of the fishes of the greater deeps, and were launching it in a veritable storm against the Tellurian visitor. "Those?" asked Rodebush, calmly. The detonating balls of destruction were literally annihilating even the atmosphere beyond the polycyclic screen, but that barrier was scarcely affected. "No. That." Costigan pointed out a hemispherical dome which, redly translucent, surrounded a group of buildings towering high above their neighbors. "Neither those high towers nor those screens were there the last time I was in this town. Nerado _was_ stalling for time, and that's what they're doing down there--that's all those fire-balls are for. Good sign, too--they aren't ready for us yet. We'd better take 'em while the taking's good. If they _were_ ready for us, our play would be to get out of here while we're all in one piece." Nerado had been in touch with the scientists of his city; he had been instructing them in the construction of converters and generators of such weight and power that they could crush even the defenses of the super-ship. The mechanisms were not, however, ready; the entirely unsuspected possibilities of speed inherent in absolute inertialessness had not entered into Nerado's calculations. "Better drop a few cans down onto that dome, fellows," Rodebush suggested to his gunners. "We can't," came Adlington's instant reply. "No use trying it--that's a polycyclic screen. Can you drill it? If you can, I've got a real bomb here--that special we built--that will do the trick if you can protect it from them until it gets down into the water." "I'll try it," Cleveland answered, at a nod from the physicist. "I couldn't drill Nerado's polycyclics, but I couldn't use any momentum on him. Couldn't ram him--he fell back with my thrust. But that screen down there can't back away from us, so maybe I can work on it. Get your special ready. Hang on, everybody!" The _Boise_ looped upward, and from an altitude of miles dove straight down through a storm of force-balls, beams, and shells; a dive checked abruptly as the hollow tube of energy which was Cleveland's drill snarled savagely down ahead of her and struck the shielding hemisphere with a grinding, lightning-spitting shock. As it struck, backed by all the enormous momentum of the plunging space-ship and driven by the full power of her prodigious generators it bored in, clawing and gouging viciously through the tissues of that rigid and unyielding barrier of pure energy. Then, mighty drill and plunging mass against iron-driven wall, eye-tearing and furiously spectacular warfare was waged. Well it was for Triplanetary that day that its super-ship carried ample supplies of allotropic iron; well it was that her originally Gargantuan converters and generators had been doubled and quadrupled in power on the long Nevian way! For that ocean-girdled fortress was powered to withstand any conceivable assault--but the _Boise's_ power and momentum were now inconceivable; and every watt and every dyne was solidly behind that hellishly flaming, that voraciously tearing, that irresistibly ravening cylinder of energy incredible! Through the Nevian shield that cylinder gnawed its frightful way, and down its protecting length there drove Adlington's "Special" bomb. "Special" it was indeed; so great of girth that it could barely pass through the central orifice of Ten's mighty projector, so heavily charged with sensitized atomic iron that its detonation upon any planet would not have been considered for an instant if that planet's integrity meant anything to its attackers. Down the shielding pipe of force the "Special" screamed under full propulsion, and beneath the surface of Nevia's ocean it plunged. "Cut!" yelled Adlington, and as the scintillating drill expired the bomber pressed his detonating switch. For moments the effect of the explosion seemed unimportant. A dull, low rumble was all that was to be heard of a concussion that jarred red Nevia to her very center; and all that could be seen was a slow heaving of the water. But that heaving did not cease. Slowly, _so_ slowly it seemed to the observers now high in the heavens, the waters rose up and parted; revealing a vast chasm blown deep into the ocean's rocky bed. Higher and higher the lazy mountains of water reared; effortlessly to pick up, to smash, to grind into fragments, and finally to toss aside every building, every structure, every scrap of material substance pertaining to the whole Nevian city. Flattened out, driven backward for miles, the buffeted waters were pressed, leaving exposed bare ground and broken rock where once had been the ocean's busy floor. Tremendous blasts of incandescent gas raved upward, jarring even the enormous mass of the super-ship poised so high above the site of the explosion. Then the displaced millions of tons of water rushed to make even more complete the already total destruction of the city. The raging torrents poured into that yawning cavern, filled it, and piled mountainously above it; receding and piling up, again and again; causing tidal waves which swept a full half of Nevia's mighty, watery globe. That city was silenced--forever. "MY ... GOD!" Cleveland was the first to break the awed, the stunned, silence. He licked his lips. "But we had it to do ... and at that, it's not as bad as what they did to Pittsburgh--they would have evacuated all except military personnel." "Of course ... what next?" asked Rodebush. "Look around, I suppose, to see if they have any more...." "Oh, no, Conway--no! Don't let them!" Clio was sobbing openly. "I'm going to my room and crawl under the bed--I'll see that sight all the rest of my life!" "Steady, Clio." Costigan's arm tightened around her. "We'll have to look, but we won't find any more. One--if they could have finished it--would have been enough." Again and again the _Boise_ circled the world. No more super-powered installations were being built. And, surprisingly enough, the Nevians made no demonstration of hostility. "I wonder why?" Rodebush mused. "Of course, we aren't attacking them, either, but you'd think ... do you suppose that they are waiting for Nerado?" "Probably." Costigan paused in thought. "We'd better wait for him, too. We can't leave things this way." "But if we can't force engagement ... a stalemate...." Cleveland's voice was troubled. "We'll do _something_!" Costigan declared. "This thing has got to be settled, some way or other, before we leave here. First, try talking. I've got an idea that ... anyway, it can't do any harm, and I know that he can hear and understand you." Nerado arrived. Instead of attacking, his ship hung quietly poised, a mile or two away from the equally undemonstrative _Boise_. Rodebush directed a beam. "Captain Nerado, I am Rodebush of Triplanetary. What do you wish to do about this situation?" "I wish to talk to you." The Nevian's voice came clearly from the speaker. "You are, I now perceive, a much higher form of life than any of us had thought possible; a form perhaps as high in evolution as our own. It is a pity that we did not take the time for a full meeting of minds when we first neared your planet, so that much life, both Tellurian and Nevian, might have been spared. But what is past cannot be recalled. As reasoning beings, however, you will see the futility of continuing a combat in which neither is capable of winning victory over the other. You may, of course, destroy more of our Nevian cities, in which case I should be compelled to go and destroy similarly upon your Earth; but, to reasoning minds, such a course would be sheerest stupidity." Rodebush cut the communicator beam. "Does he mean it?" he demanded of Costigan. "It sounds perfectly reasonable, but...." "But fishy!" Cleveland broke in. "Altogether too reasonable to be true!" "He means it. He means every word of it," Costigan assured his fellows. "I had an idea that he would take it that way. That's the way they are. Reasonable; passionless. Funny--they lack a lot of things that we have; but they've got stuff that I wish more of us Tellurians had, too. Give me the plate--I'll talk for Triplanetary," and the beam was restored. "Captain Nerado," he greeted the Nevian commander. "Having been with you and among your people, I know that you mean what you say and that you speak for your race. Similarly, I believe that I can speak for the Triplanetary Council--the governing body of three of the planets of our solar system--in saying that there is no need for any more conflict between our peoples. I also was compelled by circumstances to do certain things which I now wish could be undone; but as you have said, the past is past. Our two races have much to gain from each other by friendly exchanges of materials and of ideas, while we can expect nothing except mutual extermination if we elect to continue this warfare. I offer you the friendship of Triplanetary. Will you release your screens and come aboard to sign a treaty?" "My screens are down. I will come." Rodebush likewise cut off his power, although somewhat apprehensively, and a Nevian lifeboat entered the main airlock of the _Boise_. Then, at a table in the control room of Triplanetary's first super-ship, there was written the first Inter-Systemic Treaty. Upon one side were the three Nevians; amphibious, cone-headed, loop-necked, scaly, four-legged things to us monstrosities: upon the other were human beings; air-breathing, round-headed, short-necked, smooth-bodied, two-legged creatures equally monstrous to the fastidious Nevians. Yet each of these representatives of two races so different felt respect for the other race increase within him minute by minute as the conversation went on. The Nevians had destroyed Pittsburgh, but Adlington's bomb had blown an important Nevian city completely out of existence. One Nevian vessel had wiped out a Triplanetarian fleet; but Costigan had depopulated one Nevian city, had seriously damaged another, and had beamed down many Nevian ships. Therefore loss of life and material damage could be balanced off. The Solarian System was rich in iron, to which the Nevians were welcome; red Nevia possessed abundant stores of substances which upon Earth were either rare or of vital importance, or both. Therefore commerce was to be encouraged. The Nevians had knowledges and skills unknown to Earthly science, but were entirely ignorant of many things commonplace to us. Therefore interchange of students and of books was highly desirable. And so on. Thus was signed the Triplanetario-Nevian Treaty of Eternal Peace. Nerado and his two companions were escorted ceremoniously to their vessel, and the _Boise_ took off inertialess for Earth, bearing the good news that the Nevian menace was no more. Clio, now a hardened spacehound, immune even to the horrible nausea of inertialessness, wriggled lithely in the curve of Costigan's arm and laughed up at him. "You can talk all you want to, Conway Murphy Spud Costigan, but I don't like them the least little bit. They give me goose-bumps all over. I suppose that they are really estimable folks; talented, cultured, and everything; but just the same I'll bet that it will be a long, long time before anybody on Earth will really, truly _like_ them!" war of the galaxies Eddore and Arisia fought desperately to control the Universe. The ultimate battleground was a tiny, backward planet in a remote galaxy--Earth. And only a few Earthmen knew of the titanic struggle--and of the strange, decisive role they were to play in the war of the super-races. Here is the beginning of "Doc" Smith's famous Lensman series--the first of the celebrated novels that set a pattern for science fiction. BE SURE TO GET EVERY ONE OF THE LENSMAN NOVELS AS THEY GO ON SALE! ONE OF THE GREATEST SCIENCE FICTION SERIES EVER WRITTEN! A PYRAMID BOOK 95¢ Printed in U.S.A. 
49525	----	Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. FIRST LENSMAN E. E. "DOC" SMITH PYRAMID BOOKS · NEW YORK _To E. Everett Evans_ FIRST LENSMAN A PYRAMID BOOK Published by arrangement with the author Fantasy Press edition published 1950 Pyramid edition published December, 1964 Second printing July, 1966 Third printing April, 1967 Fourth printing September, 1967 Fifth printing May, 1968 Copyright 1950 by Edward E. Smith, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted without written permission of the publishers. Printed in the United States of America PYRAMID BOOKS are published by Pyramid Publications, Inc. 444 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022, U.S.A. * * * * * _ATTACK FROM SPACE_ The enemy spacefleet arrowed toward the armored mountain--nerve center of the Galactic Patrol. The Patrol battle cruisers swerved to meet them, and a miles-long cone of pure energy ravened out at the invaders, destroying whatever it touched. But the moment before the force beam struck, thousands of tiny objects dropped from the enemy fleet and, faster than light, flashed straight at their target--each one an atom bomb powerful enough to destroy Patrol Headquarters by itself! The Galactic Patrol--and civilization itself--had seconds to live. Unless a miracle happened.... A LENSMAN ADVENTURE _Second in the Great Series_ CHAPTER 1 The visitor, making his way unobserved through the crowded main laboratory of The Hill, stepped up to within six feet of the back of a big Norwegian seated at an electrono-optical bench. Drawing an automatic pistol, he shot the apparently unsuspecting scientist seven times, as fast as he could pull the trigger; twice through the brain, five times, closely spaced, through the spine. "Ah, Gharlane of Eddore, I have been expecting you to look me up. Sit down." Blonde, blue-eyed Dr. Nels Bergenholm, completely undisturbed by the passage of the stream of bullets through his head and body, turned and waved one huge hand at a stool beside his own. "But those were not ordinary projectiles!" the visitor protested. Neither person--or rather, entity--was in the least surprised that no one else had paid any attention to what had happened, but it was clear that the one was taken aback by the failure of his murderous attack. "They should have volatilized that form of flesh--should at least have blown you back to Arisia, where you belong." "Ordinary or extraordinary, what matter? As you, in the guise of Gray Roger, told Conway Costigan a short time since, 'I permitted that, as a demonstration of futility.' Know, Gharlane, once and for all, that you will no longer be allowed to act directly against any adherent of Civilization, wherever situate. We of Arisia will not interfere in person with your proposed conquest of the two galaxies as you have planned it, since the stresses and conflicts involved are necessary--and, I may add, sufficient--to produce the Civilization which must and shall come into being. Therefore, neither will you, or any other Eddorian, so interfere. You will go back to Eddore and you will stay there." "Think you so?" Gharlane sneered. "You, who have been so afraid of us for over two thousand million Tellurian years that you dared not let us even learn of you? So afraid of us that you dared not take any action to avert the destruction of any one of your budding Civilizations upon any one of the worlds of either galaxy? So afraid that you dare not, even now, meet me mind to mind, but insist upon the use of this slow and unsatisfactory oral communication between us?" "Either your thinking is loose, confused, and turbid, which I do not believe to be the case, or you are trying to lull me into believing that you are stupid." Bergenholm's voice was calm, unmoved. "I do not _think_ that you will go back to Eddore; I know it. You, too, as soon as you have become informed upon certain matters, will know it. You protest against the use of spoken language because it is, as you know, the easiest, simplest, and surest way of preventing you from securing any iota of the knowledge for which you are so desperately searching. As to a meeting of our two minds, they met fully just before you, operating as Gray Roger, remembered that which your entire race forgot long ago. As a consequence of that meeting I so learned every line and vibration of your life pattern as to be able to greet you by your symbol, Gharlane of Eddore, whereas you know nothing of me save that I am an Arisian, a fact which has been obvious from the first." In an attempt to create a diversion, Gharlane released the zone of compulsion which he had been holding; but the Arisian took it over so smoothly that no human being within range was conscious of any change. "It is true that for many cycles of time we concealed our existence from you," Bergenholm went on without a break. "Since the reason for that concealment will still further confuse you, I will tell you what it was. Had you Eddorians learned of us sooner you might have been able to forge a weapon of power sufficient to prevent the accomplishment of an end which is now certain. "It is true that your operations as Lo Sung of Uighar were not constrained. As Mithridates of Pontus--as Sulla, Marius, and Nero of Rome--as Hannibal of Carthage--as those self-effacing wights Alcixerxes of Greece and Menocoptes of Egypt--as Genghis Khan and Attila and the Kaiser and Mussolini and Hitler and the Tyrant of Asia--you were allowed to do as you pleased. Similar activities upon Rigel Four, Velantia, Palain Seven, and elsewhere were also allowed to proceed without effective opposition. With the appearance of Virgil Samms, however, the time arrived to put an end to your customary pernicious, obstructive, and destructive activities. I therefore interposed a barrier between you and those who would otherwise be completely defenseless against you." "But why now? Why not thousands of cycles ago? And why Virgil Samms?" "To answer those questions would be to give you valuable data. You may--too late--be able to answer them yourself. But to continue: you accuse me, and all Arisia, of cowardice; an evidently muddy and inept thought. Reflect, please, upon the completeness of your failure in the affair of Roger's planetoid; upon the fact that you have accomplished nothing whatever since that time; upon the situation in which you now find yourself. "Even though the trend of thought of your race is basically materialistic and mechanistic, and you belittle ours as being 'philosophic' and 'impractical', you found--much to your surprise--that your most destructive physical agencies are not able to affect even this form of flesh which I am now energizing, to say nothing of affecting the reality which is I. "If this episode is the result of the customary thinking of the second-in-command of Eddore's Innermost Circle ... but no, my visualization cannot be that badly at fault. Overconfidence--the tyrant's innate proclivity to underestimate an opponent--these things have put you into a false position; but I greatly fear that they will not operate to do so in any really important future affair." "Rest assured that they will not!" Gharlane snarled. "It may not be--exactly--cowardice. It is, however, something closely akin. If you could have acted effectively against us at any time in the past, you would have done so. If you could act effectively against us now, you would be acting, not talking. That is elementary--self-evidently true. So true that you have not tried to deny it--nor would you expect me to believe you if you did." Cold black eyes stared level into icy eyes of Norwegian blue. "Deny it? No. I am glad, however, that you used the word 'effectively' instead of 'openly'; for we have been acting effectively against you ever since these newly-formed planets cooled sufficiently to permit of the development of intelligent life." "What? You have? How?" "That, too, you may learn--too late. I have now said all I intend to say. I will give you no more information. Since you already know that there are more adult Arisians than there are Eddorians, so that at least one of us can devote his full attention to blocking the direct effort of any one of you, it is clear to you that it makes no difference to me whether you elect to go or to stay. I can and I will remain here as long as you do; I can and I will accompany you whenever you venture out of the volume of space protected by Eddorian screen, wherever you go. The election is yours." Gharlane disappeared. So did the Arisian--instantaneously. Dr. Nels Bergenholm, however, remained. Turning, he resumed his work where he had left off, knowing exactly what he had been doing and exactly what he was going to do to finish it. He released the zone of compulsion, which he had been holding upon every human being within sight or hearing, so dexterously that no one suspected, then or ever, that anything out of the ordinary had happened. He knew these things and did these things in spite of the fact that the form of flesh which his fellows of the Triplanetary Service knew as Nels Bergenholm was then being energized, not by the stupendously powerful mind of Drounli the Molder, but by an Arisian child too young to be of any use in that which was about to occur. Arisia was ready. Every Arisian mind capable of adult, or of even near-adult thinking was poised to act when the moment of action should come. They were not, however, tense. While not in any sense routine, that which they were about to do had been foreseen for many cycles of time. They knew exactly what they were going to do, and exactly how to do it. They waited. "My visualization is not entirely clear concerning the succession of events stemming from the fact that the fusion of which Drounli is a part did not destroy Gharlane of Eddore while he was energizing Gray Roger," a young Watchman, Eukonidor by symbol, thought into the assembled mind. "May I take a moment of this idle time in which to spread my visualization, for enlargement and instruction?" "You may, youth." The Elders of Arisia--the mightiest intellects of that tremendously powerful race--fused their several minds into one mind and gave approval. "That will be time well spent. Think on." "Separated from the other Eddorians by inter-galactic distance as he then was, Gharlane could have been isolated and could have been destroyed," the youth pointed out, as he somewhat diffidently spread his visualization in the public mind. "Since it is axiomatic that his destruction would have weakened Eddore somewhat and to that extent would have helped us, it is evident that some greater advantage will accrue from allowing him to live. Some points are clear enough: that Gharlane and his fellows will believe that the Arisian fusion could not kill him, since it did not; that the Eddorians, contemptuous of our powers and thinking us vastly their inferiors, will not be driven to develop such things as atomic-energy-powered mechanical screens against third-level thought until such a time as it will be too late for even those devices to save their race from extinction; that they will, in all probability, never even suspect that the Galactic Patrol which is so soon to come into being will in fact be the prime operator in that extinction. It is not clear, however, in view of the above facts, why it has now become necessary for us to slay one Eddorian upon Eddore. Nor can I formulate or visualize with any clarity the techniques to be employed in the final wiping out of the race; I lack certain fundamental data concerning events which occurred and conditions which obtained many, many cycles before my birth. I am unable to believe that my perception and memory could have been so imperfect--can it be that none of that basic data is, or ever has been available?" "That, youth, is the fact. While your visualization of the future is of course not as detailed nor as accurate as it will be after more cycles of labor, your background of knowledge is as complete as that of any other of our number." "I see." Eukonidor gave the mental equivalent of a nod of complete understanding. "It is necessary, and the death of a lesser Eddorian--a Watchman--will be sufficient. Nor will it be either surprising or alarming to Eddore's Innermost Circle that the integrated total mind of Arisia should be able to kill such a relatively feeble entity. I see." Then silence; and waiting. Minutes? Or days? Or weeks? Who can tell? What does time mean to any Arisian? Then Drounli arrived; arrived in the instant of his leaving The Hill--what matters even inter-galactic distance to the speed of thought? He fused his mind with those of the three other Molders of Civilization. The massed and united mind of Arisia, poised and ready, awaiting only his coming, launched itself through space. That tremendous, that theretofore unknown concentration of mental force arrived at Eddore's outer screen in practically the same instant as did the entity that was Gharlane. The Eddorian, however, went through without opposition; the Arisians did not. * * * * * Some two thousand million years ago, when the Coalescence occurred--the event which was to make each of the two interpassing galaxies teem with planets--the Arisians were already an ancient race; so ancient that they were even then independent of the chance formation of planets. The Eddorians, it is believed, were older still. The Arisians were native to this, our normal space-time continuum; the Eddorians were not. Eddore was--and is--huge, dense, and hot. Its atmosphere is not air, as we of small, green Terra, know air, but is a noxious mixture of gaseous substances known to mankind only in chemical laboratories. Its hydrosphere, while it does contain some water, is a poisonous, stinking, foully corrosive, slimy and sludgy liquid. And the Eddorians were as different from any people we know as Eddore is different from the planets indigenous to our space and time. They were, to our senses, utterly monstrous; almost incomprehensible. They were amorphous, amoeboid, sexless. Not androgynous or parthenogenetic, but absolutely sexless; with a sexlessness unknown in any Earthly form of life higher than the yeasts. Thus they were, to all intents and purposes and except for death by violence, immortal; for each one, after having lived for hundreds of thousands of Tellurian years and having reached its capacity to live and to learn, simply divided into two new individuals, each of which, in addition to possessing in full its parent's mind and memories and knowledges, had also a brand-new zest and a greatly increased capacity. And, since life was, there had been competition. Competition for power. Knowledge was worth while only insofar as it contributed to power. Warfare began, and aged, and continued; the appallingly efficient warfare possible only to such entities as those. Their minds, already immensely powerful, grew stronger and stronger under the stresses of internecine struggle. But peace was not even thought of. Strife continued, at higher and even higher levels of violence, until two facts became apparent. First, that every Eddorian who could be killed by physical violence had already died; that the survivors had developed such tremendous powers of mind, such complete mastery of things physical as well as mental, that they could not be slain by physical force. Second, that during the ages through which they had been devoting their every effort to mutual extermination, their sun had begun markedly to cool; that their planet would very soon become so cold that it would be impossible for them ever again to live their normal physical lives. Thus there came about an armistice. The Eddorians worked together--not without friction--in the development of mechanisms by the use of which they moved their planet across light-years of space to a younger, hotter sun. Then, Eddore once more at its hot and reeking norm, battle was resumed. Mental battle, this time, that went on for more than a hundred thousand Eddorian years; during the last ten thousand of which not a single Eddorian died. Realizing the futility of such unproductive endeavor, the relatively few survivors made a peace of sorts. Since each had an utterly insatiable lust for power, and since it had become clear that they could neither conquer nor kill each other, they would combine forces and conquer enough planets--enough galaxies--so that each Eddorian could have as much power and authority as he could possibly handle. What matter that there were not that many planets in their native space? There were other spaces, an infinite number of them; some of which, it was mathematically certain, would contain millions upon millions of planets instead of only two or three. By mind and by machine they surveyed the neighboring continua; they developed the hyper-spatial tube and the inertialess drive; they drove their planet, space-ship-wise, through space after space after space. And thus, shortly after the Coalescence began, Eddore came into our space-time; and here, because of the multitudes of planets already existing and the untold millions more about to come into existence, it stayed. Here was what they had wanted since their beginnings; here were planets enough, here were fields enough for the exercise of power, to sate even the insatiable. There was no longer any need for them to fight each other; they could now cooperate whole-heartedly--as long as each was getting more--and _more_ and MORE! Enphilisor, a young Arisian, his mind roaming eagerly abroad as was its wont, made first contact with the Eddorians in this space. Inoffensive, naive, innocent, he was surprised beyond measure at their reception of his friendly greeting; but in the instant before closing his mind to their vicious attacks, he learned the foregoing facts concerning them. The fused mind of the Elders of Arisia, however, was not surprised. The Arisians, while not as mechanistic as their opponents, and innately peaceful as well, were far ahead of them in the pure science of the mind. The Elders had long known of the Eddorians and of their lustful wanderings through plenum after plenum. Their Visualizations of the Cosmic All had long since forecast, with dreadful certainty, the invasion which had now occurred. They had long known what they would have to do. They did it. So insidiously as to set up no opposition they entered the Eddorians' minds and sealed off all knowledge of Arisia. They withdrew, tracelessly. They did not have much data, it is true; but no more could be obtained at that time. If any one of those touchy suspicious minds had been given any cause for alarm, any focal point of doubt, they would have had time in which to develop mechanisms able to force the Arisians out of this space before a weapon to destroy the Eddorians--the as yet incompletely designed Galactic Patrol--could be forged. The Arisians could, even then, have slain by mental force alone all the Eddorians except the All-Highest and his Innermost Circle, safe within their then impenetrable shield; but as long as they could not make a clean sweep they could not attack--then. Be it observed that the Arisians were not fighting for themselves. As individuals or as a race they had nothing to fear. Even less than the Eddorians could they be killed by any possible application of physical force. Past masters of mental science, they knew that no possible concentration of Eddorian mental force could kill any one of them. And if they were to be forced out of normal space, what matter? To such mentalities as theirs, any given space would serve as well as any other. No, they were fighting for an ideal; for the peaceful, harmonious, liberty-loving Civilization which they had envisaged as developing throughout, and eventually entirely covering the myriads of planets of, two tremendous Island Universes. Also, they felt a heavy weight of responsibility. Since all these races, existing and yet to appear, had sprung from and would spring from the Arisian life-spores which permeated this particular space, they all were and would be, at bottom, Arisian. It was starkly unthinkable that Arisia would leave them to the eternal dominance of such a rapacious, such a tyrannical, such a hellishly insatiable breed of monsters. Therefore the Arisians fought; efficiently if insidiously. They did not--they could not--interfere openly with Eddore's ruthless conquest of world after world; with Eddore's ruthless smashing of Civilization after Civilization. They did, however, see to it, by selective matings and the establishment of blood-lines upon numberless planets, that the trend of the level of intelligence was definitely and steadily upward. Four Molders of Civilization--Drounli, Kriedigan, Nedanillor, and Brolenteen, who, in fusion, formed the "Mentor of Arisia" who was to become known to every wearer of Civilization's Lens--were individually responsible for the Arisian program of development upon the four planets of Tellus, Rigel IV, Velantia, and Palain VII. Drounli established upon Tellus two principal lines of blood. In unbroken male line of descent the Kinnisons went back to long before the dawn of even mythical Tellurian history. Kinnexa of Atlantis, daughter of one Kinnison and sister of another, is the first of the blood to be named in these annals; but the line was then already old. So was the other line; characterized throughout its tremendous length, male and female, by peculiarly spectacular red-bronze-auburn hair and equally striking gold-flecked, tawny eyes. Nor did these strains mix. Drounli had made it psychologically impossible for them to mix until the penultimate stage of development should have been reached. While that stage was still in the future Virgil Samms appeared, and all Arisia knew that the time had come to engage the Eddorians openly, mind to mind. Gharlane-Roger was curbed, savagely and sharply. Every Eddorian, wherever he was working, found his every line of endeavor solidly blocked. Gharlane, as has been intimated, constructed a supposedly irresistible weapon and attacked his Arisian blocker, with results already told. At that failure Gharlane knew that there was something terribly amiss; that it had been amiss for over two thousand million Tellurian years. Really alarmed for the first time in his long life, he flashed back to Eddore; to warn his fellows and to take counsel with them as to what should be done. And the massed and integrated force of all Arisia was only an instant behind him. * * * * * Arisia struck Eddore's outermost screen, and in the instant of impact that screen went down. And then, instantaneously and all unperceived by the planet's defenders, the Arisian forces split. The Elders, including all the Molders, seized the Eddorian who had been handling that screen--threw around him an impenetrable net of force--yanked him out into inter-galactic space. Then, driving in resistlessly, they turned the luckless wight inside out. And before the victim died under their poignant probings, the Elders of Arisia learned everything that the Eddorian and all of his ancestors had ever known. They then withdrew to Arisia, leaving their younger, weaker, partially-developed fellows to do whatever they could against mighty Eddore. Whether the attack of these lesser forces would be stopped at the second, the third, the fourth, or the innermost screen; whether they would reach the planet itself and perhaps do some actual damage before being driven off; was immaterial. Eddore must be allowed and would be allowed to repel that invasion with ease. For cycles to come the Eddorians must and would believe that they had nothing really to fear from Arisia. The real battle, however, had been won. The Arisian visualizations could now be extended to portray every essential element of the climactic conflict which was eventually to come. It was no cheerful conclusion at which the Arisians arrived, since their visualizations all agreed in showing that the only possible method of wiping out the Eddorians would also of necessity end their own usefulness as Guardians of Civilization. Such an outcome having been shown necessary, however, the Arisians accepted it, and worked toward it, unhesitatingly. CHAPTER 2 As has been said, The Hill, which had been built to be the Tellurian headquarters of the Triplanetary Service and which was now the headquarters of the half-organized Solarian Patrol, was--and is--a truncated, alloy-sheathed, honey-combed mountain. But, since human beings do not like to live eternally underground, no matter how beautifully lighted or how carefully and comfortably air-conditioned the dungeon may be, the Reservation spread far beyond the foot of that gray, forbidding, mirror-smooth cone of metal. Well outside that farflung Reservation there was a small city; there were hundreds of highly productive farms; and, particularly upon this bright May afternoon, there was a Recreation Park, containing, among other things, dozens of tennis courts. One of these courts was three-quarters enclosed by stands, from which a couple of hundred people were watching a match which seemed to be of some little local importance. Two men sat in a box which had seats for twenty, and watched admiringly the pair who seemed in a fair way to win in straight sets the mixed-doubles championship of the Hill. "Fine-looking couple, Rod, if I do say so myself, as well as being smooth performers." Solarian Councillor Virgil Samms spoke to his companion as the opponents changed courts. "I still think, though, the young hussy ought to wear some clothes--those white nylon shorts make her look nakeder even than usual. I told her so, too, the jade, but she keeps on wearing less and less." "Of course," Commissioner Roderick K. Kinnison laughed quietly. "What did you expect? She got her hair and eyes from you, why not your hard-headedness, too? One thing, though, that's all to the good--she's got what it takes to strip ship that way, and most of 'em haven't. But what I can't understand is why they don't...." He paused. "I don't either. Lord knows we've thrown them at each other hard enough, and Jack Kinnison and Jill Samms would certainly make a pair to draw to. But if they won't ... but maybe they will yet. They're still youngsters, and they're friendly enough." If Samms père could have been out on the court, however, instead of in the box, he would have been surprised; for young Kinnison, although smiling enough as to face, was addressing his gorgeous partner in terms which carried little indeed of friendliness. "Listen, you bird-brained, knot-headed, grand-standing half-wit!" he stormed, voice low but bitterly intense. "I ought to beat your alleged brains out! I've told you a thousand times to watch your own territory and _stay out of mine_! If you had been where you belonged, or even taken my signal, Frank couldn't have made that thirty-all point; and if Lois hadn't netted she'd've caught you flat-footed, a kilometer out of position, and made it deuce. What do you think you're doing, anyway--playing tennis or seeing how many innocent bystanders you can bring down out of control?" "What do _you_ think?" the girl sneered, sweetly. Her tawny eyes, only a couple of inches below his own, almost emitted sparks. "And just look at who's trying to tell who how to do what! For your information, Master Pilot John K. Kinnison, I'll tell you that just because you can't quit being 'Killer' Kinnison even long enough to let two good friends of ours get a point now and then, or maybe even a game, is no reason why I've got to turn into 'Killer' Samms. And I'll also tell you...." "You'll tell me nothing, Jill--I'm telling _you_! Start giving away points in anything and you'll find out some day that you've given away too many. I'm not having any of that kind of game--and as long as you're playing with me you aren't either--or else. If you louse up this match just once more, the next ball I serve will hit the tightest part of those fancy white shorts of yours--right where the hip pocket would be if they had any--and it'll raise a welt that will make you eat off of the mantel for three days. So watch your step!" "You insufferable lug! I'd like to smash this racket over your head! I'll do it, too, and walk off the court, if you don't...." The whistle blew. Virgilia Samms, all smiles, toed the base-line and became the personification and embodiment of smoothly flowing motion. The ball whizzed over the net, barely clearing it--a sizzling service ace. The game went on. And a few minutes later, in the shower room, where Jack Kinnison was caroling lustily while plying a towel, a huge young man strode up and slapped him ringingly between the shoulder blades. "Congratulations, Jack, and so forth. But there's a thing I want to ask you. Confidential, sort of...?" "Shoot! Haven't we been eating out of the same dish for lo, these many moons? Why the diffidence all of a sudden, Mase? It isn't in character." "Well ... it's ... I'm a lip-reader, you know." "Sure. We all are. What of it?" "It's only that ... well, I saw what you and Miss Samms said to each other out there, and if that was lovers' small talk I'm a Venerian mud-puppy." "_Lovers!_ Who the hell ever said we were lovers?... Oh, you've been inhaling some of dad's balloon-juice. _Lovers!_ Me and that red-headed stinker--that jelly-brained sapadilly? _Hardly!_" "Hold it, Jack!" The big officer's voice was slightly edged. "You're off course--a hell of a long flit off. That girl has got everything. She's the class of the Reservation--why, she's a regular twelve-nineteen!" "Huh?" Amazed, young Kinnison stopped drying himself and stared. "You mean to say you've been giving her a miss just because...." He had started to say "because you're the best friend I've got in the System," but he did not. "Well, it would have smelled slightly cheesy, I thought." The other man did not put into words, either, what both of them so deeply knew to be the truth. "But if you haven't got ... if it's O.K. with you, of course...." "Stand by for five seconds--I'll take you around." Jack threw on his uniform, and in a few minutes the two young officers, immaculate in the space-black-and-silver of the Patrol, made their way toward the women's dressing rooms. "... but she's all right, at that ... in most ways ... I guess." Kinnison was half-apologizing for what he had said. "Outside of being chicken-hearted and pig-headed, she's a good egg. She really qualifies ... most of the time. But I wouldn't have her, bonus attached, any more than she would have me. It's strictly mutual. You won't fall for her, either, Mase; you'll want to pull one of her legs off and beat the rest of her to death with it inside of a week--but there's nothing like finding things out for yourself." In a short time Miss Samms appeared; dressed somewhat less revealingly than before in the blouse and kilts which were the mode of the moment. "Hi, Jill! This is Mase--I've told you about him. My boat-mate. Master Electronicist Mason Northrop." "Yes, I've heard about you, 'Troncist--a lot." She shook hands warmly. "He hasn't been putting tracers on you, Jill, on accounta he figured he'd be poaching. Can you feature that? I straightened him out, though, in short order. Told him why, too, so he ought to be insulated against any voltage you can generate." "Oh, you did? How sweet of you! But how ... oh, those?" She gestured at the powerful prism binoculars, a part of the uniform of every officer of space. "Uh-huh." Northrop wriggled, but held firm. "If I'd only been as big and husky as you are," surveying admiringly some six feet two of altitude and two hundred-odd pounds of hard meat, gristle, and bone, "I'd have grabbed him by one ankle, whirled him around my head, and flung him into the fifteenth row of seats. What's the matter with him, Mase, is that he was born centuries and centuries too late. He should have been an overseer when they built the pyramids--flogging slaves because they wouldn't step just so. Or better yet, one of those people it told about in those funny old books they dug up last year--liege lords, or something like that, remember? With the power of life and death--'high, middle, and low justice', whatever that was--over their vassals and their families, serfs, and serving-wenches. _Especially_ serving-wenches! He likes little, cuddly baby-talkers, who pretend to be utterly spineless and completely brainless--eh, Jack?" "Ouch! Touché, Jill--but maybe I had it coming to me, at that. Let's call it off, shall we? I'll be seeing you two, hither or yon." Kinnison turned and hurried away. "Want to know why he's doing such a quick flit?" Jill grinned up at her companion; a bright, quick grin. "Not that he was giving up. The blonde over there--the one in rocket red. Very few blondes can wear such a violent shade. Dimples Maynard." "And is she ... er...?" "Cuddly and baby-talkish? Uh-uh. She's a grand person. I was just popping off; so was he. You know that neither of us really meant half of what we said ... or ... at least...." Her voice died away. "I don't know whether I do or not," Northrop replied, awkwardly but honestly. "That was savage stuff if there ever was any. I can't see for the life of me why you two--two of the world's finest people--should have to tear into each other that way. Do you?" "I don't know that I ever thought of it like that." Jill caught her lower lip between her teeth. "He's splendid, really, and I like him a lot--usually. We get along perfectly most of the time. We don't fight at all except when we're too close together ... and then we fight about anything and everything ... say, suppose that that could be it? Like charges, repelling each other inversely as the square of the distance? That's about the way it seems to be." "Could be, and I'm glad." The man's face cleared. "And I'm a charge of the opposite sign. Let's go!" * * * * * And in Virgil Samms' deeply-buried office, Civilization's two strongest men were deep in conversation. "... troubles enough to keep four men of our size awake nights." Samms' voice was light, but his eyes were moody and somber. "You can probably whip yours, though, in time. They're mostly in one solar system; a short flit covers the rest. Languages and customs are known. But how--_how_--can legal processes work efficiently--work at all, for that matter--when a man can commit a murder or a pirate can loot a space-ship and be a hundred parsecs away before the crime is even discovered? How can a Tellurian John Law find a criminal on a strange world that knows nothing whatever of our Patrol, with a completely alien language--maybe no language at all--where it takes months even to find out who and where--if any--the native police officers are? But there must be a way, Rod--there's _got_ to be a way!" Samms slammed his open hand resoundingly against his desk's bare top. "And by God I'll find it--the Patrol _will_ come out on top!" "'Crusader' Samms, now and forever!" There was no trace of mockery in Kinnison's voice or expression, but only friendship and admiration. "And I'll bet you do. Your Interstellar Patrol, or whatever...." "Galactic Patrol. I know what the name of it is going to be, if nothing else." "... is just as good as in the bag, right now. You've done a job so far, Virge. This whole system, Nevia, the colonies on Aldebaran II and other planets, even Valeria, as tight as a drum. Funny about Valeria, isn't it...." There was a moment of silence, then Kinnison went on: "But wherever diamonds are, there go Dutchmen. And Dutch women go wherever their men do. And, in spite of medical advice, Dutch babies arrive. Although a lot of the adults died--three G's is no joke--practically all of the babies keep on living. Developing bones and muscles to fit--walking at a year and a half old--living normally--they say that the third generation will be perfectly at home there." "Which shows that the human animal is more adaptable than some ranking medicos had believed, is all. Don't try to side-track me, Rod. You know as well as I do what we're up against; the new headaches that inter-stellar commerce is bringing with it. New vices--drugs--thionite, for instance; we haven't been able to get an inkling of an idea as to where that stuff is coming from. And I don't have to tell you what piracy has done to insurance rates." "I'll say not--look at the price of Aldebaranian cigars, the only kind fit to smoke! You've given up, then, on the idea that Arisia is the pirates' GHQ?" "Definitely. It isn't. The pirates are even more afraid of it than tramp spacemen are. It's out of bounds--absolutely forbidden territory, apparently--to everybody, my best operatives included. All we know about it is the name--Arisia--that our planetographers gave it. It is the first completely incomprehensible thing I have ever experienced. I am going out there myself as soon as I can take the time--not that I expect to crack a thing that my best men couldn't touch, but there have been so many different and conflicting reports--no two stories agree on anything except in that no one could get anywhere near the planet--that I feel the need of some first-hand information. Want to come along?" "Try to keep me from it!" "But at that, we shouldn't be too surprised," Samms went on, thoughtfully. "Just beginning to scratch the surface as we are, we should expect to encounter peculiar, baffling--even completely inexplicable things. Facts, situations, events, and beings for which our one-system experience could not possibly have prepared us. In fact, we already have. If, ten years ago, anyone had told you that such a race as the Rigellians existed, what would you have thought? One ship went there, you know--once. One hour in any Rigellian city--one minute in a Rigellian automobile--drives a Tellurian insane." "I see your point." Kinnison nodded. "Probably I would have ordered a mental examination. And the Palainians are even worse. People--if you can call them that--who live on Pluto and _like_ it! Entities so alien that nobody, as far as I know, understands them. But you don't have to go even that far from home to locate a job of unscrewing the inscrutable. Who, what, and why--and for how long--was Gray Roger? And, not far behind him, is this young Bergenholm of yours. And by the way, you never did give me the lowdown on how come it was the 'Bergenholm', and not the 'Rodebush-Cleveland', that made trans-galactic commerce possible and caused nine-tenths of our headaches. As I get the story, Bergenholm wasn't--isn't--even an engineer." "Didn't I? Thought I did. He wasn't, and isn't. Well, the original Rodebush-Cleveland free drive was a killer, you know...." "_How_ I know!" Kinnison exclaimed, feelingly. "They beat their brains out and ate their hearts out for months, without getting it any better. Then, one day, this kid Bergenholm ambles into their shop--big, awkward, stumbling over his own feet. He gazes innocently at the thing for a couple of minutes, then says: "'Why don't you use uranium instead of iron and rewind it so it will put out a wave-form like this, with humps here, and here; instead of there, and there?' and he draws a couple of free-hand, but really beautiful curves. "'Why should we?' they squawk at him. "'Because it will work that way,' he says, and ambles out as unconcernedly as he came in. Can't--or won't--say another word. "Well in sheer desperation, they tried it--and it WORKED! And nobody has ever had a minute's trouble with a Bergenholm since. That's why Rodebush and Cleveland both insisted on the name." "I see; and it points up what I just said. But if he's such a mental giant, why isn't he getting results with his own problem, the meteor? Or is he?" "No ... or at least he wasn't as of last night. But there's a note on my pad that he wants to see me sometime today--suppose we have him come in now?" "Fine! I'd like to talk to him, if it's O.K. with you and with him." The young scientist was called in, and was introduced to the Commissioner. "Go ahead, Doctor Bergenholm," Samms suggested then. "You may talk to both of us, just as freely as though you and I were alone." "I have, as you already know, been called psychic," Bergenholm began, abruptly. "It is said that I dream dreams, see visions, hear voices, and so on. That I operate on hunches. That I am a genius. Now I very definitely am _not_ a genius--unless my understanding of the meaning of that word is different from that of the rest of mankind." Bergenholm paused. Samms and Kinnison looked at each other. The latter broke the short silence. "The Councillor and I have just been discussing the fact that there are a great many things we do not know; that with the extension of our activities into new fields, the occurrence of the impossible has become almost a commonplace. We are able, I believe, to listen with open minds to anything you have to say." "Very well. But first, please know that I am a scientist. As such, I am trained to observe; to think calmly, clearly, and analytically; to test every hypothesis. I do not believe at all in the so-called supernatural. This universe did not come into being, it does not continue to be, except by the operation of natural and immutable laws. And I mean _immutable_, gentlemen. Everything that has ever happened, that is happening now, or that ever is to happen, was, is, and will be statistically connected with its predecessor event and with its successor event. If I did not believe that implicitly, I would lose all faith in the scientific method. For if one single 'supernatural' event or thing had ever occurred or existed it would have constituted an entirely unpredictable event and would have initiated a series--a succession--of such events; a state of things which no scientist will or can believe possible in an orderly universe. "At the same time, I recognize the fact that I myself have done things--caused events to occur, if you prefer--that I cannot explain to you or to any other human being in any symbology known to our science; and it is about an even more inexplicable--call it 'hunch' if you like--that I asked to have a talk with you today." "But you are arguing in circles," Samms protested. "Or are you trying to set up a paradox?" "Neither. I am merely clearing the way for a somewhat startling thing I am to say later on. You know, of course, that any situation with which a mind is unable to cope; a really serious dilemma which it cannot resolve; will destroy that mind--frustration, escape from reality, and so on. You also will realize that I must have become cognizant of my own peculiarities long before anyone else did or could?" "Ah. I see. Yes, of course." Samms, intensely interested, leaned forward. "Yet your present personality is adequately, splendidly integrated. How could you possibly have overcome--reconciled--a situation so full of conflict?" "You are, I think, familiar with my parentage?" Samms, keen as he was, did not consider it noteworthy that the big Norwegian answered his question only by asking one of his own. "Yes ... oh, I'm beginning to see ... but Commissioner Kinnison has not had access to your dossier. Go ahead." "My father is Dr. Hjalmar Bergenholm. My mother, before her marriage, was Dr. Olga Bjornson. Both were, and are, nuclear physicists--very good ones. Pioneers, they have been called. They worked, and are still working, in the newest, outermost fringes of the field." "Oh!" Kinnison exclaimed. "A mutant? Born with second sight--or whatever it is?" "Not second sight, as history describes the phenomenon, no. The records do not show that any such faculty was ever demonstrated to the satisfaction of any competent scientific investigator. What I have is something else. Whether or not it will breed true is an interesting topic of speculation, but one having nothing to do with the problem now in hand. To return to the subject, I resolved my dilemma long since. There is, I am absolutely certain, a science of the mind which is as definite, as positive, as immutable of law, as is the science of the physical. While I will make no attempt to prove it to you, I _know_ that such a science exists, and that I was born with the ability to perceive at least some elements of it. "Now to the matter of the meteor of the Patrol. That emblem was and is purely physical. The pirates have just as able scientists as we have. What physical science can devise and synthesize, physical science can analyze and duplicate. There is a point, however, beyond which physical science cannot go. It can neither analyze nor imitate the tangible products of that which I have so loosely called the science of the mind. "I know, Councillor Samms, what the Triplanetary Service needs; something vastly more than its meteor. I also know that the need will become greater and greater as the sphere of action of the Patrol expands. Without a really efficient symbol, the Solarian Patrol will be hampered even more than the Triplanetary Service; and its logical extension into the Space Patrol, or whatever that larger organization may be called, will be definitely impossible. We need something which will identify any representative of Civilization, positively and unmistakably, wherever he may be. It must be impossible of duplication, or even of imitation, to which end it must kill any unauthorized entity who attempts imposture. It must operate as a telepath between its owner and any other living intelligence, of however high or low degree, so that mental communication, so much clearer and faster than physical, will be possible without the laborious learning of language; or between us and such peoples as those of Rigel Four or of Palain Seven, both of whom we know to be of high intelligence and who must already be conversant with telepathy." "Are you or have you been, reading my mind?" Samms asked quietly. "No," Bergenholm replied flatly. "It is not and has not been necessary. Any man who can think, who has really considered the question, and who has the good of Civilization at heart, must have come to the same conclusions." "Probably so, at that. But no more side issues. You have a solution of some kind worked out, or you would not be here. What is it?" "It is that you, Solarian Councillor Samms, should go to Arisia as soon as possible." "Arisia!" Samms exclaimed, and: "Arisia! Of all the hells in space, why Arisia? And how can we make the approach? Don't you know that _nobody_ can get anywhere near that damn planet?" Bergenholm shrugged his shoulders and spread both arms wide in a pantomime of complete helplessness. "How do you know--another of your hunches?" Kinnison went on. "Or did somebody tell you something? _Where_ did you get it?" "It is not a hunch," the Norwegian replied, positively. "No one told me anything. But I _know_--as definitely as I know that the combustion of hydrogen in oxygen will yield water--that the Arisians are very well versed in that which I have called the science of the mind; that if Virgil Samms goes to Arisia he will obtain the symbol he needs; that he will never obtain it otherwise. As to _how_ I know these things ... I can't ... I just ... I _know_ it, I tell you!" Without another word, without asking permission to leave, Bergenholm whirled around and hurried out. Samms and Kinnison stared at each other. "Well?" Kinnison asked, quizzically. "I'm going. Now. Whether I can be spared or not, and whether you think I'm out of control or not. I believe him, every word--and besides, there's the Bergenholm. How about you? Coming?" "Yes. Can't say that I'm sold one hundred percent; but, as you say, the Bergenholm is a hard fact to shrug off. And at minimum rating, it's got to be tried. What are you taking? Not a fleet, probably--the _Boise_? Or the _Chicago_?" It was the Commissioner of Public Safety speaking now, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. "The _Chicago_, I'd say--the fastest and strongest thing in space." "Recommendation approved. Blast-off; twelve hundred hours tomorrow!" CHAPTER 3 The superdreadnought _Chicago_, as she approached the imaginary but nevertheless sharply defined boundary, which no other ship had been allowed to pass, went inert and crept forward, mile by mile. Every man, from Commissioner and Councillor down, was taut and tense. So widely variant, so utterly fantastic, were the stories going around about this Arisia that no one knew what to expect. They expected the unexpected--and got it. "Ah, Tellurians, you are precisely on time." A strong, assured, deeply resonant pseudo-voice made itself heard in the depths of each mind aboard the tremendous ship of war. "Pilots and navigating officers, you will shift course to one seventy eight dash seven twelve fifty three. Hold that course, inert, at one Tellurian gravity of acceleration. Virgil Samms will now be interviewed. He will return to the consciousnesses of the rest of you in exactly six of your hours." Practically dazed by the shock of their first experience with telepathy, not one of the _Chicago's_ crew perceived anything unusual in the phraseology of that utterly precise, diamond-clear thought. Samms and Kinnison, however, precisionists themselves, did. But, warned although they were and keyed up although they were to detect any sign of hypnotism or of mental suggestion, neither of them had the faintest suspicion, then or ever, that Virgil Samms did not as a matter of fact leave the _Chicago_ at all. Samms _knew_ that he boarded a lifeboat and drove it toward the shimmering haze beyond which Arisia was. Commissioner Kinnison _knew_, as surely as did every other man aboard, that Samms did those things, because he and the other officers and most of the crew watched Samms do them. They watched the lifeboat dwindle in size with distance; watched it disappear within the peculiarly iridescent veil of force which their most penetrant ultra-beam spy-rays could not pierce. They waited. And, since every man concerned _knew_, beyond any shadow of doubt and to the end of his life, that everything that seemed to happen actually did happen, it will be so described. Virgil Samms, then, drove his small vessel through Arisia's innermost screen and saw a planet so much like Earth that it might have been her sister world. There were the white ice-caps, the immense blue oceans, the verdant continents partially obscured by fleecy banks of cloud. Would there, or would there not, be cities? While he had not known at all exactly what to expect, he did not believe that there would be any large cities upon Arisia. To qualify for the role of _deus ex machina_, the Arisian with whom Samms was about to deal would have to be a super-man indeed--a being completely beyond man's knowledge or experience in power of mind. Would such a race of beings have need of such things as cities? They would not. There would be no cities. Nor were there. The lifeboat flashed downward--slowed--landed smoothly in a regulation dock upon the outskirts of what appeared to be a small village surrounded by farms and woods. "This way, please." An inaudible voice directed him toward a two-wheeled vehicle which was almost, but not quite, like a Dillingham roadster. This car, however, took off by itself as soon as Samms closed the door. It sped smoothly along a paved highway devoid of all other traffic, past farms and past cottages, to stop of itself in front of the low, massive structure which was the center of the village and, apparently, its reason for being. "This way, please," and Samms went through an automatically-opened door; along a short, bare hall; into a fairly large central room containing a vat and one deeply-holstered chair. "Sit down, please." Samms did so, gratefully. He did not know whether he could have stood up much longer or not. He had expected to encounter a tremendous mentality; but this was a thing far, far beyond his wildest imaginings. This was a brain--just that--nothing else. Almost globular; at least ten feet in diameter; immersed in and in perfect equilibrium with a pleasantly aromatic liquid--a BRAIN! "Relax," the Arisian ordered, soothingly, and Samms found that he _could_ relax. "Through the one you know as Bergenholm I heard of your need and have permitted you to come here this once for instruction." "But this ... none of this ... it isn't ... it _can't_ be real!" Samms blurted. "I am--I must be--imagining it ... and yet I know that I _can't_ be hypnotized--I've been psychoed against it!" "What is reality?" the Arisian asked, quietly. "Your profoundest thinkers have never been able to answer that question. Nor, although I am much older and a much more capable thinker than any member of your race, would I attempt to give you its true answer. Nor, since your experience has been so limited, is it to be expected that you could believe without reservation any assurances I might give you in thoughts or in words. You must, then, convince yourself--definitely, by means of your own five senses--that I and everything about you are real, as you understand reality. You saw the village and this building; you see the flesh that houses the entity which is I. You feel your own flesh; as you tap the woodwork with your knuckles you feel the impact and hear the vibrations as sound. As you entered this room you must have perceived the odor of the nutrient solution in which and by virtue of which I live. There remains only the sense of taste. Are you by any chance either hungry or thirsty?" "Both." "Drink of the tankard in the niche yonder. In order to avoid any appearance of suggestion I will tell you nothing of its content except the one fact that it matches perfectly the chemistry of your tissues." Gingerly enough, Samms brought the pitcher to his lips--then, seizing it in both hands, he gulped down a tremendous draught. It was GOOD! It smelled like all appetizing kitchen aromas blended into one; it tasted like all of the most delicious meals he had ever eaten; it quenched his thirst as no beverage had ever done. But he could not empty even that comparatively small container--whatever the stuff was, it had a satiety value immensely higher even than old, rare, roast beef! With a sigh of repletion Samms replaced the tankard and turned again to his peculiar host. "I am convinced. That was real. No possible mental influence could so completely and unmistakably satisfy the purely physical demands of a body as hungry and as thirsty as mine was. Thanks, immensely, for allowing me to come here, Mr....?" "You may call me Mentor. I have no name, as you understand the term. Now, then, please think fully--you need not speak--of your problems and of your difficulties; of what you have done and of what you have it in mind to do." Samms thought, flashingly and cogently. A few minutes sufficed to cover Triplanetary's history and the beginning of the Solarian Patrol; then, for almost three hours, he went into the ramifications of the Galactic Patrol of his imaginings. Finally he wrenched himself back to reality. He jumped up, paced the floor, and spoke. "But there's a vital flaw, one inherent and absolutely ruinous fact that makes the whole thing impossible!" he burst out, rebelliously. "No one man, or group of men, no matter who they are, can be trusted with that much power. The Council and I have already been called everything imaginable; and what we have done so far is literally nothing at all in comparison with what the Galactic Patrol could and must do. Why, I myself would be the first to protest against the granting of such power to _anybody_. Every dictator in history, from Philip of Macedon to the Tyrant of Asia, claimed to be--and probably was, in his beginnings--motivated solely by benevolence. How am I to think that the proposed Galactic Council, or even I myself, will be strong enough to conquer a thing that has corrupted utterly every man who has ever won it? Who is to watch the watchmen?" "The thought does you credit, youth," Mentor replied, unmoved. "That is one reason why you are here. You, of your own force, can not know that you are in fact incorruptible. I, however, know. Moreover, there is an agency by virtue of which that which you now believe to be impossible will become commonplace. Extend your arm." Samms did so, and there snapped around his wrist a platinum-iridium bracelet carrying, wrist-watch-wise, a lenticular something at which the Tellurian stared in stupefied amazement. It seemed to be composed of thousands--millions--of tiny gems, each of which emitted pulsatingly all the colors of the spectrum; it was throwing out--broadcasting--a turbulent flood of writhing, polychromatic light! "The successor to the golden meteor of the Triplanetary Service," Mentor said, calmly. "The Lens of Arisia. You may take my word for it, until your own experience shall have convinced you of the fact, that no one will ever wear Arisia's Lens who is in any sense unworthy. Here also is one for your friend, Commissioner Kinnison; it is not necessary for him to come physically to Arisia. It is, you will observe, in an insulated container, and does not glow. Touch its surface, but lightly and very fleetingly, for the contact will be painful." Samms' finger-tip barely touched one dull, gray, lifeless jewel: his whole arm jerked away uncontrollably as there swept through his whole being the intimation of an agony more poignant by far than any he had ever known. "Why--it's _alive_!" he gasped. "No, it is not really alive, as you understand the term ..." Mentor paused, as though seeking a way to describe to the Tellurian a thing which was to him starkly incomprehensible. "It is, however, endowed with what you might call a sort of pseudo-life; by virtue of which it gives off its characteristic radiation while, and only while, it is in physical circuit with the living entity--the ego, let us say--with whom it is in exact resonance. Glowing, the Lens is perfectly harmless; it is complete--saturated--satiated--fulfilled. In the dark condition it is, as you have learned, dangerous in the extreme. It is then incomplete--unfulfilled--frustrated--you might say seeking or yearning or demanding. In that condition its pseudo-life interferes so strongly with any life to which it is not attuned that that life, in a space of seconds, is forced out of this plane or cycle of existence." "Then I--I alone--of all the entities in existence, can wear this particular Lens?" Samms licked his lips and stared at it, glowing so satisfyingly and contentedly upon his wrist. "But when I die, will it be a perpetual menace?" "By no means. A Lens cannot be brought into being except to match some one living personality; a short time after you pass into the next cycle your Lens will disintegrate." "Wonderful!" Samms breathed, in awe. "But there's one thing ... these things are ... priceless, and there will be millions of them to make ... and you don't...." "What will we get out of it, you mean?" The Arisian seemed to smile. "Exactly." Samms blushed, but held his ground. "Nobody does anything for nothing. Altruism is beautiful in theory, but it has never been known to work in practice. I will pay a tremendous price--any price within reason or possibility--for the Lens; but I will have to know what that price is to be." "It will be heavier than you think, or can at present realize; although not in the sense you fear." Mentor's thought was solemnity itself. "Whoever wears the Lens of Arisia will carry a load that no weaker mind could bear. The load of authority; of responsibility; of knowledge that would wreck completely any mind of lesser strength. Altruism? No. Nor is it a case of good against evil, as you so firmly believe. Your mental picture of glaring white and of unrelieved black is not a true picture. Neither absolute evil nor absolute good do or can exist." "But that would make it still worse!" Samms protested. "In that case, I can't see any reason at all for your exerting yourselves--putting yourselves out--for us." "There is, however, reason enough; although I am not sure that I can make it as clear to you as I would wish. There are in fact three reasons; any one of which would justify us in exerting--would compel us to exert--the trivial effort involved in the furnishing of Lenses to your Galactic Patrol. First, there is nothing either intrinsically right or intrinsically wrong about liberty or slavery, democracy or autocracy, freedom of action or complete regimentation. It seems to us, however, that the greatest measure of happiness and of well-being for the greatest number of entities, and therefore the optimum advancement toward whatever sublime Goal it is toward which this cycle of existence is trending in the vast and unknowable Scheme of Things, is to be obtained by securing for each and every individual the greatest amount of mental and physical freedom compatible with the public welfare. We of Arisia are only a small part of this cycle; and, as goes the whole, so goes in greater or lesser degree each of the parts. Is it impossible for you, a fellow citizen of this cycle-universe, to believe that such fulfillment alone would be ample compensation for a much greater effort?" "I never thought of it in that light...." It was hard for Samms to grasp the concept; he never did understand it thoroughly. "I begin to see, I think ... at least, I believe you." "Second, we have a more specific obligation in that the life of many, many worlds has sprung from Arisian seed. Thus, _in loco parentis_, we would be derelict indeed if we refused to act. And third, you yourself spend highly valuable time and much effort in playing chess. Why do you do it? What do you get out of it?" "Why, I ... uh ... mental exercise, I suppose ... I like it!" "Just so. And I am sure that one of your very early philosophers came to the conclusion that a fully competent mind, from a study of one fact or artifact belonging to any given universe, could construct or visualize that universe, from the instant of its creation to its ultimate end?" "Yes. At least, I have heard the proposition stated, but I have never believed it possible." "It is not possible simply because no fully competent mind ever has existed or ever will exist. A mind can become fully competent only by the acquisition of infinite knowledge, which would require infinite time as well as infinite capacity. Our equivalent of your chess, however, is what we call the 'Visualization of the Cosmic All'. In my visualization a descendant of yours named Clarrissa MacDougall will, in a store called Brenleer's upon the planet ... but no, let us consider a thing nearer at hand and concerning you personally, so that its accuracy will be subject to check. Where you will be and exactly what you will be doing, at some definite time in the future. Five years, let us say?" "Go ahead. If you can do that you're _good_." "Five Tellurian calendar years then, from the instant of your passing through the screen of 'The Hill' on this present journey, you will be ... allow me, please, a moment of thought ... you will be in a barber shop not yet built; the address of which is to be fifteen hundred fifteen Twelfth Avenue, Spokane, Washington, North America, Tellus. The barber's name will be Antonio Carbonero and he will be left-handed. He will be engaged in cutting your hair. Or rather, the actual cutting will have been done and he will be shaving, with a razor trade-marked 'Jensen-King-Byrd', the short hairs in front of your left ear. A comparatively small, quadrupedal, grayish-striped entity, of the race called 'cat'--a young cat, this one will be, and called Thomas, although actually of the female sex--will jump into your lap, addressing you pleasantly in a language with which you yourself are only partially familiar. You call it mewing and purring, I believe?" "Yes," the flabbergasted Samms managed to say. "Cats do purr--especially kittens." "Ah--very good. Never having met a cat personally, I am gratified at your corroboration of my visualization. This female youth erroneously called Thomas, somewhat careless in computing the elements of her trajectory, will jostle slightly the barber's elbow with her tail; thus causing him to make a slight incision, approximately three millimeters long, parallel to and just above your left cheek-bone. At the precise moment in question, the barber will be applying a styptic pencil to this insignificant wound. This forecast is, I trust, sufficiently detailed so that you will have no difficulty in checking its accuracy or its lack thereof?" "Detailed! _Accuracy!_" Samms could scarcely think. "But listen--not that I want to cross you up deliberately, but I'll tell you now that a man doesn't like to get sliced by a barber, even such a little nick as that. I'll remember that address--and the cat--and I'll never go into the place!" "Every event does affect the succession of events," Mentor acknowledged, equably enough. "Except for this interview, you would have been in New Orleans at that time, instead of in Spokane. I have considered every pertinent factor. You will be a busy man. Hence, while you will think of this matter frequently and seriously during the near future, you will have forgotten it in less than five years. You will remember it only at the touch of the astringent, whereupon you will give voice to certain self-derogatory and profane remarks." "I ought to," Samms grinned; a not-too-pleasant grin. He had been appalled by the quality of mind able to do what Mentor had just done; he was now more than appalled by the Arisian's calm certainty that what he had foretold in such detail would in every detail come to pass. "If, after all this Spokane--let a tiger-striped kitten jump into my lap--let a left-handed Tony Carbonero nick me--uh-uh, Mentor, UH-UH! _If_ I do, I'll deserve to be called everything I can think of!" "These that I have mentioned, the gross occurrences, are problems only for inexperienced thinkers." Mentor paid no attention to Samms' determination never to enter that shop. "The real difficulties lie in the fine detail, such as the length, mass, and exact place and position of landing, upon apron or floor, of each of your hairs as it is severed. Many factors are involved. Other clients passing by--opening and shutting doors--air currents--sunshine--wind--pressure, temperature, humidity. The exact fashion in which the barber will flick his shears, which in turn depends upon many other factors--what he will have been doing previously, what he will have eaten and drunk, whether or not his home life will have been happy ... you little realize, youth, what a priceless opportunity this will be for me to check the accuracy of my visualization. I shall spend many periods upon the problem. I cannot attain perfect accuracy, of course. Ninety nine point nine nines percent, let us say ... or perhaps ten nines ... is all that I can reasonably expect...." "But, Mentor!" Samms protested. "I can't help you on a thing like that! How can I know or report the exact mass, length, and orientation of single hairs?" "You cannot; but, since you will be wearing your Lens, I myself can and will compare minutely my visualization with the actuality. For know, youth, that wherever any Lens is, there can any Arisian be if he so desires. And now, knowing that fact, and from your own knowledge of the satisfactions to be obtained from chess and other such mental activities, and from the glimpses you have had into my own mind, do you retain any doubts that we Arisians will be fully compensated for the trifling effort involved in furnishing whatever number of Lenses may be required?" "I have no more doubts. But this Lens ... I'm getting more afraid of it every minute. I see that it is a perfect identification; I can understand that it can be a perfect telepath. But is it something else, as well? If it has other powers ... what are they?" "I cannot tell you; or, rather, I will not. It is best for your own development that I do not, except in the most general terms. It has additional qualities, it is true; but, since no two entities ever have the same abilities, no two Lenses will ever be of identical qualities. Strictly speaking, a Lens has no real power of its own; it merely concentrates, intensifies, and renders available whatever powers are already possessed by its wearer. You must develop your own powers and your own abilities; we of Arisia, in furnishing the Lens, will have done everything that we should do." "Of course, sir; and much more than we have any right to expect. You have given me a Lens for Roderick Kinnison; how about the others? Who is to select them?" "You are, for a time." Silencing the man's protests, Mentor went on: "You will find that your judgment will be good. You will send to us only one entity who will not be given a Lens, and it is necessary that that one entity should be sent here. You will begin a system of selection and training which will become more and more rigorous as time goes on. This will be necessary; not for the selection itself, which the Lensmen themselves could do among babies in their cradles, but because of the benefits thus conferred upon the many who will not graduate, as well as upon the few who will. In the meantime you will select the candidates; and you will be shocked and dismayed when you discover how few you will be able to send. "You will go down in history as First Lensman Samms; the Crusader, the man whose wide vision and tremendous grasp made it possible for the Galactic Patrol to become what it is to be. You will have highly capable help, of course. The Kinnisons, with their irresistible driving force, their indomitable will to do, their transcendent urge; Costigan, back of whose stout Irish heart lie Erin's best of brains and brawn; your cousins George and Ray Olmstead; your daughter Virgilia...." "Virgilia! Where does _she_ fit into this picture? What do you know about her--and how?" "A mind would be incompetent indeed who could not visualize, from even the most fleeting contact with you, a fact which has been in existence for some twenty three of your years. Her doctorate in psychology; her intensive studies under Martian and Venerian masters--even under one reformed Adept of North Polar Jupiter--of the involuntary, uncontrollable, almost unknown and hence highly revealing muscles of the face, the hands, and other parts of the human body. You will remember that poker game for a long time." "I certainly will." Samms grinned, a bit shamefacedly. "She gave us clear warning of what she was going to do, and then cleaned us out to the last millo." "Naturally. She has, all unconsciously, been training herself for the work she is destined to do. But to resume; you will feel yourself incompetent, unworthy--that, too, is a part of a Lensman's Load. When you first scan the mind of Roderick Kinnison you will feel that he, not you, should be the prime mover in the Galactic Patrol. But know now that no mind, not even the most capable in the universe, can either visualize truly or truly evaluate itself. Commissioner Kinnison, upon scanning your mind as he will scan it, will know the truth and will be well content. But time presses; in one minute you leave." "Thanks a lot ... thanks." Samms got to his feet and paused, hesitantly. "I suppose that it will be all right ... that is, I can call on you again, if...?" "No," the Arisian declared, coldly. "My visualization does not indicate that it will ever again be either necessary or desirable for you to visit or to communicate with me or with any other Arisian." Communication ceased as though a solid curtain had been drawn between the two. Samms strode out and stepped into the waiting vehicle, which whisked him back to his lifeboat. He blasted off; arriving in the control room of the _Chicago_ precisely at the end of the sixth hour after leaving it. "Well, Rod, I'm back ..." he began, and stopped; utterly unable to speak. For at the mention of the name Samms' Lens had put him fully en rapport with his friend's whole mind; and what he perceived struck him--literally and precisely--dumb. He had always liked and admired Rod Kinnison. He had always known that he was tremendously able and capable. He had known that he was big; clean; a square shooter; the world's best. Hard; a driver who had little more mercy on his underlings in selected undertakings than he had on himself. But now, as he saw spread out for his inspection Kinnison's ego in its entirety; as he compared in fleeting glances that terrific mind with those of the other officers--good men, too, all of them--assembled in the room; he knew that he had never even begun to realize what a giant Roderick Kinnison really was. "What's the matter, Virge?" Kinnison exclaimed, and hurried up, both hands outstretched. "You look like you're seeing ghosts! What did they do to you?" "Nothing--much. But 'ghosts' doesn't half describe what I'm seeing right now. Come into my office, will you, Rod?" Ignoring the curious stares of the junior officers, the Commissioner and the Councillor went into the latter's quarters, and in those quarters the two Lensmen remained in close consultation during practically all of the return trip to Earth. In fact, they were still conferring deeply, via Lens, when the _Chicago_ landed and they took a ground-car into The Hill. "But who are you going to send first, Virge?" Kinnison demanded. "You must have decided on at least some of them, by this time." "I know of only five, or possibly six, who are ready," Samms replied, glumly. "I would have sworn that I knew of a hundred, but they don't measure up. Jack, Mason Northrop, and Conway Costigan, for the first load. Lyman Cleveland, Fred Rodebush, and perhaps Bergenholm--I haven't been able to figure him out, but I'll know when I get him under my Lens--next. That's all." "Not quite. How about your identical-twin cousins, Ray and George Olmstead, who have been doing such a terrific job of counter-spying?" "Perhaps ... Quite possibly." "And if I'm good enough, Clayton and Schweikert certainly are, to name only two of the commodores. And Knobos and DalNalten. And above all, how about Jill?" "Jill? Why, I don't ... she measures up, of course, but ... but at that, there was nothing said against it, either ... I wonder...." "Why not have the boys in--Jill, too--and thrash it out?" The young people were called in; the story was told; the problem stated. The boys' reaction was instantaneous and unanimous. Jack Kinnison took the lead. "Of course Jill's going, if anybody does!" he burst out vehemently. "Count _her_ out, with all the stuff she's got? _Hardly_!" "Why, Jack! This, from _you_?" Jill seemed highly surprised. "I have it on excellent authority that I'm a stinker; a half-witted one, at that. A jelly-brain, with come-hither eyes." "You are, and a lot of other things besides." Jack Kinnison did not back up a millimeter, even before their fathers. "But even at your sapadilliest your half wits are better than most other people's whole ones; and I never said or thought that your brain couldn't function, whenever it wanted to, back of those sad eyes. Whatever it takes to be a Lensman, sir," he turned to Samms, "she's got just as much of as the rest of us. Maybe more." "I take it, then, that there is no objection to her going?" Samms asked. There was no objection. "What ship shall we take, and when?" "The _Chicago_. Now." Kinnison directed. "She's hot and ready. We didn't strike any trouble going or coming, so she didn't need much servicing. Flit!" They flitted, and the great battleship made the second cruise as uneventfully as she had made the first. The _Chicago's_ officers and crew knew that the young people left the vessel separately; that they returned separately, each in his or her lifeboat. They met, however, not in the control room, but in Jack Kinnison's private quarters; the three young Lensmen and the girl. The three were embarrassed; ill at ease. The Lenses were--definitely--not working. No one of them would put his Lens on Jill, since she did not have one.... The girl broke the short silence. "Wasn't she the most perfectly _beautiful_ thing you ever saw?" she breathed. "In spite of being over seven feet tall? She looked to be about twenty--except her eyes--but she must have been a hundred, to know so much--but what are you boys staring so about?" "_She!_" Three voices blurted as one. "Yes. She. Why? I know we weren't together, but I got the impression, some way or other, that there was only the one. What did _you_ see?" All three men started to talk at once, a clamor of noise; then all stopped at once. "You first, Spud. Whom did you talk to, and what did he, she, or it say?" Although Conway Costigan was a few years older than the other three, they all called him by nickname as a matter of course. "National Police Headquarters--Chief of the Detective Bureau," Costigan reported, crisply. "Between forty three and forty five; six feet and half an inch; one seventy five. Hard, fine, keen, a Big Time Operator if there ever was one. Looked a lot like your father, Jill; the same dark auburn hair, just beginning to gray, and the same deep orange-yellow markings in his eyes. He gave me the works; then took this Lens out of his safe, snapped it onto my wrist, and gave me two orders--get out and stay out." Jack and Mase stared at Costigan, at Jill, and at each other. Then they whistled in unison. "I see this is not going to be a unanimous report, except possibly in one minor detail," Jill remarked. "Mase, you're next." "I landed on the campus of the University of Arisia," Northrop stated, flatly. "Immense place--hundreds of thousands of students. They look me to the Physics Department--to the private laboratory of the Department Head himself. He had a panel with about a million meters and gauges on it; he scanned and measured every individual component element of my brain. Then he made a pattern, on a milling router just about as complicated as his panel. From there on, of course, it was simple--just like a dentist making a set of china choppers or a metallurgist embedding a test-section. He snapped a couple of sentences of directions at me, and then said 'Scram!' That's all." "Sure that was all?" Costigan asked. "Didn't he add 'and _stay_ scrammed'?" "He didn't _say_ it, exactly, but the implication was clear enough." "The one point of similarity," Jill commented. "Now you, Jack. You have been looking as though we were all candidates for canvas jackets that lace tightly up the back." "Uh-uh. As though maybe _I_ am. I didn't see anything at all. Didn't even land on the planet. Just floated around in an orbit inside that screen. The thing I talked with was a pattern of pure force. This Lens simply appeared on my wrist, bracelet and all, out of thin air. He told me plenty, though, in a very short time--his last word being for me not to come back or call back." "Hm ... m ... m." This of Jack's was a particularly indigestible bit, even for Jill Samms. "In plain words," Costigan volunteered, "we all saw exactly what we expected to see." "Uh-uh," Jill denied. "I certainly did not expect to see a woman ... no; what each of us saw, I think, was what would do us the most good--give each of us the highest possible lift. I am wondering whether or not there was anything at all really there." "That might be it, at that." Jack scowled in concentration. "But there must have been _something_ there--these Lenses are real. But what makes me mad is that they wouldn't give you a Lens. You're just as good a man as any one of us--if I didn't know it wouldn't do a damn bit of good I'd go back there right now and...." "Don't pop off so, Jack!" Jill's eyes, however, were starry. "I know you mean it, and I could almost love you, at times--but I don't need a Lens. As a matter of fact, I'll be much better off without one." "Jet back, Jill!" Jack Kinnison stared deeply into the girl's eyes--but still did not use his Lens. "Somebody must have done a terrific job of selling, to make you believe that ... or _are_ you sold, actually?" "Actually. Honestly. That Arisian was a thousand times more of a woman than I ever will be, and she didn't wear a Lens--never had worn one. Women's minds and Lenses don't fit. There's a sex-based incompatibility. Lenses are as masculine as whiskers--and at that, only a very few men can ever wear them, either. Very special men, like you three and Dad and Pops Kinnison. Men with tremendous force, drive, and scope. Pure killers, all of you; each in his own way, of course. No more to be stopped than a glacier, and twice as hard and ten times as cold. A woman simply _can't_ have that kind of a mind! There is going to be a woman Lensman some day--just one--but not for years and years; and I wouldn't be in her shoes for anything. In this job of mine, of...." "Well, go on. What is this job you're so sure you are going to do?" "Why, I don't know!" Jill exclaimed, startled eyes wide. "I thought I knew all about it, but I don't! Do you, about yours?" They did not, not one of them; and they were all as surprised at that fact as the girl had been. "Well, to get back to this Lady Lensman who is going to appear some day, I gather that she is going to be some kind of a freak. She'll have to be, practically, because of the sex-based fundamental nature of the Lens. Mentor didn't say so, in so many words, but she made it perfectly clear that...." "Mentor!" the three men exclaimed. Each of them had dealt with Mentor! "I am beginning to see," Jill said, thoughtfully. "Mentor. Not a real name at all. To quote the Unabridged verbatim--I had occasion to look the word up the other day and I am appalled now at the certainty that there was a connection--quote; Mentor, a wise and faithful counselor; unquote. Have any of you boys anything to say? I haven't; and I am beginning to be scared blue." Silence fell; and the more they thought, those three young Lensmen and the girl who was one of the two human women ever to encounter knowingly an Arisian mind, the deeper that silence became. CHAPTER 4 "So you didn't find anything on Nevia." Roderick Kinnison got up, deposited the inch-long butt of his cigar in an ashtray, lit another, and prowled about the room; hands jammed deep into breeches pockets. "I'm surprised. Nerado struck me as being a B.T.O.... I thought sure he'd qualify." "So did I." Samms' tone was glum. "He's Big Time, and an Operator; but not big enough, by far. I'm--we're both--finding out that Lensman material is _damned_ scarce stuff. There's none on Nevia, and no indication whatever that there ever will be any." "Tough ... and you're right, of course, in your stand that we'll have to have Lensmen from as many different solar systems as possible on the Galactic Council or the thing won't work at all. So damned much jealousy--which is one reason why we're here in New York instead of out at The Hill, where we belong--we've found that out already, even in such a small and comparatively homogeneous group as our own system--the Solarian Council will not only have to be made up mostly of Lensmen, but each and every inhabited planet of Sol will have to be represented--even Pluto, I suppose, in time. And by the way, your Mr. Saunders wasn't any too pleased when you took Knobos of Mars and DalNalten of Venus away from him and made Lensmen out of them--and put them miles over his head." "Oh, I wouldn't say that ... exactly. I convinced him ... but at that, since Saunders is not Lensman grade himself, it was a trifle difficult for him to understand the situation completely." "You say it easy--'difficult' is not the word I would use. But back to the Lensman hunt." Kinnison scowled blackly. "I agree, as I said before, that we need non-human Lensmen, the more the better, but I don't think much of your chance of finding any. What makes you think ... Oh, I see ... but I don't know whether you're justified or not in assuming a high positive correlation between a certain kind of mental ability and technological advancement." "No such assumption is necessary. Start anywhere you please, Rod, and take it from there; including Nevia." "I'll start with known facts, then. Interstellar flight is new to us. We haven't spread far, or surveyed much territory. But in the eight solar systems with which we are most familiar there are seven planets--I'm not counting Valeria--which are very much like Earth in point of mass, size, climate, atmosphere, and gravity. Five of the seven did not have any intelligent life and were colonized easily and quickly. The Tellurian worlds of Procyon and Vega became friendly neighbors--thank God we learned something on Nevia--because they were already inhabited by highly advanced races: Procia by people as human as we are, Vegia by people who would be so if it weren't for their tails. Many other worlds of these systems are inhabited by more or less intelligent non-human races. Just how intelligent they are we don't know, but the Lensmen will soon find out. "My point is that no race we have found so far has had either atomic energy or any form of space-drive. In any contact with races having space-drives we have not been the discoverers, but the discovered. _Our_ colonies are all within twenty six light-years of Earth except Aldebaran II, which is fifty seven, but which drew a lot of people, in spite of the distance, because it was so nearly identical with Earth. On the other hand, the Nevians, from a distance of over a hundred light-years, found _us_ ... implying an older race and a higher development ... but you just told me that they would _never_ produce a Lensman!" "That point stopped me, too, at first. Follow through; I want to see if you arrive at the same conclusion I did." "Well ... I ... I ..." Kinnison thought intensely, then went on: "Of course, the Nevians were not colonizing; nor, strictly speaking, exploring. They were merely hunting for iron--a highly organized, intensively specialized operation to find a raw material they needed desperately." "Precisely," Samms agreed. "The Rigellians, however, were _surveying_, and Rigel is about four hundred and forty light-years from here. We didn't have a thing they needed or wanted. They nodded at us in passing and kept on going. I'm still on your track?" "Dead center. And just where does that put the Palainians?" "I see ... you may have something there, at that. Palain is so far away that nobody knows even where it is--probably thousands of light-years. Yet they have not only explored this system; they colonized Pluto long before our white race colonized America. But damn it, Virge, I don't like it--any part of it. Rigel Four you may be able to take, with your Lens ... even one of their damned automobiles, if you stay solidly en rapport with the driver. But _Palain_, Virge! Pluto is bad enough, but the home planet! You can't. Nobody can. It simply can't be done!" "I know it won't be easy," Samms admitted, bleakly, "but if it's got to be done, I'll do it. And I have a little information that I haven't had time to tell you yet. We discussed once before, you remember, what a job it was to get into any kind of communication with the Palainians on Pluto. You said then that nobody could understand them, and you were right--then. However, I re-ran those brain-wave tapes, wearing my Lens, and could understand them--the thoughts, that is--as well as though they had been recorded in precisionist-grade English." "_What?_" Kinnison exclaimed, then fell silent. Samms remained silent. What they were thinking of Arisia's Lens cannot be expressed in words. "Well, go on," Kinnison finally said. "Give me the rest of it--the stinger that you've been holding back." "The messages--_as messages_--were clear and plain. The backgrounds, however, the connotations and implications, were not. Some of their codes and standards seem to be radically different from ours--so utterly and fantastically different that I simply cannot reconcile either their conduct or their ethics with their obviously high intelligence and their advanced state of development. However, they have at least some minds of tremendous power, and none of the peculiarities I deduced were of such a nature as to preclude Lensmanship. Therefore I am going to Pluto; and from there--I hope--to Palain Seven. If there's a Lensman there, I'll get him." "You will, at that," Kinnison paid quiet tribute to what he, better than anyone else, knew that his friend had. "But enough of me--how are you doing?" "As well as can be expected at this stage of the game. The thing is developing along three main lines. First, the pirates. Since that kind of thing is more or less my own line I'm handling it myself, unless and until you find someone better qualified. I've got Jack and Costigan working on it now. "Second; drugs, vice, and so on. I hope you find somebody to take this line over, because, frankly, I'm in over my depth and want to get out. Knobos and DalNalten are trying to find out if there's anything to the idea that there may be a planetary, or even inter-planetary, ring involved. Since Sid Fletcher isn't a Lensman I couldn't disconnect him openly from his job, but he knows a lot about the dope-vice situation and is working practically full time with the other two. "Third; pure--or rather, decidedly impure--politics. The more I studied _that_ subject, the clearer it became that politics would be the worst and biggest battle of the three. There are too many angles I don't know a damned thing about, such as what to do about the succession of foaming, screaming fits your friend Senator Morgan will be throwing the minute he finds out what our Galactic Patrol is going to do. So I ducked the whole political line. "Now you know as well as I do--better, probably--that Morgan is only the Pernicious Activities Committee of the North American Senate. Multiply him by the thousands of others, all over space, who will be on our necks before the Patrol can get its space-legs, and you will see that all that stuff will have to be handled by a Lensman who, as well as being a mighty smooth operator, will have to know _all_ the answers and will have to have plenty of guts. I've got the guts, but none of the other prime requisites. Jill hasn't, although she's got everything else. Fairchild, your Relations ace, isn't a Lensman and can never become one. So you can see quite plainly who has got to handle politics himself." "You may be right ... but this Lensman business comes first...." Samms pondered, then brightened. "Perhaps--probably--I can find somebody on this trip--a Palainian, say--who is better qualified than any of us." Kinnison snorted. "If you can, I'll buy you a week in any Venerian relaxerie you want to name." "Better start saving up your credits, then, because from what I already know of the Palainian mentality such a development is distinctly more than a possibility." Samms paused, his eyes narrowing. "I don't know whether it would make Morgan and his kind more rabid or less so to have a non-Solarian entity possess authority in our affairs political--but at least it would be something new and different. But in spite of what you said about 'ducking' politics, what have you got Northrop, Jill and Fairchild doing?" "Well, we had a couple of discussions. I couldn't give either Jill or Dick orders, of course...." "Wouldn't, you mean," Samms corrected. "Couldn't," Kinnison insisted. "Jill, besides being your daughter and Lensman grade, had no official connection with either the Triplanetary Service or the Solarian Patrol. And the Service, including Fairchild, is still Triplanetary; and it will have to stay Triplanetary until you have found enough Lensmen so that you can spring your twin surprises--Galactic Council and Galactic Patrol. However, Northrop and Fairchild are keeping their eyes and ears open and their mouths shut, and Jill is finding out whatever she can about drugs and so on, as well as the various political angles. They'll report to you--facts, deductions, guesses, and recommendations--whenever you say the word." "Nice work, Rod. Thanks. I think I'll call Jill now, before I go--wonder where she is? ... but I wonder ... with the Lens perhaps telephones are superfluous? I'll try it." "JILL!" he thought intensely into his Lens, forming as he did so a mental image of his gorgeous daughter as he knew her. But he found, greatly to his surprise, that neither elaboration nor emphasis was necessary. "Ouch!" came the almost instantaneous answer, long before his thought was complete. "Don't think so hard, Dad, it hurts--I almost missed a step." Virgilia was actually there with him; inside his own mind; in closer touch with him than she had ever before been. "Back so soon? Shall we report now, or aren't you ready to go to work yet?" "Skipping for the moment your aspersions on my present activities--not quite." Samms moderated the intensity of his thought to a conversational level. "Just wanted to check with you. Come in, Rod." In flashing thoughts he brought her up to date. "Jill, do you agree with what Rod here has just told me?" "Yes. Fully. So do the boys." "That settles it, then--unless, of course, I can find a more capable substitute." "Of course--but we will believe that when we see it." "Where are you and what are you doing?" "Washington, D.C. European Embassy. Dancing with Herkimer Third, Senator Morgan's Number One secretary. I was going to make passes at him--in a perfectly lady-like way, of course--but it wasn't necessary. He thinks he can break down my resistance." "Careful, Jill! That kind of stuff...." "Is very old stuff indeed, Daddy dear. Simple. And Herkimer Third isn't really a menace; he just thinks he is. Take a look--you can, can't you, with your Lens?" "Perhaps ... Oh, yes. I see him as well as you do." Fully en rapport with the girl as he was, so that his mind received simultaneously with hers any stimulus which she was willing to share, it seemed as though a keen, handsome, deeply tanned face bent down from a distance of inches toward his own. "But I don't like it a bit--and him even less." "That's because you aren't a girl," Jill giggled mentally. "This is fun; and it won't hurt him a bit, except maybe for a slightly bruised vanity, when I don't fall down flat at his feet. And I'm learning a lot that he hasn't any suspicion he's giving away." "Knowing you, I believe that. But don't ... that is ... well, be _very_ careful not to get your fingers burned. The job isn't worth it--yet." "Don't worry, Dad." She laughed unaffectedly. "When it comes to playboys like this one, I've got millions and skillions and whillions of ohms of resistance. But here comes Senator Morgan himself, with a fat and repulsive Venerian--he's calling my boy-friend away from me, with what he thinks is an imperceptible high-sign, into a huddle--and my olfactory nerves perceive a rich and fruity aroma, as of skunk--so ... I hate to seem to be giving a Solarian Councillor the heave-ho, but if I want to read what goes on--and I certainly do--I'll have to concentrate. As soon as you get back give us a call and we'll report. Take it easy, Dad!" "You're the one to be told that, not me. Good hunting, Jill!" Samms, still seated calmly at his desk, reached out and pressed a button marked "GARAGE". His office was on the seventieth floor; the garage occupied level after level of sub-basement. The screen brightened; a keen young face appeared. "Good evening, Jim. Will you please send my car up to the Wright Skyway feeder?" "At once, sir. It will be there in seventy five seconds." Samms cut off; and, after a brief exchange of thought with Kinnison, went out into the hall and along it to the "DOWN" shaft. There, going free, he stepped through a doorless, unguarded archway into over a thousand feet of air. Although it was long after conventional office hours the shaft was still fairly busy, but that made no difference--inertialess collisions cannot even be felt. He bulleted downward to the sixth floor, where he brought himself to an instantaneous halt. Leaving the shaft, he joined the now thinning crowd hurrying toward the exit. A girl with meticulously plucked eyebrows and an astounding hair-do, catching sight of his Lens, took her hands out of her breeches pockets--skirts went out, as office dress, when up-and-down open-shaft velocities of a hundred or so miles per hour replaced elevators--nudged her companion, and whispered excitedly: "Look there! Quick! I never saw one close up before, did you? That's him--himself! First Lensman Samms!" At the Portal, the Lensman as a matter of habit held out his car-check, but such formalities were no longer necessary, or even possible. Everybody knew, or wanted to be thought of as knowing, Virgil Samms. "Stall four sixty five, First Lensman, sir," the uniformed gateman told him, without even glancing at the extended disk. "Thank you, Tom." "This way, please, sir, First Lensman," and a youth, teeth gleaming white in a startlingly black face, strode proudly to the indicated stall and opened the vehicle's door. "Thank you, Danny," Samms said, as appreciatively as though he did not know exactly where his ground-car was. He got in. The door jammed itself gently shut. The runabout--a Dillingham eleven-forty--shot smoothly forward upon its two fat, soft tires. Half-way to the exit archway he was doing forty; he hit the steeply-banked curve leading into the lofty "street" at ninety. Nor was there shock or strain. Motorcycle-wise, but automatically, the "Dilly" leaned against its gyroscopes at precisely the correct angle; the huge low-pressure tires clung to the resilient synthetic of the pavement as though integral with it. Nor was there any question of conflicting traffic, for this thoroughfare, six full levels above Varick Street proper, was not, strictly speaking, a street at all. It had only one point of access, the one which Samms had used; and only one exit--it was simply and only a feeder into Wright Skyway, a limited-access superhighway. Samms saw, without noting particularly, the maze of traffic-ways of which this feeder was only one tiny part; a maze which extended from ground-level up to a point well above even the towering buildings of New York's metropolitan district. The way rose sharply; Samms' right foot went down a little farther; the Dillingham began to pick up speed. Moving loud-speakers sang to him and yelled and blared at him, but he did not hear them. Brilliant signs, flashing and flaring all the colors of the spectrum--sheer triumphs of the electrician's art--blazed in or flamed into arresting words and eye-catching pictures, but he did not see them. Advertising--designed by experts to sell everything from aardvarks to Martian zyzmol ("bottled ecstacy")--but the First Lensman was a seasoned big-city dweller. His mind had long since become a perfect filter, admitting to his consciousness only things which he wanted to perceive: only so can big-city life be made endurable. Approaching the Skyway, he cut in his touring roadlights, slowed down a trifle, and insinuated his low-flyer into the stream of traffic. Those lights threw fifteen hundred watts apiece, but there was no glare--polarized lenses and wind-shields saw to that. He wormed his way over to the left-hand, high-speed lane and opened up. At the edge of the skyscraper district, where Wright Skyway angles sharply downward to ground level, Samms' attention was caught and held by something off to his right--a blue-white, whistling something that hurtled upward into the air. As it ascended it slowed down; its monotone shriek became lower and lower in pitch; its light went down through the spectrum toward the red. Finally it exploded, with an earth-shaking crash; but the lightning-like flash of the detonation, instead of vanishing almost instantaneously, settled itself upon a low-hanging artificial cloud and became a picture and four words--two bearded faces and "SMITH BROS. COUGH DROPS"! "Well, I'll be damned!" Samms spoke aloud, chagrined at having been compelled to listen to and to look at an advertisement. "I thought I had seen everything, but _that_ is really new!" Twenty minutes--fifty miles--later, Samms left the Skyway at a point near what had once been South Norwalk, Connecticut; an area transformed now into the level square miles of New York Spaceport. New York Spaceport; then, and until the establishment of Prime Base, the biggest and busiest field in existence upon any planet of Civilization. For New York City, long the financial and commercial capital of the Earth, had maintained the same dominant position in the affairs of the Solar System and was holding a substantial lead over her rivals, Chicago, London, and Stalingrad, in the race for inter-stellar supremacy. And Virgil Samms himself, because of the ever-increasing menace of piracy, had been largely responsible for the policy of basing the war-vessels of the Triplanetary Patrol upon each space-field in direct ratio to the size and importance of that field. Hence he was no stranger in New York Spaceport; in fact, master psychologist that he was, he had made it a point to know by first name practically everyone connected with it. No sooner had he turned his Dillingham over to a smiling attendant, however, than he was accosted by a man whom he had never seen before. "Mr. Samms?" the stranger asked. "Yes." Samms did not energize his Lens; he had not yet developed either the inclination or the technique to probe instantaneously every entity who approached him, upon any pretext whatever, in order to find out what that entity _really_ wanted. "I'm Isaacson ..." the man paused, as though he had supplied a world of information. "Yes?" Samms was receptive, but not impressed. "Interstellar Spaceways, you know. We've been trying to see you for two weeks, but we couldn't get past your secretaries, so I decided to buttonhole you here, myself. But we're just as much alone here as we would be in either one of our offices--yes, more so. What I want to talk to you about is having our exclusive franchise extended to cover the outer planets and the colonies." "Just a minute, Mr. Isaacson. Surely you know that I no longer have even a portfolio in the Council; that practically all of my attention is, and for some time to come will be, directed elsewhere?" "Exactly--_officially_." Isaacson's tone spoke volumes. "But you're still the Boss; they'll do anything you tell them to. We couldn't try to do business with you before, of course, but in your present position there is nothing whatever to prevent you from getting into the biggest thing that will ever be. We are the biggest corporation in existence now, as you know, and we are still growing--fast. We don't do business in a small way, or with small men; so here's a check for a million credits, or I will deposit it to your account...." "I'm not interested." "As a binder," the other went on, as smoothly as though his sentence had not been interrupted, "with twenty-five million more to follow on the day that our franchise goes through." "I'm still not interested." "No ... o ... o ...?" Isaacson studied the Lensman narrowly: and Samms, Lens now wide awake, studied the entrepreneur. "Well ... I ... while I admit that we want you pretty badly, you are smart enough to know that we'll get what we want anyway, with or without you. With you, though, it will be easier and quicker, so I am authorized to offer you, besides the twenty six million credits ..." he savored the words as he uttered them: "twenty two and one-half percent of Spaceways. On today's market that is worth fifty million credits; ten years from now it will be worth fifty _billion_. That's my high bid; that's as high as we can possibly go." "I'm glad to hear that--I'm _still_ not interested," and Samms strode away, calling his friend Kinnison as he did so. "Rod? Virgil." He told the story. "Whew!" Kinnison whistled expressively. "They're not pikers, anyway, are they? What a _sweet_ set-up--and you could wrap it up and hand it to them like a pound of coffee...." "Or you could, Rod." "Could be...." The big Lensman ruminated. "But _what_ a hookup! Perfectly legitimate, and with plenty of precedents--and arguments, of a sort--in its favor. The outer planets. Then Alpha Centauri and Sirius and Procyon and so on. Monopoly--all the traffic will bear...." "Slavery, you mean!" Samms stormed. "It would hold Civilization back for a thousand years!" "Sure, but what do _they_ care?" "That's it ... and he said--and actually believed--that they would get it without my help.... I can't help wondering about that." "Simple enough, Virge, when you think about it. He doesn't know yet what a Lensman is. Nobody does, you know, except Lensmen. It will take some time for that knowledge to get around...." "And still longer for it to be _believed_." "Right. But as to the chance of Interstellar Spaceways ever getting the monopoly they're working for, I didn't think I would have to remind you that it was not entirely by accident that over half of the members of the Solarian Council are Lensmen, and that any Galactic Councillor will automatically _have_ to be a Lensman. So go right ahead with what you started, my boy, and don't give Isaacson and Company another thought. We'll bend an optic or two in that direction while you are gone." "I was overlooking a few things, at that, I guess." Samms sighed in relief as he entered the main office of the Patrol. The line at the receptionist's desk was fairly short, but even so, Samms was not allowed to wait. That highly decorative, but far-from-dumb blonde, breaking off in mid-sentence her business of the moment, turned on her charm as though it had been a battery of floodlights, pressed a stud on her desk, and spoke to the man before her and to the Lensman: "Excuse me a moment, please. First Lensman Samms, sir...?" "Yes, Miss Regan?" her communicator--"squawk-box", in every day parlance--broke in. "First Lensman Samms is here, sir," the girl announced, and broke the circuit. "Good evening, Sylvia. Lieutenant-Commander Wagner, please, or whoever else is handling clearances," Samms answered what he thought was to have been her question. "Oh, no, sir; you are cleared. Commodore Clayton has been waiting for you ... here he is, now." "Hi, Virgil!" Commodore Clayton, a big, solid man with a scarred face and a shock of iron-gray hair, whose collar bore the two silver stars which proclaimed him to be the commander-in-chief of a continental contingent of the Patrol, shook hands vigorously. "I'll zip you out. Miss Regan, call a bug, please." "Oh, that isn't necessary, Alex!" Samms protested. "I'll pick one up outside." "Not in any Patrol base in North America, my friend; nor, unless I am very badly mistaken, anywhere else. From now on, Lensmen have absolute priority, and the quicker everybody realizes exactly what that means, the better." The "bug"--a vehicle something like a jeep, except more so--was waiting at the door. The two men jumped aboard. "The _Chicago_--and blast!" Clayton ordered, crisply. The driver obeyed--literally. Gravel flew from beneath skidding tires as the highly maneuverable little ground-car took off. A screaming turn into the deservedly famous Avenue of Oaks. Along the Avenue. Through the Gate, the guards saluting smartly as the bug raced past them. Past the barracks. Past the airport hangars and strips. Out into the space-field, the scarred and blackened area devoted solely to the widely-spaced docks of the tremendous vessels which plied the vacuous reaches of inter-planetary and inter-stellar space. Spacedocks were, and are, huge and sprawling structures; built of concrete and steel and asbestos and ultra-stubborn refractory and insulation and vacuum-breaks; fully air-conditioned and having refrigeration equipment of thousands of tons per hour of ice; designed not only to expedite servicing, unloading, and loading, but also to protect materials and personnel from the raving, searing blasts of take-off and of landing. A space-dock is a squat and monstrous cylinder, into whose hollow top the lowermost one-third of a space-ship's bulk fits as snugly as does a baseball into the "pocket" of a veteran fielder's long-seasoned glove. And the tremendous distances between those docks minimize the apparent size, both of the structures themselves and of the vessels surmounting them. Thus, from a distance, the _Chicago_ looked little enough, and harmless enough; but as the bug flashed under the overhanging bulk and the driver braked savagely to a stop at one of the dock's entrances, Samms could scarcely keep from flinching. That featureless, gray, smoothly curving wall of alloy steel loomed so incredibly high above them--extended so terrifyingly far outward beyond its visible means of support! It _must_ be on the very verge of crashing! Samms stared deliberately at the mass of metal towering above him, then smiled--not without effort--at his companion. "You'd think, Alex, that a man would get over being afraid that a ship was going to fall on him, but I haven't--yet." "No, and you probably never will. I never have, and I'm one of the old hands. Some claim not to mind it--but not in front of a lie detector. That's why they had to make the passenger docks bigger than the liners--too many passengers fainted and had to be carried aboard on stretchers--or cancelled passage entirely. However, scaring hell out of them on the ground had one big advantage; they felt so safe inside that they didn't get the colly-wobbles so bad when they went free." "Well, I've got over _that_, anyway. Good-bye, Alex; and thanks." Samms entered the dock, shot smoothly upward, followed an escorting officer to the captain's own cabin, and settled himself into a cushioned chair facing an ultra-wave view-plate. A face appeared upon his communicator screen and spoke. "Winfield to First Lensman Samms--you will be ready to blast off at twenty one hundred?" "Samms to Captain Winfield," the Lensman replied. "I will be ready." Sirens yelled briefly; a noise which Samms knew was purely a formality. Clearance had been issued; Station PIXNY was filling the air with warnings. Personnel and material close enough to the _Chicago's_ dock to be affected by the blast were under cover and safe. The blast went on; the plate showed, instead of a view of the space-field, a blaze of blue-white light. The war-ship was inertialess, it is true; but so terrific were the forces released that incandescent gases, furiously driven, washed the dock and everything for hundreds of yards around it. The plate cleared. Through the lower, denser layers of atmosphere the _Chicago_ bored in seconds; then, as the air grew thinner and thinner, she rushed upward faster and faster. The terrain below became concave ... then convex. Being completely without inertia, the ship's velocity was at every instant that at which the friction of the medium through which she blasted her way equaled precisely the force of her driving thrust. Wherefore, out in open space, the Earth a fast-shrinking tiny ball and Sol himself growing smaller, paler, and weaker at a startling rate, the _Chicago's_ speed attained an almost constant value; a value starkly impossible for the human mind to grasp. CHAPTER 5 For hours Virgil Samms sat motionless, staring almost unseeing into his plate. It was not that the view was not worth seeing--the wonder of space, the ever-changing, constantly-shifting panorama of incredibly brilliant although dimensionless points of light, against that wondrous background of mist-besprinkled black velvet, is a thing that never fails to awe even the most seasoned observer--but he had a tremendous load on his mind. He had to solve an apparently insoluble problem. How ... _how_ ... HOW could he do what he had to do? Finally, knowing that the time of landing was approaching, he got up, unfolded his fans, and swam lightly through the air of the cabin to a hand-line, along which he drew himself into the control room. He could have made the trip in that room, of course, if he had so chosen; but, knowing that officers of space do not really like to have strangers in that sanctum, he did not intrude until it was necessary. Captain Winfield was already strapped down at his master conning plate. Pilots, navigators, and computers worked busily at their respective tasks. "I was just going to call you, First Lensman." Winfield waved a hand in the general direction of a chair near his own. "Take the Lieutenant-Captain's station, please." Then, after a few minutes: "Go inert, Mr. White." "Attention, all personnel," Lieutenant-Captain White spoke conversationally into a microphone. "Prepare for inert maneuvering, Class Three. Off." A bank of tiny red lights upon a panel turned green practically as one. White cut the Bergenholm, whereupon Virgil Samms' mass changed instantly from a weight of zero to one of five hundred and twenty five pounds--ships of war then had no space to waste upon such non-essentials as artificial gravity. Although he was braced for the change and cushioned against it, the Lensman's breath _whooshed!_ out sharply; but, being intensely interested in what was going on, he swallowed convulsively a couple of times, gasped a few deep breaths, and fought his way back up to normalcy. The Chief Pilot was now at work, with all the virtuoso's skill of his rank and grade; one of the hall-marks of which is to make difficult tasks look easy. He played trills and runs and arpeggios--at times veritable glissades--upon keyboards and pedals, directing with micrometric precision the tremendous forces of the superdreadnaught to the task of matching the intrinsic velocity of New York Spaceport at the time of his departure to the I. V. of the surface of the planet so far below. Samms stared into his plate; first at the incredibly tiny apparent size of that incredibly hot sun, and then at the barren-looking world toward which they were dropping at such terrific speed. "It doesn't seem possible ..." he remarked, half to Winfield, half to himself, "that a sun could be that big and that hot. Rigel Four is almost two hundred times as far away from it as Earth is from Sol--something like eighteen billion miles--it doesn't look much, if any, bigger than Venus does from Luna--yet this world is hotter than the Sahara Desert." "Well, blue giants are both big and hot," the captain replied, matter-of-factly, "and their radiation, being mostly invisible, is deadly stuff. And Rigel is about the biggest in this region. There are others a lot worse, though. Doradus S, for instance, would make Rigel, here, look like a tallow candle. I'm going out there, some of these days, just to take a look at it. But that's enough of astronomical chit-chat--we're down to twenty miles of altitude and we've got your city just about stopped." The _Chicago_ slowed gently to a halt; perched motionless upon softly hissing jets. Samms directed his visibeam downward and sent along it an exploring, questing thought. Since he had never met a Rigellian in person, he could not form the mental image or pattern necessary to become en rapport with any one individual of the race. He did know, however, the type of mind which must be possessed by the entity with whom he wished to talk, and he combed the Rigellian city until he found one. The rapport was so incomplete and imperfect as to amount almost to no contact at all, but he could, perhaps, make himself understood. "If you will excuse this possibly unpleasant and certainly unwarranted intrusion," he thought, carefully and slowly, "I would like very much to discuss with you a matter which should become of paramount importance to all the intelligent peoples of all the planets in space." "I welcome you, Tellurian." Mind fused with mind at every one of uncountable millions of points and paths. This Rigellian professor of sociology, standing at his desk, was physically a monster ... the oil-drum of a body, the four blocky legs, the multi-branchiate tentacular arms, that immobile dome of a head, the complete lack of eyes and of ears ... nevertheless Samms' mind fused with the monstrosity's as smoothly, as effortlessly, and almost as completely as it had with his own daughter's! And _what_ a mind! The transcendent poise; the staggeringly tremendous range and scope--the untroubled and unshakeable calm; the sublime quietude; the vast and placid certainty; the ultimate stability, unknown and forever unknowable to any human or near-human race! "Dismiss all thought of intrusion, First Lensman Samms ... I have heard of you human beings, of course, but have never considered seriously the possibility of meeting one of you mind to mind. Indeed, it was reported that none of our minds could make any except the barest and most unsatisfactory contact with any of yours they chanced to encounter. It is, I now perceive, the Lens which makes this full accord possible, and it is basically about the Lens that you are here?" "It is," and Samms went on to cover in flashing thoughts his conception of what the Galactic Patrol should be and should become. That was easy enough; but when he tried to describe in detail the qualifications necessary for Lensmanship, he began to bog down. "Force, drive, scope, of course ... range ... power ... but above all, an absolute integrity ... an ultimate incorruptibility...." He could recognize such a mind after meeting it and studying it, but as to finding it ... It might not be in any place of power or authority. His own, and Rod Kinnison's, happened to be; but Costigan's was not ... and both Knobos and DalNalten had made inconspicuousness a fine art.... "I see," the native stated, when it became clear that Samms could say no more. "It is evident, of course, that I cannot qualify; nor do I know anyone personally who can. However...." "What?" Samms demanded. "I was sure, from the feel of your mind, that you ... but with a mind of such depth and breadth, such tremendous scope and power, you must be incorruptible!" "I am," came the dry rejoinder. "We all are. No Rigellian is, or ever will be or can be, what you think of as 'corrupt' or 'corruptible'. Indeed, it is only by the narrowest, most intense concentration upon every line of your thought that I can translate your meaning into a concept possible for any of us even to understand." "Then what ... Oh, I see. I was starting at the wrong end. Naturally enough, I suppose, I looked first for the qualities rarest in my own race." "Of course. Our minds have ample scope and range; and, perhaps, sufficient power. But those qualities which you refer to as 'force' and 'drive' are fully as rare among us as absolute mental integrity is among you. What you know as 'crime' is unknown. We have no police, no government, no laws, no organized armed forces of any kind. We take, practically always, the line of least resistance. We live and let live, as your thought runs. We work together for the common good." "Well ... I don't know what I expected to find here, but certainly not this...." If Samms had never before been completely thunderstruck, completely at a loss, he was then. "You don't think, then, that there is any chance?" "I have been thinking, and there may be a chance ... a slight one, but still a chance," the Rigellian said, slowly. "For instance, that youth, so full of curiosity, who first visited your planet. Thousands of us have wondered, to ourselves and to each other, about the peculiar qualities of mind which compelled him and others to waste so much time, effort, and wealth upon a project so completely useless as exploration. Why, he had even to develop energies and engines theretofore unknown, and which can never be of any real use!" Samms was shaken by the calm finality with which the Rigellian dismissed all possibility of the usefulness of inter-stellar exploration, but stuck doggedly to his purpose. "However slight the chance, I must find and talk to this man. I suppose he is now out in deep space somewhere. Have you any idea where?" "He is now in his home city, accumulating funds and manufacturing fuel with which to continue his pointless activities. That city is named ... that is, in your English you might call it ... Suntown? Sunberg? No, it must be more specific ... Rigelsville? Rigel City?" "Rigelston, I would translate it?" Samms hazarded. "Exactly--Rigelston." The professor marked its location upon a globular mental map far more accurate and far more detailed than the globe which Captain Winfield and his lieutenant were then studying. "Thanks. Now, can you and will you get in touch with this explorer and ask him to call a meeting of his full crew and any others who might be interested in the project I have outlined?" "I can. I will. He and his kind are not quite sane, of course, as you know; but I do not believe that even they are so insane as to be willing to subject themselves to the environment of your vessel." "They will not be asked to come here. The meeting will be held in Rigelston. If necessary, I shall insist that it be held there." "You would? I perceive that you would. It is strange ... yes, fantastic ... you are quarrelsome, pugnacious, anti-social, vicious, small-bodied and small-brained; timid, nervous, and highly and senselessly excitable; unbalanced and unsane; as sheerly monstrous mentally as you are physically...." These outrageous thoughts were sent as casually and as impersonally as though the sender were discussing the weather. He paused, then went on: "And yet, to further such a completely visionary project, you are eager to subject yourself to conditions whose counterparts I could not force myself, under any circumstances whatever, to meet. It may be ... it must be true that there is an extension of the principle of working together for the common good which my mind, for lack of pertinent data, has not been able to grasp. I am now en rapport with Dronvire the explorer." "Ask him, please, not to identify himself to me. I do not want to go into that meeting with any preconceived ideas." "A balanced thought," the Rigellian approved. "Someone will be at the airport to point out to you the already desolated area in which the space-ship of the explorers makes its so-frightful landings; Dronvire will ask someone to meet you at the airport and bring you to the place of meeting." The telepathic line snapped and Samms turned a white and sweating face to the _Chicago's_ captain. "God, what a strain! Don't ever try telepathy unless you positively have to--especially not with such an outlandishly _different_ race as these Rigellians are!" "Don't worry; I won't." Winfield's words were not at all sympathetic, but his tone was. "You looked as though somebody was beating your brains out with a spiked club. Where next, First Lensman?" Samms marked the location of Rigelston upon the vessel's chart, then donned ear-plugs and a special, radiation-proof suit of armor, equipped with refrigerators and with extra-thick blocks of lead glass to protect the eyes. The airport, an extremely busy one well outside the city proper, was located easily enough, as was the spot upon which the Tellurian ship was to land. Lightly, slowly, she settled downward, her jets raving out against a gravity fully twice that of her native Earth. Those blasts, however, added little or nothing to the destruction already accomplished by the craft then lying there--a torpedo-shaped cruiser having perhaps one-twentieth of the _Chicago's_ mass and bulk. The superdreadnaught landed, sinking into the hard, dry ground to a depth of some ten or fifteen feet before she stopped. Samms, en rapport with the entity who was to be his escort, made a flashing survey of the mind so intimately in contact with his own. No use. This one was not and never could become Lensman material. He climbed heavily down the ladder. This double-normal gravity made the going a bit difficult, but he could stand that a lot better than some of the other things he was going to have to take. The Rigellian equivalent of an automobile was there, waiting for him, its door invitingly open. Samms had known--in general--what to expect. The two-wheeled chassis was more or less similar to that of his own Dillingham. The body was a narrow torpedo of steel, bluntly pointed at both ends, and without windows. Two features, however, were both unexpected and unpleasant--the hard, tough steel of which that body was forged was an inch and a half thick, instead of one-sixteenth; and even that extraordinarily armored body was dented and scarred and marred, especially about the fore and rear quarters, as deeply and as badly and as casually as are the fenders of an Earthly jalopy! The Lensman climbed, not easily or joyously, into that grimly forbidding black interior. Black? It was so black that the port-hole-like doorway seemed to admit no light at all. It was blacker than a witch's cat in a coal cellar at midnight! Samms flinched; then, stiffening, thought at the driver. "My contact with you seems to have slipped. I'm afraid that I will have to cling to you rather more tightly than may be either polite or comfortable. Deprived of sight, and without your sense of perception, I am practically helpless." "Come in, Lensman, by all means. I offered to maintain full engagement, but it seemed to me that you declined it; quite possibly the misunderstanding was due to our unfamiliarity with each others' customary mode of thought. Relax, please, and come in ... there! Better?" "Infinitely better. Thanks." And it was. The darkness vanished; through the unexplainable perceptive sense of the Rigellian he could "see" everything--he had a practically perfect three-dimensional view of the entire circumambient sphere. He could see both the inside and the outside of the ground car he was in and of the immense space-ship in which he had come to Rigel IV. He could see the bearings and the wrist-pins of the internal-combustion engine of the car, the interior structure of the welds that held the steel plates together, the busy airport outside, and even deep into the ground. He could see and study in detail the deepest-buried, most heavily shielded parts of the atomic engines of the _Chicago_. But he was wasting time. He could also plainly see a deeply-cushioned chair, designed to fit a human body, welded to a stanchion and equipped with half a dozen padded restraining straps. He sat down quickly; strapped himself in. "Ready?" "Ready." The door banged shut with a clangor which burst through space-suit and ear-plugs with all the violence of a nearby thunderclap. And that was merely the beginning. The engine started--an internal-combustion engine of well over a thousand horsepower, designed for maximum efficiency by engineers in whose lexicon there were no counterparts of any English words relating to noise, or even to sound. The car took off; with an acceleration which drove the Tellurian backward, deep into the cushions. The scream of tortured tires and the crescendo bellowing of the engine combined to form an uproar which, amplified by and reverberating within the resonant shell of metal, threatened to addle the very brain inside the Lensman's skull. "You suffer!" the driver exclaimed, in high concern. "They cautioned me to start and stop gently, to drive slowly and carefully, to bump softly. They told me you are frail and fragile, a fact which I perceived for myself and which has caused me to drive with the utmost possible care and restraint. Is the fault mine? Have I been too rough?" "Not at all. It isn't that. It's the ungodly noise." Then, realizing that the Rigellian could have no conception of his meaning, he continued quickly: "The vibrations in the atmosphere, from sixteen cycles per second up to about nine or ten thousand." He explained what a second was. "My nervous system is very sensitive to those vibrations. But I expected them and shielded myself against them as adequately as I could. Nothing can be done about them. Go ahead." "Atmospheric vibrations? _Atmospheric_ vibrations? Atmospheric _vibrations_?" The driver marveled, and concentrated upon this entirely new concept while he-- 1. Swung around a steel-sheathed concrete pillar at a speed of at least sixty miles per hour, grazing it so closely that he removed one layer of protective coating from the metal. 2. Braked so savagely to miss a wildly careening truck that the restraining straps almost cut Samms' body, space-suit and all, into slices. 3. Darted into a hole in the traffic so narrow that only tiny fractions of inches separated his hurtling Juggernaut from an enormous steel column on one side and another speeding vehicle on the other. 4. Executed a double-right-angle reverse curve, thus missing by hair's breadths two vehicles traveling in the opposite direction and one in his own. 5. As a grand climax to this spectacular exhibition of insane driving, he plunged at full speed into a traffic artery which seemed so full already that it could not hold even one more car. But it could--just barely could. However, instead of near misses or grazing hits, this time there were bumps, dents--little ones, nothing at all, really, only an inch or so deep--and an utterly hellish concatenation and concentration of noise. "I fail completely to understand what effect such vibrations could have," the Rigellian announced finally, sublimely unconscious that anything at all out of the ordinary had occurred. For him, nothing had. "But surely they cannot be of any use?" "On this world, I am afraid not. No," Samms admitted, wearily. "Here, too, apparently, as everywhere, the big cities are choking themselves to death with their own traffic." "Yes. We build and build, but never have roads enough." "What are those mounds along the streets?" For some time Samms had been conscious of those long, low, apparently opaque structures; attracted to them because they were the only non-transparent objects within range of the Rigellian's mind. "Or is it something I should not mention?" "What? Oh, those? By no means." One of the nearby mounds lost its opacity. It was filled with swirling, gyrating bands and streamers of energy so vivid and so solid as to resemble fabric; with wildly hurtling objects of indescribable shapes and contours; with brilliantly flashing symbols which Samms found, greatly to his surprise, made sense--not through the Rigellian's mind, but through his own Lens: "EAT TEEGMEE'S FOOD!" "Advertising!" Samms' thought was a snort. "Advertising. You do not perceive yours, either, as you drive?" This was the first bond to be established between two of the most highly advanced races of the First Galaxy! The frightful drive continued; the noise grew worse and worse. Imagine, if you can, a city of fifteen millions of people, throughout whose entire length, breadth, height, and depth no attempt whatever had ever been made to abate any noise, however violent or piercing! If your imagination has been sufficiently vivid and if you have worked understandingly enough, the product may approximate what First Lensman Samms was forced to listen to that day. Through ever-thickening traffic, climbing to higher and ever higher roadways between towering windowless walls of steel, the massive Rigellian automobile barged and banged its way. Finally it stopped, a thousand feet or so above the ground, beside a building which was still under construction. The heavy door clanged open. They got out. And then--it chanced to be daylight at the time--Samms saw a tangle of fighting, screaming _colors_ whose like no entity possessing the sense of sight had ever before imagined. Reds, yellows, blues, greens, purples, and every variation and inter-mixture possible; laid on or splashed on or occurring naturally at perfect random, smote his eyes as violently as the all-pervading noise had been assailing his ears. He realized then that through his guide's sense of perception he had been "seeing" only in shades of gray, that to these people "visible" light differed only in wave-length from any other band of the complete electromagnetic spectrum of vibration. Strained and tense, the Lensman followed his escort along a narrow catwalk, through a wall upon which riveters and welders were busily at work, into a room practically without walls and ceiled only by story after story of huge I-beams. Yet _this_ was the meeting-place; almost a hundred Rigellians were assembled there! And as Samms walked toward the group a craneman dropped a couple of tons of steel plate, from a height of eight or ten feet, upon the floor directly behind him. "I just about jumped right out of my armor," is the way Samms himself described his reactions; and that description is perhaps as good as any. At any rate, he went briefly out of control, and the Rigellian sent him a steadying, inquiring, wondering thought. He could no more understand the Tellurian's sensitivity than Samms could understand the fact that to these people, even the concept of physical intrusion was absolutely incomprehensible. These builders were not workmen, in the Tellurian sense. They were Rigellians, each working his few hours per week for the common good. They would be no more in contact with the meeting than would their fellows on the other side of the planet. Samms closed his eyes to the riot of clashing colors, deafened himself by main strength to the appalling clangor of sound, forced himself to concentrate every fiber of his mind upon his errand. "Please synchronize with my mind, as many of you as possible," he thought at the group as a whole, and went en rapport with mind after mind after mind. And mind after mind after mind lacked something. Some were stronger than others, had more initiative and drive and urge, but none would quite do. Until-- "Thank God!" In the wave of exultant relief, of fulfillment, Samms no longer saw the colors or heard the din. "You, sir, are of Lensman grade. I perceive that you are Dronvire." "Yes, Virgil Samms, I am Dronvire; and at long last I know what it is that I have been seeking all my life. But how of these, my other friends? Are not some of them...?" "I do not know, nor is it necessary that I find out. You will select ..." Samms paused, amazed. The other Rigellians were still in the room, but mentally, he and Dronvire were completely alone. "They anticipated your thought, and, knowing that it was to be more or less personal, they left us until one of us invites them to return." "I like that, and appreciate it. You will go to Arisia. You will receive your Lens. You will return here. You will select and send to Arisia as many or as few of your fellows as you choose. These things I require you, by the Lens of Arisia, to do. Afterward--please note that this is in no sense obligatory--I would like very much to have you visit Earth and accept appointment to the Galactic Council. Will you?" "I will." Dronvire needed no time to consider his decision. The meeting was dismissed. The same entity who had been Samms' chauffeur on the in-bound trip drove him back to the _Chicago_, driving as "slowly" and as "carefully" as before. Nor, this time, did the punishment take such toll, even though Samms knew that each terrific lunge and lurch was adding one more bruise to the already much-too-large collection discoloring almost every square foot of his tough hide. He had succeeded, and the thrill of success had its usual analgesic effect. The _Chicago's_ captain met him in the air-lock and helped him remove his suit. "Are you _sure_ you're all right, Samms?" Winfield was no longer the formal captain, but a friend. "Even though you didn't call, we were beginning to wonder ... you look as though you'd been to a Valerian clambake, and I sure as hell don't like the way you're favoring those ribs and that left leg. I'll tell the boys you got back in A-prime shape, but I'll have the doctors look you over, just to make sure." Winfield made the announcement, and through his Lens Samms could plainly feel the wave of relief and pleasure that spread throughout the great ship with the news. It surprised him immensely. Who was _he_, that all these boys should care so much whether he lived or died? "I'm perfectly all right," Samms protested. "There's nothing at all the matter with me that twenty hours of sleep won't fix as good as new." "Maybe; but you'll go to the sick-bay first, just the same," Winfield insisted. "And I suppose you want me to blast back to Tellus?" "Right. And fast. The Ambassadors' Ball is next Tuesday evening, you know, and that's one function I can't stay away from, even with a Class A Double Prime excuse." CHAPTER 6 The Ambassadors' Ball, one of the most ultra-ultra functions of the year, was well under way. It was not that everyone who was anyone was there; but everyone who was there was, in one way or another, very emphatically someone. Thus, there were affairs at which there were more young and beautiful women, and more young and handsome men; but none exhibiting newer or more expensive gowns, more ribbons and decorations, more or costlier or more refined jewelry, or a larger acreage of powdered and perfumed epidermis. And even so, the younger set was well enough represented. Since pioneering appeals more to youth than to age, the men representing the colonies were young; and their wives, together with the daughters and the second (or third or fourth, or occasionally the fifth) wives of the human personages practically balanced the account. Nor was the throng entirely human. The time had not yet come, of course, when warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing monstrosities from hundreds of other solar systems would vie in numbers with the humanity present. There were, however, a few Martians on the floor, wearing their light "robes du convention" and dancing with meticulously mathematical precision. A few Venerians, who did not dance, sat in state or waddled importantly about. Many worlds of the Solarian System, and not a few other systems, were represented. One couple stood out, even against that opulent and magnificent background. Eyes followed them wherever they went. The girl was tall, trim, supple; built like a symphony. Her Callistan vexto-silk gown, of the newest and most violent shade of "radio-active" green, was phosphorescently luminous; fluorescent; gleaming and glowing. Its hem swept the floor, but above the waist it vanished mysteriously except for wisps which clung to strategic areas here and there with no support, apparently, except the personal magnetism of the wearer. She, almost alone of all the women there, wore no flowers. Her only jewelry was a rosette of huge, perfectly-matched emeralds, perched precariously upon her bare left shoulder. Her hair, unlike the other women's flawless coiffures, was a flamboyant, artistically-disarranged, red-bronze-auburn mop. Her soft and dewy eyes--Virgilia Samms could control her eyes as perfectly as she could her highly educated hands--were at the moment gold-flecked, tawny wells of girlish innocence and trust. "But I _can't_ give you this next dance, too, Herkimer--_Honestly_ I can't!" she pleaded, snuggling just a trifle closer into the embrace of the young man who was just as much man, physically, as she was woman. "I'd just _love_ to, really, but I just simply _can't_, and you know why, too." "You've got some duty-dances, of course ..." "_Some?_ I've got a list as long as from here to there! Senator Morgan first, of course, then Mr. Isaacson, then I sat one out with Mr. Ossmen--I can't _stand_ Venerians, they're so slimy and fat and repulsive!--and that leathery horned toad from Mars and that Jovian hippopotamus ..." She went down the list, and as she named or characterized each entity another finger of her left hand pressed down upon the back of her partner's right, to emphasize the count of her social obligations. But those talented fingers were doing more--far, far more--than that. Herkimer Third, although no little of a Don Juan, was a highly polished, smoothly finished, thoroughly seasoned diplomat. As such, his eyes and his other features--particularly his eyes--had been schooled for years to reveal no trace of whatever might be going on inside his brain. If he had entertained any suspicion of the beautiful girl in his arms, if anyone had suggested that she was trying her best to pump him, he would have smiled the sort of smile which only the top-drawer diplomat can achieve. He was not suspicious of Virgilia Samms. However, simply because she was Virgil Samms' daughter, he took an extra bit of pain to betray no undue interest in any one of the names she recited. And besides, she was not looking at his eyes, nor even at his face. Her glance, demurely downcast, was all too rarely raised above the level of his chin. There were some things, however, that Herkimer Herkimer Third did not know. That Virgilia Samms was the most accomplished muscle-reader of her times. That she was so close to him, not because of his manly charm, but because only in that position could she do her prodigious best. That she could work with her eyes alone, but in emergencies, when fullest possible results were imperative, she had to use her exquisitely sensitive fingers and her exquisitely tactile skin. That she had studied intensively, and had tabulated the reactions of, each of the entities on her list. That she was now, with his help, fitting those reactions into a pattern. And finally, that that pattern was beginning to assume the grim shape of MURDER! And Virgilia Samms, working now for something far more urgent and vastly more important than a figmental Galactic Patrol, hoped desperately that this Herkimer was not a muscle-reader too; for she knew that she was revealing her secrets even more completely than was he. In fact, if things got much worse, he could not help but feel the pounding of her heart ... but she could explain that easily enough, by a few appropriate wiggles ... No, he wasn't a reader, definitely not. He wasn't watching the right places; he was looking where that gown had been designed to make him look, and nowhere else ... and no tell-tale muscles lay beneath any part of either of his hands. As her eyes and her fingers and her lovely torso sent more and more information to her keen brain, Jill grew more and more anxious. She was sure that murder was intended, but who was to be the victim? Her father? Probably. Pops Kinnison? Possibly. Somebody else? Barely possibly. And when? And where? And how? She _didn't know_! And she would have to be _sure_ ... Mentioning names hadn't been enough, but a personal appearance ... Why _didn't_ dad show up--or did she wish he wouldn't come at all...? Virgil Samms entered the ball-room. "And dad told me, Herkimer," she cooed sweetly, gazing up into his eyes for the first time in over a minute, "that I must dance with every one of them. So you see ... Oh, there he is now, over there! I've been wondering where he's been keeping himself." She nodded toward the entrance and prattled on artlessly. "He's almost _never_ late, you know, and I've ..." He looked, and as his eyes met those of the First Lensman, Jill learned three of the facts she needed so badly to know. Her father. Here. Soon. She never knew how she managed to keep herself under control; but, some way and just barely, she did. Although nothing showed, she was seething inwardly: wrought up as she had never before been. What could she do? She _knew_, but she did not have a scrap or an iota of visible or tangible evidence; and if she made one single slip, however slight, the consequences could be immediate and disastrous. After this dance might be too late. She could make an excuse to leave the floor, but that would look very bad, later ... and none of them would Lens her, she knew, while she was with Herkimer--_damn_ such chivalry!... She _could_ take the chance of waving at her father, since she hadn't seen him for so long ... no, the smallest risk would be with Mase. He looked at her every chance he got, and she'd _make_ him use his Lens ... Northrop looked at her; and over Herkimer's shoulder, for one fleeting instant, she allowed her face to reveal the terrified appeal she so keenly felt. "Want me, Jill?" His Lensed thought touched only the outer fringes of her mind. Full rapport is more intimate than a kiss: no one except her father had ever really put a Lens on Virgilia Samms. Nevertheless: "_Want_ you! I never wanted anybody so much in my life! Come in, Mase--quick--_please_!" Diffidently enough, he came; but at the first inkling of the girl's news all thought of diffidence or of privacy vanished. "Jack! Spud! Mr. Kinnison! Mr. Samms!" he Lensed sharp, imperative, almost frantic thoughts. "Listen in!" "Steady, Mase, I'll take over," came Roderick Kinnison's deeper, quieter mental voice. "First, the matter of guns. Anybody except me wearing a pistol? You are, Spud?" "Yes, sir." "You would be. But you and Mase, Jack?" "We've got our Lewistons!" "You would have. Blasters, my sometimes-not-quite-so-bright son, are fine weapons indeed for certain kinds of work. In emergencies, it is of course permissible to kill a few dozen innocent bystanders. In such a crowd as this, though, it is much better technique to kill only the one you are aiming at. So skip out to my car, you two, right now, and change--and make it _fast_." Everyone knew that Roderick Kinnison's car was at all times an arsenal on wheels. "Wish you were in uniform, too, Virge, but it can't be helped now. Work your way--_slowly_--around to the northwest corner. Spud, do the same." "It's impossible--starkly unthinkable!" and "I'm not _sure_ of anything, really ..." Samms and his daughter began simultaneously to protest. "Virgil, you talk like a man with a paper nose. Keep still until after you've used your brain. And I'm sure enough of what you know, Jill, to take plenty of steps. You can relax now--take it easy. We're covering Virgil and I called up support in force. You _can_ relax a little, I see. Good! I'm not trying to hide from anybody that the next few minutes may be critical. Are you pretty sure, Jill, that Herkimer is a key man?" "Pretty sure, Pops." _How_ much better she felt, now that the Lensmen were on guard! "In this one case, at least." "Good! Then let him talk you into giving him every dance, right straight through until something breaks. Watch him. He must know the signal and who is going to operate, and if you can give us a fraction of a second of warning it will help no end. Can do?" "I'll say I can--and I would love to, the big, slimy, stinking skinker!" As transliterated into words, the girl's thought may seem a trifle confused, but Kinnison knew exactly what she meant. "One more thing, Jill; a detail. The boys are coming back in and are working their partners over this way. See if Herkimer notices that they have changed their holsters." "No, he didn't notice," Jill reported, after a moment. "But I don't notice any difference, either, and I'm looking for it." "Nevertheless, it's there, and the difference between a Mark Seventeen and a Mark Five is something more than that between Tweedledum and Tweedledee," Kinnison returned, dryly. "However, it may not be as obvious to non-military personnel as it is to us. That's far enough, boys, don't get too close. Now, Virge, keep solidly en rapport with Jill on one side and with us on the other, so that she won't have to give herself and the show away by yelling and pointing, and ..." "But this is preposterous!" Samms stormed. "Preposterous, hell," Roderick Kinnison's thought was still coldly level; only the fact that he was beginning to use non-ballroom language revealed any sign of the strain he was under. "Stop being so goddam heroic and start using your brain. You turned down fifty billion credits. Why do you suppose they offered that much, when they can get anybody killed for a hundred? And what would they do about it?" "But they couldn't get away with it, Rod, at an Ambassadors' Ball. They _couldn't_, possibly." "Formerly, no. That was my first thought, too. But it was you who pointed out to me, not so long ago, that the techniques of crime have changed of late. In the new light, the swankier the brawl the greater the confusion and the better the chance of getting away clean. Comb _that_ out of your whiskers, you red-headed mule!" "Well ... there might be something in it, after all ..." Samms' thought showed apprehension at last. "You know damn well there is. But you boys--Jack and Mase especially--loosen up. You can't do good shooting while you're strung up like a couple of cocoons. Do something--talk to your partners or think at Jill ..." "That won't be hard, sir." Mason Northrop grinned feebly. "And that reminds me of something, Jill. Mentor certainly bracketed the target when he--or she, or it, maybe--said that you would never need a Lens." "Huh?" Jill demanded, inelegantly. "I don't see the connection, if any." "No? Everybody else does, I'll bet. How about it?" The other Lensmen, even Samms, agreed enthusiastically. "Well, do you think that any of those characters, particularly Herkimer Herkimer Third, would let a harness bull in harness--even such a beautiful one as you--get close enough to him to do such a Davey the Dip act on his mind?" "Oh ... I never thought of that, but it's right, and I'm glad ... but Pops, you said something about 'support in force.' Have you any idea how long it will be? I _hope_ I can hold out, with you all supporting me, but ..." "You can, Jill. Two or three minutes more, at most." "Support? In force? What do you mean?" Samms snapped. "Just that. The whole damned army," Kinnison replied. "I sent Two-Star Commodore Alexander Clayton a thought that lifted him right out of his chair. Everything he's got, at full emergency blast. Armor--mark eighty fours--six by six extra heavies--a ninety sixty for an ambulance--full escort, upstairs and down--way-friskers--'copters--cruisers and big stuff--in short, the works. I would have run with you before this, if I dared; but the minute the relief party shows up, we do a flit." "If you _dared_?" Jill asked, shaken by the thought. "Exactly, my dear. I don't dare. If they start anything we'll do our damnedest, but I'm praying they won't." But Kinnison's prayers--if he made any--were ignored. Jill heard a sharp, but very usual and insignificant sound; someone had dropped a pencil. She felt an inconspicuous muscle twitch slightly. She saw the almost imperceptible tensing of a neck-muscle which would have turned Herkimer's head in a certain direction if it had been allowed to act. Her eyes flashed along that line, searched busily for milli-seconds. A man was reaching unobtrusively, as though for a handkerchief. But men at Ambassadors' Balls do not carry blue handkerchiefs; nor does any fabric, however dyed, resemble at all closely the blued steel of an automatic pistol. Jill would have screamed, then, and pointed; but she had time to do neither. Through her rapport with her father the Lensmen saw everything that she saw, in the instant of her seeing it. Hence five shots blasted out, practically as one, before the girl could scream, or point, or even move. She did scream, then; but since dozens of other women were screaming, too, it made no difference--then. Conway Costigan, trigger-nerved spacehound that he was and with years of gun-fighting and of hand-to-hand brawling in his log, shot first; even before the gunman did. It was Costigan's blinding speed that saved Virgil Samms' life that day; for the would-be assassin was dying, with a heavy slug crashing through his brain, before he finished pulling the trigger. The dying hand twitched upward. The bullet intended for Samms' heart went high; through the fleshy part of the shoulder. Roderick Kinnison, because of his age, and his son and Northrop, because of their inexperience, were a few milli-seconds slow. They, however, were aiming for the body, not for the head; and any of those three resulting wounds would have been satisfactorily fatal. The man went down, and stayed down. Samms staggered, but did not go down until the elder Kinnison, as gently as was consistent with the maximum of speed, threw him down. "Stand back! Get back! Give him air!" Men began to shout, the while pressing closer themselves. "You men, stand back. Some of you go get a stretcher. You women, come here." Kinnison's heavy, parade-ground voice smashed down all lesser noises. "Is there a doctor here?" There was; and, after being "frisked" for weapons, he went busily to work. "Joy--Betty--Jill--Clio," Kinnison called his own wife and their daughter, Virgilia Samms, and Mrs. Costigan. "You four first. Now you--and you--and you--and you...." he went on, pointing out large, heavy women wearing extremely extreme gowns, "Stand here, right over him. Cover him up, so that nobody else can get a shot at him. You other women, stand behind and between these--closer yet--fill those spaces up solid--there! Jack, stand there. Mase, there. Costigan, the other end; I'll take this one. Now, everybody, listen. I know damn well that none of you women are wearing guns above the waist, and you've all got long skirts--thank God for ballgowns! Now, fellows, if any one of these women makes a move to lift her skirt, blow her brains out, right then, without waiting to ask questions." "Sir, I protest! This is outrageous!" one of the dowagers exclaimed. "Madam, I agree with you fully. It is." Kinnison smiled as genuinely as he could under the circumstances. "It is, however, _necessary_. I will apologize to all you ladies, and to you, doctor--in writing if you like--after we have Virgil Samms aboard the _Chicago_; but until then I would not trust my own grandmother." The doctor looked up. "The _Chicago_? This wound does not appear to be a very serious one, but this man is going to a hospital at once. Ah, the stretcher. So ... please ... easy ... there, that is excellent. Call an ambulance, please, immediately." "I did. Long ago. But no hospital, doctor. All those windows--open to the public--or the whole place bombed--by no means. I'm taking no chances whatever." "Except with your own life!" Jill put in sharply, looking up from her place at her father's side. Assured that the First Lensman was in no danger of dying, she had begun to take interest in other things. "You are important, too, you know, and you're standing right out there in the open. Get another stretcher, lie down on it, and we'll guard you, too ... and don't be too stiff-necked to take your own advice!" she flared, as he hesitated. "I'm not, if it were necessary, but it isn't. If they had killed him, yes. I'd probably be next in line. But since he got only a scratch, there'd be no point at all in killing even a _good_ Number Two." "A _scratch_!" Jill fairly seethed. "Do you call that horrible wound a _scratch_?" "Huh? Why, certainly--that's all it is--thanks to you," he returned, in honest and complete surprise. "No bones shattered--no main arteries cut--missed the lung--he'll be as good as new in a couple of weeks." "And now," he went on aloud, "if you ladies will please pick up this stretcher we will move en masse, and _slowly_, toward the door." The women, no longer indignant but apparently enjoying the sensation of being the center of interest, complied with the request. "Now, boys," Kinnison Lensed a thought. "Did any of you--Costigan?--see any signs of a concerted rush, such as there would have been to get the killer away if we hadn't interfered?" "No, sir," came Costigan's brisk reply. "None within sight of me." "Jack and Mase--I don't suppose you looked?" They hadn't--had not thought of it in time. "You'll learn. It takes a few things like this to make it automatic. But I couldn't see any, either, so I'm fairly certain there wasn't any. Smart operators--quick on the uptake." "I'd better get at this, sir, don't you think, and let Operation Boskone go for a while?" Costigan asked. "I don't think so." Kinnison frowned in thought. "This operation was _planned_, son, by people with brains. Any clues you could find now would undoubtedly be plants. No, we'll let the regulars look; we'll stick to our own ..." Sirens wailed and screamed outside. Kinnison sent out an exploring thought. "Alex?" "Yes. Where do you want this ninety-sixty with the doctors and nurses? It's too wide for the gates." "Go through the wall. Across the lawn. Right up to the door, and never mind the frippery they've got all over the place--have your adjutant tell them to bill us for damage. Samms is shot in the shoulder. Not too serious, but I'm taking him to the Hill, where I know he'll be safe. What have you got on top of the umbrella, the _Boise_ or the _Chicago_? I haven't had time to look up yet." "Both." "Good man." Jack Kinnison started at the monstrous tank, which was smashing statues, fountains, and ornamental trees flat into the earth as it moved ponderously across the grounds, and licked his lips. He looked at the companies of soldiers "frisking" the route, the grounds, and the crowd--higher up, at the hovering helicopters--still higher, at the eight light cruisers so evidently and so viciously ready to blast--higher still, at the long streamers of fire which, he now knew, marked the locations of the two most powerful engines of destruction ever built by man--and his face turned slowly white. "Good Lord, Dad!" he swallowed twice. "I had no idea ... but they might, at that." "Not 'might', son. They damn well would, if they could get here soon enough with heavy enough stuff." The elder Kinnison's jaw-muscles did not loosen, his darting eyes did not relax their vigilance for a fraction of a second as he Lensed the thought. "You boys can't be expected to know it all, but right now you're learning fast. Get this--paste it in your iron hats. _Virgil Samms' life is the most important thing in this whole damned universe!_ If they had got him then it would not, strictly speaking, have been my fault, but if they get him now, it will be." The land cruiser crunched to a stop against the very entrance, and a white-clad man leaped out. "Let me look at him, please..." "Not yet!" Kinnison denied, sharply. "Not until he's got four inches of solid steel between him and whoever wants to finish the job they started. Get your men around him, and get him aboard--fast!" Samms, protected at every point at every instant, was lifted into the maw of the ninety-sixty; and as the massive door clanged shut Kinnison heaved a tremendous sigh of relief. The cavalcade moved away. "Coming with us, Rod?" Commodore Clayton shouted. "Yes, but got a couple minutes' work here yet. Have a staff car wait for me, and I'll join you." He turned to the three young Lensmen and the girl. "This fouls up our plans a little, but not too much--I hope. No change in Mateese or Boskone; you and Costigan, Jill, can go ahead as planned. Northrop, you'll have to brief Jill on Zwilnik and find out what she knows. Virgil was going to do it tonight, after the brawl here, but you know as much about it now as any of us. Check with Knobos, DalNalten, and Fletcher--while Virgil is laid up you and Jack may have to work on both Zabriska and Zwilnik--he'll Lens you. Get the dope, then do as you think best. Get going!" He strode away toward the waiting staff-car. "Boskone? Zwilnik?" Jill demanded. "What gives? What are they, Jack?" "We don't know yet--maybe we're going to name a couple of planets..." "Piffle!" she scoffed. "Can _you_ talk sense, Mase? What's Boskone?" "A simple, distinctive, pronounceable coined word; suggested, I believe, by Dr. Bergenholm ..." he began. "You know what I mean, you ..." she broke in, but was silenced by a sharply Lensed thought from Jack. His touch was very light, barely sufficient to make conversation possible; but even so, she flinched. "Use your brain, Jill; you aren't thinking a lick--not that you can be blamed for it. Stop talking; there may be lip-readers or high-powered listeners around. This feels funny, doesn't it?" He twitched mentally and went on: "You already know what Operation Mateese is, since it's your own dish--politics. Operation Zwilnik is drugs, vice, and so on. Operation Boskone is pirates; Spud is running that. Operation Zabriska is Mase and me checking some peculiar disturbances in the sub-ether. Come in, Mase, and do your stuff--I'll see you later, aboard. Clear ether, Jill!" Young Kinnison vanished from the fringes of her mind and Northrop appeared. And what a difference! His mind touched hers as gingerly as Jack's had done; as skittishly, as instantaneously ready to bolt away from anything in the least degree private. However, Jack's mind had rubbed hers the wrong way, right from the start--and Mase's didn't! "Now, about this Operation Zwilnik," Jill began. "Something else first. I couldn't help noticing, back there, that you and Jack ... well, not out of phase, exactly, or really out of sync, but sort of ... well, as though ..." "'Hunting'?" she suggested. "Not exactly ... 'forcing' might be better--like holding a tight beam together when it wants to fall apart. So you noticed it yourself?" "Of course, but I thought Jack and I were the only ones who did. Like scratching a blackboard with your finger-nails--you _can_ do it, but you're awfully glad to stop ... and I _like_ Jack, too, darn it--at a distance." "And you and I fit like precisely tuned circuits. Jack really meant it, then, when he said that you ... that is, he ... I didn't quite believe it until now, but if ... you know, of course, what you've already done to me." Jill's block went on, full strength. She arched her eyebrows and spoke aloud--"why, I haven't the _faintest_ idea!" "Of course not. That's why you're using voice. I've found out, too, that I can't lie with my mind. I feel like a heel and a louse, with so much job ahead, but you've simply got to tell me something. Then--whatever you say--I'll hit the job with everything I've got. Do I get heaved out between planets without a space-suit, or not?" "I don't think so." Jill blushed vividly, but her voice was steady. "You would rate a space-suit, and enough oxygen to reach another plan--another goal. And now we'd better get to work, don't you think?" "Yes. Thanks, Jill, a million. I know as well as you do that I was talking out of turn, and how much--but I had to know." He breathed deep. "And that's all I ask--for now. Cut your screens." She lowered her mental barriers, finding it surprisingly easy to do so in this case; let them down almost as far as she was in the habit of doing with her father. He explained in flashing thoughts everything he knew of the four Operations, concluding: "I'm not assigned to Zabriska permanently; I'll probably work with you on Mateese after your father gets back into circulation. I'm to act more as a liaison man--neither Knobos nor DalNalten knows you well enough to Lens you. Right?" "Yes, I've met Mr. Knobos only once, and have never even seen Dr. DalNalten." "Ready to visit them, via Lens?" "Yes. Go ahead." The two Lensmen came in. They came into his mind, not hers. Nevertheless their thoughts, superimposed upon Northrop's, came to the girl as clearly as though all four were speaking to each other face to face. "What a _weird_ sensation!" Jill exclaimed. "Why, I never _imagined_ anything like it!" "We are sorry to trouble you, Miss Samms...." Jill was surprised anew. The silent voice deep within her mind was of characteristically Martian timber, but instead of the harshly guttural consonants and the hissing sibilants of any Martian's best efforts at English, pronunciation and enunciation were flawless. "Oh, I didn't mean that. It's no trouble at all, really, I just haven't got used to this telepathy yet." "None of us has, to any noticeable degree. But the reason for this call is to ask you if you have anything new, however slight, to add to our very small knowledge of Zwilnik?" "Very little, I'm afraid; and that little is mostly guesses, deductions, and jumpings at conclusions. Father told you about the way I work, I suppose?" "Yes. Exact data is not to be expected. Hints, suggestions, possible leads, will be of inestimable value." "Well, I met a very short, very fat Venerian, named Ossmen, at a party at the European Embassy. Do either of you know him?" "I know of him," DalNalten replied. "A highly reputable merchant, with such large interests on Tellus that he has to spend most of his time here. He is not in any one of our books ... although there is nothing at all surprising in that fact. Go on, please, Miss Samms." "He didn't come to the party with Senator Morgan; but he came to some kind of an agreement with him that night, and I am pretty sure that it was about thionite. That's the only new item I have." "_Thionite!_" The three Lensmen were equally surprised. "Yes. Thionite. Definitely." "How _sure_ are you of this, Miss Samms?" Knobos asked, in deadly earnest. "I am not _sure_ that this particular agreement was about thionite, no; but the probability is roughly nine-tenths. I _am_ sure, however, that both Senator Morgan and Ossmen know a lot about thionite that they want to hide. Both gave very high positive reactions--well beyond the six-sigma point of virtual certainty." There was a pause, broken by the Martian, but not by a thought directed at any one of the three. "Sid!" he called, and even Jill could feel the Lensed thought speed. "Yes, Knobos? Fletcher." "That haul-in you made, out in the asteroids. Heroin, hadive, and ladolian, wasn't it? No thionite involved anywhere?" "No thionite. However, you must remember that part of the gang got away, so all I can say positively is that we didn't see, or hear about, any thionite. There was some gossip, of course: but you know there always is." "Of course. Thanks, Sid." Jill could feel the brilliant Martian's mental gears whirl and click. Then he went into such a flashing exchange of thought with the Venerian that the girl lost track in seconds. "One more question, Miss Samms?" DalNalten asked. "Have you detected any indications that there may be some connection between either Ossmen or Morgan and any officer or executive of Interstellar Spaceways?" "_Spaceways!_ Isaacson?" Jill caught her breath. "Why ... nobody even thought of such a thing--at least, nobody ever mentioned it to me--I never thought of making any such tests." "The possibility occurred to me only a moment ago, at your mention of thionite. The connection, if any exists, will be exceedingly difficult to trace. But since most, if not all, of the parties involved will probably be included in your Operation Mateese, and since a finding, either positive or negative, would be tremendously significant, we feel emboldened to ask you to keep this point in mind." "Why, of course I will. I'll be very glad to." "We thank you for your courtesy and your help. One or both of us will get in touch with you from time to time, now that we know the pattern of your personality. May immortal Grolossen speed the healing of your father's wound." CHAPTER 7 Late that night--or, rather, very early the following morning--Senator Morgan and his Number One secretary were closeted in the former's doubly spy-ray-proofed office. Morgan's round, heavy, florid face had perhaps lost a little of its usual color; the fingers of his left hand drummed soundlessly upon the glass top of his desk. His shrewd gray eyes, however, were as keen and as calculating as ever. "This thing smells, Herkimer ... it _reeks_ ... but I can't figure any of the angles. That operation was _planned_. Sure fire, it _couldn't_ miss. Right up to the last split second it worked perfectly. Then--blooie! A flat bust. The Patrol landed and everything was under control. There _must_ have been a leak somewhere--but where in hell could it have been?" "There couldn't have been a leak, Chief; it doesn't make sense." The secretary uncrossed his long legs, recrossed them in the other direction, threw away a half-smoked cigarette, lit another. "If there'd been any kind of a leak they would have done a lot more than just kill the low man on the ladder. You know as well as I do that Rocky Kinnison is the hardest-boiled character this side of hell. If he had known anything, he would have killed everybody in sight, including you and me. Besides, if there had been a leak, he would not have let Samms get within ten thousand miles of the place--that's one sure thing. Another is he wouldn't have waited until after it was all over to get his army there. No, Chief, there couldn't have been a leak. Whatever Samms or Kinnison found out--probably Samms, he's a hell of a lot smarter than Kinnison is, you know--he learned right there and then. He must have seen Brainerd start to pull his gun." "I thought of that. I'd buy it, except for one fact. Apparently you didn't time the interval between the shots and the arrival of the tanks." "Sorry, Chief." Herkimer's face was a study in chagrin. "I made a bad slip there." "I'll say you did. One minute and fifty eight seconds." "_What!_" Morgan remained silent. "The patrol is fast, of course ... and always ready ... and they would yank the stuff in on tractor beams, not under their own power ... but even so ... five minutes, is my guess, Chief. Four and a half, absolute minimum." "Check. And where do you go from there?" "I see your point. I don't. That blows everything wide open. One set of facts says there was a leak, which occurred between two and a half and three minutes before the signal was given. I ask you, Chief, does that make sense?" "No. That's what is bothering me. As you say, the facts seem to be contradictory. Somebody must have learned something before anything happened; but if they did, why didn't they do more? And Murgatroyd. If they didn't know about him, why the ships--especially the big battlewagons? If they did think he might be out there somewhere, why didn't they go and find out?" "Now I'll ask one. Why didn't our Mr. Murgatroyd do something? Or wasn't the pirate fleet supposed to be in on this? Probably not, though." "My guess would be the same as yours. Can't see any reason for having a fleet cover a one-man operation, especially as well-planned a one as this was. But that's none of our business. These Lensmen are. I was watching them every second. Neither Samms nor Kinnison did anything whatever during that two minutes." "Young Kinnison and Northrop each left the hall about that time." "I know it. So they did. Either one of them _could_ have called the Patrol--but what has that to do with the price of beef C. I. F. Valeria?" Herkimer refrained tactfully from answering the savage question. Morgan drummed and thought for minutes, then went on slowly: "There are two, and only two, possibilities; neither of which seem even remotely possible. It was--_must_ have been--either the Lens or the girl." "The girl? Act your age, Senator. I knew where _she_ was, and what she was doing, every second." "That was evident." Morgan stopped drumming and smiled cynically. "I'm getting a hell of a kick out of seeing you taking it, for a change, instead of dishing it out." "Yes?" Herkimer's handsome face hardened. "That game isn't over, my friend." "That's what _you_ think," the Senator jibed. "Can't believe that any woman _can_ be Herkimer-proof, eh? You've been working on her for six weeks now, instead of the usual six hours, and you haven't got anywhere yet." "I will, Senator." Herkimer's nostrils flared viciously. "I'll get her, one way or another, if it's the last thing I ever do." "I'll give you eight to five you don't; and a six-month time limit." "I'll take five thousand of that. But what makes you think that she's anything to be afraid of? She's a trained psychologist, yes; but so am I; and I'm older and more experienced than she is. That leaves that yoga stuff--her learning how to sit cross-legged, how to contemplate her navel, and how to try to get in tune with the infinite. How do you figure _that_ puts her in my class?" "I told you, I don't. Nothing makes sense. But she is Virgil Samms' daughter." "What of it? You didn't gag on George Olmstead--you picked him yourself for one of the toughest jobs we've got. By blood he's just about as close to Virgil Samms as Virgilia is. They might as well have been hatched out of the same egg." "Physically, yes. Mentally and psychologically, no. Olmstead is a realist, a materialist. He wants his reward in this world, not the next, and is out to get it. Furthermore, the job will probably kill him, and even if it doesn't, he will never be in a position of trust or where he can learn much of anything. On the other hand, Virgil Samms is--but I don't need to tell you what _he_ is like. But you don't seem to realize that she's just like him--she isn't playing around with you because of your overpowering charm...." "Listen, Chief. She didn't know anything and she didn't do anything. I was dancing with her all the time, as close as that," he clasped his hands tightly together, "so I know what I'm talking about. And if you think she could _ever_ learn anything from me, skip it. You know that nobody on Earth, or anywhere else, can read my face; and besides, she was playing coy right then--wasn't even looking at me. So count her out." "We'll have to, I guess." Morgan resumed his quiet drumming. "If there were any possibility that she pumped you I'd send you to the mines, but there's no sign ... that leaves the Lens. It has seemed, right along, more logical than the girl--but a lot more fantastic. Been able to find out anything more about it?" "No. Just what they've been advertising. Combination radio-phone, automatic language-converter, telepath, and so on. Badge of the top skimmings of the top-bracket cops. But I began to think, out there on the floor, that they aren't advertising everything they know." "So did I. You tell me." "Take the time zero minus three minutes. Besides the five Lensmen--and Jill Samms--the place was full of top brass; scrambled eggs all over the floor. Commodores and lieutenant-Commodores from all continental governments of the Earth, the other planets, and the colonies, all wearing full-dress side-arms. Nobody knew anything then; we agree on that. But within the next few seconds, somebody found out something and called for help. One of the Lensmen could possibly have done that without showing signs. BUT--at zero time all four Lensmen had their guns out--and _not_ Lewistons, please note--and were shooting; whereas none of the other armed officers knew that anything was going on until after it was all over. That puts the finger on the Lens." "That's the way I figured it. But the difficulties remain unchanged. _How?_ Mind-reading?" "Space-drift!" Herkimer snorted. "My mind can't be read." "Nor mine." "And besides, if they could read minds, they wouldn't have waited until the last possible split second to do it, unless ... say, wait a minute!... Did Brainerd act or look nervous, toward the last? I wasn't to look at him, you know." "Not nervous, exactly; but he did get a little tense." "There you are, then. Hired murderers aren't smart. A Lensman saw him tighten up and got suspicious. Turned in the alarm on general principles. Warned the others to keep on their toes. But even so, it doesn't look like mind-reading--they'd have killed him sooner. They were watchful, and mighty quick on the draw." "That could be it. That's about as thin and as specious an explanation as I ever saw cooked up, but it _does_ cover the facts ... and the two of us will be able to make it stick ... but take notice, pretty boy, that certain parties are not going to like this at all. In fact, they are going to be very highly put out." "That's a nice hunk of understatement, boss. But notice one beautiful thing about this story?" Herkimer grinned maliciously. "It lets us pass the buck to Big Jim Towne. We can be--and will be--sore as hell because he picks such weak-sister characters to do his killings!" * * * * * In the heavily armored improvised ambulance, Virgil Samms sat up and directed a thought at his friend Kinnison, finding his mind a turmoil of confusion. "What's the matter, Rod?" "Plenty!" the big Lensman snapped back. "They were--maybe still are--too damn far ahead of us. Something has been going on that we haven't even suspected. I stood by, as innocent as a three-year-old girl baby, and let you walk right into that one--and I emphatically do not enjoy getting caught with my pants down that way. It makes me jumpy. This may be all, but it may not be--not by eleven thousand light-years--and I'm trying to dope out what is going to happen next." "And what have you deduced?" "Nothing. I'm stuck. So I'm tossing it into your lap. Besides, that's what you are getting paid for, thinking. So go ahead and think. What would you be doing, if you were on the other side?" "I see. You think, then, that it might not be good technique to take the time to go back to the spaceport?" "You get the idea. But--can you stand transfer?" "Certainly. They got my shoulder dressed and taped, and my arm in a sling. Shock practically all gone. Some pain, but not much. I can walk without falling down." "Fair enough. Clayton!" He Lensed a vigorous thought. "Have any of the observers spotted anything, high up or far off?" "No, sir." "Good. Kinnison to Commodore Clayton, orders. Have a 'copter come down and pick up Samms and myself on tractors. Instruct the _Boise_ and the cruisers to maintain utmost vigilance. Instruct the _Chicago_ to pick us up. Detach the _Chicago_ and the _Boise_ from your task force. Assign them to me. Off." "Clayton to Commissioner Kinnison. Orders received and are being carried out. Off." The transfers were made without incident. The two super-dreadnaughts leaped into the high stratosphere and tore westward. Half-way to the Hill, Kinnison called Dr. Frederick Rodebush. "Fred? Kinnison. Have Cleve and Bergenholm link up with us. Now--how are the Geigers on the outside of the Hill behaving?" "Normal, all of them," the physicist-Lensman reported after a moment. "Why?" Kinnison detailed the happenings of the recent past. "So tell the boys to unlimber all the stuff the Hill has got." "My God!" Cleveland exclaimed. "Why, that's putting us back to the days of the Interplanetary Wars!" "With one notable exception," Kinnison pointed out. "The attack, if any, will be strictly modern. I hope we'll be able to handle it. One good thing, the old mountain's got a lot of sheer mass. How much radioactivity will it stand?" "Allotropic iron, U-235, or plutonium?" Rodebush seized his slide-rule. "What difference does it make?" "From a practical standpoint ... perhaps none. But with a task force defending, not many bombs could get through, so I'd say ..." "I wasn't thinking so much of bombs." "What, then?" "Isotopes. A good, thick blanket of dust. Slow-speed, fine stuff that neither our ships nor the Hill's screens could handle. We've got to decide, first, whether Virgil will be safer there in the Hill or out in space in the _Chicago_; and second, for how long." "I see ... I'd say here, _under_ the Hill. Months, perhaps years, before anything could work down this far. And we can _always_ get out. No matter how hot the surface gets, we've got enough screen, heavy water, cadmium, lead, mercury, and everything else necessary to get him out through the locks." "That's what I was hoping you'd say. And now, about the defense ... I wonder ... I don't want everybody to think I've gone completely hysterical, but I'll be damned if I want to get caught again with...." His thought faded out. "May I offer a suggestion, sir?" Bergenholm's thought broke the prolonged silence. "I'd be very glad to have it--your suggestions so far haven't been idle vaporings. Another hunch?" "No, sir, a logical procedure. It has been some months since the last emergency call-out drill was held. If you issue such another call now, and nothing happens, it can be simply another surprise drill; with credit, promotion, and monetary awards for the best performances; further practice and instruction for the less proficient units." "Splendid, Dr. Bergenholm!" Samms' brilliant and agile mind snatched up the thought and carried it along. "And what a chance, Rod, for something vastly larger and more important than a Continental, or even a Tellurian, drill--make it the first maneuver of the Galactic Patrol!" "I'd like to, Virge, but we can't. My boys are ready, but you aren't. No top appointments and no authority." "That can be arranged in a very few minutes. We have been waiting for the psychological moment. This, especially if trouble should develop, is the time. You yourself expect an attack, do you not?" "Yes. I would not start anything unless and until I was ready to finish it, and I see no reason for assuming that whoever it was that tried to kill you is not at least as good a planner as I am." "And the rest of you...? Dr. Bergenholm?" "My reasoning, while it does not exactly parallel that of Commissioner Kinnison, leads to the same conclusion; that an attack in great force is to be expected." "Not _exactly_ parallel?" Kinnison demanded. "In what respects?" "You do not seem to have considered the possibility, Commissioner, that the proposed assassination of First Lensman Samms could very well have been only the first step in a comprehensive operation." "I didn't ... and it _could_ have been. So go ahead, Virge, with...." The thought was never finished, for Samms had already gone ahead. Simultaneously, it seemed, the minds of eight other Lensmen joined the group of Tellurians. Samms, intensely serious, spoke aloud to his friend: "The Galactic Council is now assembled. Do you, Roderick K. Kinnison, promise to uphold, in as much as you conscientiously can and with all that in you lies, the authority of this Council throughout all space?" "I promise." "By virtue of the authority vested in me its president by the Galactic Council, I appoint you Port Admiral of the Galactic Patrol. My fellow councillors are now inducting the armed forces of their various solar systems into the Galactic Patrol ... It will not take long ... There, you may make your appointments and issue orders for the mobilization." The two super-dreadnaughts were now approaching the Hill. The _Boise_ stayed "up on top"; the _Chicago_ went down. Kinnison, however, paid very little attention to the landing or to Samms' disembarkation, and none whatever to the _Chicago's_ reascent into the high heavens. He knew that everything was under control; and, now alone in his cabin, he was busy. "All personnel of all armed forces just inducted into the Galactic Patrol, attention!" He spoke into an ultra-wave microphone, the familiar parade-ground rasp very evident in his deep and resonant voice. "Kinnison of Tellus, Port Admiral, speaking. Each of you has taken oath to the Galactic Patrol?" They had. "At ease. The organization chart already in your hands is made effective as of now. Enter in your logs the date and time. Promotions: Commodore Clayton of North America, Tellus...." In his office at New York Spaceport Clayton came to attention and saluted crisply; his eyes shining, his deeply-scarred face alight. "... to be Admiral of the First Galactic Region. Commodore Schweikert of Europe, Tellus ..." In Berlin a narrow-waisted, almost foppish-seeming man, with roached blond hair and blue eyes, bowed stiffly from the waist and saluted punctiliously. "... to be Lieutenant-Admiral of the First Galactic Region." And so on, down the list. A marshal and a lieutenant-marshal of the Solarian System; a general and a lieutenant-general of the planet Sol Three. Promotions, agreed upon long since, to fill the high offices thus vacated. Then the list of commodores upon other planets--Guindlos of Redland, Mars; Sesseffsen of Talleron, Venus; Raymond of the Jovian Sub-System; Newman of Alphacent; Walters of Sirius; van-Meeter of Valeria; Adams of Procyon; Roberts of Altair; Barrtell of Fomalhout; Armand of Vega; and Coigne of Aldebaran--each of whom was actually the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of a world. Each of these was made general of his planet. "Except for lieutenant-commodores and up, who will tune their minds to me--dismissed!" Kinnison stopped talking and went onto his Lens. "That was for the record. I don't need to tell you, fellows, how glad I am to be able to do this. You're tops, all of you--I don't know of anybody I'd rather have at my back when the ether gets rough ..." "Right back at you, chief!" "Same to you Rod!" "Rocky Rod, Port Admiral!" "Now we're blasting!" came a melange of thoughts. Those splendid men, with whom he had shared so much of danger and of stress, were all as jubilant as schoolboys. "But the thing that makes this possible may also make it necessary for us to go to work; to earn your extra stars and my wheel." Kinnison smothered the welter of thoughts and outlined the situation, concluding: "So you see it may turn out to be only a drill--but on the other hand, since the outfit is big enough to have built a war-fleet alone, if it wanted one, and since it may have had a lot of first-class help that none of us knows anything about, we may be in for the damndest battle that any of us ever saw. So come prepared for _anything_. I am now going back onto voice, for the record. "Kinnison to the commanding officers of all fleets, sub-fleets, and task-forces of the Galactic Patrol. Information. Subject, tactical problem; defense of the Hill against a postulated Black Fleet of unknown size, strength, and composition; of unknown nationality or origin; coming from an unknown direction in space at an unknown time. "Kinnison to Admiral Clayton. Orders. Take over. I am relinquishing command of the _Boise_ and the _Chicago_." "Clayton to Port Admiral Kinnison. Orders received. Taking over. I am at the _Chicago's_ main starboard lock. I have instructed Ensign Masterson, the commanding officer of this gig, to wait; that he is to take you down to the Hill." "WHAT? Of all the damned...." This was a thought, and unrecorded. "Sorry, Rod--I'm sorry as hell, and I'd like no end to have you along." This, too, was a thought. "But that's the way it is. Ordinary Admirals ride the ether with their fleets. Port Admirals stay aground. I report to you, and you run things--in broad--by remote control." "I see." Kinnison then Lensed a fuming thought at Samms. "Alex _couldn't_ do this to me--and wouldn't--and knows damn well that I'd burn him to a crisp if he had the guts to try it. So it's _your_ doing--what in hell's the big idea?" "Who's being heroic now, Rod?" Samms asked, quietly. "Use _your_ brain. And then come down here, where you belong." And Kinnison, after a long moment of rebellious thought and with as much grace as he could muster, came down. Down not only to the Patrol's familiar offices, but down into the deepest crypts beneath them. He was glum enough, and bitter, at first: but he found much to do. Grand Fleet Headquarters--_his_ headquarters--was being organized, and the best efforts of the best minds and of the best technologists of three worlds were being devoted to the task of strengthening the already extremely strong defenses of THE HILL. And in a very short time the plates of GFHQ showed that Admiral Clayton and Lieutenant-Admiral Schweikert were doing a very nice job. All of the really heavy stuff was of Earth, the Mother Planet, and was already in place; as were the less numerous and much lighter contingents of Mars, of Venus, and of Jove. And the fleets of the outlying solar systems--cutters, scouts, and a few light cruisers--were neither maintaining fleet formation nor laying course for Sol. Instead, each individual vessel was blasting at maximum for the position in space in which it would form one unit of a formation englobing at a distance of light-years the entire Solarian System, and each of those hurtling hundreds of ships was literally combing all circumambient space with its furiously-driven detector beams. "Nice." Kinnison turned to Samms, now beside him at the master plate. "Couldn't have done any better myself." "After you get it made, what are you going to do with it in case nothing happens?" Samms was still somewhat skeptical. "How long can you make a drill last?" "Until all the ensigns have long gray whiskers if I have to, but don't worry--if we have time to get the preliminary globe made I'll be the surprisedest man in the system." And Kinnison was not surprised; before full englobement was accomplished, a loud-speaker gave tongue. "Flagship _Chicago_ to Grand Fleet Headquarters!" it blatted, sharply. "The Black Fleet has been detected. RA twelve hours, declination plus twenty degrees, distance about thirty light-years...." Kinnison started to say something; then, by main force, shut himself up. He wanted intensely to take over, to tell the boys out there exactly what to do, but he couldn't. He was now a Big Shot--damn the luck! He could be and must be responsible for broad policy and for general strategy, but, once those vitally important decisions had been made, the actual work would have to be done by others. He didn't like it--but there it was. Those flashing thoughts took only an instant of time. "... which is such extreme range that no estimate of strength or composition can be made at present. We will keep you informed." "Acknowledge," he ordered Randolph; who, wearing now the five silver bars of major, was his Chief Communications Officer. "No instructions." He turned to his plate. Clayton hadn't had to be told to pull in his light stuff; it was all pelting hell-for-leather for Sol and Tellus. Three general plans of battle had been mapped out by Staff. Each had its advantages--and its disadvantages. Operation Acorn--long distance--would be fought at, say, twelve light-years. It would keep everything, particularly the big stuff, away from the Hill, and would make automatics useless ... _unless_ some got past, or _unless_ the automatics were coming in on a sneak course, or _unless_ several other things--in any one of which cases _what_ a God-awful shellacking the Hill would take! He grinned wryly at Samms, who had been following his thought, and quoted: "A vast hemisphere of lambent violet flame, through which neither material substance nor destructive ray can pass." "Well, that dedicatory statement, while perhaps a bit florid, was strictly true at the time--before the days of allotropic iron and of polycyclic drills. Now I'll quote one: 'Nothing is permanent except change'." "Uh-huh," and Kinnison returned to his thinking. Operation Adack. Middle distance. Uh-uh. He didn't like it any better now than he had before, even though some of the Big Brains of Staff thought it the ideal solution. A compromise. All of the disadvantages of both of the others, and none of the advantages of either. It _still_ stunk, and unless the Black fleet had an utterly fantastic composition Operation Adack was out. And Virgil Samms, quietly smoking a cigarette, smiled inwardly. Rod the Rock could scarcely be expected to be in favor of any sort of compromise. That left Operation Affick. Close up. It had three tremendous advantages. First, the Hill's own offensive weapons--as long as they lasted. Second, the new Rodebush-Bergenholm fields. Third, no sneak attack could be made without detection and interception. It had one tremendous disadvantage; some stuff, and probably a lot of it, would get through. Automatics, robots, guided missiles equipped with super-speed drives, with polycyclic drills, and with atomic war-heads strong enough to shake the whole world. But with those new fields, shaking the world wouldn't be enough; in order to get deep enough to reach Virgil Samms they would damn near have to destroy the world. Could _anybody_ build a bomb that powerful? He didn't think so. Earth technology was supreme throughout all known space; of Earth technologists the North Americans were, and always had been, tops. Grant that the Black Fleet was, basically, North American. Grant further that they had a man as good as Adlington--or that they could spy-ray Adlington's brain and laboratories and shops--a tall order. Adlington himself was several months away from a world-wrecker, unless he could put one a hundred miles down before detonation, which simply was not feasible. He turned to Samms. "It'll be Affick, Virge, unless they've got a composition that is radically different from anything I ever saw put into space." "So? I can't say that I am very much surprised." The calm statement and the equally calm reply were beautifully characteristic of the two men. Kinnison had not asked, nor had Samms offered, advice. Kinnison, after weighing the facts, made his decision. Samms, calmly certain that the decision was the best that could be made upon the data available, accepted it without question or criticism. "We've still got a minute or two," Kinnison remarked. "Don't quite know what to make of their line of approach. Coma Berenices. I don't know of anything at all out that way, do you? They could have detoured, though." "No, I don't." Samms frowned in thought. "Probably a detour." "Check." Kinnison turned to Randolph. "Tell them to report whatever they know; we can't wait any ..." As he was speaking the report came in. The Black Fleet was of more or less normal make-up; considerably larger than the North American contingent, but decidedly inferior to the Patrol's present Grand Fleet. Either three or four capital ships ... "And we've got six!" Kinnison said, exultantly. "Our own two, Asia's _Himalaya_, Africa's _Johannesburg_, South America's _Bolivar_, and Europe's _Europa_." ... Battle cruisers and heavy cruisers, about in the usual proportions; but an unusually high ratio of scouts and light cruisers. There were either two or three large ships which could not be classified definitely at that distance; long-range observers were going out to study them. "Tell Clayton," Kinnison instructed Randolph, "that it is to be Operation Affick, and for him to fly at it." "Report continued," the speaker came to life again. "There are three capital ships, apparently of approximately the _Chicago_ class, but tear-drop-shaped instead of spherical ..." "Ouch!" Kinnison flashed a thought at Samms. "I don't like that. They can both fight and run." "... The battle cruisers are also tear-drops. The small vessels are torpedo-shaped. There are three of the large ships, which we are still not able to classify definitely. They are spherical in shape, and very large, but do not seem to be either armed or screened, and are apparently carriers--possibly of automatics. We are now making contact--off!" Instead of looking at the plates before them, the two Lensmen went en rapport with Clayton, so that they could see everything he saw. The stupendous Cone of Battle had long since been formed; the word to fire was given in a measured two-second call. Every firing officer in every Patrol ship touched his stud in the same split second. And from the gargantuan mouth of the Cone there spewed a miles-thick column of energy so raw, so stark, so incomprehensibly violent that it must have been seen to be even dimly appreciated. It simply cannot be described. Its prototype, Triplanetary's Cylinder of Annihilation, had been a highly effective weapon indeed. The offensive beams of the fish-shaped Nevian cruisers of the void were even more powerful. The Cleveland-Rodebush projectors, developed aboard the original _Boise_ on the long Nevian way, were stronger still. The composite beam projected by this fleet of the Galactic Patrol, however, was the sublimation and quintessence of each of these, redesigned and redesigned by scientists and engineers of ever-increasing knowledge, rebuilt and rebuilt by technologists of ever-increasing skill. Capital ships and a few of the heaviest cruisers could mount screen generators able to carry that frightful load; but every smaller ship caught in that semi-solid rod of indescribably incandescent fury simply flared into nothingness. But in the instant before the firing order was given--as though precisely timed, which in all probability was the case--the ever-watchful observers picked up two items of fact which made the new Admiral of the First Galactic Region cut his almost irresistible weapon and break up his Cone of Battle after only a few seconds of action. One: those three enigmatic cargo scows had fallen apart _before_ the beam reached them, and hundreds--yes, thousands--of small objects had hurtled radially outward, out well beyond the field of action of the Patrol's beam, at a speed many times that of light. Two: Kinnison's forebodings had been prophetic. A swarm of Blacks, all small--must have been hidden right on Earth somewhere!--were already darting at the Hill from the south. "Cease firing!" Clayton rapped into his microphone. The dreadful beam expired. "Break cone formation! Independent action--light cruisers and scouts, _get those bombs_! Heavy cruisers and battle cruisers, engage similar units of the Blacks, two to one if possible. _Chicago_ and _Boise_, attack Black Number One. _Bolivar_ and _Himalaya_, Number Two. _Europa_ and _Johannesburg_, Number Three!" Space was full of darting, flashing, madly warring ships. The three Black super-dreadnaughts leaped forward as one. Their massed batteries of beams, precisely synchronized and aimed, lashed out as one at the nearest Patrol super heavy, the _Boise_. Under the vicious power of that beautifully-timed thrust that warship's first, second, and third screens, her very wall-shield, flared through the spectrum and into the black. Her Chief Pilot, however, was fast--_very_ fast--and he had a fraction of a second in which to work. Thus, practically in the instant of her wall-shield's failure, she went free; and while she was holed badly and put out of action, she was not blown out of space. In fact, it was learned later that she lost only forty men. The Blacks were not as fortunate. The _Chicago_, now without a partner, joined beams with the _Bolivar_ and the _Himalaya_ against Number Two; then, a short half-second later, with her other two sister-ships against Number Three. And in that very short space of time two Black super-dreadnaughts ceased utterly to be. But also, in that scant second of time, Black Number One had all but disappeared! Her canny commander, with no stomach at all for odds of five to one against, had ordered flight at max; she was already one-sixtieth of a light-year--about one hundred thousand million miles--away from the Earth and was devoting her every energy to the accumulation of still more distance. "_Bolivar!_ _Himalaya!_" Clayton barked savagely. "Get him!" He wanted intensely to join the chase, but he couldn't. He had to stay here. And he didn't have time even to swear. Instead, without a break, the words tripping over each other against his teeth: "_Chicago!_ _Johannesburg!_ _Europa!_ Act at will against heaviest craft left. Blast 'em down!" He gritted his teeth. The scouts and light cruisers were doing their damndest, but they were out-numbered three to one--Christ, what a lot of stuff was getting through! The Blacks wouldn't last long, between the Hill and the heavies ... but maybe long enough, at that--the Patrol globe was leaking like a sieve! He voiced a couple of bursts of deep-space profanity and, although he was almost afraid to look, sneaked a quick peek to see how much was left of the Hill. He looked--and stopped swearing in the middle of a four-letter Anglo-Saxon word. What he saw simply did not make sense. Those Black bombs should have peeled the armor off of that mountain like the skin off of a nectarine and scattered it from the Pacific to the Mississippi. By now there should be a hole a mile deep where the Hill had been. But there wasn't. The Hill was still there! It might have shrunk a little--Clayton couldn't see very well because of the worse-than-incandescent radiance of the practically continuous, sense-battering, world-shaking atomic detonations--_but the Hill was still there_! And as he stared, chilled and shaken, at that indescribably terrific spectacle, a Black cruiser, holed and helpless, fell toward that armored mountain with an acceleration starkly impossible to credit. And when it struck it did not penetrate, and splash, and crater, as it should have done. Instead, it simply spread out, _in a thin layer_, over an acre or so of the fortress' steep and apparently still armored surface! "You saw that, Alex? Good. Otherwise you could scarcely believe it," came Kinnison's silent voice. "Tell all our ships to stay away. There's a force of over a hundred thousand G's acting in a direction normal to every point of our surface. The boys are giving it all the decrement they can--somewhere between distance cube and fourth power--but even so it's pretty fierce stuff. How about the _Bolivar_ and the _Himalaya_? Not having much luck catching Mr. Black, are they?" "Why, I don't know. I'll check ... No, sir, they aren't. They report that they are losing ground and will soon lose trace." "I was afraid so, from that shape. Rodebush was about the only one who saw it coming ... well, we'll have to redesign and rebuild ..." * * * * * Port Admiral Kinnison, shortly after directing the foregoing thought, leaned back in his chair and smiled. The battle was practically over. The Hill had come through. The Rodebush-Bergenholm fields had held her together through the most God-awful session of saturation atomic bombing that any world had ever seen or that the mind of man had ever conceived. And the counter-forces had kept the interior rock from flowing like water. So far, so good. Her original armor was gone. Converted into ... what? For hundreds of feet inward from the surface she was hotter than the reacting slugs of the Hanfords. Delousing her would be a project, not an operation; millions of cubic yards of material would have to be hauled off into space with tractors and allowed to simmer for a few hundred years; but what of that? Bergenholm had said that the fields would tend to prevent the radioactives from spreading, as they otherwise would--and _Virgil Samms was still safe_! "Virge, my boy, come along." He took the First Lensman by his good arm and lifted him out of his chair. "Old Doctor Kinnison's peerless prescription for you and me is a big, thick, juicy, porterhouse steak." CHAPTER 8 That murderous attack upon Virgil Samms, and its countering by those new super-lawmen, the Lensmen, and by an entire task force of the North American Armed Forces, was news of Civilization-wide importance. As such, it filled every channel of Universal Telenews for an hour. Then, in stunning and crescendo succession, came the staccato reports of the creation of the Galactic Patrol, the mobilization--allegedly for maneuvers--of Galactic Patrol's Grand Fleet, and the ultimately desperate and all-too-nearly successful attack upon The Hill. "Just a second, folks; we'll have it very shortly. You'll see something that nobody ever saw before and that nobody will ever see again. We're getting in as close as the Law will let us." The eyes of Telenews' ace reporter and the telephoto lens of his cameraman stared down from a scooter at the furiously smoking, sputteringly incandescent surface of Triplanetary's ancient citadel; while upon dozens of worlds thousands of millions of people packed themselves tighter and tighter around tens of millions of visiplates and loud-speakers in order to see and to hear the tremendous news. "There it is, folks, look at it--the only really impregnable fortress ever built by man! A good many of our experts had it written off as obsolete, long ago, but it seems these Lensmen had something up their sleeves besides their arms, heh-heh! And speaking of Lensmen, they haven't been throwing their weight around, so most of us haven't noticed them very much, but this reporter wants to go on record right now as saying there must be a lot more to the Lens than any of us has thought, because otherwise nobody would have gone to all that trouble and expense, to say nothing of the tremendous loss of life, just to kill the Chief Lensman, which seems to have been what they were after. "We told you a few minutes ago, you know, that every Continent of Civilization sent official messages denying most emphatically any connection with this outrage. It's still a mystery, folks; in fact, it is getting more and more mysterious all the time. _Not one single man of the Black Fleet was taken alive!_ Not even in the ships that were only holed--they blew themselves up! And there were no uniforms or books or anything of the kind to be found in any of the wrecks--no identification whatever! "And now for the scoop of all time! Universal Telenews has obtained permission to interview the two top Lensmen, both of whom you all know--Virgil Samms and 'Rod the Rock' Kinnison--personally for this beam. We are now going down, by remote control, of course, right into the Galactic patrol office, right in The Hill itself. Here we are. Now if you will step just a little closer to the mike, please, Mr. Samms, or should I say...?" "You should say 'First Lensman Samms'," Kinnison said bruskly. "Oh, yes, First Lensman Samms. Thank you, Mr. Kinnison. Now, First Lensman Samms, our clients all want to know all about the Lens. We all know what it _does_, but what, really, _is_ it? Who invented it? How does it work?" Kinnison started to say something, but Samms silenced him with a thought. "I will answer those questions by asking you one." Samms smiled disarmingly. "Do you remember what happened because the pirates learned to duplicate the golden meteor of the Triplanetary Service?" "Oh, I see." The Telenews ace, although brash and not at all thin-skinned, was quick on the uptake. "Hush-hush? T. S.?" "Top Secret. Very much so," Samms confirmed, "and we are going to keep some things about the Lens secret as long as we possibly can." "Fair enough. Sorry folks, but you will agree that they're right on that. Well, then, Mr. Samms, who do you think it was that tried to kill you, and where do you think the Black Fleet came from?" "I have no idea," Samms said, slowly and thoughtfully. "No. No idea whatever." "What? Are you _sure_ of that? Aren't you holding back maybe just a little bit of a suspicion, for diplomatic reasons?" "I am holding nothing back; and through my Lens I can make you certain of the fact. Lensed thoughts come from the mind itself, direct, not through such voluntary muscles as the tongue. The mind does not lie--even such lies as you call 'diplomacy'." The Lensman demonstrated and the reporter went on: "He is _sure_, folks, which fact knocked me speechless for a second or two--which is quite a feat in itself. Now, Mr. Samms, one last question. What is all this Lens stuff really about? What are all you Lensmen--the Galactic Council and so on--really up to? What do you expect to get out of it? And why would anybody want to make such an all-out effort to get rid of you? And give it to me on the Lens, please, if you can do it and talk at the same time--that was a wonderful sensation, folks, of getting the dope straight and _knowing_ that it was straight." "I can and will answer both by voice and by Lens. Our basic purpose is ..." and he quoted verbatim the resounding sentences which Mentor had impressed so ineradicably upon his mind. "You know how little happiness, how little real well-being, there is upon any world today. We propose to increase both. What we expect to get out of it is happiness and well-being for ourselves, the satisfaction felt by any good workman doing the job for which he is best fitted and in which he takes pride. As to why anyone should want to kill me, the logical explanation would seem to be that some group or organization or race, opposed to that for which we Lensmen stand, decided to do away with us and started with me." "Thank you, Mr. Samms. I am sure that we all enjoyed this interview very much. Now, folks, you all know 'Rocky Rod', 'Rod the Rock', Kinnison ... just a little closer, please ... thank you. I don't suppose you have any suspicions, either, any more than...." "I certainly have!" Kinnison barked, so savagely that five hundred million people jumped as one. "How do you want it; voice, or Lens, or both?" Then on the Lens: "Think it over, son, because _I suspect everybody_!" "Bub-both, please, Mr. Kinnison." Even Universal's star reporter was shaken by the quiet but deadly fury of the big Lensman's thought, but he rallied so quickly that his hesitation was barely noticeable. "Your Lensed thought to me was that you suspect _everybody_, Mr. Kinnison?" "Just that. Everybody. I suspect every continental government of every world we know, including that of North America of Tellus. I suspect political parties and organized minorities. I suspect pressure groups. I suspect capital and I suspect labor. I suspect an organization of criminals. I suspect nations and races and worlds that no one of us has as yet heard of--not even you, the top-drawer newshawk of the universe." "But you have nothing concrete to go on, I take it?" "If I did have, do you think I'd be standing here talking to you?" * * * * * First Lensman Samms sat in his private quarters and thought. Lensman Dronvire of Rigel Four stood behind him and helped him think. Port Admiral Kinnison, with all his force and drive, began a comprehensive program of investigation, consolidation, expansion, redesigning, and rebuilding. Virgilia Samms went to a party practically every night. She danced, she flirted, she talked. _How_ she talked! Meaningless small talk for the most part--but interspersed with artless questions and comments which, while they perhaps did not put her partner of the moment completely at ease, nevertheless did not quite excite suspicion. Conway Costigan, Lens under sleeve, undisguised but inconspicuous, rode the ether-lanes; observing minutely and reporting fully. Jack Kinnison piloted and navigated and computed for his friend and boat-mate: Mason Northrop; who, completely surrounded by breadboard hookups of new and ever-more-fantastic complexity, listened and looked; listened and tuned; listened and rebuilt; listened and--finally--took bearings and bearings and bearings with his ultra-sensitive loops. DalNalten and Knobos, with dozens of able helpers, combed the records of three worlds in a search which produced as a by-product a monumental "who's who" of crime. Skilled technicians fed millions of cards, stack by stack, into the most versatile and most accomplished machines known to the statisticians of the age. And Dr. Nels Bergenholm, abandoning temporarily his regular line of work, devoted his peculiar talents to a highly abstruse research in the closely allied field of organic chemistry. The walls of Virgil Samms' quarters became covered with charts, diagrams, and figures. Tabulations and condensations piled up on his desk and overflowed into baskets upon the floor. Until: "Lensman Olmstead, of Alphacent, sir," his secretary announced. "Good! Send him in, please." The stranger entered. The two men, after staring intently at each other for half a minute, smiled and shook hands vigorously. Except for the fact that the newcomer's hair was brown, they were practically identical! "I'm certainly glad to see you, George. Bergenholm passed you, of course?" "Yes. He says that he can match your hair to mine, even the individual white ones. And he has made me a wig-maker's dream of a wig." "Married?" Samms' mind leaped ahead to possible complications. "Widower, same as you. And...." "Just a minute--going over this once will be enough." He Lensed call after call. Lensmen in various parts of space became en rapport with him and thus with each other. "Lensmen--especially you, Rod--George Olmstead is here, and his brother Ray is available. I am going to work." "I _still_ don't like it!" Kinnison protested. "It's too dangerous. I told the Universe I was going to keep you covered, and I _meant_ it!" "That's what makes it perfectly safe. That is, if Bergenholm is _sure_ that the duplication is close enough ..." "I am sure." Bergenholm's deeply resonant pseudo-voice left no doubt at all in any one of the linked minds. "The substitution will not be detected." "... and that nobody knows, George, or even suspects, that you got your Lens." "I am sure of that." Olmstead laughed quietly. "Also, nobody except us and your secretary knows that I am here. For a good many years I have made a specialty of that sort of thing. Photos, fingerprints, and so on have all been taken care of." "Good. I simply can not work efficiently here," Samms expressed what all knew to be the simple truth. "Dronvire is a much better analyst-synthesist than I am; as soon as any significant correlation is possible he will know it. We have learned that the Towne-Morgan crowd, Mackenzie Power, Ossmen Industries, and Interstellar Spaceways are all tied in together, and that thionite is involved, but we have not been able to get any further. There is a slight correlation--barely significant--between deaths from thionite and the arrival in the Solarian System of certain Spaceways liners. The fact that certain officials of the Earth-Screen Service have been and are spending considerably more than they earn sets up a slight but definite probability that they are allowing space-ships or boats from space-ships to land illegally. These smugglers carry contraband, which may or may not be thionite. In short, we lack fundamental data in every department, and it is high time for me to begin doing my share in getting it." "I don't check you, Virge." None of the Kinnisons ever did give up without a struggle. "Olmstead is a mighty smooth worker, and you are our prime coordinator. Why not let him keep up the counter-espionage--do the job you were figuring on doing yourself--and you stay here and boss it?" "I have thought of that, a great deal, and have...." "Because Olmstead can not do it," a hitherto silent mind cut in, decisively. "I, Rularion of North Polar Jupiter, say so. There are psychological factors involved. The ability to separate and to evaluate the constituent elements of a complex situation; the ability to make correct decisions without hesitation; as well as many others not as susceptible to concise statement, but which collectively could be called power of mind. How say you, Bergenholm of Tellus? For I have perceived in you a mind approximating in some respects the philosophical and psychological depth of my own." This outrageously egotistical declaration was, to the Jovian, a simple statement of an equally simple truth, and Bergenholm accepted it as such. "I agree. Olmstead probably could not succeed." "Well, then, can Samms?" Kinnison demanded. "Who knows?" came Bergenholm's mental shrug, and simultaneously: "Nobody knows whether I can or not, but I am going to try," and Samms ended--almost--the argument by asking Bergenholm and a couple of other Lensmen to come into his office and by taking off his Lens. "And that's another thing I don't like." Kinnison offered one last objection. "Without your Lens, _anything_ can happen to you." "Oh, I won't have to be without it very long. And besides, Virgilia isn't the only one in the Samms family who can work better--sometimes--without a Lens." The Lensmen came in and, in a surprisingly short time, went out. A few minutes later, two Lensmen strolled out of Samms' inner office into the outer one. "Good-bye, George," the red-headed man said aloud, "and good luck." "Same to you, Chief," and the brown-haired one strode out. Norma the secretary was a smart girl, and observant. In her position, she had to be. Her eyes followed the man out, then scanned the Lensman from toe to crown. "I've never seen anything like it, Mr. Samms," she remarked then. "Except for the difference in coloring, and a sort of ... well, stoopiness ... he could be your identical twin. You two must have had a common ancestor--or several--not too far back, didn't you?" "We certainly did. Quadruple second cousins, you might call it. We have known of each other for years, but this is the first time we have met." "Quadruple second cousins? What does that mean? How come?" "Well, say that once upon a time there were two men named Albert and Chester...." "What? Not two Irishmen named Pat and Mike? You're slipping, boss." The girl smiled roguishly. During rush hours she was always the fast, cool, efficient secretary, but in moments of ease such persiflage as this was the usual thing in the First Lensman's private office. "Not at all up to your usual form." "Merely because I am speaking now as a genealogist, not as a raconteur. But to continue, we will say that Chester and Albert had four children apiece, two boys and two girls, two pairs of identical twins, each. And when they grew up--half way up, that is...." "Don't tell me that we are going to suppose that all those identical twins married each other?" "Exactly. Why not?" "Well, it would be stretching the laws of probability all out of shape. But go ahead--I can see what's coming, I think." "Each of those couples had one, and only one, child. We will call those children Jim Samms and Sally Olmstead; John Olmstead and Irene Samms." The girl's levity disappeared. "James Alexander Samms and Sarah Olmstead Samms. Your parents. I didn't see what was coming, after all. This George Olmstead; then, is your...." "Whatever it is, yes. I can't name it, either--maybe you had better call Genealogy some day and find out. But it's no wonder we look alike. And there are three of us, not two--George has an identical twin brother." The red-haired Lensman stepped back into the inner office, shut the door, and Lensed a thought at Virgil Samms. "It worked, Virgil! I talked to her for five solid minutes, practically leaning on her desk, and she didn't tumble! And if this wig of Bergenholm's fooled _her_ so completely, the job he did on you would fool _anybody_!" "Fine! I've done a little testing myself, on the keenest men I know, without a trace of recognition so far." His last lingering doubt resolved, Samms boarded the ponderous, radiation-proof, neutron-proof shuttle-scow which was the only possible means of entering or leaving the Hill. A fast cruiser whisked him to Nampa, where Olmstead's "accidentally" damaged transcontinental transport was being repaired, and from which city Olmstead had been gone so briefly that no one had missed him. He occupied Olmstead's space; he surrendered the remainder of Olmstead's ticket. He reached New York. He took a 'copter to Senator Morgan's office. He was escorted into the private office of Herkimer Herkimer Third. "Olmstead. Of Alphacent." "Yes?" Herkimer's hand moved, ever so little, upon his desk's top. "Here." The Lensman dropped an envelope upon the desk in such fashion that it came to rest within an inch of the hand. "Prints. Here." Samms made prints. "Wash your hands, over there." Herkimer pressed a button. "Check all these prints, against each other and the files. Check the two halves of the torn sheet, fiber to fiber." He turned to the Lensless Lensman, now standing quietly before his desk. "Routine; a formality, in your case, but necessary." "Of course." Then for long seconds the two hard men stared into the hard depths of each other's eyes. "You may do, Olmstead. We have had very good reports of you. But you have never been in thionite?" "No. I have never even seen any." "What do you want to get into it for?" "Your scouts sounded me out; what did they tell you? The usual thing--promotion from the ranks into the brass--to get to where I can do myself and the organization some good." "Yourself first, the organization second?" "What else? Why should I be different from the rest of you?" This time the locked eyes held longer; one pair smoldering, the other gold-flecked, tawny ice. "Why, indeed?" Herkimer smiled thinly. "We do not advertise it, however." "Outside, I wouldn't, either; but here I'm laying my cards flat on the table." "I see. You _will_ do, Olmstead, if you live. There's a test, you know." "They told me there would be." "Well, aren't you curious to know what it is?" "Not particularly. _You_ passed it, didn't you?" "What do you mean by _that_ crack?" Herkimer leaped to his feet; his eyes, smoldering before, now ablaze. "Exactly what I said, no more and no less. You may read into it anything you please." Samms' voice was as cold as were his eyes. "You picked me out because of what I am. Did you think that moving upstairs would make a boot-licker out of me?" "Not at all." Herkimer sat down and took from a drawer two small, transparent, vaguely capsule-like tubes, each containing a few particles of purple dust. "You know what this is?" "I can guess." "Each of these is a good, heavy jolt; about all that a strong man with a strong heart can stand. Sit down. Here is one dose. Pull the cover, stick the capsule up one nostril, squeeze the ejector, and sniff. If you can leave this other dose sitting here on the desk you will live, and thus pass the test. If you can't, you die." Samms sat, and pulled, and squeezed, and sniffed. His forearms hit the desk with a thud. His hands clenched themselves into fists, the tight-stretched tendons standing boldly out. His face turned white. His eyes jammed themselves shut; his jaw-muscles sprang into bands and lumps as they clamped his teeth hard together. Every voluntary muscle in his body went into a rigor as extreme as that of death itself. His heart pounded; his breathing became stertorous. This was the dreadful "muscle-lock" so uniquely characteristic of thionite; the frenzied immobility of the ultimately passionate satisfaction of every desire. The Galactic Patrol became for him an actuality; a force for good pervading all the worlds of all the galaxies of all the universes of all existing space-time continual. He knew what the Lens was, and why. He understood time and space. He knew the absolute beginning and the ultimate end. He also saw things and did things over which it is best to draw a kindly veil, for _every_ desire--mental or physical, open or sternly suppressed, noble or base--that Virgil Samms had ever had was being _completely satisfied_. EVERY DESIRE. As Samms sat there, straining motionlessly upon the verge of death through sheer ecstasy, a door opened and Senator Morgan entered the room. Herkimer started, almost imperceptibly, as he turned--had there been, or not, an instantaneously-suppressed flash of guilt in those now completely clear and frank brown eyes? "Hi, Chief; come in and sit down. Glad to see you--this is not exactly my idea of fun." "No? When did you stop being a sadist?" The senator sat down beside his minion's desk, the fingertips of his left hand began soundlessly to drum. "You wouldn't have, by any chance, been considering the idea of...?" He paused significantly. "What an idea." Herkimer's act--if it was an act--was flawless. "He's too good a man to waste." "I know it, but you didn't act as though you did. I've never seen you come out such a poor second in an interview ... and it wasn't because you didn't know to start with just what kind of a tiger he was--that's why he was selected for this job. And it would have been so easy to give him just a wee bit more." "That's preposterous, Chief, and you know it." "Do I? However, it couldn't have been jealousy, because he isn't being considered for your job. He won't be over you, and there's plenty of room for everybody. What was the matter? Your bloodthirstiness wouldn't have taken you _that_ far, under these circumstances. Come clean, Herkimer." "Okay--I hate the whole damned family!" Herkimer burst out, viciously. "I see. That adds up." Morgan's face cleared, his fingers became motionless. "You can't make the Samms wench and aren't in position to skin her alive, so you get allergic to all her relatives. That adds up, but let me tell you something." His quiet, level voice carried more of menace than most men's loudest threats. "Keep your love life out of business and keep that sadistic streak under control. Don't let anything like this happen again." "I won't, Chief. I got off the beam--but he made me so _damn_ mad!" "Certainly. That's exactly what he was trying to do. Elementary. If he could make you look small it would make him look big, and he just about did. But watch now, he's coming to." Samms' muscles relaxed. He opened his eyes groggily; then, as a wave of humiliated realization swept over his consciousness, he closed them again and shuddered. He had always thought himself pretty much of a man; how could he _possibly_ have descended to such nauseous depths of depravity, of turpitude, of sheer moral degradation? And yet every cell of his being was shrieking its demand for more; his mind and his substance alike were permeated by an over-mastering craving to experience again the ultimate thrills which they had so tremendously, so outrageously enjoyed. There was another good jolt lying right there on the desk in front of him, even though thionite-sniffers always saw to it that no more of the drug could be obtained without considerable physical exertion; which exertion would bring them to their senses. If he took that jolt it would kill him. What of it? What was death? What good was life, except to enjoy such thrills as he had just had and was about to have again? And besides, thionite couldn't kill _him_. He was a super-man; he had just proved it! He straightened up and reached for the capsule; and that effort, small as it was, was enough to bring First Lensman Virgil Samms back under control. The craving, however, did not decrease. Rather, it increased. Months were to pass before he could think of thionite, or even of the color purple, without a spasmodic catching of the breath and a tightening of every muscle. Years were to pass before he could forget, even partially, the theretofore unsuspected dwellers in the dark recesses of his own mind. Nevertheless, from the store of whatever it was that made him what he was, Virgil Samms drew strength. Thumb and forefinger touched the capsule, but instead of picking it up, he pushed it across the desk toward Herkimer. "Put it away, bub. One whiff of that stuff will last me for life." He stared unfathomably at the secretary, then turned to Morgan and nodded. "After all, he did not _say_ that he ever passed this or any other test. He just didn't contradict me when I said it." With a visible effort Herkimer remained silent, but Morgan did not. "You talk too much, Olmstead. Can you stand up yet?" Gripping the desk with both hands, Samms heaved himself to his feet. The room was spinning and gyrating; every individual thing in it was moving in a different and impossible orbit; his already splintered skull threatened more and more violently to emulate a fragmentation bomb; black and white spots and vari-colored flashes filled his cone of vision. He wrenched one hand free, then the other--and collapsed back into the chair. "Not yet--quite," he admitted, through stiff lips. Although he was careful not to show it, Morgan was amazed--not that the man had collapsed, but that he had been able so soon to lift himself even an inch. "Tiger" was not the word; this Olmstead must be seven-eighths dinosaur. "It takes a few minutes; longer for some, not so long for others," Morgan said, blandly. "But what makes you think Herkimer here never took one of the same?" "Huh?" Again two pairs of eyes locked and held; and this time the duel was longer and more pregnant. "What do _you_ think? How do you suppose I lived to get as old as I am now? By being dumb?" Morgan unwrapped a Venerian cigar, settled it comfortably between his teeth, lit it, and drew three slow puffs before replying. "Ah, a student. An analytical mind," he said, evenly, and--apparently--irrelevantly. "Let's skip Herkimer for the moment. Try your hand on me." "Why not? From what we hear out in the field, you have always been in the upper brackets, so you probably never had to prove that you could take it or let it alone. My guess would be, though, that you could." "The good old oil, eh?" Morgan allowed his face and voice to register a modicum, precisely metered, of contempt. "How to get along in the world; Lesson One: Butter up the Boss." "Nice try, Senator, but I'll have to score you a clean miss." Samms, now back almost to normal, grinned companionably. "We both know that if I were still in the kindergarten I wouldn't be here now." "I'll let that one pass--this time." Under that look and tone Morgan's underlings were wont to cringe, but this Olmstead was not the cringing type. "Don't do it again. It might not be safe." "Oh, it would be safe enough--for today, at least. There are two factors which you are very carefully ignoring. First, I haven't accepted the job yet." "Are you innocent enough to think you'll get out of this building alive if I don't accept you?" "If you want to call it innocence, yes. Oh, I know you've got gunnies all over the place, but they don't mean a thing." "No?" Morgan's voice was silkily venomous. "No." Olmstead was completely unimpressed. "Put yourself in my place. You know I've been around a long time; and not just around my mother. I was weaned quite a number of years ago." "I see. You don't scare worth a damn. A point. And you are testing me, just as I am testing you. Another point. I'm beginning to like you, George. I think I know what your second point is, but let's have it, just for the record." "I'm sure you do. Any man, to be my boss, has got to be at least as good a man as I am. Otherwise I take his job away from him." "Fair enough. By God, I _do_ like you, Olmstead!" Morgan, his big face wreathed in smiles, got up, strode over, and shook hands vigorously; and Samms, scan as he would, could not even hazard a guess as to how much--if any--of this enthusiasm was real. "Do you want the job? And when can you go to work?" "Yes, sir. Two hours ago, sir." "That's fine!" Morgan boomed. Although he did not comment upon it, he noticed and understood the change in the form of address. "Without knowing what the job is or how much it pays?" "Neither is important, sir, at the moment." Samms, who had got up easily enough to shake hands, now shook his head experimentally. Nothing rattled. Good--he was in pretty good shape already. "As to the job, I can either do it or find out why it can't be done. As to pay, I've heard you called a lot of things, but 'piker' was never one of them." "Very well. I predict that you will go far." Morgan again shook the Lensman's hand; and again Samms could not evaluate the Senator's sincerity. "Tuesday afternoon. New York Spaceport. Space-ship _Virgin Queen_. Report to Captain Willoughby in the dock office at fourteen hundred hours. Stop at the cashier's office on your way out. Good-bye." CHAPTER 9 Piracy was rife. There was no suspicion, however, nor would there be for many years, that there was anything of very large purpose about the business. Murgatroyd was simply a Captain Kidd of space; and even if he were actually connected with Galactic Spaceways, that fact would not be surprising. Such relationships had always existed; the most ferocious and dreaded pirates of the ancient world worked in full partnership with the First Families of that world. Virgil Samms was thinking of pirates and of piracy when he left Senator Morgan's office. He was still thinking of them while he was reporting to Roderick Kinnison. Hence: "But that's enough about this stuff and me, Rod. Bring me up to date on Operation Boskone." "Branching out no end. Your guess was right that Spaceways' losses to pirates are probably phony. But it wasn't the _known_ attacks--that is, those cases in which the ship was found, later, with some or most of the personnel alive--that gave us the real information. They were all pretty much alike. But when we studied the total disappearances we really hit the jack-pot." "That doesn't sound just right, but I'm listening." "You'd better, since it goes farther than even you suspected. It was no trouble at all to get the passenger lists and the names of the crews of the independent ships that were lost without a trace. Their relatives and friends--we concentrated mostly on wives--could be located, except for the usual few who moved around so much that they got lost. Spacemen average young, you know, and their wives are still younger. Well, these young women got jobs, most of them remarried, and so on. In short, normal." "And in the case of Spaceways, not normal?" "Decidedly not. In the first place, you'd be amazed at how little publication was ever done of passenger lists, and apparently crew lists were not published at all. No use going into detail as to how we got the stuff, but we got it. However, nine tenths of the wives had disappeared, and none had remarried. The only ones we could find were those who did not care, even when their husbands were alive, whether they ever saw them again or not. But the big break was--you remember the disappearance of that girls'-school cruise ship?" "Of course. It made a lot of noise." "An interesting point in connection with that cruise is that two days before the ship blasted off the school was robbed. The vault was opened with thermite and the whole Administration Building burned to the ground. All the school's records were destroyed. Thus, the list of missing had to be made up from statements made by friends, relatives, and what not." "I remember something of the kind. My impression was, though, that the space-ship company furnished.... Oh!" The tone of Samms' thought alerted sharply. "That was Spaceways, under cover?" "Definitely. Our best guess is that there were quite a few shiploads of women disappeared about that time, instead of one. Austine's College had more students that year than ever before or since. It was the extras, not the regulars, who went on that cruise; the ones who figured it would be more convenient to disappear in space than to become ordinary missing persons." "But Rod! That would mean ... but where?" "It means just that. And finding out 'where' will run into a project. There are over two thousand million suns in this galaxy, and the best estimate is that there are more than that many planets habitable by beings more or less human in type. You know how much of the galaxy has been explored and how fast the work of exploring the rest of it is going. Your guess is just as good as mine as to where those spacemen and engineers and their wives and girl-friends are now. I am sure, though, of four things; none of which we can ever begin to prove. One; they didn't die in space. Two; they landed on a comfortable and very well equipped Tellurian planet. Three; they built a fleet there. Four; that fleet attacked the Hill." "Murgatroyd, do you suppose?" Although surprised by Kinnison's tremendous report, Samms was not dismayed. "No idea. No data--yet." "And they'll keep on building," Samms said. "They had a fleet much larger than the one they expected to meet. Now they'll build one larger than all our combined forces. And since the politicians will always know what we are doing ... or it might be ... I wonder...?" "You can stop wondering." Kinnison grinned savagely. "What do you mean?" "Just what you were going to think about. You know the edge of the galaxy closest to Tellus, where that big rift cuts in?" "Yes." "Across that rift, where it won't be surveyed for a thousand years, there's a planet that could be Earth's twin sister. No atomic energy, no space-drive, but heavily industrialized and anxious to welcome us. Project Bennett. Very, _very_ hush-hush. Nobody except Lensmen know anything about it. Two friends of Dronvire's--smart, smooth operators--are in charge. It's going to be the Navy Yard of the Galactic Patrol." "But Rod ..." Samms began to protest, his mind leaping ahead to the numberless problems, the tremendous difficulties, inherent in the program which his friend had outlined so briefly. "Forget it, Virge!" Kinnison cut in. "It won't be easy, of course, but we can do anything they can do, and do it better. You can go calmly ahead with your own chores, knowing that when--and notice that I say 'when', not 'if'--we need it we'll have a fleet up our sleeves that will make the official one look like a task force. But I see you're at the rendezvous, and there's Jill. Tell her 'hi' for me. And as the Vegians say--'Tail high, brother!'" Samms was in the hotel's ornate lobby; a couple of uniformed "boys" and Jill Samms were approaching. The girl reached him first. "You had no trouble in recognizing me, then, my dear?" "None at all, Uncle George." She kissed him perfunctorily, the bell hops faded away. "So nice to see you--I've heard _so_ much about you. The Marine Room, you said?" "Yes. I reserved a table." And in that famous restaurant, in the unequalled privacy of the city's noisiest and most crowded night spot, they drank sparingly; ate not-so-sparingly; and talked not sparingly at all. "It's perfectly safe here, you think?" Jill asked first. "Perfectly. A super-sensitive microphone couldn't hear anything, and it's so dark that a lip-reader, even if he could read us, would need a pair of twelve-inch night-glasses." "Goody! They did a marvelous job, Dad. If it weren't for your ... well, your personality, I wouldn't recognize you even now." "You think I'm safe, then?" "Absolutely." "Then we'll get down to business. You, Knobos, and DalNalten all have keen and powerful minds. You can't all be wrong. Spaceways, then, is tied in with both the Towne-Morgan gang and with thionite. The logical extension of that--Dal certainly thought of it, even though he didn't mention it--would be ..." Samms paused. "Check. That the notorious Murgatroyd, instead of being just another pirate chief, is really working for Spaceways and belongs to the Towne-Morgan-Isaacson gang. But dad--what an idea! Can things be _that_ rotten, really?" "They may be worse than that. Now the next thing. Who, in your opinion, is the real boss?" "Well, it certainly is not Herkimer Herkimer Third." Jill ticked him off on a pink forefinger. She had been asked for an opinion; she set out to give it without apology or hesitation. "He could--just about--direct the affairs of a hot-dog stand. Nor is it Clander. He isn't even a little fish; he's scarcely a minnow. Equally certainly it is neither the Venerian nor the Martian. They may run planetary affairs, but nothing bigger. I haven't met Murgatroyd, of course, but I have had several evaluations, and he does not rate up with Towne. And Big Jim--and this surprised me as much as it will you--is almost certainly not the prime mover." She looked at him questioningly. "That would have surprised me tremendously yesterday; but after today--I'll tell you about that presently--it doesn't." "I'm glad of that. I expected an argument, and I have been inclined to question the validity of my own results, since they do not agree with common knowledge--or, rather, what is supposed to be knowledge. That leaves Isaacson and Senator Morgan." Jill frowned in perplexity; seemed, for the first time, unsure. "Isaacson is of course a big man. Able. Well-informed. Extremely capable. A top-notch executive. Not only _is_, would _have_ to be, to run Spaceways. On the other hand, I have always thought that Morgan was nothing but a windbag...." Jill stopped talking; left the thought hanging in air. "So did I--until today," Samms agreed grimly. "I thought that he was simply an unusually corrupt, greedy, rabble-rousing politician. Our estimates of him may have to be changed very radically." Samms' mind raced. From two entirely different angles of approach, Jill and he had arrived at the same conclusion. But, if Morgan were really the Big Shot, would he have deigned to interview personally such small fry as Olmstead? Or was Olmstead's job of more importance than he, Samms, had supposed? "I've got a dozen more things to check with you," he went on, almost without a pause, "but since this leadership matter is the only one in which my experience would affect your judgment, I had better tell you about what happened today...." * * * * * Tuesday came, and hour fourteen hundred; and Samms strode into an office. There was a big, clean desk; a wiry, intense, gray-haired man. "Captain Willoughby?" "Yes." "George Olmstead reporting." "Fourth Officer." The captain punched a button; the heavy, sound-proof door closed itself and locked. "_Fourth_ Officer? New rank, eh. What does the ticket cover?" "New, and special. Here's the articles; read it and sign it." He did not add "or else", it was not necessary. It was clearly evident that Captain Willoughby, never garrulous, intended to be particularly reticent with his new subordinate. Samms read. "... Fourth Officer ... shall ... no duties or responsibilities in the operation or maintenance of said space-ship ... cargo ..." Then came a clause which fairly leaped from the paper and smote his eyes: "when in command of a detail outside the hull of said space-ship he shall enforce, by the infliction of death or such other penalty as he deems fit...." The Lensman was rocked to the heels, but did not show it. Instead, he took the captain's pen--his own, as far as Willoughby was concerned, could have been filled with vanishing ink--and wrote George Olmstead's name in George Olmstead's bold, flowing script. Willoughby then took him aboard the good ship _Virgin Queen_ and led him to his cabin. "Here you are, Mr. Olmstead. Beyond getting acquainted with the super-cargo and the rest of your men, you will have no duties for a few days. You have full run of the ship, with one exception. Stay out of the control room until I call you. Is that clear?" "Yes, sir." Willoughby turned away and Samms, after tossing his space-bag into the rack, took inventory. The room was of course very small; but, considering the importance of mass, it was almost extravagantly supplied. There were shelves, or rather, tight racks, of books; there were sun-lamps and card-shelves and exercisers and games; there was a receiver capable of bringing in programs from almost anywhere in space. The room had only one lack; it did not have an ultra-wave visiplate. Nor was this lack surprising. "They" would scarcely let George Olmstead know where "they" were taking him. Samms was surprised, however, when he met the men who were to be directly under his command; for instead of one, or at most two, they numbered exactly forty. And they were all, he thought at first glance, the dregs and sweepings of the lowest dives in space. Before long, however, he learned that they were not all space-rats and denizens of Skid Rows. Six of them--the strongest physically and the hardest mentally of the lot--were fugitives from lethal chambers; murderers and worse. He looked at the biggest, toughest one of the six--a rock-drill-eyed, red-haired giant--and asked: "What did they tell you, Tworn, that your job was going to be?" "They didn't say. Just that it was dangerous, but if I done exactly what my boss would tell me to do, and nothing else, I might not even get hurt. An' I was due to take the deep breath the next week, see? That's just how it was, boss." "I see," and one by one Virgil Samms, master psychologist, studied and analyzed his motley crew until he was called into the control room. The navigating tank was covered; no charts were to be seen. The one "live" visiplate showed a planet and a fiercely blue-white sun. "My orders are to tell you, at this point, all I know about what you've got to do and about that planet down there. Trenco, they call it." To Virgil Samms, the first adherent of Civilization ever to hear it, that name meant nothing whatever. "You are to take about five of your men, go down there, and gather all the green leaves you can. Not green in color; sort of purplish. What they call broadleaf is the best; leaves about two feet long and a foot wide. But don't be too choosy. If there isn't any broadleaf handy, grab anything you can get hold of." "What is the opposition?" Samms asked, quietly. "And what have they got that makes them so tough?" "Nothing. No inhabitants, even. Just the planet itself. Next to Arisia, it's the God damndest planet in space. I've never been any closer to it than this, and I never will, so I don't know anything about it except what I hear; but there's something about it that kills men or drives them crazy. We spend seven or eight boats every trip, and thirty-five or forty men, and the biggest load that anybody ever took away from here was just under two hundred pounds of leaf. A good many times we don't get any." "They go crazy, eh?" In spite of his control, Samms paled. But it couldn't be like Arisia. "What are the symptoms? What do they say?" "Various. Main thing seems to be that they lose their sight. Don't go blind, exactly, but can't see where anything is; or, if they do see it, it isn't there. And it rains over forty feet deep every night, and yet it all dries up by morning. The worst electrical storms in the universe, and wind-velocities--I can show you charts on that--of over eight hundred miles an hour." "Whew! How about time? With your permission, I would like to do some surveying before I try to land." "A smart idea. A couple of the other boys had the same, but it didn't help--they didn't come back. I'll give you two Tellurian days--no, three--before I give you up and start sending out the other boats. Pick out your five men and see what you can do." As the boat dropped away, Willoughby's voice came briskly from a speaker. "I know that you five men have got ideas. Forget 'em. Fourth Officer Olmstead has the authority and the orders to put a half-ounce slug through the guts of any or all of you that don't jump, and jump fast, to do what he tells you. And if that boat makes any funny moves I blast it out of the ether. Good harvesting!" For forty-eight Tellurian hours, taking time out only to sleep, Samms scanned and surveyed the planet Trenco; and the more he studied it, the more outrageously abnormal it became. Trenco was, and is, a peculiar planet indeed. Its atmosphere is not air as we know air; its hydrosphere does not resemble water. Half of that atmosphere and most of that hydrosphere are one chemical, a substance of very low heat of vaporization and having a boiling point of about seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit. Trenco's days are intensely hot; its nights are bitterly cold. At night, therefore, it rains: and by comparison a Tellurian downpour of one inch per hour is scarcely a drizzle. Upon Trenco it really _rains_--forty seven feet and five inches of precipitation, every night of every Trenconian year. And this tremendous condensation of course causes wind. Willoughby's graphs were accurate. Except at Trenco's very poles there is not a spot in which or a time at which an Earthly gale would not constitute a dead calm; and along the equator, at every sunrise and every sunset, the wind blows from the day side into the night side at a velocity which no Tellurian hurricane or cyclone, however violent, has even distantly approached. Also, therefore, there is lightning. Not in the mild and occasional flashes which we of gentle Terra know, but in a continuous, blinding glare which outshines a normal sun; in battering, shattering, multi-billion-volt discharges which not only make darkness unknown there, but also distort beyond recognition and beyond function the warp and the woof of space itself. Sight is almost completely useless in that fantastically altered medium. So is the ultra-beam. Landing on the daylight side, except possibly at exact noon, would be impossible because of the wind, nor could the ship stay landed for more than a couple of minutes. Landing on the night side would be practically as bad, because of the terrific charge the boat would pick up--unless the boat carried something that could be rebuilt into a leaker. Did it? It did. Time after time, from pole to pole and from midnight around the clock, Samms stabbed Visibeam and spy-ray down toward Trenco's falsely-visible surface, with consistently and meaninglessly impossible results. The planet tipped, lurched, spun, and danced. It broke up into chunks, each of which began insanely to follow mathematically impossible paths. Finally, in desperation, he rammed a beam down and held it down. Again he saw the planet break up before his eyes, but this time he held on. He _knew_ that he was well out of the stratosphere, a good two hundred miles up. Nevertheless, he _saw_ a tremendous mass of jagged rock falling straight down, with terrific velocity, upon his tiny lifeboat! Unfortunately the crew, to whom he had not been paying overmuch attention of late, saw it, too; and one of them, with a bestial yell, leaped toward Samms and the controls. Samms, reaching for pistol and blackjack, whirled around just in time to see the big red-head lay the would-be attacker out cold with a vicious hand's-edge chop at the base of the skull. "Thanks, Tworn. Why?" "Because I want to get out of this alive, and he'd've had us all in hell in fifteen minutes. You know a hell of a lot more than we do, so I'm playin' it your way. See?" "I see. Can you use a sap?" "An artist," the big man admitted, modestly. "Just tell me how long you want a guy to be out and I won't miss it a minute, either way. But you'd better blow that crumb's brains out, right now. He ain't no damn good." "Not until after I see whether he can work or not. You're a Procian, aren't you?" "Yeah. Midlands--North Central." "What did you do?" "Nothing much, at first. Just killed a guy that needed killing; but the goddam louse had a lot of money, so they give me twenty five years. I didn't like it very well, and acted rough, so they give me solitary--boot, bandage, and so on. So I tried a break--killed six or eight, maybe a dozen, guards--but didn't quite make it. So they slated me for the big whiff. That's all, boss." "I'm promoting you, now, to squad leader. Here's the sap." He handed Tworn his blackjack. "Watch 'em--I'll be too busy to. This landing is going to be tough." "Gotcha, boss." Tworn was calibrating his weapon by slugging himself experimentally on the leg. "Go ahead. As far as these crumbs are concerned, you've got this air-tank all to yourself." Samms had finally decided what he was going to do. He located the terminator on the morning side, poised his little ship somewhat nearer to dawn than to midnight, and "cut the rope". He took one quick reading on the sun, cut off his plates, and let her drop, watching only his pressure gages and gyros. One hundred millimeters of mercury. Three hundred. Five hundred. He slowed her down. He was going to hit a thin liquid, but if he hit it too hard he would smash the boat, and he had no idea what the atmospheric pressure at Trenco's surface would be. Six hundred. Even this late at night, it might be greater than Earth's ... and it might be a lot less. Seven hundred. Slower and slower he crept downward, his tension mounting infinitely faster than did the needle of the gage. This was an instrument landing with a vengeance! Eight hundred. How was the crew taking it? How many of them had Tworn had to disable? He glanced quickly around. None! Now that they could not see the hallucinatory images upon the plates, they were not suffering at all--he himself was the only one aboard who was feeling the strain! Nine hundred ... nine hundred forty. The boat "hit the drink" with a crashing, splashing impact. Its pace was slow enough, however, and the liquid was deep enough, so that no damage was done. Samms applied a little driving power and swung his craft's sharp nose into the line toward the sun. The little ship plowed slowly forward, as nearly just awash as Samms could keep her; grounded as gently as a river steam-boat upon a mud-flat. The starkly incredible downpour slackened; the Lensman knew that the second critical moment was at hand. "Strap down, men, until we see what this wind is going to do to us." The atmosphere, moving at a velocity well above that of sound, was in effect not a gas, but a solid. Even a spaceboat's hard skin of alloy plate, with all its bracing, could not take what was coming next. Inert, she would be split open, smashed, flattened out, and twisted into pretzels. Samms' finger stabbed down; the Berg went into action; the lifeboat went free just as that raging blast of quasi-solid vapor wrenched her into the air. The second descent was much faster and much easier than the first. Nor, this time, did Samms remain surfaced or drive toward shore. Knowing now that this ocean was not deep enough to harm his vessel, he let her sink to the bottom. More, he turned her on her side and drove her at a flat angle into the bottom; so deep that the rim of her starboard lock was flush with the ocean's floor. Again they waited; and this time the wind did not blow the lifeboat away. Upon purely theoretical grounds Samms had reasoned that the weird distortion of vision must be a function of distance, and his observations so far had been in accord with that hypothesis. Now, slowly and cautiously, he sent out a visibeam. Ten feet ... twenty ... forty ... all clear. At fifty the seeing was definitely bad; at sixty it became impossible. He shortened back to forty and began to study the vegetation, growing with such fantastic speed that the leaves, pressed flat to the ground by the gale and anchored there by heavy rootlets, were already inches long. There was also what seemed to be animal life, of sorts, but Samms was not, at the moment, interested in Trenconian zoology. "Are them the plants we're going to get, boss?" Tworn asked, staring into the plate over Samms' shoulder. "Shall we go out now an' start pickin' 'em?" "Not yet. Even if we could open the port the blast would wreck us. Also, it would shear your head off, flush with the coaming, as fast as you stuck it out. This wind should ease off after a while; we'll go out a little before noon. In the meantime we'll get ready. Have the boys break out a couple of spare Number Twelve struts, some clamps and chain, four snatch blocks, and a hundred feet of heavy space-line.... "Good," he went on, when the order had been obeyed. "Rig the line from the winch through snatch blocks here, and here, and here, so I can haul you back against the wind. While you are doing that I'll rig a remote control on the winch." Shortly before Trenco's fierce, blue-white sun reached meridian, the six men donned space-suits and Samms cautiously opened the air-lock ports. They worked. The wind was now scarcely more than an Earthly hurricane; the wildly whipping broadleaf plants, struggling upward, were almost half-way to the vertical. The leaves were apparently almost fully grown. Four men clamped their suits to the line. The line was paid out. Each man selected two leaves; the largest, fattest, purplest ones he could reach. Samms hauled them back and received the loot; Tworn stowed the leaves away. Again--again--again. With noon there came a few minutes of "calm". A strong man could stand against the now highly variable wind; could move around without being blown beyond the horizon; and during those few minutes all six men gathered leaves. That time, however, was very short. The wind steadied into the reverse direction with ever-increasing fury; winch and space-line again came into play. And in a scant half hour, when the line began to hum an almost musical note under its load, Samms decided to call it quits. "That'll be all for today, boys," he announced. "About twice more and this line will part. You've done too good a job to lose you. Secure ship." "Shall I blow the air, sir?" Tworn asked. "I don't think so." Samms thought for a moment. "No. I'm afraid to take the chance. This stuff, whatever it is, is probably as poisonous as cyanide. We'll keep our suits on and exhaust into space." Time passed. "Night" came; the rain and the flood. The bottom softened. Samms blasted the lifeboat out of the mud and away from the planet. He opened the bleeder valves, then both air-lock ports; the contaminated air was replaced by the ultra-hard vacuum of the inter-planetary void. He signaled the _Virgin Queen_; the lifeboat was taken aboard. "Quick trip, Olmstead," Willoughby congratulated him. "I'm surprised that you got back at all, to say nothing of with so much stuff and not losing a man. Give me the weight, mister, fast!" "Three hundred and forty eight pounds, sir," the super-cargo reported. "My God! And all pure broadleaf! _Nobody_ ever did _that_ before! How did you do it, Olmstead?" "I don't know whether that would be any of your business or not." Samms' mien was not insulting; merely thoughtful. "Not that I give a damn, but my way might not help anybody else much, and I think I had better report to the main office first, and let them do the telling. Fair enough?" "Fair enough," the skipper conceded, ungrudgingly. "What a load! And no losses!" "One boatload of air, is all; but air is expensive out here." Samms made a point, deliberately. "Air!" Willoughby snorted. "I'll swap you a hundred flasks of air, any time, for any one of those leaves!" Which was what Samms wanted to know. Captain Willoughby was smart. He knew that the way to succeed was to use and then to trample upon his inferiors; to toady to such superiors as were too strong to be pulled down and thus supplanted. He knew this Olmstead had what it took to be a big shot. Therefore: "They told me to keep you in the dark until we got to Trenco," he more than half apologized to his Fourth Officer shortly after the _Virgin Queen_ blasted away from the Trenconian system. "But they didn't say anything about afterwards--maybe they figured you wouldn't be aboard any more, as usual--but anyway, you can stay right here in the control room if you want to." "Thanks, Skipper, but mightn't it be just as well," he jerked his head inconspicuously toward the other officers, "to play the string out, this trip? I don't care where we're going, and we don't want anybody to get any funny ideas." "That'd be a lot better, of course--as long as you know that your cards are all aces, as far as I'm concerned." "Thanks, Willoughby. I'll remember that." Samms had not been entirely frank with the private captain. From the time required to make the trip, he knew to within a few parsecs Trenco's distance from Sol. He did not know the direction, since the distance was so great that he had not been able to recognize any star or constellation. He did know, however, the course upon which the vessel then was, and he would know courses and distances from then on. He was well content. A couple of uneventful days passed. Samms was again called into the control room, to see that the ship was approaching a three-sun solar system. "This where we're going to land?" he asked, indifferently. "We ain't going to land," Willoughby told him. "You are going to take the broadleaf down in your boat, close enough so that you can parachute it down to where it has to go. Way 'nuff, pilot, go inert and match intrinsics. Now, Olmstead, watch. You've seen systems like this before?" "No, but I know about them. Those two suns over there are a hell of a lot bigger and further away than they look, and this one here, much smaller, is in the Trojan position. Have those big suns got any planets?" "Five or six apiece, they say; all hotter and dryer than the brazen hinges of hell. This sun here has seven, but Number Two--'Cavenda', they call it--is the only Tellurian planet in the system. The first thing we look for is a big, diamond-shaped continent ... there's only one of that shape ... there it is, over there. Notice that one end is bigger than the other--that end is north. Strike a line to split the continent in two and measure from the north end one-third of the length of the line. That's the point we're diving at now ... see that crater?" "Yes." The _Virgin Queen_, although still hundreds of miles up, was slowing rapidly. "It must be a big one." "It's a good fifty miles across. Go down until you're dead sure that the box will land somewhere inside the rim of that crater. Then dump it. The parachute and the sender are automatic. Understand?" "Yes, sir; I understand," and Samms took off. He was vastly more interested in the stars, however, than in delivering the broadleaf. The constellation directly beyond Sol from wherever he was might be recognizable. Its shape would be smaller and more or less distorted; its smaller stars, brilliant to Earthly eyes only because of their nearness, would be dimmer, perhaps invisible; the picture would be further confused by intervening, nearby, brilliant strangers; but such giants as Canopus and Rigel and Betelgeuse and Deneb would certainly be highly visible if he could only recognize them. From Trenco his search had failed; but he was still trying. _There_ was something vaguely familiar! Sweating with the mental effort, he blocked out the too-near, too-bright stars and studied intensively those that were left. A blue-white and a red were most prominent. Rigel and Betelgeuse? Could that constellation be Orion? The Belt was very faint, but it was there. Then Sirius ought to be about there, and Pollux about there; and, at this distance, about equally bright. They were. Aldebaran would be orange, and about one magnitude brighter than Pollux; and Capella would be yellow, and half a magnitude brighter still. There they were! Not too close to where they should be, but close enough--it was Orion! And this thionite way-station, then, was somewhere near right ascension seventeen hours and declination plus ten degrees! He returned to the _Virgin Queen_. She blasted off. Samms asked very few questions and Willoughby volunteered very little information; nevertheless the First Lensman learned more than anyone of his fellow pirates would have believed possible. Aloof, taciturn, disinterested to a degree, he seemed to spend practically all of his time in his cabin when he was not actually at work; but he kept his eyes and his ears wide open. And Virgil Samms, as has been intimated, had a brain. The _Virgin Queen_ made a quick flit from Cavenda to Vegia, arriving exactly on time; a proud, clean space-ship as high above suspicion as Calpurnia herself. Samms unloaded her cargo; replaced it with one for Earth. She was serviced. She made a fast, eventless run to Tellus. She docked at New York Spaceport. Virgil Samms walked unconcernedly into an ordinary-looking rest-room; George Olmstead, fully informed, walked unconcernedly out. As soon as he could, Samms Lensed Northrop and Jack Kinnison. "We lined up a thousand and one signals, sir," Northrop reported for the pair, "but only one of them carried a message, and it didn't make sense." "Why not?" Samms asked, sharply. "With a Lens, _any_ kind of a message, however garbled, coded, or interrupted, makes sense." "Oh, we understood what it said," Jack came in, "but it didn't say enough. Just 'READY--READY--READY'; over and over." "What!" Samms exclaimed, and the boys could feel his mind work. "Did that signal, by any chance, originate anywhere near seventeen hours and plus ten degrees?" "Very near. Why? How did you know?" "Then it does make sense!" Samms exclaimed, and called a general conference of Lensmen. "Keep working along these same lines," Samms directed, finally. "Keep Ray Olmstead in the Hill in my place. I am going to Pluto, and--I hope--to Palain Seven." Roderick Kinnison of course protested; but, equally of course, his protests were over-ruled. CHAPTER 10 Pluto is, on the average, about forty times as far away from the sun as is Mother Earth. Each square yard of Earth's surface receives about sixteen hundred times as much heat as does each of Pluto's. The sun as seen from Pluto is a dim, wan speck. Even at perihelion, an event which occurs only once in two hundred forty eight Tellurian years, and at noon and on the equator, Pluto is so bitterly cold that climatic conditions upon its surface simply cannot be described by or to warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing man. As good an indication as any can be given, perhaps, by mentioning the fact that it had taken the Patrol's best engineers over six months to perfect the armor which Virgil Samms then wore. For no ordinary space-suit would do. Space itself is not cold; the only loss of heat is by radiation into or through an almost perfect vacuum. In contact with Pluto's rocky, metallic soil, however, there would be conduction; and the magnitude of the inevitable heat-loss made the Tellurian scientists gasp. "Watch your feet, Virge!" had been Roderick Kinnison's insistent last thought. "Remember those psychologists--if they stayed in contact with that ground for five minutes they froze their feet to the ankles. Not that the boys aren't good, but slipsticks sometimes slip in more ways than one. If your feet ever start to get cold, drop whatever you're doing and drive back here at max!" Virgil Samms landed. His feet stayed warm. Finally, assured that the heaters of his suit could carry the load indefinitely, he made his way on foot into the settlement near which he had come to ground. And there he saw his first Palainian. Or, strictly speaking, he saw part of his first Palainian; for no three-dimensional creature has ever seen or ever will see in entirety any member of any of the frigid-blooded, poison-breathing races. Since life as we know it--organic, three-dimensional life--is based upon liquid water and gaseous oxygen, such life did not and could not develop upon planets whose temperatures are only a few degrees above absolute zero. Many, perhaps most, of these ultra-frigid planets have an atmosphere of sorts; some have no atmosphere at all. Nevertheless, with or without atmosphere and completely without oxygen and water, life--highly intelligent life--did develop upon millions and millions of such worlds. That life is not, however, strictly three-dimensional. Of necessity, even in the lowest forms, it possesses an extension into the hyper-dimension; and it is this metabolic extension alone which makes it possible for life to exist under such extreme conditions. The extension makes it impossible for any human being to see anything of a Palainian except the fluid, amorphous, ever-changing thing which is his three-dimensional aspect of the moment; makes any attempt at description or portraiture completely futile. Virgil Samms stared at the Palainian; tried to see what it looked like. He could not tell whether it had eyes or antennae; legs, arms, or tentacles, teeth or beaks, talons or claws or feet; skin, scales, or feathers. It did not even remotely resemble anything that the Lensman had ever seen, sensed, or imagined. He gave up; sent out an exploring thought. "I am Virgil Samms, a Tellurian," he sent out slowly, carefully, after he made contact with the outer fringes of the creature's mind. "Is it possible for you, sir or madam, to give me a moment of your time?" "Eminently possible, Lensman Samms, since my time is of completely negligible value." The monster's mind flashed into accord with Samms' with a speed and precision that made him gasp. That is, a part of it became en rapport with a part of his: years were to pass before even the First Lensman would know much more about the Palainian than he learned in that first contact; no human beings except the Children of the Lens ever were to understand even dimly the labyrinthine intricacies, the paradoxical complexities, of the Palainian mind. "'Madam' might be approximately correct," the native's thought went smoothly on. "My name, in your symbology, is Twelfth Pilinipsi; by education, training, and occupation I am a Chief Dexitroboper. I perceive that you are indeed a native of that hellish Planet Three, upon which it was assumed for so long that no life could possibly exist. But communication with your race has been almost impossible heretofore ... Ah, the Lens. A remarkable device, truly. I would slay you and take it, except for the obvious fact that only you can possess it." "What!" Dismay and consternation flooded Samms' mind. "You already know the Lens?" "No. Yours is the first that any of us has perceived. The mechanics, the mathematics, and the basic philosophy of the thing, however, are quite clear." "What!" Samms exclaimed again. "You can, then, produce Lenses yourselves?" "By no means, any more than you Tellurians can. There are magnitudes, variables, determinants, and forces involved which no Palainian will ever be able to develop, to generate, or to control." "I see." The Lensman pulled himself together. For a First Lensman, he was making a wretched showing indeed.... "Far from it, sir," the monstrosity assured him. "Considering the strangeness of the environment into which you have voluntarily flung yourself so senselessly, your mind is well integrated and strong. Otherwise it would have shattered. If our positions were reversed, the mere thought of the raging heat of your Earth would--come no closer, please!" The thing vanished; reappeared many yards away. Her thoughts were a shudder of loathing, of terror, of sheer detestation. "But to get on. I have been attempting to analyze and to understand your purpose, without success. That failure is not too surprising, of course, since my mind is weak and my total power is small. Explain your mission, please, as simply as you can." Weak? Small? In view of the power the monstrosity had just shown, Samms probed for irony, for sarcasm or pretense. There was no trace of anything of the kind. He tried, then, for fifteen solid minutes, to explain the Galactic Patrol, but at the end the Palainian's only reaction was one of blank non-comprehension. "I fail completely to perceive the use of, or the need for, such an organization," she stated flatly. "This altruism--what good is it? It is unthinkable that any other race would take any risks or exert any effort for us, any more than we would for them. Ignore and be ignored, as you must already know, is the Prime Tenet." "But there is a little commerce between our worlds; your people did not ignore our psychologists; and you are not ignoring me," Samms pointed out. "Oh, none of us is perfect," Pilinipsi replied, with a mental shrug and what seemed to be an airy wave of a multi-tentacled member. "That ideal, like any other, can only be approached asymptotically, never reached; and I, being somewhat foolish and silly, as well as weak and vacillant, am much less perfect than most." Flabbergasted, Samms tried a new tack. "I might be able to make my position clearer if I knew you better. I know your name, and that you are a woman of Palain Seven"--it is a measure of Virgil Samms' real size that he actually thought "woman", and not merely "female"--"but all I can understand of your occupation is the name you have given it. What does a Chief Dexitroboper do?" "She--or he--or, perhaps, it ... is a supervisor of the work of dexitroboping." The thought, while perfectly clear, was completely meaningless to Samms, and the Palainian knew it. She tried again. "Dexitroboping has to do with ... nourishment? No--with nutrients." "Ah. Farming--agriculture," Samms thought; but this time it was the Palainian who could not grasp the concept. "Hunting? Fishing?" No better. "Show me, then, please." She tried; but demonstration, too, was useless; for to Samms the Palainian's movements were pointless indeed. The peculiarly flowing subtly changing thing darted back and forth, rose and fell, appeared and disappeared; undergoing the while cyclic changes in shape and form and size, in aspect and texture. It was now spiny, now tentacular, now scaly, now covered with peculiarly repellent feather-like fronds, each oozing a crimson slime. But it apparently did not _do_ anything whatever. The net result of all its activity was, apparently, zero. "There, it is done." Pilinipsi's thought again came clear. "You observed and understood? You did not. That is strange--baffling. Since the Lens did improve communication and understanding tremendously, I hoped that it might extend to the physical as well. But there must be some basic, fundamental difference, the nature of which is at present obscure. I wonder ... if I had a Lens, too--but no...." "But yes!" Samms broke in, eagerly. "Why don't you go to Arisia and be tested for one? You have a magnificent, a really _tremendous_ mind. It is of Lensman grade in every respect except one--you simply don't _want_ to use it!" "Me? Go to Arisia?" The thought would have been, in a Tellurian, a laugh of scorn. "How utterly silly--how abysmally stupid! There would be personal discomfort, quite possibly personal danger, and two Lenses would be little or no better than one in resolving differences between our two continua, which are probably in fact incommensurable." "Well, then," Samms thought, almost viciously, "can you introduce me to someone who is stupider, sillier, and more foolish than you are?" "Not here on Pluto, no." The Palainian took no offense. "That was why it was I who interviewed the earlier Tellurian visitors and why I am now conversing with you. The others avoided you." "I see." Samms' thought was grim. "How about the home planet, then?" "Ah. Undoubtedly. In fact, there is a group, a club, of such persons. None of them is, of course, as insane--as aberrant--as you are, but they are all much more so than I am." "Who of this club would be most interested in becoming a Lensman?" "Tallick was the least stable member of the New-Thought Club when I left Seven; Kragzex a close second. There may of course have been changes since then. But I cannot believe that even Tallick--even Tallick at his outrageous worst--would be crazy enough to join your Patrol." "Nevertheless, I must see him myself. Can you and will you give me a chart of a routing from here to Palain Seven?" "I can and I will. Nothing you have thought will be of any use to me; that will be the easiest and quickest way of getting rid of you." The Palainian spread a completely detailed chart in Samms' mind, snapped the telepathic line, and went unconcernedly about her incomprehensible business. Samms, mind reeling, made his way back to his boat and took off. And as the light-years and the parsecs screamed past, he sank deeper and deeper into a welter of unproductive speculation. What were--really--those Palainians? How could they--really--exist as they seemed to exist? And why had some of that dexitroboper's--whatever _that_ meant!--thoughts come in so beautifully sharp and clear and plain while others...? He knew that his Lens would receive and would convert into his own symbology any thought or message, however coded or garbled or however sent or transmitted. The Lens was not at fault; his symbology was. There were concepts--things--actualities--occurrences--so foreign to Tellurian experience that no referents existed. Hence the human mind lacked the channels, the mechanisms, to grasp them. He and Roderick Kinnison had glibly discussed the possibility of encountering forms of intelligent life so alien that humanity would have no point whatever of contact with them. After what Samms had just gone through, that was more of a possibility than either he or his friend had believed; and he hoped grimly, as he considered how seriously this partial contact with the Palainian had upset him, that the possibility would never become a fact. He found the Palainian system easily enough, and Palain Seven. That planet, of course, was almost as dark upon its sunward side as upon the other, and its inhabitants had no use for light. Pilinipsi's instructions, however, had been minute and exact; hence Samms had very little trouble in locating the principal city--or, rather, the principal village, since there were no real cities. He found the planet's one spaceport. What a thing to call a _port_! He checked back; recalled exactly this part of his interview with Pluto's Chief Dexitroboper. "The place upon which space-ships land," had been her thought, when she showed him exactly where it was in relationship to the town. Just that, and nothing else. It had been his mind, not hers, that had supplied the docks and cradles, the service cars, the officers, and all the other things taken for granted in space-fields everywhere as Samms knew them. Either the Palainian had not perceived the trappings with which Samms had invested her visualization, or she had not cared enough about his misapprehension to go to the trouble of correcting it; he did not know which. The whole area was as bare as his hand. Except for the pitted, scarred, slagged-down spots which showed so clearly what driving blasts would do to such inconceivably cold rock and metal, Palainport was in no way distinguishable from any other unimproved portion of the planet's utterly bleak surface. There were no signals; he had been told of no landing conventions. Apparently it was everyone for himself. Wherefore Samms' tremendous landing lights blazed out, and with their aid he came safely to ground. He put on his armour and strode to the air-lock; then changed his mind and went to the cargo-port instead. He had intended to walk, but in view of the rugged and deserted field and the completely unknown terrain between the field and the town, he decided to ride the "creep" instead. This vehicle, while slow, could go--literally--anywhere. It had a cigar-shaped body of magnalloy; it had big, soft, tough tires; it had cleated tracks; it had air- and water-propellers; it had folding wings; it had driving, braking, and steering jets. It could traverse the deserts of Mars, the oceans and swamps of Venus, the crevassed glaciers of Earth, the jagged, frigid surface of an iron asteroid, and the cratered, fluffy topography of the moon; if not with equal speed, at least with equal safety. Samms released the thing and drove it into the cargo lock, noting mentally that he would have to exhaust the air of that lock into space before he again broke the inner seal. The ramp slid back into the ship; the cargo port closed. Here he was! Should he use his headlights, or not? He did not know the Palainians' reaction to or attitude toward light. It had not occurred to him while at Pluto to ask, and it might be important. The landing lights of his vessel might already have done his cause irreparable harm. He could drive by starlight if he had to ... but he needed light and he had not seen a single living or moving thing. There was no evidence that there was a Palainian within miles. While he had known, with his brain, that Palain would be dark, he had expected to find buildings and traffic--ground-cars, planes, and at least a few space-ships--and not this vast nothingness. If nothing else, there _must_ be a road from Palain's principal city to its only spaceport; but Samms had not seen it from his vessel and he could not see it now. At least, he could not recognize it. Wherefore he clutched in the tractor drive and took off in a straight line toward town. The going was more than rough--it was really rugged--but the creep was built to stand up under punishment and its pilot's chair was sprung and cushioned to exactly the same degree. Hence, while the course itself was infinitely worse than the smoothly paved approaches to Rigelston, Samms found this trip much less bruising than the other had been. Approaching the village, he dimmed his roadlights and slowed down. At its edge he cut them entirely and inched his way forward by starlight alone. What a town! Virgil Samms had seen the inhabited places of almost every planet of Civilization. He had seen cities laid out in circles, sectors, ellipses, triangles, squares, parallelopipeds--practically every plan known to geometry. He had seen structures of all shapes and sizes--narrow skyscrapers, vast-spreading one-stories, polyhedra, domes, spheres, semi-cylinders, and erect and inverted full and truncated cones and pyramids. Whatever the plan or the shapes of the component units, however, those inhabited places had, without exception, been understandable. But this! Samms, his eyes now completely dark-accustomed, could see fairly well, but the more he saw the less he grasped. There was no plan, no coherence or unity whatever. It was as though a cosmic hand had flung a few hundreds of buildings, of incredibly and senselessly varied shapes and sizes and architectures, upon an otherwise empty plain, and as though each structure had been allowed ever since to remain in whatever location and attitude it had chanced to fall. Here and there were jumbled piles of three or more utterly incongruous structures. There were a few whose arrangement was almost orderly. Here and there were large, irregularly-shaped areas of bare, untouched ground. There were no streets--at least, nothing that the man could recognize as such. Samms headed the creep for one of those open areas, then stopped--declutched the tracks, set the brakes, and killed the engines. "Go slow, fellow," he advised himself then. "Until you find out what a dexitroboper actually does while working at his trade, don't take chances of interfering or of doing damage!" No Lensman knew--then--that frigid-blooded poison-breathers were not strictly three-dimensional; but Samms did know that he had actually seen things which he could not understand. He and Kinnison had discussed such occurrences calmly enough; but the actuality was enough to shake even the mind of Civilization's First Lensman. He did not need to be any closer, anyway. He had learned the Palainians' patterns well enough to Lens them from a vastly greater distance than his present one; this personal visit to Palainopolis had been a gesture of friendliness, not a necessity. "Tallick? Kragzex?" He sent out the questing, querying thought. "Lensman Virgil Samms of Sol Three calling Tallick and Kragzex of Palain Seven." "Kragzex acknowledging, Virgil Samms," a thought snapped back, as diamond-clear, as precise, as Pilinipsi's had been. "Is Tallick here, or anywhere on the planet?" "He is here, but he is emmfozing at the moment. He will join us presently." Damnation! There it was again! First "dexitroboping", and now this! "One moment, please," Samms requested. "I fail to grasp the meaning of your thought." "So I perceive. The fault is of course mine, in not being able to attune my mind fully to yours. Do not take this, please, as any aspersion upon the character or strength of your own mind." "Of course not. I am the first Tellurian you have met?" "Yes." "I have exchanged thoughts with one other Palainian, and the same difficulty existed. I can neither understand nor explain it; but it is as though there are differences between us so fundamental that in some matters mutual comprehension is in fact impossible." "A masterly summation and undoubtedly a true one. This emmfozing, then--if I read correctly, your race has only two sexes?" "You read correctly." "I cannot understand. There is no close analogy. However, emmfozing has to do with reproduction." "I see," and Samms saw, not only a frankness brand-new to his experience, but also a new view of both the powers and the limitations of his Lens. It was, by its very nature, of precisionist grade. It received thoughts and translated them precisely into English. There was some leeway, but not much. If any thought was such that there was no extremely close counterpart or referent in English, the Lens would not translate it at all, but would simply give it a hitherto meaningless symbol--a symbol which would from that time on be associated, by all Lenses everywhere, with that one concept and no other. Samms realized then that he might, some day, learn what a dexitroboper actually did and what the act of emmfozing actually was; but that he very probably would not. Tallick joined them then, and Samms again described glowingly, as he had done so many times before, the Galactic Patrol of his imaginings and plannings. Kragzex refused to have anything to do with such a thing, almost as abruptly as Pilinipsi had done, but Tallick lingered--and wavered. "It is widely known that I am not entirely sane," he admitted, "which may explain the fact that I would very much like to have a Lens. But I gather, from what you have said, that I would probably not be given a Lens to use purely for my own selfish purposes?" "That is my understanding," Samms agreed. "I was afraid so." Tallick's mien was ... "woebegone" is the only word for it. "I have work to do. Projects, you know, of difficulty, of extreme complexity and scope, sometimes even approaching danger. A Lens would be of tremendous use." "How?" Samms asked. "If your work is of enough importance to enough people, Mentor would certainly give you a Lens." "This would benefit me; only me. We of Palain, as you probably already know, are selfish, mean-spirited, small-souled, cowardly, furtive, and sly. Of what you call 'bravery' we have no trace. We attain our ends by stealth, by indirection, by trickery and deceit." Ruthlessly the Lens was giving Virgil Samms the uncompromisingly exact English equivalent of the Palainian's every thought. "We operate, when we must operate at all openly, with the absolutely irreducible minimum of personal risk. These attitudes and attributes will, I have no doubt, preclude all possibility of Lensmanship for me and for every member of my race." "Not necessarily." _Not necessarily!_ Although Virgil Samms did not know it, this was one of the really critical moments in the coming into being of the Galactic Patrol. By a conscious, a tremendous effort, the First Lensman was lifting himself above the narrow, intolerant prejudices of human experience and was consciously attempting to see the whole through Mentor's Arisian mind instead of through his Tellurian own. That Virgil Samms was the first human being to be born with the ability to accomplish that feat even partially was one of the reasons why he was the first wearer of the Lens. "Not necessarily," First Lensman Virgil Samms said and meant. He was inexpressibly shocked--revolted in every human fiber--by what this unhuman monster had so frankly and callously thought. There were, however, many things which no human being ever could understand, and there was not the shadow of a doubt that this Tallick had a really tremendous mind. "You have said that your mind is feeble. If so, there is no simple expression of the weakness of mine. I can perceive only one, the strictly human, facet of the truth. In a broader view it is distinctly possible that your motivation is at least as 'noble' as mine. And to complete my argument, you work with other Palainians, do you not, to reach a common goal?" "At times, yes." "Then you can conceive of the desirability of working with non-Palainian entities toward an end which would benefit both races?" "Postulating such an end, yes; but I am unable to visualize any such. Have you any specific project in mind?" "Not at the moment." Samms ducked. He had already fired every shot in his locker. "I am quite certain, however, that if you go to Arisia you will be informed of several such projects." There was a period of silence. Then: "I believe that I _will_ go to Arisia, at that!" Tallick exclaimed, brightly. "I will make a deal with your friend Mentor. I will give him a share--say fifty percent, or forty--of the time and effort I save on my own projects!" "Just so you _go_, Tallick." Samms concealed right manfully his real opinion of the Palainian's scheme. "When can you go? Right now?" "By no means. I must first finish this project. A year, perhaps--or more; or possibly less. Who knows?" Tallick cut communications and Samms frowned. He did not know the exact length of Seven's year, but he knew that it was long--_very_ long. CHAPTER 11 A small, black scout-ship, commanded jointly by Master Pilot John K. Kinnison and Master Electronicist Mason M. Northrop, was blasting along a course very close indeed to RA17: D+10. In equipment and personnel, however, she was not an ordinary scout. Her control room was so full of electronics racks and computing machines that there was scarcely footway in any direction; her graduated circles and vernier scales were of a size and a fineness usually seen only in the great vessels of the Galactic Survey. And her crew, instead of the usual twenty-odd men, numbered only seven--one cook, three engineers, and three watch officers. For some time the young Third Officer, then at the board, had been studying something on his plate; comparing it minutely with the chart clipped into the rack in front of him. Now he turned, with a highly exaggerated deference, to the two Lensmen. "Sirs, which of your Magnificences is officially the commander of this here bucket of odds and ends at the present instant?" "Him." Jack used his cigarette as a pointer. "The guy with the misplaced plucked eyebrow on his upper lip. I don't come on duty until sixteen hundred hours--one precious Tellurian minute yet in which to dream of the beauties of Earth so distant in space and in both past and future time." "Huh? Beauties? Plural? Next time I see a party whose pictures are cluttering up this whole ship I'll tell her about your polygamous ideas. I'll ignore that crack about my mustache, though, since you can't raise one of your own. I'm ignoring you, too--like this, see?" Ostentatiously turning his back upon the lounging Kinnison, Northrop stepped carefully over three or four breadboard hookups and stared into the plate over the watch officer's shoulder. He then studied the chart. "_Was ist los_, Stu? I don't see a thing." "More Jack's line than yours, Mase. This system we're headed for is a triple, and the chart says it's a double. Natural enough, of course. This whole region is unexplored, so the charts are astronomicals, not surveys. But that makes us Prime Discoverers, and our Commanding Officer--and the book says 'Officer', not 'Officers'--has got to...." "That's me, now," Jack announced, striding grandly toward the plate. "Amscray, oobsbay. _I_ will name the baby. _I_ will report. _I_ will go down in history...." "Bounce back, small fry. You weren't at the time of discovery." Northrop placed a huge hand flat against Jack's face and pushed gently. "You'll go down, sure enough--not in history, but from a knock on the knob--if you try to steal any thunder away from _me_. And besides, you'd name it '_Dimples_'--what a _revolting_ thought!" "And what would you name it? '_Virgilia_', I suppose?" "Far from it, my boy." He had intended doing just that, but now he did not quite dare. "After our project, of course. The planet we're heading for will be Zabriska; the suns will be A-, B-, and C-Zabriskae, in order of size; and the watch officer then on duty, Lieutenant L. Stuart Rawlings, will engross these and all other pertinent data in the log. Can you classify 'em from here, Jack?" "I can make some guesses--close enough, probably, for Discovery work." Then, after a few minutes: "Two giants, a blue-white and a bluish yellow; and a yellow dwarf." "Dwarf in the Trojan?" "That would be my guess, since that is the only place it could stay very long, but you can't tell much from one look. I can tell you one thing, though--unless your Zabriska is in a system straight beyond this one, it's got to be a planet of the big fellow himself; and brother, that sun is _hot_!" "It's got to be here, Jack. I haven't made _that_ big an error in reading a beam since I was a sophomore." "I'll buy that ... well, we're close enough, I guess." Jack killed the driving blasts, but not the Bergenholm; the inertialess vessel stopped instantaneously in open space. "Now we've got to find out which one of those twelve or fifteen planets was on our line when that last message was sent.... There, we're stable enough, I hope. Open your cameras, Mase. Pull the first plate in fifteen minutes. That ought to give me enough track so I can start the job, since we're at a wide angle to their ecliptic." The work went on for an hour or so. Then: "Something coming from the direction of Tellus," the watch officer reported. "Big and fast. Shall I hail her?" "Might as well," but the stranger hailed first. "Space-ship _Chicago_, NA2AA, calling. Are you in trouble? Identify yourself, please." "Space-ship NA774J acknowledging. No trouble...." "Northrop! Jack!" came Virgil Samms' highly concerned thought. The superdreadnaught flashed alongside, a bare few hundred miles away, and stopped. "Why did you stop _here_?" "This is where our signal came from, sir." "Oh." A hundred thoughts raced through Samms' mind, too fast and too fragmentary to be intelligible. "I see you're computing. Would it throw you off too much to go inert and match intrinsics, so that I can join you?" "No sir; I've got everything I need for a while." Samms came aboard; three Lensmen studied the chart. "Cavenda is there," Samms pointed out. "Trenco is there, off to one side. I felt sure that your signal originated on Cavenda; but Zabriska, here, while on almost the same line, is less than half as far from Tellus." He did not ask whether the two young Lensmen were sure of their findings. He knew. "This arouses my curiosity no end--does it merely complicate the thionite problem, or does it set up an entirely new problem? Go ahead, boys, with whatever you were going to do next." Jack had already determined that the planet they wanted was the second out; A-Zabriskae Two. He drove the scout as close to the planet as he could without losing complete coverage; stationed it on the line toward Sol. "Now we wait a bit," he answered. "According to recent periodicity, not less than four hours and not more than ten. With the next signal we'll nail that transmitter down to within a few feet. Got your spotting screens full out, Mase?" "_Recent_ periodicity?" Samms snapped. "It has improved, then, lately?" "Very much, sir." "That helps immensely. With George Olmstead harvesting broadleaf, it would. It is still one problem. While we wait, shall we study the planet a little?" They explored; finding that A-Zabriskae Two was a disappointing planet indeed. It was small, waterless, airless, utterly featureless, utterly barren. There were no elevations, no depressions, no visible markings whatever--not even a meteor crater. Every square yard of its surface was apparently exactly like every other. "No rotation," Jack reported, looking up from the bolometer. "That sand-pile is not inhabited and never will be. I'm beginning to wonder." "So am I, now," Northrop admitted. "I still say that those signals came from this line and distance, but it looks as though they must have been sent from a ship. If so, now that we're here--particularly the _Chicago_--there will be no more signals." "Not necessarily." Again Samms' mind transcended his Tellurian experience and knowledge. He did not suspect the truth, but he was not jumping at conclusions. "There may be highly intelligent life, even upon such a planet as this." They waited, and in a few hours a communications beam snapped into life. "READY--READY--READY...." it said briskly, for not quite one minute, but that was time enough. Northrop yelped a string of numbers; Jack blasted the little vessel forward and downward; the three watch officers, keen-eyed at their plates, stabbed their visibeams, ultra-beams, and spy-rays along the indicated line. "And bore straight through the planet if you have to--they may be on the other side!" Jack cautioned, sharply. "They aren't--it's here, on this side!" Rawlings saw it first. "Nothing much to it, though ... it looks like a relay station." "A _relay_! I'll be a...." Jack started to express an unexpurgated opinion, but shut himself up. Young cubs did not swear in front of the First Lensman. "Let's land, sir, and look the place over, anyway." "By all means." They landed, and cautiously disembarked. The horizon, while actually quite a little closer than that of Earth, seemed much more distant because there was nothing whatever--no tree, no shrub, no rock or pebble, not even the slightest ripple--to break the geometrical perfection of that surface of smooth, hard, blindingly reflective, fiendishly hot white sand. Samms was highly dubious at first--a ground-temperature of four hundred seventy-five degrees was not to be taken lightly; he did not at all like the looks of that ultra-fervent blue-white sun; and in his wildest imaginings he had never pictured such a desert. Their space-suits, however, were very well insulated, particularly as to the feet, and highly polished; and in lieu of atmosphere there was an almost perfect vacuum. They could stand it for a while. The box which housed the relay station was made of non-ferrous metal and was roughly cubical in shape, perhaps five feet on a side. It was so buried that its upper edge was flush with the surface; its top, which was practically indistinguishable from the surrounding sand, was not bolted or welded, but was simply laid on, loose. Previous spy-ray inspection having proved that the thing was not booby-trapped, Jack lifted the cover by one edge and all three Lensmen studied the mechanisms at close range; learning nothing new. There was an extremely sensitive non-directional receiver, a highly directional sender, a beautifully precise uranium-clock director, and an "eternal" powerpack. There was nothing else. "What next, sir?" Northrop asked. "There'll be an incoming signal, probably, in a couple of days. Shall we stick around and see whether it comes in from Cavenda or not?" "You and Jack had better wait, yes." Samms thought for minutes. "I do not believe, now, that the signal will come from Cavenda, or that it will ever come twice from the same direction, but we will have to make sure. But I can't see any _reason_ for it!" "I think I can, sir." This was Northrop's specialty. "No space-ship could possibly hit Tellus from here except by accident with a single-ended beam, and they can't use a double-ender because it would have to be on all the time and would be as easy to trace as the Mississippi River. But this planet did all its settling ages ago--which is undoubtedly why they picked it out--and that director in there is a Marchanti--the second Marchanti I have ever seen." "Whatever _that_ is," Jack put in, and even Samms thought a question. "The most precise thing ever built," the specialist explained. "Accuracy limited only by that of determination of relative motions. Give me an accurate enough equation to feed into it, like that tape is doing, and two sighting shots, and I'll guarantee to pour an eighteen-inch beam into any two foot cup on Earth. My guess is that it's aimed at some particular bucket-antenna on one of the Solar planets. I could spoil its aim easily enough, but I don't suppose that is what you're after." "Decidedly not. We want to trace them, without exciting any more suspicion than is absolutely necessary. How often, would you say, do they have to come here to service this station--change tapes, and whatever else might be necessary?" "Change tapes, is all. Not very often, by the size of those reels. If they know the relative motions exactly enough, they could compute as far ahead as they care to. I've been timing that reel--it's got pretty close to three months left on it." "And more than that much has been used. It's no wonder we didn't see anything." Samms straightened up and stared out across the frightful waste. "Look there--I thought I saw something move--it _is_ moving!" "There's something moving closer than that, and it's really funny." Jack laughed deeply. "It's like the paddle-wheels, shaft and all, of an old-fashioned river steam-boat, rolling along as unconcernedly as you please. He won't miss me by over four feet, but he isn't swerving a hair. I think I'll block him off, just to see what he does." "Be careful, Jack!" Samms cautioned, sharply. "Don't touch it--it may be charged, or worse." Jack took the metal cover, which he was still holding, and by working it back and forth edgewise in the sand, made of it a vertical barrier squarely across the thing's path. The traveler paid no attention, did not alter its steady pace of a couple of miles per hour. It measured about twelve inches long over all; its paddle-wheel-like extremities were perhaps two inches wide and three inches in diameter. "Do you think it's actually _alive_, sir? In a place like this?" "I'm sure of it. Watch carefully." It struck the barrier and stopped. That is, its forward motion stopped, but its rolling did not. Its rate of revolution did not change; it either did not know or did not care that its drivers were slipping on the smooth, hard sand; that it could not climb the vertical metal plate; that it was not getting anywhere. "What a brain!" Northrop chortled, squatting down closer. "Why doesn't it back up or turn around? It may be alive, but it certainly isn't very bright." The creature, now in the shadow of the 'Troncist's helmet, slowed down abruptly--went limp--collapsed. "Get out of his light!" Jack snapped, and pushed his friend violently away; and as the vicious sunlight struck it, the native revived and began to revolve as vigorously as before. "I've got a hunch. Sounds screwy--never heard of such a thing--but it acts like an energy-converter. Eats energy, raw and straight. No storage capacity--on this world he wouldn't need it--a few more seconds in the shade would probably have killed him, but there's no shade here. Therefore, he can't be dangerous." He reached out and touched the middle of the revolving shaft. Nothing happened. He turned it at right angles to the plate. The thing rolled away in a straight line, perfectly contented with the new direction. He recaptured it and stuck a test-prod lightly into the sand, just ahead of its shaft and just inside one paddle wheel. Around and around that slim wire the creature went: unable, it seemed, to escape from even such a simple trap; perfectly willing, it seemed, to spend all the rest of its life traversing that tiny circle. "'What a brain!' is right, Mase," Jack exclaimed. "_What_ a brain!" "This is wonderful, boys, really wonderful; something completely new to our science." Samms' thought was deep with feeling. "I am going to see if I can reach its mind or consciousness. Would you like to come along?" "_Would_ we!" Samms tuned low and probed; lower and lower; deeper and deeper; and Jack and Mase stayed with him. The thing was certainly alive; it throbbed and vibrated with vitality: equally certainly, it was not very intelligent. But it had a definite consciousness of its own existence; and therefore, however tiny and primitive, a mind. Although its rudimentary ego could neither receive nor transmit thought, it knew that it was a fontema, that it must roll and roll and roll, endlessly, that by virtue of determined rolling its species would continue and would increase. "Well, that's one for the book!" Jack exclaimed, but Samms was entranced. "I would like to find one or two more of them, to find out ... I think I'll _take_ the time. Can you see any more of them, either of you?" "No, but we can find some--Stu!" Northrop called. "Yes?" "Look around, will you? Find us a couple more of these fontema things and flick them over here with a tractor." "Coming up!" and in a few seconds they were there. "Are you photographing this, Lance?" Samms called the Chief Communications Officer of the _Chicago_. "We certainly are, sir--all of it. What are they, anyway? Animal, vegetable, or mineral?" "I don't know. Probably no one of the three, strictly speaking. I'd like to take a couple back to Tellus, but I'm afraid that they'd die, even under an atomic lamp. We'll report to the Society." Jack liberated his captive and aimed it to pass within a few feet of one of the newcomers, but the two fontemas did not ignore each other. Both swerved, so that they came together wheel to wheel. The shafts bent toward each other, each into a right angle. The angles touched and fused. The point of fusion swelled rapidly into a double fist-sized lump. The half-shafts doubled in length. The lump split into four; became four perfect paddle-wheels. Four full-grown fontemas rolled away from the spot upon which two had met; their courses forming two mutually perpendicular straight lines. "Beautiful!" Samms exclaimed. "And notice, boys, the method of avoiding inbreeding. Upon a perfectly smooth planet such as this, no two of those four can ever meet, and the chance is almost vanishingly small that any of their first-generation offspring will ever meet. But I'm afraid I've been wasting time. Take me back out to the _Chicago_, please, and I'll be on my way." "You don't seem at all optimistic, sir," Jack ventured, as the NA774J approached the _Chicago_. "Unfortunately, I am not. The signal will almost certainly come in from an unpredictable direction, from a ship so far away that even a super-fast cruiser could not get close enough to her to detect--just a minute. Rod!" He Lensed the elder Kinnison so sharply that both young Lensmen jumped. "What is it, Virge?" Samms explained rapidly, concluding: "So I would like to have you throw a globe of scouts around this whole Zabriskan system. One detet[A] out and one detet apart, so as to be able to slap a tracer onto any ship laying a beam to this planet, from any direction whatever. It would not take too many scouts, would it?" [Footnote A: Detet--the distance at which one space-ship can detect another. EES.] "No; but it wouldn't be worth while." "Why not?" "Because it wouldn't prove a thing except what we already know--that Spaceways is involved in the thionite racket. The ship would be clean. Merely another relay." "Oh. You're probably right." If Virgil Samms was in the least put out at this cavalier dismissal of his idea, he made no sign. He thought intensely for a couple of minutes. "You _are_ right. I will have to work from the Cavenda end. How are you coming with Operation Bennett?" "Nice!" Kinnison enthused. "When you get a couple of days, come over and see it grow. This is a fine world, Virge--it'll be ready!" "I'll do that." Samms broke the connection and called Dronvire. "The only change here is for the worse," the Rigellian reported, tersely. "The slight positive correlation between deaths from thionite and the arrival of Spaceways vessels has disappeared." There was no need to elaborate on that bare statement. Both Lensmen knew what it meant. The enemy, either in anticipation of statistical analysis or for economic reasons, was rationing his small supply of the drug. And DalNalten was very much unlike his usual equable self. He was glum and unhappy; so much so that it took much urging to make him report at all. "We have, as you know, put our best operatives to work on the inter-planetary lines," he said finally, half sullenly. "We have secured quite a little data. The accumulating facts, however, point more and more definitely toward an utterly preposterous conclusion. Can you think of any valid reason why the exports and imports of thionite between Tellus and Mars, Mars and Venus, and Venus and Tellus, should all be exactly equal to each other?" "_What!_" "Precisely. That is why Knobos and I are not yet ready to present even a preliminary report." Then Jill. "I can't prove it, any more than I could before, but I'm pretty sure that Morgan is the Boss. I have drawn every picture I can think of with Isaacson in the driver's seat, but none of them fit?" She paused, questioningly. "I am already reconciled to adopting that view; at least as a working hypothesis. Go ahead." "The fact seems to be that Morgan has always had all the left-wingers of the Nationalists under his thumb. Now he and his man Friday, Representative Flierce, are wooing all the radicals and so-called liberals on our side of both Senate and House--a new technique for him--and they're offering plenty of the right kind of bait. He has the commentators guessing, but there's no doubt whatever in my mind that he is aiming at next Election Day and our Galactic Council." "And you and Dronvire are sitting idly by, doing nothing, of course?" "Of course!" Jill giggled, but sobered quickly. "He's a smooth, _smooth_ worker, Dad. We are organizing, of course, and putting out propaganda of our own, but there's so pitifully little that we can actually _do_--look and listen to this for a minute, and you'll see what I mean." In her distant room Jill manipulated a reel and flipped a switch. A plate came to life, showing Morgan's big, sweating, passionately earnest face. "... and who _are_ these Lensmen, anyway?" Morgan's voice bellowed, passionate conviction in every syllable. "They are the hired minions of the classes, stabbers in the back, crooks and scoundrels, TOOLS OF RUTHLESS WEALTH! They are hirelings of the inter-planetary bankers, those unspeakable excrescences on the body politic who are still grinding down into the dirt, under an iron heel, the face of the common man! In the guise of democracy they are trying to set up the worst, the most outrageous tyranny that this universe has ever...." Jill snapped the switch viciously. "And a lot of people _swallow_ that ... that _bilge_!" she almost snarled. "If they had the brains of a ... of even that Zabriskan fontema Mase told me about, they wouldn't, but they _do_!" "I know they do. We have known all along that he is a masterly actor; we now know that he is more than that." "Yes, and we're finding out that no appeal to reason, no psychological counter-measures, will work. Dronvire and I agree that you'll _have_ to arrange matters so that you can do solid months of stumping yourself. Personally." "It may come to that, but there's a lot of other things to do first." Samms broke the connection and thought. He did not consciously try to exclude the two youths, but his mind was working so fast and in such a disjointed fashion that they could catch only a few fragments. The incomprehensible vastness of space--tracing--detection--Cavenda's one tiny, fast moving moon--back, and solidly, to DETECTION. "Mase," Samms thought then, carefully. "As a specialist in such things, why is it that the detectors of the smallest scout--lifeboat, even--have practically the same range as those of the largest liners and battleships?" "Noise level and hash, sir, from the atomics." "But can't they be screened out?" "Not entirely, sir, without blocking reception completely." "I see. Suppose, then, that all atomics aboard were to be shut down; that for the necessary heat and light we use electricity, from storage or primary batteries or from a generator driven by an internal-combustion motor or a heat-engine. Could the range of detection then be increased?" "Tremendously, sir. My guess is that the limiting factor would then be the cosmics." "I hope you're right. While you are waiting for the next signal to come in, you might work out a preliminary design for such a detector. If, as I anticipate, this Zabriska proves to be a dead end, Operation Zabriska ends here--becomes a part of Zwilnik--and you two will follow me at max to Tellus. You, Jack, are very badly needed on Operation Boskone. You and I, Mase, will make appropriate alterations aboard a J-class vessel of the Patrol." CHAPTER 12 Approaching Cavenda in his dead-black, converted scout-ship, Virgil Samms cut his drive, killed his atomics, and turned on his super-powered detectors. For five full detets in every direction--throughout a spherical volume over ten detets in diameter--space was void of ships. Some activity was apparent upon the planet dead ahead, but the First Lensman did not worry about that. The drug-runners would of course have atomics in their plants, even if there were no space-ships actually on the planet--which there probably were. What he did worry about was detection. There would be plenty of detectors, probably automatic; not only ordinary sub-ethereals, but electros and radars as well. He flashed up to within one and a quarter detets, stopped, and checked again. Space was still empty. Then, after making a series of observations, he went inert and established an intrinsic velocity which, he hoped, would be close enough. He again shut off his atomics and started the sixteen-cylinder Diesel engine which would do its best to replace them. That best was none too good, but it would do. Besides driving the Bergenholm it could furnish enough kilodynes of thrust to produce a velocity many times greater than any attainable by inert matter. It used a lot of oxygen per minute, but it would not run for very many minutes. With her atomics out of action his ship would not register upon the plates of the long-range detectors universally used. Since she was nevertheless traveling faster than light, neither electromagnetic detector-webs nor radar could "see" her. Good enough. Samms was not the System's best computer, nor did he have the System's finest instruments. His positional error could be corrected easily enough; but as he drove nearer and nearer to Cavenda, keeping, toward the last, in line with its one small moon, he wondered more and more as to how much of an allowance he should make for error in his intrinsic, which he had set up practically by guess. And there was another variable, the cut-off. He slowed down to just over one light; but even at that comparatively slow speed an error of one millisecond at cut-off meant a displacement of two hundred miles! He switched the spotter into the Berg's cut-off circuit, set it for three hundred miles, and waited tensely at his controls. The relays clicked, the driving force expired, the vessel went inert. Samms' eyes, flashing from instrument to instrument, told him that matters could have been worse. His intrinsic was neither straight up, as he had hoped, nor straight down, as he had feared, but almost exactly half-way between the two--straight out. He discovered that fact just in time; in another second or two he would have been out beyond the moon's protecting bulk and thus detectable from Cavenda. He went free, flashed back to the opposite boundary of his area of safety, went inert, and put the full power of the bellowing Diesel to the task of bucking down his erroneous intrinsic, losing altitude continuously. Again and again he repeated the maneuver; and thus, grimly and stubbornly, he fought his ship to ground. He was very glad to see that the surface of the satellite was rougher, rockier, ruggeder, and more cratered even than that of Earth's Luna. Upon such a terrain as this, it would be next to impossible to spot even a moving vessel--if it moved carefully. By a series of short and careful inertialess hops--correcting his intrinsic velocity after each one by an inert collision with the ground--he maneuvered his vessel into such a position that Cavenda's enormous globe hung directly overhead. Breathing a profoundly deep breath of relief he killed the big engine, cut in his fully-charged accumulators, and turned on detector and spy-ray. He would see what he could see. His detectors showed that there was only one point of activity on the whole planet. He located it precisely; then, after cutting his spy-ray to minimum power, he approached it gingerly, yard by yard. Stopped! As he had more than half expected, there was a spy-ray block. A big one, almost two miles in diameter. It would be almost directly beneath him--or rather, almost straight overhead--in about three hours. Samms had brought along a telescope, considerably more powerful than the telescopic visiplate of his scout. Since the surface gravity of this moon was low--scarcely one-fifth that of Earth--he had no difficulty in lugging the parts out of the ship or in setting the thing up. But even the telescope did not do much good. The moon was close to Cavenda, as astronomical distances go--but really worth-while astronomical optical instruments simply are not portable. Thus the Lensman saw something that, by sufficient stretch of the imagination, could have been a factory; and, eyes straining at the tantalizing limit of visibility, he even made himself believe that he saw a toothpick-shaped object and a darkly circular blob, either of which could have been the space-ship of the outlaws. He was sure, however, of two facts. There were no real cities upon Cavenda. There were no modern spaceports, or even air-fields. He dismounted the 'scope, stored it, set his detectors, and waited. He had to sleep at times, of course; but any ordinary detector rig can be set to sound off at any change in its status--and Samms' was no ordinary rig. Wherefore, when the drug-mongers' vessel took off, Samms left Cavenda as unobtrusively as he had approached it, and swung into that vessel's line. Samms' strategy had been worked out long since. On his Diesel, at a distance of just over one detet, he would follow the outlaw as fast as he could; long enough to establish his line. He would then switch to atomic drive and close up to between one and two detets; then again go onto Diesel for a check. He would keep this up for as long as might prove necessary. As far as any of the Lensmen knew, Spaceways always used regular liners or freighters in this business, and this scout was much faster than any such vessel. And even if--highly improbable thought!--the enemy ship was faster than his own, it would still be within range of _those_ detectors when it got to wherever it was that it was going. But how wrong Samms was! At his first check, instead of being not over two detets away the quarry was three and a half; at the second the distance was four and a quarter; at the third, almost exactly five. Scowling, Samms watched the erstwhile brilliant point of light fade into darkness. That circular blob that he had almost seen, then, had been the space-ship, but it had not been a sphere, as he had supposed. Instead, it had been a tear-drop; sticking, sharp tail down, in the ground. Ultra-fast. This was the result. But ideas had blown up under him before, they probably would again. He resumed atomic drive and made arrangements with the Port Admiral to rendezvous with him and the _Chicago_ at the earliest possible time. "What is there along that line?" he demanded of the superdreadnaught's Chief Pilot, even before junction had been made. "Nothing, sir, that we know of," that worthy reported, after studying his charts. He boarded the gigantic ship of war, and with Kinnison pored over those same charts. "Your best bet is Eridan, I think," Kinnison concluded finally. "Not too near your line, but they could very easily figure that a one-day dogleg would be a good investment. And Spaceways owns it, you know, from core to planetary limits--the richest uranium mines in existence. Made to order. Nobody would suspect a uranium ship. How about throwing a globe around Eridan?" Samms thought for minutes. "No ... not yet, at least. We don't know enough yet." "I know it--that's why it looks to me like a good time and place to learn something," Kinnison argued. "We know--almost know, at least--that a super-fast ship, carrying thionite, has just landed there. This is the hottest lead we've had. I say englobe the planet, declare martial law, and not let anything in or out until we find it. Somebody there must know something, a lot more than we do. I say hunt him out and make him talk." "You're just popping off, Rod. You know as well as I do that nabbing a few of the small fry isn't enough. We can't move openly until we can strike high." "I suppose not," Kinnison grumbled. "But we know so _damned_ little, Virge!" "Little enough," Samms agreed. "Of the three main divisions, only the political aspect is at all clear. In the drug division, we know where thionite comes from and where it is processed, and Eridan may be--probably is--another link. On the other end, we know a lot of peddlers and a few middlemen--nobody higher. We have no actual knowledge whatever as to who the higher-ups are or how they work; and it's the bosses we want. Concerning the pirates, we know even less. 'Murgatroyd' may be no more a man's name than 'zwilnik' is...." "Before you get too far away from the subject, what are you going to do about Eridan?" "Nothing, for the moment, would be best, I believe. However, Knobos and DalNalten should switch their attention from Spaceways' passenger liners to the uranium ships from Eridan to all three of the inner planets. Check?" "Check. Particularly since it explains so beautifully the merry-go-round they have been on so long--chasing the same packages of dope backwards and forwards so many times that the corners of the boxes got worn round. We've got to get the top men, and they're smart. Which reminds me--Morgan as Big Boss does not square up with the Morgan that you and Fairchild smacked down so easily when he tried to investigate the Hill. A loud-mouthed, chiseling politician might have a lock-box full of documentary evidence about party bosses and power deals and chorus girls and Martian tekkyl coats, but the man we're after very definitely would not." "You're telling me?" This point was such a sore one that Samms relapsed into idiom. "The boys should have cracked that box a week ago, but they struck a knot. I'll see if they know anything yet. Tune in, Rod. Ray!" He Lensed a thought at his cousin. "Yes, Virge?" "Have you got a spy-ray into that lock-box yet?" "Glad you called. Yes, last night. Empty. Empty as a sub-deb's skull--except for an atomic-powered gimmick that it took Bergenholm's whole laboratory almost a week to neutralize." "I see. Thanks. Off." Samms turned to Kinnison. "Well?" "Nice. A mighty smart operator." Kinnison gave credit ungrudgingly. "Now I'll buy your picture--what a man! But now--and I've got my ears pinned back--what was it you started to say about pirates?" "Just that we have very little to go on, except for the kind of stuff they seem to like best, and the fact that even armed escorts have not been able to protect certain types of shipments of late. The escorts, too, have disappeared. But with these facts as bases, it seems to me that we could arrange something, perhaps like this...." * * * * * A fast, sleek freighter and a heavy battle-cruiser bored steadily through the inter-stellar void. The merchantman carried a fabulously valuable cargo: not bullion or jewels or plate of price, but things literally above price--machine tools of highest precision, delicate optical and electrical instruments, fine watches and chronometers. She also carried First Lensman Virgil Samms. And aboard the war-ship there was Roderick Kinnison; for the first time in history a mere battle-cruiser bore a Port Admiral's flag. As far as the detectors of those two ships could reach, space was empty of man-made craft; but the two Lensmen knew that they were not alone. One and one-half detets away, loafing along at the freighter's speed and paralleling her course, in a hemispherical formation open to the front, there flew six tremendous tear-drops; super-dreadnaughts of whose existence no Tellurian or Colonial government had even an inkling. They were the fastest and deadliest craft yet built by man--the first fruits of Operation Bennett. And they, too, carried Lensmen--Costigan, Jack Kinnison, Northrop, Dronvire of Rigel Four, Rodebush, and Cleveland. Nor was there need of detectors: the eight Lensmen were in as close communication as though they had been standing in the same room. "On your toes, men," came Samms' quiet thought. "We are about to pass within a few light-minutes of an uninhabited solar system. No Tellurian-type planets at all. This may be it. Tune to Kinnison on one side and to your captains on the other. Take over, Rod." At one instant the ether, for one full detet in every direction, was empty. In the next, three intensely brilliant spots of detection flashed into being, in line with the dead planet so invitingly close at hand. This development came as a surprise, since only two raiders had been expected: a battleship to take care of the escort, a cruiser to take the merchantman. The fact that the pirates had become cautious or suspicious and had sent three super-dreadnaughts on the mission, however, did not operate to change the Patrol's strategy; for Samms had concluded, and Dronvire and Bergenholm and Rularion of Jupiter had agreed, that the real commander of the expedition would be aboard the vessel that attacked the freighter. In the next instant, then--each Lensman saw what Roderick Kinnison saw, in the very instant of his seeing it--six more points of hard, white light sprang into being upon the plates of guileful freighter and decoying cruiser. "Jack and Mase, take the leader!" Kinnison snapped out the thought. "Dronvire and Costigan, right wing--he's the one that's going after the freighter. Fred and Lyman, left wing. Hipe!" The pirate ships flashed up, filling ether and sub-ether alike with a solid mush of interference through which no call for help could be driven; two super-dreadnaughts against the cruiser, one against the freighter. The former, of course, had been expected to offer more than a token resistance. Battle cruisers of the Patrol were powerful vessels, both on offense and defense, and it was a known and recognized fact that the men of the Patrol were _men_. The pirate commander who attacked the freighter, however, was a surprised pirate indeed. His first beam, directed well forward, well ahead of the precious cargo, should have wrought the same havoc against screens and wall-shields and structure as a white-hot poker would against a pat of luke-warm butter. Practically the whole nose-section, including the control room, should have whiffed outward into space in gobbets and streamers of molten and gaseous metal. But nothing of the sort happened--this merchantman was _no_ push-over! No ordinary screens protected that particular freighter and the person of First Lensman Samms--Roderick Kinnison had very thoroughly seen to that. In sheer mass her screen generators out-weighed her entire cargo, heavy as that cargo was, by more than two to one. Thus the pirate's beams stormed and struck and clawed and clung--uselessly. They did not penetrate. And as the surprised attacker shoved his power up and up, to his absolute ceiling of effort, the only result was to increase the already tremendous pyrotechnic display of energies cascading in all directions from the fiercely radiant defenses of the Tellurian freighter. And in a few seconds the commanding officers of the other two attacking battleships were also surprised. The battle-cruiser's screens did not go down, even under the combined top effort of two super-dreadnaughts! And she did not have a beam hot enough to light a match--she must be _all screen_! But before the startled outlaws could do anything about the realization that they, instead of being the trappers, were in cold fact the trapped, all three of them were surprised again--the last surprise that any of them was ever to receive. Six mighty tear-drops--vastly bigger, faster, more powerful than their own--were rushing upon them, blanketing all channels of communication as efficiently and as enthusiastically as they themselves had been doing an instant before. Being out simply and ruthlessly to kill, and not to capture, four of the newcomers from Bennett polished off the cruiser's two attackers in very short order. They simply flashed in, went inert at the four corners of an imaginary tetrahedron, and threw everything they had--and they had plenty. Possibly--just barely possibly--there may have been, somewhere, a space-battle shorter than that one; but there certainly was never one more violent. Then the four set out after their two sister-ships and the one remaining pirate, who was frantically devoting his every effort to the avoidance of engagement. But with six ships, each one of which was of vastly greater individual power than his own, at the six corners of an octahedron of which he was the geometrical center, his ability to cut tractor beams and to "squirt out" from between two opposed pressors did him no good whatever. He was englobed; or, rather, to apply the correct terminology to an operation involving so few units, he was "boxed". To blow the one remaining raider out of the ether would have been easy enough, but that was exactly what the Patrolmen did not want to do. They wanted information. Wherefore each of the Patrol ships directed a dozen or so beams upon the scintillating protective screens of the enemy; enough so that every square yard of defensive web was under direct attack. As rapidly as it could be done without losing equilibrium or synchronization, the power of each beam was stepped up until the wildly violet incandescence of the pirate screen showed that it was hovering on the very edge of failure. Then, in the instant, needle-beamers went furiously to work. The screen was already loaded to its limit; no transfer of defensive energy was possible. Thus, tremendously overloaded locally, locally it flared through the ultra-violet into the black and went down; and the fiercely penetrant daggers of pure force stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. The engine room went first, even though the needlers had to gnaw a hundred-foot hole straight through the pirate craft in order to find the vital installations. Then, enough damage done so that spy-rays could get in, the rest of the work was done with precision and dispatch. In a matter of seconds the pirate hulk lay helpless, and the Patrolmen peeled her like an orange--or, rather, more like an amateur cook very wastefully peeling a potato. Resistless knives of energy sheared off tail-section and nose-section, top and bottom, port and starboard sides; then slabbed off the corners of what was left, until the control room was almost bared to space. Then, as soon as the intrinsic velocities could possibly be matched, board and storm! With Dronvire of Rigel Four in the lead, closely followed by Costigan, Northrop, Kinnison the Younger, and a platoon of armed and armored Space Marines! Samms and the two scientists did not belong in such a melee as that which was to come, and knew it. Kinnison the Elder did not belong, either, but did not know it. In fact, he cursed fluently and bitterly at having to stay out--nevertheless, out he stayed. Dronvire, on the other hand, did not like to fight. The very thought of actual, bodily, hand-to-hand combat revolted every fiber of his being. In view of what the spy-ray men were reporting, however, and of what all the Lensmen knew of pirate psychology, Dronvire had to get into that control room first, and he had to get there _fast_. And if he _had_ to fight, he could; and, physically, he was wonderfully well equipped for just such activity. To his immense physical strength, the natural concomitant of a force of gravity more than twice Earth's, the armor which so encumbered the Tellurian battlers was a scarcely noticeable impediment. His sense of perception, which could not be barred by any material substance, kept him fully informed of every development in his neighborhood. His literally incredible speed enabled him not merely to parry a blow aimed at him, but to bash out the brains of the would-be attacker before that blow could be more than started. And whereas a human being can swing only one space-axe or fire only two ray-guns at a time, the Rigellian plunged through space toward what was left of the pirate vessel, swinging not one or two space-axes, but four; each held in a lithe and supple, but immensely strong, tentacular "hand". Why axes? Why not Lewistons, or rifles, or pistols? Because the space armor of that day could withstand almost indefinitely the output of two or three hand-held projectors; because the resistance of its defensive fields varied directly as the cube of the velocity of any material projectile encountering them. Thus, and strangely enough, the advance of science had forced the re-adoption of that long-extinct weapon. Most of the pirates had died, of course, during the dismemberment of their ship. Many more had been picked off by the needle-beam gunners. In the control room, however, there was a platoon of elite guards, clustered so closely about the commander and his officers that needles could not be used; a group that would have to be wiped out by hand. If the attack had come by way of the only doorway, so that the pirates could have concentrated their weapons upon one or two Patrolmen, the commander might have had time enough to do what he was under compulsion to do. But while the Patrolmen were still in space a plane of force sheared off the entire side of the room, a tractor beam jerked the detached wall away, and the attackers floated in en masse. Weightless combat is not at all like any form of gymnastics known to us ground-grippers. It is much more difficult to master, and in times of stress the muscles revert involuntarily and embarrassingly to their wonted gravity-field techniques. Thus the endeavors of most of the battlers upon both sides, while earnest enough and deadly enough of intent, were almost comically unproductive of result. In a matter of seconds frantically-struggling figures were floating from wall to ceiling to wall to floor; striking wildly, darting backward from the violence of their own fierce swings. The Tellurian Lensmen, however, had had more practice and remembered their lessons better. Jack Kinnison, soaring into the room, grabbed the first solid thing he could reach; a post. Pulling himself down to the floor, he braced both feet, sighted past the nearest foeman, swung his axe, and gave a tremendous shove. Such was his timing that in the instant of maximum effort the beak of his atrociously effective weapon encountered the pirate's helmet--and that was that. He wrenched his axe free and shoved the corpse away in such a direction that the reaction would send him against a wall at the floor line, in position to repeat the maneuver. Since Mason Northrop was heavier and stronger than his friend, his technique was markedly different. He dove for the chart-table, which of course was welded to the floor. He hooked one steel-shod foot around one of the table's legs and braced the other against its top. Weightless but inert, it made no difference whether his position was vertical or horizontal or anywhere between; from this point of vantage, with his length of body and arm and axe, he could cover a lot of room. He reached out, hooked bill of axe into belt or line-snap or angle of armor, and pulled; and as the helplessly raging pirate floated past him, he swung and struck. And that, too, was that. Dronvire of Rigel Four did not rush to the attack. He had never been and was not now either excited or angry. Indeed, it was only empirically that he knew what anger and excitement were. He had never been in any kind of a fight. Therefore he paused for a couple of seconds to analyze the situation and to determine his own most efficient method of operation. He would not have to be in physical contact with the pirate captain to go to work on his mind, but he would have to be closer than this and he would have to be free from physical attack while he concentrated. He perceived what Kinnison and Costigan and Northrop were doing, and knew why each was working in a different fashion. He applied that knowledge to his own mass, to his own musculature, to the length and strength of his arms--each one of which was twice as long and ten times as strong as the trunk of an elephant. He computed forces and leverages, actions and reactions, points of application, stresses and strains. He threw away two of his axes. The two empty arms reached out, each curling around the neck of a pirate. Two axes flashed, grazing each pinioning arm so nearly that it seemed incredible that the sharp edges did not shear away the Rigellian's own armor. Two heads floated away from two bodies and Dronvire reached for two more. And two--and two--and two. Calm and dispassionate, but not wasting a motion or a millisecond, Dronvire accomplished more, in less time, than all the Tellurians in the room. "Costigan, Northrop, Kinnison--attend!" he launched a thought. "I have no time to kill more of them. The commander is dying of a self-inflicted wound and I have important work to do. See to it, please, that these remaining creatures do not attack me while I am doing it." Dronvire tuned his mind to that of the pirate and probed. Although dying, the pirate captain offered fierce resistance, but the Rigellian was not alone. Attuned to his mind, working smoothly with it, giving it strengths and qualities which no Rigellian ever had had or ever would have, were the two strongest minds of Earth: that of Rod the Rock Kinnison, with the driving force, the indomitable will, the transcendent urge of all human heredity; and that of Virgil Samms, with all that had made him First Lensman. "TELL!" that terrific triple mind demanded, with a force which simply could not be denied. "WHERE ARE YOU FROM? Resistance is useless; yours or that of those whom you serve. Your bases and powers are smaller and weaker than ours, since Spaceways is only a corporation and we are the Galactic Patrol. TELL! WHO ARE YOUR BOSSES? TELL--TELL!" Under that irresistible urge there appeared, foggily and without any hint of knowledge of name or of spatial co-ordinates, an embattled planet, very similar in a smaller way to the Patrol's own Bennett, and-- Even more foggily, but still not so blurred but that their features were unmistakeably recognizable, the images of two men. That of Murgatroyd, the pirate chief, completely strange to both Kinnison and Samms; and-- Back of Murgatroyd and above him, that of-- BIG JIM TOWNE! CHAPTER 13 "First, about Murgatroyd." In his office in The Hill Roderick Kinnison spoke aloud to the First Lensman. "What do you think should be done about him?" "Murgatroyd. Hm ... m ... m." Samms inhaled a mouthful of smoke and exhaled it slowly; watched it dissipate in the air. "Ah, yes, Murgatroyd." He repeated the performance. "My thought, at the moment, is to let him alone." "Check," Kinnison said. If Samms was surprised at his friend's concurrence he did not show it. "Why? Let's see if we check on that." "Because he does not seem to be of fundamental importance. Even if we could find him ... and by the way, what do you think the chance is of our spies finding him?" "Just about the same chance that theirs have of finding out about the Samms-Olmstead switch or our planet Bennett. Vanishingly small. Zero." "Right. And even if we could find him--even find their secret base, which is certainly as well hidden as ours is--it would do us no present good, because we could take no positive action. We have, I think, learned the prime fact; that Towne is actually Murgatroyd's superior." "That's the way I see it. We can almost draw an organization chart now." "I wouldn't say 'almost'." Samms smiled half-ruefully. "There are gaping holes, and Isaacson is as yet a highly unknown quantity. I've tried to draw one a dozen times, but we haven't got enough information. An incorrect chart, you know, would be worse than none at all. As soon as I can draw a correct one, I'll show it to you. But in the meantime, the position of our friend James F. Towne is now clear. He is actually a Big Shot in both piracy and politics. That fact surprised me, even though it did clarify the picture tremendously." "Me, too. One good thing, we won't have to hunt for him. You've been working on him right along, though, haven't you?" "Yes, but this new relationship throws light on a good many details which have been obscure. It also tends to strengthen our working hypothesis as to Isaacson--which we can't prove yet, of course--that he is the actual working head of the drug syndicate. Vice-President in charge of Drugs, so to speak." "Huh? That's a new one on me. I don't see it." "There is very little doubt that at the top there is Morgan. He is, and has been for some time, the real boss of North America. Under him, probably taking orders direct, is President Witherspoon." "Undoubtedly. The Nationalist party is strictly _a la_ machine, and Witherspoon is one of the world's slimiest skinkers. Morgan is Chief Engineer of the Machine. Take it from there." "We know that Boss Jim is also in the top echelon--quite possibly the Commander-in-Chief--of the enemy's Armed Forces. By analogy, and since Isaacson is apparently on the same level as Towne, immediately below Morgan...." "Wouldn't there be three? Witherspoon?" "I doubt it. My present idea is that Witherspoon is at least one level lower. Comparatively small fry." "Could be--I'll buy it. A nice picture, Virge; and beautifully symmetrical. His Mightiness Morgan. Secretary of War Towne and Secretary of Drugs Isaacson; and each of them putting a heavy shoulder behind the political bandwagon. _Very_ nice. That makes Operation Mateese tougher than ever--a triple-distilled toughie. Glad I told you it wasn't my dish--saves me the trouble of backing out now." "Yes, I have noticed how prone you are to duck tough jobs." Samms smiled quietly. "However, unless I am even more mistaken than usual, you will be in it up to your not-so-small ears, my friend, before it is over." "Huh? How?" Kinnison demanded. "That will, I hope, become clear very shortly." Samms stubbed out the butt of his cigarette and lit another. "The basic problem can be stated very simply. How are we going to persuade the sovereign countries of Earth--particularly the North American Continent--to grant the Galactic Patrol the tremendous power and authority it will have to have?" "Nice phrasing, Virge, and studied. Not off the cuff. But aren't you over-drawing a bit? Little if any conflict. The Patrol would be pretty largely inter-systemic in scope ... with of course the necessary inter-planetary and inter-continental ... and ... um ... m...." "Exactly." "But it's logical enough, Virge, even at that, and has plenty of precedents, clear back to ancient history. 'Way back, before space-travel, when they first started to use atomic energy, and the only drugs they had to worry about were cocaine, morphine, heroin, and other purely Tellurian products. I was reading about it just the other day." Kinnison swung around, fingered a book out of a matched set, and riffled its leaves. "Russia was the world's problem child then--put up what they called an iron curtain--wouldn't play with the neighbors' children, but picked up her marbles and went home. But yet--here it is. Original source unknown--some indications point to a report of somebody named Hoover, sometime in the nineteen forties or fifties, Gregorian calendar. Listen: "'This protocol'--he's talking about the agreement on world-wide Narcotics Control--'was signed by fifty-two nations, including the U.S.S.R.'--that was Russia--'and its satellite states. It was the only international agreement to which the Communist countries'--you know more about what Communism was, I suppose, than I do." "Just that it was another form of dictatorship that didn't work out." "'... to which the Communist countries ever gave more than lip service. This adherence is all the more surprising, in view of the political situation then obtaining, in that all signatory nations obligated themselves to surrender national sovereignty in five highly significant respects, as follows: "'First, to permit Narcotics agents of all other signatory nations free, secret, and unregistered entry into, unrestricted travel throughout, and exit from, all their lands and waters, wherever situate: "'Second, upon request, to allow known criminals and known contraband to enter and to leave their territories without interference: "'Third, to cooperate fully, and as a secondary and not as a prime mover, in any Narcotics Patrol program set up by any other signatory nation: "'Fourth, upon request, to maintain complete secrecy concerning any Narcotics operation: and "'Fifth, to keep the Central Narcotics Authority fully and continuously informed upon all matters hereinbefore specified.' "And apparently, Virge, it worked. If they could do that, 'way back then, we certainly should be able to make the Patrol work now." "You talk as though the situations were comparable. They aren't. Instead of giving up an insignificant fraction of their national sovereignty, all nations will have to give up practically all of it. They will have to change their thinking from a National to a Galactic viewpoint; will have to become units in a Galactic Civilization, just as counties used to be units of states, and states are units of the continents. The Galactic Patrol will not be able to stop at being the supreme and only authority in inter-systemic affairs. It is bound to become intra-systemic, intra-planetary, and intra-continental. Eventually, it must and it shall be the _sole_ authority, except for such purely local organizations as city police." "_What_ a program!" Kinnison thought silently for minutes. "But I'm still betting that you can bring it off." "We'll keep on driving until we do. What gives us our chance is that the all-Lensman Solarian Council is already in existence and is functioning smoothly; and that the government of North America has no jurisdiction beyond the boundaries of its continent. Thus, and even though Morgan has extra-legal powers both as Boss of North America and as the head of an organization which is in fact inter-systemic in scope, he can do nothing whatever about the fact that the Solarian Council has been enlarged into the Galactic Council. As a matter of fact, he was and is very much in favor of that particular move--just as much so as we are." "You're going too fast for me. How do you figure that?" "Unlike our idea of the Patrol as a coordinator of free and independent races, Morgan sees it as the perfect instrument of a Galactic dictatorship, thus: North America is the most powerful continent of Earth. The other continents will follow her lead--or else. Tellus can very easily dominate the other Solarian planets, and the Solar System can maintain dominance over all other systems as they are discovered and colonized. Therefore, whoever controls the North American Continent controls all space." "I see. Could be, at that. Throw the Lensmen out, put his own stooges in. Wonder how he'll go about it? A _tour de force_? No. The next election, would be my guess. If so, that will be the most important election in history." "If they decide to wait for the election, yes. I'm not as sure as you seem to be that they will not act sooner." "They can't," Kinnison declared. "Name me one thing they think they can do, and I'll shoot it fuller of holes than a target." "They can, and I am very much afraid that they will," Samms replied, soberly. "At any time he cares to do so, Morgan--through the North American Government, of course--can abrogate the treaty and name his own Council." "Without my boys--the backbone and the guts of North America, as well as of the Patrol? Don't be stupid, Virge. They're _loyal_." "Admitted--but at the same time they are being paid in North American currency. Of course, we will soon have our own Galactic credit system worked out, but...." "What the hell difference would _that_ make?" Kinnison wanted savagely to know. "You think they'd last until the next pay-day if they start playing that kind of ball? What in hell do you think _I'd_ be doing? And Clayton and Schweikert and the rest of the gang? Sitting on our fat rumps and crying into our beers?" "You would do nothing. I could not permit any illegal...." "Permit!" Kinnison blazed, leaping to his feet. "Permit--hell! Are you loose-screwed enough to actually think I would ask or need your permission? Listen, Samms!" The Port Admiral's voice took on a quality like nothing his friend had ever before heard. "The first thing I would do would be to take off your Lens, wrap you up--especially your mouth--in seventeen yards of three-inch adhesive tape, and heave you into the brig. The second would be to call out everything we've got, including every half-built ship on Bennett able to fly, and declare martial law. The third would be a series of summary executions, starting with Morgan and working down. And if he's got any fraction of the brain I credit him with, Morgan knows damned well _exactly_ what would happen." "Oh." Samms, while very much taken aback, was thrilled to the center of his being. "I had not considered anything so drastic, but you probably would...." "Not 'probably'," Kinnison corrected him grimly. "'Certainly'." "... and Morgan does know ... except about Bennett, of course ... and he would not, for obvious reasons, bring in his secret armed forces. You're right, Rod, it will be the election." "Definitely; and it's plain enough what their basic strategy will be." Kinnison, completely mollified, sat down and lit another cigar. "His Nationalist party is now in power, but it was our Cosmocrats of the previous administration who so basely slipped one over on the dear pee-pul--who betrayed the entire North American Continent into the claws of rapacious wealth, no less--by ratifying that unlawful, unhallowed, unconstitutional, and so on, treaty. Scoundrels! Bribe-takers! Betrayers of a sacred trust! _How_ Rabble-Rouser Morgan will thump the tub on that theme--he'll make the welkin ring as it never rang before." Kinnison mimicked savagely the demagogue's round and purple tones as he went on: "'Since they had no mandate from the pee-pul to trade their birthright for a mess of pottage that nefarious and underhanded treaty is, _a prima vista_ and _ipso facto_ and _a priori_, completely and necessarily and positively null and void. People of Earth, arouse! Arise! Rise in your might and throw off this stultifying and degrading, this paralyzing yoke of the Monied Powers--throw out this dictatorial, autocratic, wealth-directed, illegal, monstrous Council of so-called Lensmen! Rise in your might at the polls! Elect a Council of your own choosing--not of Lensmen, but of ordinary folks like you and me. Throw _off_ this hellish yoke, I say!'--and here he begins to positively froth at the mouth--'so that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth!' "He has used that exact peroration, ancient as it is, so many times that practically everybody thinks he originated it; and it's always good for so many decibels of applause that he'll keep on using it forever." "Your analysis is vivid, cogent, and factual, Rod--but the situation is not at all funny." "Did I act as though I thought it was? If so, I'm a damned poor actor. I'd like to kick the bloodsucking leech all the way from here to the Great Nebula in Andromeda, and if I ever get the chance I'm going to!" "An interesting, but somewhat irrelevant idea." Samms smiled at his friend's passionate outburst. "But go on. I agree with you in principle so far, and your viewpoint is--to say the least--refreshing." "Well, Morgan will have so hypnotized most of the dear pee-pul that they will think it their own idea when he re-nominates this spineless nincompoop Witherspoon for another term as President of North America, with a solid machine-made slate of hatchet-men behind him. They win the election. Then the government of the North American Continent--not the Morgan-Towne-Isaacson machine, but all nice and legal and by mandate and in strict accordance with the party platform--abrogates the treaty and names its own Council. And right then, my friend, the boys and I will do our stuff." "Except that, in such a case, you wouldn't. Think it over, Rod." "Why not?" Kinnison demanded, in a voice which, however, did not carry much conviction. "Because we would be in the wrong; and we are even less able to go against united public opinion than is the Morgan crowd." "We'd do _something_--I've got it!" Kinnison banged the desk with his fist. "That would be a strictly unilateral action. North America would be standing alone." "Of course." "So we'll pull all the Cosmocrats and all of our friends out of North America--move them to Bennett or somewhere--and make Morgan and Company a present of it. We won't declare martial law or kill anybody, unless they decide to call in their reserves. We'll merely isolate the whole damned continent--throw a screen around it and over it that a microbe won't be able to get through--one that would make that iron curtain I read about look like a bride's veil--and we'll _keep_ them isolated until they beg to join up on our terms. Strictly legal, and the perfect solution. How about me giving the boys a briefing on it, right now?" "Not yet." Samms' mien, however, lightened markedly. "I never thought of that way out.... It _could_ be done, and it would probably work, but I would not recommend it except as an ultimately last resort. It has at least two tremendous drawbacks." "I know it, but...." "It would wreck North America as no nation has ever been wrecked; quite possibly beyond recovery. Furthermore, how many people, including yourself and your children, would like to renounce their North American citizenship and remove themselves, permanently and irrevocably, from North American soil?" "Um ... m ... m. Put that away, it doesn't sound so good, does it? But what the hell else can we do?" "Just what we have been planning on doing. We must win the election." "Huh?" Kinnison's mouth almost fell open. "You say it easy. How? With whom? By what stretch of the imagination do you figure that you can find anybody with a loose enough mouth to out-lie and out-promise Morgan? And can you duplicate his machine?" "We can not only duplicate his machine; we can better it. The truth, presented to the people in language they can understand and appreciate, by a man whom they like, admire, and respect, will be more attractive than Morgan's promises. The same truth will dispose of Morgan's lies." "Well, go on. You've answered my questions, after a fashion, except the stinger. Does the Council think it's got a man with enough dynage to lift the load?" "Unanimously. They also agreed unanimously that we have only one. Haven't you any idea who he is?" "Not a glimmering of one." Kinnison frowned in thought, then his face cleared into a broad grin and he yelled: "_What_ a damn fool I am--_you_, of course!" "Wrong. I was not even seriously considered. It was the concensus that I could not possibly win. My work has been such as to keep me out of the public eye. If the man in the street thinks of me at all, he thinks that I hold myself apart and above him--the ivory tower concept." "Could be, at that; but you've got my curiosity aroused. How can a man of that caliber have been kicking around so long without me knowing anything about him?" "You do. That's what I've been working around to all afternoon. You." "Huh?" Kinnison gasped as though he had received a blow in the solar plexus. "Me? ME? Hell's--Brazen--Hinges!" "Exactly. You." Silencing Kinnison's inarticulate protests, Samms went on: "First, you'll have no difficulty in talking to an audience as you've just talked to me." "Of course not--but did I use any language that would burn out the transmitters? I don't remember whether I did or not." "I don't, either. You probably did, but that would be nothing new. Telenews has never yet cut you off the ether because of it. The point is this: while you do not realize it, you are a better tub-thumper and welkin-ringer than Morgan is, when something--such as just now--really gets you going. And as for a machine, what finer one is possible than the Patrol? Everybody in it or connected with it will support you to the hilt--you know that." "Why, I ... I suppose so ... probably they would, yes." "Do you know why?" "Can't say that I do, unless it's because I treat them fair, so they do the same to me." "Exactly. I don't say that everybody likes you, but I don't know of anybody who doesn't respect you. And, most important, everybody--all over space--knows 'Rod the Rock' Kinnison, and why he is called that." "But that very 'man on horseback' thing may backfire on you, Virge." "Perhaps--slightly--but we're not afraid of that. And finally, you said you'd like to kick Morgan from here to Andromeda. How would you like to kick him from Panama City to the North Pole?" "I said it, and I wasn't just warming up my jets, either. I'd like it." The big Lensman's nostrils flared, his lips thinned. "By God, Virge, I will!" "Thanks, Rod." With no display whatever of the emotion he felt, Samms skipped deliberately to the matter next in hand. "Now, about Eridan. Let's see if they know anything yet." The report of Knobos and DalNalten was terse and exact. They had found--and that finding, so baldly put, could have filled and should fill a book--that Spaceways' uranium vessels were, beyond any reasonable doubt, hauling thionite from Eridan to the planets of Sol. Spy-rays being useless, they had considered the advisability of investigating Eridan in person, but had decided against such action. Eridan was closely held by Uranium, Incorporated. Its population was one hundred percent Tellurian human. Neither DalNalten nor Knobos could disguise himself well enough to work there. Either would be caught promptly, and as promptly shot. "Thanks, fellows," Samms said, when it became evident that the brief report was done. Then, to Kinnison, "That puts it up to Conway Costigan. And Jack? Or Mase? Or both?" "Both," Kinnison decided, "and anybody else they can use." "I'll get them at it." Samms sent out thoughts. "And now, I wonder what that daughter of mine is doing? I'm a little worried about her, Rod. She's too cocky for her own good--or strength. Some of these days she's going to bite off more than she can chew, if she hasn't already. The more we learn about Morgan, the less I like the idea of her working on Herkimer Herkimer Third. I've told her so, a dozen times, and why, but of course it didn't do any good." "It wouldn't. The only way to develop teeth is to bite with 'em. You had to. So did I. Our kids have got to, too. We lived through it. So will they. As for Herky the Third...." He thought for moments, then went on: "Check. But she's done a job so far that nobody else could do. In spite of that fact, if it wasn't for our Lenses I'd say to pull her, if you have to heave the insubordinate young jade into the brig. But with the Lenses, and the way you watch her ... to say nothing of Mase Northrop, and he's a lot of man ... I can't see her getting in either very bad or very deep. Can you?" "No, I can't." Samms admitted, but the thoughtful frown did not leave his face. He Lensed her: finding, as he had supposed, that she was at a party; dancing, as he had feared, with Senator Morgan's Number One Secretary. "Hi, Dad!" she greeted him gaily, with no slightest change in the expression of the face turned so engagingly to her partner's. "I have the honor of reporting that all instruments are still dead-centering the green." "And have you, by any chance, been paying any attention to what I have been telling you?" "Oh, lots," she assured him. "I've collected reams of data. He could be almost as much of a menace as he thinks he is, in some cases, but I haven't begun to slip yet. As I have told you all along, this is just a game, and we're both playing it strictly according to the rules." "That's good. Keep it that way, my dear." Samms signed off and his daughter returned her full attention--never noticeably absent--to the handsome secretary. The evening wore on. Miss Samms danced every dance; occasionally with one or another of the notables present, but usually with Herkimer Herkimer Third. "A drink?" he asked. "A small, cold one?" "Not so small, and _very_ cold," she agreed, enthusiastically. Glass in hand, Herkimer indicated a nearby doorway. "I just heard that our host has acquired a very old and very fine bronze--a Neptune. We should run an eye over it, don't you think?" "By all means," she agreed again. But as they passed through the shadowed portal the man's head jerked to the right. "_There's_ something you really ought to see, Jill!" he exclaimed. "Look!" She looked. A young woman of her own height and build and with her own flamboyant hair, identical as to hair-do and as to every fine detail of dress and of ornamentation, glass in hand, was strolling back into the ball-room! Jill started to protest, but could not. In the brief moment of inaction the beam of a snub-nosed P-gun had played along her spine from hips to neck. She did not fall--he had given her a very mild jolt--but, rage as she would, she could neither struggle nor scream. And, after the fact, she knew. But he _couldn't_--couldn't _possibly_! Nevian paralysis-guns were as outlawed as was Vee Two gas itself! Nevertheless, he had. And on the instant a woman, dressed in crisp and spotless white and carrying a hooded cloak, appeared--and Herkimer now wore a beard and heavy, horn rimmed spectacles. Thus, very shortly, Virgilia Samms found herself, completely helpless and completely unrecognizable, walking awkwardly out of the house between a businesslike doctor and a solicitous nurse. "Will you need me any more, Doctor Murray?" The woman carefully and expertly loaded the patient into the rear seat of a car. "Thank you, no, Miss Childs." With a sick, cold certainty Jill knew that this conversation was for the benefit of the doorman and the hackers, and that it would stand up under any examination. "Mrs. Harman's condition is ... er ... well, nothing at all serious." The car moved out into the street and Jill, really frightened for the first time in her triumphant life, fought down an almost overwhelming wave of panic. The hood had slipped down over her eyes, blinding her. She could not move a single voluntary muscle. Nevertheless, she knew that the car traveled a few blocks--six, she thought--west on Bolton Street before turning left. Why didn't somebody Lens her? Her father wouldn't, she knew, until tomorrow. Neither of the Kinnisons would, nor Spud--they never did except on direct invitation. But Mase would, before he went to bed--or would he? It was past his bed-time now, and she had been pretty caustic, only last night, because she was doing a particularly delicate bit of reading. But he would ... he _must_! "Mase! _Mase!_ MASE!" And, eventually, Mase did. Deep under The Hill, Roderick Kinnison swore fulminantly at the sheer physical impossibility of getting out of that furiously radiating mountain in a hurry. At New York Spaceport, however, Mason Northrop and Jack Kinnison not only could hurry, but did. "Where are you, Jill?" Northrop demanded presently. "What kind of a car are you in?" "Quite near Stanhope Circle." In communication with her friends at last, Jill regained a measure of her usual poise. "Within eight or ten blocks, I'm sure. I'm in a black Wilford sedan, last year's model. I didn't get a chance to see its license plates." "That helps a lot!" Jack grunted, savagely. "A ten-block radius covers a hell of a lot of territory, and half the cars in town are black Wilford sedans." "Shut up, Jack! Go ahead, Jill--tell us all you can, and keep on sending us anything that will help at all." "I kept the right and left turns and distances straight for quite a while--about twenty blocks--that's how I know it was Stanhope Circle. I don't know how many times he went around the circle, though, or which way he went when he left it. After leaving the Circle, the traffic was very light, and here there doesn't seem to be any traffic at all. That brings us up to date. You'll know as well as I do what happens next." With Jill, the Lensmen knew that Herkimer drove his car up to the curb and stopped--parked without backing up. He got out and hauled the girl's limp body out of the car, displacing the hood enough to free one eye. Good! Only one other car was visible; a bright yellow convertible parked across the street, about half a block ahead. There was a sign--"NO PARKING ON THIS SIDE 7 TO 10." The building toward which he was carrying her was more than three stories high, and had a number--one, four--if he would _only_ swing her a little bit more, so that she could see the rest of it--one four-seven-nine! "Rushton Boulevard, you think, Mase?" "Could be. Fourteen seventy nine would be on the downtown-traffic side. Blast!" Into the building, where two masked men locked and barred the door behind them. "And keep it locked!" Herkimer ordered. "You know what to do until I come back down." Into an elevator, and up. Through massive double doors into a room, whose most conspicuous item of furniture was a heavy steel chair, bolted to the floor. Two masked men got up and placed themselves behind that chair. Jill's strength was coming back fast; but not fast enough. The cloak was removed. Her ankles were tied firmly, one to each front leg of the chair. Herkimer threw four turns of rope around her torso and the chair's back, took up every inch of slack, and tied a workmanlike knot. Then, still without a word, he stood back and lighted a cigarette. The last trace of paralysis disappeared, but the girl's mad struggles, futile as they were, were not allowed to continue. "Put a double hammerlock on her," Herkimer directed, "but be damned sure not to break anything at this stage of the game. That comes later." Jill, more furiously angry than frightened until now, locked her teeth to keep from screaming as the pressure went on. She could not bend forward to relieve the pain; she could not move; she could only grit her teeth and glare. She was beginning to realize, however, what was actually in store; that Herkimer Herkimer Third was in fact a monster whose like she had never known. He stepped quietly forward, gathered up a handful of fabric, and heaved. The strapless and backless garment, in no way designed to withstand such stresses, parted; squarely across at the upper strand of rope. He puffed his cigarette to a vivid coal--took it in his fingers--there was an audible hiss and a tiny stink of burning flesh as the glowing ember was extinguished in the clear, clean skin below the girl's left armpit. Jill flinched then, and shrieked desperately, but her tormentor was viciously unmoved. "That was just to settle any doubt as to whether or not I mean business. I'm all done fooling around with you. I want to know two things. First, everything you know about the Lens; where it comes from, what it really is, and what it does besides what your press-agents advertise. Second, what really happened at the Ambassadors' Ball. Start talking. The faster you talk, the less you'll get hurt." "You can't get away with this, Herkimer." Jill tried desperately to pull her shattered nerves together. "I'll be missed--traced...." She paused, gasping. If she told him that the Lensmen were in full and continuous communication with her--and if he believed it--he would kill her right then. She switched instantly to another track. "That double isn't good enough to fool anybody who really knows me." "She doesn't have to be." The man grinned venomously. "Nobody who knows you will get close enough to her to tell the difference. This wasn't done on the spur of the moment, Jill; it was planned--minutely. You haven't got the chance of the proverbial celluloid dog in hell." "Jill!" Jack Kinnison's thought stabbed in. "It isn't Rushton--fourteen seventy-nine is a two-story. What other streets could it be?" "I don't know...." She was not in very good shape to think. "Damnation! Got to get hold of somebody who knows the streets. Spud, grab a hacker at the Circle and I'll Lens Parker...." Jack's thought snapped off as he tuned to a local Lensman. Jill's heart sank. She was starkly certain now that the Lensmen could not find her in time. "Tighten up a little, Eddie. You, too, Bob." "Stop it! Oh, God, STOP IT!" The unbearable agony relaxed a little. She watched in horrified fascination a second glowing coal approach her bare right side. "Even if I do talk you'll kill me anyway. You couldn't let me go now." "Kill you, my pet? Not if you behave yourself. We've got a lot of planets the Patrol never heard of, and you could keep a man interested for quite a while, if you really tried. And if you beg hard enough maybe I'll let you try. However, I'd get just as much fun out of killing you as out of the other, so it's up to you. Not sudden death, of course. Little things, at first, like we've been doing. A few more touches of warmth here and there--so.... "Scream as much as you please. I enjoy it, and this room is sound-proof. Once more, boys, about half an inch higher this time ... up ... steady ... down. We'll have half an hour or so of this stuff"--Herkimer knew that to the quivering, sensitive, highly imaginative girl his words would be practically as punishing as the atrocious actualities themselves--"then I'll do things to your finger-nails and toe-nails, beginning with burning slivers of double-base flare powder and working up. Then your eyes--or no, I'll save them until last, so you can watch a couple of Venerian slasher-worms work on you, one on each leg, and a Martian digger on your bare belly." Gripping her hair firmly in his left hand, he forced her head back and down; down almost to her hard-held hands. His right hand, concealing something which he had not mentioned and which was probably starkly unmentionable, approached her taut-stretched throat. "Talk or not, just as you please." The voice was utterly callous, as chill as the death she now knew he was so willing to deal. "But listen. If you elect to talk, tell the truth. You won't lie twice. I'll count to ten. One." Jill uttered a gurgling, strangling noise and he lifted her head a trifle. "Can you talk now?" "Yes." "Two." Helpless, immobile, scared now to a depth of terror she had never imagined it possible to feel, Jill fought her wrenched and shaken mind back from insanity's very edge; managed with a pale tongue to lick bloodless lips. Pops Kinnison always said a man could die only once, but he didn't know ... in battle, yes, perhaps ... but she had already died a dozen times--but she'd keep on dying forever before she'd say a word. But-- "Tell him, Jill!" Northrop's thought beat at her mind. He, her lover, was unashamedly frantic; as much with sheer rage as with sympathy for her physical and mental anguish. "For the nineteenth time I say _tell him_! We've just located you--Hancock Avenue--we'll be there in two minutes!" "Yes, Jill, quit being a damned stubborn jackass and _tell him_!" Jack Kinnison's thought bit deep; but this time, strangely enough, the girl felt no repugnance at his touch. There was nothing whatever of the lover; nor of the brother, except of the fraternity of arms. She belonged. She would come out of this brawl right side up or none of them would. "Tell the goddam rat the truth!" Jack's thought drove on. "It won't make any difference--he won't live long enough to pass it on!" "But I can't--I won't!" Jill stormed. "Why, Pops Kinnison would...." "Not this time I wouldn't, Jill!" Samms' thought tried to come in, too, but the Port Admiral's vehemence was overwhelming. "No harm--he's doing this strictly on his own--if Morgan had had any idea he'd've killed him first. Start talking or I'll spank you to a rosy blister!" They were to laugh, later, at the incongruity of that threat, but it did produce results. "Nine." Herkimer grinned wolfishly, in sadistic anticipation. "Stop it--I'll tell!" she screamed. "Stop it--take that thing away--I can't _stand_ it--I'll tell!" She burst into racking, tearing sobs. "Steady." Herkimer put something in his pocket, then slapped her so viciously that fingers-long marks sprang into red relief upon the chalk-white background of her cheek. "Don't crack up; I haven't started to work on you yet. What about that Lens?" She gulped twice before she could speak. "It comes from--ulp!--Arisia. I haven't got one myself, so I don't know very much--ulp!--about it at first hand, but from what the boys tell me it must be...." * * * * * Outside the building three black forms arrowed downward. Northrop and young Kinnison stopped at the sixth level; Costigan went on down to take care of the guards. "Bullets, not beams," the Irishman reminded his younger fellows. "We'll have to clean up the mess without leaving a trace, so don't do any more damage to the property than you absolutely have to." Neither made any reply; they were both too busy. The two thugs standing behind the steel chair, being armed openly, went first; then Jack put a bullet through Herkimer's head. But Northrop was not content with that. He slid the pin to "full automatic" and ten more heavy slugs tore into the falling body before it struck the floor. Three quick slashes and the girl was free. "Jill!" "Mase!" Locked in each other's arms, straining together, no bystander would have believed that this was their first kiss. It was plainly--yes, quite spectacularly--evident, however, that it would not be their last. Jack, blushing furiously, picked up the cloak and flung it at the oblivious couple. "P-s-s-t! _P-s-s-t! Jill!_ Wrap 'em up!" he whispered, urgently. "All the top brass in space is coming at full emergency blast--there'll be scrambled eggs all over the place any second now--_Mase!_ _Damn_ your thick, hard skull, snap out of it! He's always frothing at the mouth about her running around half naked and if he sees her like this--especially with _you_--he'll simply have a litter of lizards! You'll get a million black spots and seven hundred years in the clink! That's better--'bye now--I'll see you up at New York Spaceport." Jack Kinnison dashed to the nearest window, threw it open, and dived headlong out of the building. CHAPTER 14 The employment office of any concern with personnel running into the hundreds of thousands is a busy place indeed, even when its plants are all on Tellus and its working conditions are as nearly ideal as such things can be made. When that firm's business is Colonial, however, and its working conditions are only a couple of degrees removed from slavery, procurement of personnel is a first-magnitude problem; the Personnel Department, like Alice in Wonderland, must run as fast as it can go in order to stay where it is. Thus the "Help Wanted" advertisements of Uranium, Incorporated covered the planet Earth with blandishment and guile; and thus for twelve hours of every day and for seven days of every week the employment offices of Uranium, Inc. were filled with men--mostly the scum of Earth. There were, of course, exceptions; one of which strode through the motley group of waiting men and thrust a card through the "Information" wicket. He was a chunky-looking individual, appearing shorter than his actual five feet nine because of a hundred and ninety pounds of weight--even though every pound was placed exactly where it would do the most good. He looked--well, slouchy--and his mien was sullen. "Birkenfeld--by appointment," he growled through the wicket, in a voice which could have been pleasantly deep. The coolly efficient blonde manipulated plugs. "Mr. George W. Jones, sir, by appointment.... Thank you, sir," and Mr. Jones was escorted into Mr. Birkenfeld's private office. "Have a chair, please, Mr. ... er ... Jones." "So you know?" "Yes. It is seldom that a man of your education, training, and demonstrated ability applies to us for employment of his own initiative, and a very thorough investigation is indicated." "What am I here for, then?" the visitor demanded, truculently. "You could have turned me down by mail. Everybody else has, since I got out." "You are here because we who operate on the frontiers cannot afford to pass judgment upon a man because of his past, unless that past precludes the probability of a useful future. Yours does not; and in some cases, such as yours, we are very deeply interested in the future." The official's eyes drilled deep. Conway Costigan had never been in the limelight. On the contrary, he had made inconspicuousness a passion and an art. Even in such scenes of violence as that which had occurred at the Ambassadors' Ball he managed to remain unnoticed. His Lens had never been visible. No one except Lensmen--and Clio and Jill--knew that he had one; and Lensmen--and Clio and Jill--did not talk. Although he was calmly certain that this Birkenfeld was not an ordinary interviewer, he was equally certain that the investigators of Uranium, Inc. had found out exactly and only what the Patrol had wanted them to find. "So?" Jones' bearing altered subtly, and not because of the penetrant eyes. "That's all I want--a chance. I'll start at the bottom, as far down as you say." "We advertise, and truthfully, that opportunity on Eridan is unlimited." Birkenfeld chose his words with care. "In your case, opportunity will be either absolutely unlimited or zero, depending entirely upon yourself." "I see." Dumbness had not been included in the fictitious Mr. Jones' background. "You don't need to draw a blue-print." "You'll do, I think." The interviewer nodded in approval. "Nevertheless, I must make our position entirely clear. If the slip was--shall we say accidental?--you will go far with us. If you try to play false, you will not last long and you will not be missed." "Fair enough." "Your willingness to start at the bottom is commendable, and it is a fact that those who come up through the ranks make the best executives; in our line at least. Just how far down are you willing to start?" "How low do you go?" "A mucker, I think would be low enough; and, from your build, and obvious physical strength, the logical job." "Mucker?" "One who skoufers ore in the mine. Nor can we make any exception in your case as to the routines of induction and transportation." "Of course not." "Take this slip to Mr. Calkins, in Room 6217. He will run you through the mill." And that night, in an obscure boarding-house, Mr. George Washington Jones, after a meticulous Service Special survey in every direction, reached a large and somewhat grimy hand into a screened receptacle in his battered suitcase and touched a Lens. "Clio?" The lovely mother of their wonderful children appeared in his mind. "Made it, sweetheart, no suspicion at all. No more Lensing for a while--not too long, I hope--so ... so-long, Clio." "Take it easy, Spud darling, and _be careful_." Her tone was light, but she could not conceal a stark background of fear. "Oh, I _wish_ I could go, too!" "I wish you could, Tootie." The linked minds flashed back to what the two had done together in the red opacity of Nevian murk; on Nevia's mighty, watery globe--but that kind of thinking would not do. "But the boys will keep in touch with me and keep you posted. And besides, you know how hard it is to get a baby-sitter!" * * * * * It is strange that the fundamental operations of working metalliferous veins have changed so little throughout the ages. Or is it? Ores came into being with the crusts of the planets; they change appreciably only with the passage of geologic time. Ancient mines, of course, could not go down very deep or follow a seam very far; there was too much water and too little air. The steam engine helped, in degree if not in kind, by removing water and supplying air. Tools improved--from the simple metal bar through pick and shovel and candle, through drill and hammer and low explosive and acetylene, through Sullivan slugger and high explosive and electrics, through skoufer and rotary and burley and sourceless glow, to the complex gadgetry of today--but what, fundamentally, is the difference? Men still crawl, snake-like, to where the metal is. Men still, by dint of sheer brawn, jackass the precious stuff out to where our vaunted automatics can get hold of it. And men still die, in horribly unknown fashions and in callously recorded numbers, in the mines which supply the stuff upon which our vaunted culture rests. But to resume the thread of narrative, George Washington Jones went to Eridan as a common laborer; a mucker. He floated down beside the skip--a "skip" is a mine elevator--some four thousand eight hundred feet. He rode an ore-car a horizontal distance of approximately eight miles to the brilliantly-illuminated cavern which was the Station of the Twelfth and lowest level. He was assigned to the bunk in which he would sleep for the next fifteen nights: "Fifteen down and three up," ran the standard underground contract. He walked four hundred yards, yelled "Nothing Down!" and inched his way up a rise--in many places scarcely wider than his shoulders--to the stope some three hundred feet above. He reported to the miner who was to be his immediate boss and bent his back to the skoufer--which, while not resembling a shovel at all closely, still meant hard physical labor. He already knew ore--the glossy, sub-metallic, pitchy black luster of uraninite or pitchblende; the yellows of autunite and carnotite; the variant and confusing greens of tobernite. No values went from Jones' skoufer into the heavily-timbered, steel-braced waste-pockets of the stope; very little base rock went down the rise. He became accustomed to the work; got used to breathing the peculiarly lifeless, dry, oily compressed air. And when, after a few days, his stentorian "Nothing Down!" called forth a "Nothing but a little fine stuff!" and a handful of grit and pebbles, he knew that he had been accepted into the undefined, unwritten, and unofficial, yet nevertheless intensely actual, fellowship of hard-rock men. He belonged. He knew that he must abandon his policy of invisibility; and, after several days of thought, he decided how he would do it. Hence, upon the first day of his "up" period, he joined his fellows in their descent upon one of the rawest, noisiest dives of Danapolis. The men were met, of course, by a bevy of giggling, shrieking, garishly painted and strongly perfumed girls--and at this point young Jones' behavior became exceedingly unorthodox. "Buy me a drink, mister? And a dance, huh?" "On your way, sister." He brushed the importunate wench aside. "I get enough exercise underground, an' you ain't got a thing I want." Apparently unaware that the girl was exchanging meaningful glances with a couple of husky characters labelled "BOUNCER" in billposter type, the atypical mucker strode up to the long and ornate bar. "Gimme a bottle of pineapple pop," he ordered bruskly, "an' a package of Tellurian cigarettes--Sunshines." "P-p-pine...?" The surprised bartender did not finish the word. The bouncers were fast, but Costigan was faster. A hard knee took one in the solar plexus; a hard elbow took the other so savagely under the chin as to all but break his neck. A bartender started to swing a bung-starter, and found himself flying through the air toward a table. Men, table, and drinks crashed to the floor. "I pick my own company an' I drink what I damn please," Jones announced, grittily. "Them lunkers ain't hurt none, to speak of ..." His hard eyes swept the room malevolently, "but I ain't in no gentle mood an' the next jaspers that tackle me will wind up in the repair shop, or maybe in the morgue. See?" This of course was much too much; a dozen embattled roughnecks leaped to mop up on the misguided wight who had so impugned the manhood of all Eridan. Then, while six or seven bartenders blew frantic blasts upon police whistles, there was a flurry of action too fast to be resolved into consecutive events by the eye. Conway Costigan, one of the fastest men with hands and feet the Patrol has ever known, was trying to keep himself alive; and he succeeded. "What the hell goes on here?" a chorus of raucously authoritative voices yelled, and sixteen policemen--John Law did not travel singly in that district, but in platoons--swinging clubs and saps, finally hauled George Washington Jones out from the bottom of the pile. He had sundry abrasions and not a few contusions, but no bones were broken and his skin was practically whole. And since his version of the affair was not only inadequate, but also differed in important particulars from those of several non-participating witnesses, he spent the rest of his holiday in jail; a development with which he was quite content. The work--and time--went on. He became in rapid succession a head mucker, a miner's pimp (which short and rugged Anglo-Saxon word means simply "helper" in underground parlance) a miner, a top-miner, and then--a long step up the ladder!--a shift-boss. And then disaster struck; suddenly, paralyzingly, as mine disasters do. Loud-speakers blared briefly--"Explosion! Cave-in! Flood! Fire! Gas! Radiation! Damp!"--and expired. Short-circuits; there was no way of telling which, if any, of those dire warnings were true. The power failed, and the lights. The hiss of air from valves, a noise which by its constant and unvarying and universal presence soon becomes unheard, became noticeable because of its diminution in volume and tone. And then, seconds later, a jarring, shuddering rumble was felt and heard, accompanied by the snapping of shattered timbers and the sharper, utterly unforgettable shriek of rending and riven steel. And the men, as men do under such conditions, went wild; yelling, swearing, leaping toward where, in the rayless dark, each thought the rise to be. It took a couple of seconds for the shift-boss to break out and hook up his emergency battery-lamp; and three or four more seconds, and by dint of fists, feet, and a two-foot length of air-hose, to restore any degree of order. Four men were dead; but that wasn't too bad--considering. "Up there! Under the hanging wall!" he ordered, sharply. "_That_ won't fall--unless the whole mountain slips. Now, how many of you jaspers have got your emergency kits on you? Twelve--out of twenty-six--what brains! Put on your masks. You without 'em can stay up here--you'll be safe for a while--I hope." Then, presently: "There, that's all for now. I guess." He flashed his light downward. The massive steel members no longer writhed; the crushed and tortured timbers were still. "That rise may be open, it goes through solid rock, not waste. I'll see. Wright, you're all in one piece, aren't you?" "I guess so--yes." "Take charge up here. I'll go down to the drift. If the rise is open I'll give you a flash. Send the ones with masks down, one at a time. Take a jolly-bar and bash the brains out of anybody who gets panicky again." Jones was not as brave as he sounded: mine disasters carry a terror which is uniquely and peculiarly poignant. Nevertheless he went down the rise, found it open, and signalled. Then, after issuing brief orders, he led the way along the dark and silent drift toward the Station; wondering profanely why the people on duty there had not done something with the wealth of emergency equipment always ready there. The party found some cave-ins, but nothing they could not dig through. The Station was also silent and dark. Jones, flashing his head-lamp upon the emergency panel, smashed the glass, wrenched the door open, and pushed buttons. Lights flashed on. Warning signals flared, bellowed and rang. The rotary air-pump began again its normal subdued, whickering whirr. But the water-pump! Shuddering, clanking, groaning, it was threatening to go out any second--but there wasn't a thing in the world Jones could do about it--yet. The Station itself, so buttressed and pillared with alloy steel as to be little more compressible than an equal volume of solid rock, was unharmed; but in it nothing lived. Four men and a woman--the nurse--were stiffly motionless at their posts; apparently the leads to the Station had been blasted in such fashion that no warning whatever had been given. And smoke, billowing inward from the main tunnel, was growing thicker by the minute. Jones punched another button; a foot-thick barrier of asbestos, tungsten, and vitrified refractory slid smoothly across the tunnel's opening. He considered briefly, pityingly, those who might be outside, but felt no urge to explore. If any lived, there were buttons on the other side of the fire-door. The eddying smoke disappeared, the flaring lights winked out, air-horns and bells relapsed into silence. The shift-boss, now apparently the Superintendent of the whole Twelfth Level, removed his mask, found the Station walkie-talkie, and snapped a switch. He spoke, listened, spoke again then called a list of names--none of which brought any response. "Wright, and you five others," picking out miners who could be depended upon to keep their heads, "take these guns. Shoot if you have to, but not unless you have to. Have the muckers clear the drift, just enough to get through. You'll find a shift-boss, with a crew of nineteen, up in Stope Sixty. Their rise is blocked. They've got light and power again now, and good air, and they're working on it, but opening the rise from the top is a damned slow job. Wright, you throw a chippie into it from the bottom. You others, work back along the drift, clear to the last glory hole. Be sure that all the rises are open--check all the stopes and glory holes--tell everybody you find alive to report to me here...." "Aw, what good!" a man shrieked. "We're all goners anyway--I want _water_ an'...." "Shut up, fool!" There was a sound as of fist meeting flesh, the shriek was stilled. "Plenty of water--tanks full of the stuff." A grizzled miner turned to the self-appointed boss and twitched his head--toward the laboring pump. "Too damn much water too soon, huh?" "I wouldn't wonder--but get busy!" As his now orderly and purposeful men disappeared, Jones picked up his microphone and changed the setting of a dial. "On top, somebody," he said crisply. "On top...." "Oh, there's somebody alive down in Twelve, after all!" a girl's voice screamed in his ear. "Mr. Clancy! Mr. Edwards!" "To hell with Clancy, and Edwards, too," Jones barked. "Gimme the Chief Engineer and the Head Surveyor, and gimme 'em _fast_." "Clancy speaking, Station Twelve." If Works Manager Clancy had heard that pointed remark, and he must have, he ignored it. "Stanley and Emerson will be here in a moment. In the meantime, who's calling? I don't recognize your voice, and it's been so long...." "Jones. Shift-boss, Stope Fifty Nine. I had a little trouble getting here to the Station." "What? Where's Pennoyer? And Riley? And...?" "Dead. Everybody. Gas or damp. No warning." "Not enough to turn on _anything_--not even the purifiers?" "Nothing." "Where were you?" "Up in the stope." "Good God!" That news, to Clancy, was informative enough. "But to hell with all that. What happened, and where?" "A skip-load, and then a magazine, of high explosive, right at Station Seven--it's right at the main shaft, you know." Jones did not know, since he had never been in that part of the mine, but he could see the picture. "Main shaft filled up to above Seven, and both emergency shafts blocked. Number One at Six, Number Two at Seven--must have been a fault--But here's Chief Engineer Stanley." The works manager, not too unwillingly, relinquished the microphone. A miner came running up and Jones covered his mouth-piece. "How about the glory holes?" "Plugged solid, all four of 'em--by the vibro, clear up to Eleven." "Thanks." Then, as soon as Stanley's voice came on: "What I want to know is, why is this damned water-pump overloading? What's the circuit?" "You must be ... yes, you are pumping against too much head. Five levels above you are dead, you know, so...." "Dead? Can't you raise _anybody_?" "Not yet. So you're pumping through dead boosters on Eleven and Ten and so on up, and when your overload-relief valve opens...." "_Relief_ valve!" Jones almost screamed, "Can I dog the damn thing down?" "No, it's internal." "Christ, what a design--I could eat a handful of iron filings and _puke_ a better emergency pump than that!" "When it opens," Stanley went stolidly on, "the water will go through the by-pass back into the sump. So you'd better rod out one of the glory holes and...." "Get conscious, fat-head!" Jones blazed. "What would we use for time? Get off the air--gimme Emerson!" "Emerson speaking." "Got your maps?" "Yes." "We got to run a sag up to Eleven--fast--or drown. Can you give me the shortest possible distance?" "Can do." The Head Surveyor snapped orders. "We'll have it for you in a minute. Thank God there was somebody down there with a brain." "It doesn't take super-human intelligence to push buttons." "You'd be surprised. Your point on glory holes was very well taken--you won't have much time after the pump quits. When the water reaches the Station...." "Curtains. And it's all done now--running free and easy--recirculating. Hurry that dope!" "Here it is now. Start at the highest point of Stope Fifty Nine. Repeat." "Stope Fifty-Nine." Jones waved a furious hand as he shouted the words; the tight-packed miners turned and ran. The shift-boss followed them, carrying the walkie-talkie, aiming an exasperated kick of pure frustration at the merrily-humming water pump as he passed it. "Thirty two degrees from the vertical--anywhere between thirty and thirty five." "Thirty to thirty five off vertical." "Direction--got a compass?" "Yes." "Set the blue on zero. Course two hundred seventy five degrees." "Blue on zero. Course two seven five." "Dex sixty nine point two zero feet. That'll put you into Eleven's class yard--so big you can't miss it." "Distance sixty nine point two--_that_ all? Fine! Maybe we'll make it, after all. They're sinking a shaft, of course. From where?" "About four miles in on Six. It'll take time." "If we can get up into Eleven we'll have all the time on the clock--it'll take a week or more to flood Twelve's stopes. But this sag is sure as hell going to be touch and go. And say, from the throw of the pump and the volume of the sump, will you give me the best estimate you can of how much time we've got? I want at least an hour, but I'm afraid I won't have it." "Yes. I'll call you back." The shift-boss elbowed his way through the throng of men and, dragging the radio behind him, wriggled and floated up the rise. "Wright!" he bellowed, the echoes resounding deafeningly all up and down the narrow tube. "You up there ahead of me?" "Yeah!" that worthy bellowed back. "More men left than I thought--how many--half of 'em?" "Just about." "Good. Sort out the ones you got up there by trades." Then, when he had emerged into the now brilliantly illuminated stope, "Where are the timber-pimps?" "Over there." "Rustle timbers. Whatever you can find and wherever you find it, grab it and bring it up here. Get some twelve-inch steel, too, six feet long. Timbermen, grab that stuff off of the face and start your staging right here. You muckers, rig a couple of skoufers to throw muck to bury the base and checkerwork up to the hanging wall. Doze a sluice-way down into that waste pocket there, so we won't clog ourselves up. Work fast, fellows, but make it _solid_--you know the load it'll have to carry and what will happen if it gives." They knew. They knew what they had to do and did it; furiously, but with care and precision. "How wide a sag you figurin' on, Supe?" the boss timberman asked. "Eight foot checkerwork to the hangin', anyway, huh?" "Yes. I'll let you know in a minute." The surveyor came in. "Forty one minutes is my best guess." "From when?" "From the time the pump failed." "That was four minutes ago--nearer five. And five more before we can start cutting. Forty one less ten is thirty one. Thirty one into sixty nine point two goes...." "Two point two three feet per minute, my slip-stick says." "Thanks. Wright, what would you say is the biggest sag we can cut in this kind of rock at two and a quarter feet a minute?" "Um ... m ... m". The miner scratched his whiskery chin. "That's a tough one, boss. You'll hafta figure damn close to a hundred pounds of air to the foot on plain cuttin'--that's two hundred and a quarter. But without a burley to pimp for 'er, a rotary can't take that kind of air--she'll foul herself to a standstill before she cuts a foot. An' with a burley riggin' she's got to make damn near a double cut--seven foot inside figger--so any way you look at it you ain't goin' to cut no two foot to the minute." "I was hoping you wouldn't check my figures, but you do. So we'll cut five feet. Saw your timbers accordingly. We'll hold that burley by hand." Wright shook his head dubiously. "We don't want to die down here any more than you do, boss, so we'll do our damndest--but how in _hell_ do you figure you can hold her to her work?" "Rig a yoke. Cut a stretcher up for canvas and padding. It'll pound, but a man can stand almost anything, in short enough shifts, if he's got to or die." And for a time--two minutes, to be exact, during which the rotary chewed up and spat out a plug of rock over five feet deep--things went very well indeed. Two men, instead of the usual three, could run the rotary; that is, they could tend the complicated pneumatic walking jacks which not only oscillated the cutting demon in a geometrical path, but also rammed it against the face with a steadily held and enormous pressure, even while climbing almost vertically upward under a burden of over twenty thousand pounds. An armored hand waved a signal--voice was utterly useless--up! A valve was flipped; a huge, flat, steel foot arose; a timber slid into place, creaking and groaning as that big flat foot smashed down. Up--again! Up--a third time! Eighteen seconds--less than one-third of a minute--ten inches gained! And, while it was not easy, two men could hold the burley--in one-minute shifts. As has been intimated, this machine "pimped" for the rotary. It waited on it, ministering to its every need with a singleness of purpose impossible to any except robotic devotion. It picked the rotary's teeth, it freed its linkages, it deloused its ports, it cleared its spillways of compacted debris, it even--and this is a feat starkly unbelievable to anyone who does not know the hardness of neocarballoy and the tensile strength of ultra-special steels--it even changed, while in full operation, the rotary's diamond-tipped cutters. Both burley and rotary were extremely efficient, but neither was either quiet or gentle. In their quietest moments they shrieked and groaned and yelled, producing a volume of sound in which nothing softer than a cannon-shot could have been heard. But when, in changing the rotary's cutting teeth, the burley's "fingers" were driven into and through the solid rock--a matter of merest routine to both machines--the resultant blasts of sound cannot even be imagined, to say nothing of being described. And always both machines spewed out torrents of rock, in sizes ranging from impalpable dust up to chunks as big as a fist. As the sag lengthened and the checkerwork grew higher, the work began to slow down. They began to lose the time they had gained. There were plenty of men, but in that narrow bore there simply was not room for enough men to work. Even through that storm of dust and hurtling rock the timbermen could get their blocking up there, but they could not place it fast enough--there were too many other men in the way. One of them had to get out. Since one man could not _possibly_ run the rotary, one man would have to hold the burley. They tried it, one after another. No soap. It hammered them flat. The rotary, fouled in every tooth and channel and vent under the terrific thrust of two hundred thirty pounds of air, merely gnawed and slid. The timbermen now had room--but nothing to do. And Jones, who had been biting at his mustache and ignoring the frantic walkie-talkie for minutes, stared grimly at watch and tape. Three minutes left, and over eight feet to go. "Gimme that armor!" he rasped, and climbed the blocks. "Open the air wide open--give 'er the whole two-fifty! Get down, Mac--I'll take it the rest of the way!" He put his shoulders to the improvised yoke, braced his feet, and heaved. The burley, screaming and yelling and clamoring, went joyously to work--both ways--God, what punishment! The rotary, free and clear, chewed rock more viciously than ever. An armored hand smote his leg. Lift! He lifted that foot, set it down two inches higher. The other one. Four inches. Six. One foot. Two. Three. Lord of the ancients! Was this lifetime of agony only one minute? Or wasn't he holding her--had the damn thing stopped cutting? No, it was still cutting--the rocks were banging against and bouncing off of his helmet as viciously and as numerously as ever; he could sense, rather than feel, the furious fashion in which the relays of timbermen were laboring to keep those high-stepping jacks in motion. No, it had been only one minute. Twice that long yet to go. God! Nothing _could_ be that brutal--a bull elephant couldn't take it--but by all the gods of space and all the devils in hell, he'd stay with it until that sag broke through. And grimly, doggedly, toward the end nine-tenths unconsciously, Lensman Conway Costigan stayed with it. And in the stope so far below, a new and highly authoritative voice blared from the speaker. "Jones! God damn it, Jones, answer me! If Jones isn't there, somebody else answer me--_anybody_!" "Yes, sir?" Wright was afraid to answer that peremptory call, but more afraid not to. "Jones? This is Clancy." "No, sir. Not Jones. Wright, sir--top miner." "Where's Jones?" "Up in the sag, sir. He's holding the burley--alone." "_Alone!_ Hell's purple fires! Tell him to--how many men has he got on the rotary?" "Two, sir. That's all they's room for." "Tell him to quit it--put somebody else on it--I _won't_ have him killed, damn it!" "He's the only one strong enough to hold it, sir, but I'll send up word." Word went up via sign language, and came back down. "Beggin' your pardon, sir, but he says to tell you to go to hell, sir. He won't have no time for chit-chat, he says, until this goddam sag is through or the juice goes off, sir." A blast of profanity erupted from the speaker, of such violence that the thoroughly scared Wright threw the walkie-talkie down the waste-chute, and in the same instant the rotary crashed through. Dazed, groggy, barely conscious from his terrific effort, Jones stared owlishly through the heavy, steel-braced lenses of his helmet while the timbermen set a few more courses of wood and the rotary walked itself and the clinging burley up and out of the hole. He climbed stiffly out, and as he stared at the pillar of light flaring upward from the sag, his gorge began to rise. "Wha's the idea of that damn surveyor lying to us like that?" he babbled. "We had oodles an' oodles of time--didn't have to kill ourselves--damn water ain't got there _yet_--wha's the big...." He wobbled weakly, and took one short step, and the lights went out. The surveyor's estimate had been impossibly, accidentally close. They had had a little extra time; but it was measured very easily in seconds. And Jones, logical to the end in a queerly addled way, stood in the almost palpable darkness, and wobbled, and thought. If a man couldn't see anything with his eyes wide open, he was either blind or unconscious. He wasn't blind, therefore he must be unconscious and not know it. He sighed, wearily and gratefully, and collapsed. Battery lights were soon reconnected, and everybody knew that they had holed through. There was no more panic. And, even before the shift-boss had recovered full consciousness, he was walking down the drift toward Station Eleven. There is no need to enlarge upon the rest of that grim and grisly affair. Level after level was activated; and, since working upward in mines is vastly faster than working downward, the two parties met on the Eighth Level. Half of the men who would otherwise have died were saved, and--much more important from the viewpoint of Uranium, Inc.--the deeper and richer half of the biggest and richest uranium mine in existence, instead of being out of production for a year or more, would be back in full operation in a couple of weeks. And George Washington Jones, still a trifle shaky from his ordeal, was called into the front office. But before he arrived: "I'm going to make him Assistant Works Manager," Clancy announced. "I think not." "But listen, Mr. Isaacson--_please_! How do you expect me to build up a staff if you snatch every good man I find away from me?" "You didn't find him. Birkenfeld did. He was here only on a test. He is going into Department Q." Clancy, who had opened his mouth to continue his protests, shut it wordlessly. He knew that department Q was-- DEPARTMENT Q. CHAPTER 15 Costigan was not surprised to see the man he had known as Birkenfeld in Uranium's ornate conference room. He had not expected, however, to see Isaacson. He knew, of course, that Spaceways owned Uranium, Inc., and the planet Eridan, lock, stock, and barrel; but it never entered his modest mind that his case would be of sufficient importance to warrant the personal attention of the Big Noise himself. Hence the sight of that suave and unrevealing face gave the putative Jones a more than temporary qualm. Isaacson was top-bracket stuff, 'way out of his class. Virgil Samms ought to be taking this assignment, but since he wasn't-- But instead of being an inquisition, the meeting was friendly and informal from the start. They complimented him upon the soundness of his judgment and the accuracy of his decisions. They thanked him, both with words and with a considerable sum of expendable credits. They encouraged him to talk about himself, but there was nothing whatever of the star-chamber or of cross-examination. The last question was representative of the whole conference. "One other thing, Jones, has me slightly baffled," Isaacson said, with a really winning smile. "Since you do not drink, and since you were not in search of feminine ... er ... companionship, just why did you go down to Roaring Jack's dive?" "Two reasons," Jones said, with a somewhat shamefaced grin. "The minor one isn't easy to explain, but ... well, I hadn't been having an exactly easy time of it on Earth ... you all know about that, I suppose?" They knew. "Well, I was taking a very dim view of things in general, and a good fight would get it out of my system. It always does." "I see. And the major reason?" "I knew, of course, that I was on probation. I would have to get promoted, and fast, or stay sunk forever. To get promoted fast, a man can either be enough of a boot-licker to be pulled up from on high, or he can be shoved up by the men he is working with. The best way to get a crowd of hard-rock men to like you is to lick a few of 'em--off hours, of course, and according to Hoyle--and the more of 'em you can lick at once, the better. I'm pretty good at rough-and-tumble brawling, so I gambled that the cops would step in before I got banged up too much. I won." "I see," Isaacson said again, in an entirely different tone. He did see, now. "The first technique is so universally used that the possibility of the second did not occur to me. Nice work--_very_ nice." He turned to the other members of the Board. "This, I believe, concludes the business of the meeting?" For some reason or other Isaacson nodded slightly as he asked the question; and one by one, as though in concurrence, the others nodded in reply. The meeting broke up. Outside the door, however, the magnate did not go about his own business nor send Jones about his. Instead: "I would like to show you, if I may, the above-ground part of our Works?" "My time is yours, sir. I am interested." It is unnecessary here to go into the details of a Civilization's greatest uranium operation; the storage bins, the grinders, the Wilfley tables and slime tanks, the flotation sluices, the roasters and reducers, the processes of solution and crystallization and recrystallization, of final oxidation and reduction. Suffice it to say that Isaacson showed Jones the whole immensity of Uranium Works Number One. The trip ended on the top floor of the towering Administration Building, in a heavily-screened room containing a desk, a couple of chairs, and a tremendously massive safe. "Smoke up." Isaacson indicated a package of Jones' favorite brand of cigarettes and lighted a cigar. "You knew that you were under test. I wonder, though, if you knew how much of it was testing?" "All of it." Jones grinned. "Except for the big blow, of course." "Of course." "There were too many possibilities, of too many different kinds, too pat. I might warn you, though--I could have got away clear with that half-million." "The possibility existed." Surprisingly, Isaacson did not tell him that the trap was more subtle than it had appeared to be. "It was, however, worth the risk. Why didn't you?" "Because I figure on making more than that, a little later, and I might live longer to spend it." "Sound thinking, my boy--really sound. Now--you noticed, of course, the vote at the end of the meeting?" Jones had noticed it; and, although he did not say so, he had been wondering about it ever since. The older man strolled over to the safe and opened it, revealing a single, startlingly small package. "You passed, unanimously; you are now learning what you have to know. Not that we trust you unreservedly. You will be watched for a long time, and before you can make one false step, you will die." "That would seem to be good business, sir." "Glad you look at it that way--we thought you would. You saw the Works. Quite an operation, don't you think?" "Immense, sir. The biggest thing I ever saw." "What would you say, then, to the idea of this office being our real headquarters, of that little package there being our real business?" He swung the safe door shut, spun the knob. "It would have been highly surprising a couple of hours ago." Costigan could not afford to appear stupid, nor to possess too much knowledge. He had to steer an extremely difficult middle course. "After the climax of this build-up, though, it wouldn't seem at all impossible. Or that there were wheels--plenty of 'em!--within wheels." "Smart!" Isaacson applauded. "And what would you think might be in that package? This room is ray-proof." "Against anything the Galactic Patrol can swing?" "Positively." "Well, then, it _might_ be something beginning with the letter" he flicked two fingers, almost invisibly fast, into a T and went on without a break "M, as in morphine." "Your caution and restraint are commendable. If I had any remaining doubt as to your ability, it is gone." He paused, frowning. As belief in ability increased, that in sincerity lessened. This doubt, this questioning, existed every time a new executive was initiated into the mysteries of Department Q. The Board's judgment was good. They had slipped only twice, and those two errors had been corrected easily enough. The fellow had been warned once; that was enough. He took the plunge. "You will work with the Assistant Works Manager here until you understand the duties of the position. You will be transferred to Tellus as Assistant Works Manager there. Your principal duties will, however, be concerned with Department Q--which you will head up one day if you make good. And, just incidentally, when you go to Tellus, a package like that one in the safe will go with you." "Oh ... I see. I'll make good, sir." Jones let Isaacson see his jaw-muscles tighten in resolve. "It may take a little time for me to learn my way around, sir, but I'll learn it." "I'm sure you will. And now, to go into greater detail...." * * * * * Virgil Samms had to be sure of his facts. More than that, he had to be able to prove them; not merely to the satisfaction of a law-enforcement officer, but beyond any reasonable doubt of the hardest-headed member of a cynical and skeptical jury. Wherefore Jack Kinnison and Mase Northrop took up the thionite trail at the exact point where, each trip, George Olmstead had had to abandon it; in the atmosphere of Cavenda. And fortunately, not too much preparation was required. Cavenda was, as has been intimated, a primitive world. Its native people, humanoid in type, had developed a culture approximating in some respects that of the North American Indian at about the time of Columbus, in others that of the ancient Nomads of Araby. Thus a couple of wandering natives, unrecognizable under their dirty stormproof blankets and their scarcely thinner layers of grease and grime, watched impassively, incuriously, while a box floated pendant from its parachute from sky to ground. Mounted upon their uncouth steeds, they followed that box when it was hauled to the white man's village. Unlike many of the other natives, these two did not shuffle into that village, to lean silently against a rock or a wall awaiting their turns to exchange a few hours of simple labor for a container of a new and highly potent beverage. They did, however, keep themselves constantly and minutely informed as to everything these strange, devil-ridden white men did. One of these pseudo-natives wandered off into the wilderness two or three days before the huge thing-which-flies-without-wings left ground; the other immediately afterward. Thus the departure of the space-ship from Cavenda was recorded, as was its arrival at Eridan. It had been extremely difficult for the Patrol's engineers to devise ways and means of tracing that ship from departure to arrival without exciting suspicion, but it had not proved impossible. And Jack Kinnison, lounging idly and elegantly in the concourse of Danopolis Spaceport, seethed imperceptibly. Having swallowed a tiny Service Special capsule that morning, he knew that he had been under continuous spy-ray inspection for over two hours. He had not given himself away--practically everybody screened their inside coat pockets and hip pockets, and the cat-whisker lead from Lens to leg simply could not be seen--but for all the good they were doing him his ultra-instruments might just as well have been back on Tellus. "Mase!" he sent, with no change whatever in the vapid expression then on his face. "I'm still covered. Are you?" "Covered!" the answering thought was a snort. "They're covering me like water covers a submarine!" "Keep tuned. I'll call Spud. Spud!" "Come in, Jack." Conway Costigan, alone now in the sanctum of Department Q, did not seem to be busy, but he was. "That red herring they told us to drag across the trail was too damned red. They must be touchier than fulminate to spy-work on their armed forces--neither Mase nor I can do a lick of work. Anybody else covered?" "No. All clear." "Good. Tell them the zwilnik blockers took us out." "I'll do that. Distance only, or is somebody on your tail?" "Somebody; and I mean _some body_. A slick chick with a classy chassis; a blonde, with great, big come-hither eyes. Too good to be true; especially the falsies. Wiring, my friend--and I haven't been able to get a close look, but I wouldn't wonder if her nostrils had a skillionth of a whillimeter too much expansion. I want a spy-ray op--is it safe to use Fred?" Kinnison referred to the grizzled engineer now puttering about in a certain space-ship; not the one in which he and Northrop had come to Eridan. "Definitely not. I can do it myself and still stay very much in character.... No, I don't know her. Not surprising, of course, since the policy here is never to let the right hand know what the left is doing. How about you, Mase? Have you got a little girl-friend, too?" "Yea, verily, brother; but not little. More my size." Northrop pointed out a tall, trim brunette, strolling along with the effortless, consciously unconscious poise of the professional model. "Hm ... m ... m. I don't know her, either," Costigan reported, "but both of them are wearing four-inch spy-ray blocks and are probably wired up like Christmas trees. By inference, P-gun proof. I can't penetrate, of course, but maybe I can get a viewpoint.... You're right, Jack. Nostrils plugged. Anti-thionite, anti-Vee-Two, anti-everything. In fact, anti-social. I'll spread their pictures around and see if anybody knows either of them." He did so, and over a hundred of the Patrol's shrewdest operatives--upon this occasion North America had invaded Eridan in force--studied and thought. No one knew the tall brunette, but-- "I know the blonde." This was Parker of Washington, a Service ace for twenty five years. "'Hell-cat Hazel' DeForce, the hardest-boiled babe unhung. Watch your step around her; she's just as handy with a knife and knock-out drops as she is with a gun." "Thanks, Parker. I've heard of her." Costigan was thinking fast. "Free-lance. No way of telling who she's working for at the moment." This was a statement, not a question. "Only that it would have to be somebody with a lot of money. Her price is high. That all?" "That's all, fellows." Then, to Jack and Northrop: "My thought is that you two guys are completely out-classed--out-weighed, out-numbered, out-manned, and out-gunned. Undressed, you're sitting ducks; and if you put out any screens it'll crystallize their suspicions and they'll grab you right then--or maybe even knock you off. You'd better get out of here at full blast; you can't do any more good here, the way things are." "Sure we can!" Kinnison protested. "You wanted a diversion, didn't you?" "Yes, but you already...." "What we've done already isn't a patch to what we can do next. We can set up such a diversion that the boys can walk right on the thionite-carrier's heels without anybody paying any attention. By the way, you don't know yet who is going to carry it, do you?" "No. No penetration at all." "You soon will, bucko. Watch our smoke!" "What do you think you're going to do?" Costigan demanded, sharply. "This." Jack explained. "And don't try to say no. We're on our own, you know." "We ... l ... l ... it sounds good, and if you can pull it off it will help no end. Go ahead." The demurely luscious blonde stared disconsolately at the bulletin board, upon which another thirty minutes was being added to the time of arrival of a ship already three hours late. She picked up a book, glanced at its cover, put it down. Her hand moved toward a magazine, drew back, dropped idly into her lap. She sighed, stifled a yawn prettily, leaned backward in her seat--in such a position, Jack noticed, that he could not see into her nostrils--and closed her eyes. And Jack Kinnison, coming visibly to a decision, sat down beside her. "Pardon me, miss, but I feel just like you look. Can you tell me why convention decrees that two people, stuck in this concourse by arrivals that nobody knows when will arrive, have got to suffer alone when they could have so much more fun suffering together?" The girl's eyes opened slowly; she was neither startled, nor afraid, nor--it seemed--even interested. In fact, she gazed at him with so much disinterest and for so long a time that he began to wonder--was she going to play sweet and innocent to the end? "Yes, conventions _are_ stupid, sometimes," she admitted finally, her lovely lips curving into the beginnings of a smile. Her voice, low and sweet, matched perfectly the rest of her charming self. "After all, perfectly nice people do meet informally on shipboard; why not in concourses?" "Why not, indeed? And I'm perfectly nice people, I assure you. Willi Borden is the name. My friends call me Bill. And you?" "Beatrice Bailey; Bee for short. Tell me what you like, and we'll talk about it." "Why talk, when we could be eating? I'm with a guy. He's out on the field somewhere--a big bruiser with a pencil-stripe black mustache. Maybe you saw him talking to me a while back?" "I think so, now that you mention him. Too big--_much_ too big." The girl spoke carelessly, but managed to make it very clear that Jack Kinnison was just exactly the right size. "Why?" "I told him I'd have supper with him. Shall we hunt him up and eat together?" "Why not? Is he alone?" "He was, when I saw him last." Although Jack knew exactly where Northrop was, and who was with him, he had to play safe; he did not know how much this "Bee Bailey" really knew. "He knows a lot more people around here than I do, though, so maybe he isn't now. Let me carry some of that plunder?" "You might carry those books--thanks. But the field is so _big_--how do you expect to find him? Or do you know where he is?" "Uh-uh!" he denied, vigorously. This was the critical moment. She certainly wasn't suspicious--yet--but she was showing signs of not wanting to go out there, and if she refused to go.... "To be honest, I don't care whether I find him or not--the idea of ditching him appeals to me more and more. So how about this? We'll dash out to the third dock--just so I won't have to actually lie about looking for him--and dash right back here. Or wouldn't you rather have it a twosome?" "I refuse to answer, by advice of counsel." The girl laughed gaily, but her answer was plain enough. Their rate of progress was by no means a dash, and Kinnison did not look--with his eyes--for Northrop. Nevertheless, just south of the third dock, the two young couples met. "My cousin, Grace James," Northrop said, without a tremor or a quiver. "Wild Willi Borden, Grace--usually called Baldy on account of his hair." The girls were introduced; each vouchsafing the other a completely meaningless smile and a colorlessly conventional word of greeting. Were they, in fact as in seeming, total strangers? Or were they in fact working together as closely as were the two young Lensmen themselves? If that was acting, it was a beautiful job; neither man could detect the slightest flaw in the performance of either girl. "Whither away, pilot?" Jack allowed no lapse of time. "You know all the places around here. Lead us to a good one." "This way, my old and fragrant fruit." Northrop led off with a flourish, and again Jack tensed. The walk led straight past the third-class, apparently deserted dock of which a certain ultra-fast vessel was the only occupant. If nothing happened for fifteen more seconds.... Nothing did. The laughing, chattering four came abreast of the portal. The door swung open and the Lensmen went into action. They did not like to strong-arm women, but speed was their first consideration, with safety a close second; and it is impossible for a man to make speed while carrying a conscious, lithe, strong, heavily-armed woman in such a position that she cannot use fists, feet, teeth, gun or knife. An unconscious woman, on the other hand, can be carried easily and safely enough. Therefore Jack spun his partner around, forced both of her hands into one of his. The free hand flashed upward toward the neck; a hard finger pressed unerringly against a nerve; the girl went limp. The two victims were hustled aboard and the space-ship, surrounded now by full-coverage screen, took off. Kinnison paid no attention to ship or course; orders had been given long since and would be carried out. Instead, he lowered his burden to the floor, spread her out flat, and sought out and removed item after item of wiring, apparatus, and offensive and defensive armament. He did not undress her--quite--but he made completely certain that the only weapons left to the young lady were those with which Nature had endowed her. And, Northrop having taken care of his alleged cousin with equal thoroughness, the small-arms were sent out and both doors of the room were securely locked. "Now, Hell-cat Hazel DeForce," Kinnison said, conversationally, "You can snap out of it any time--you've been back to normal for at least two minutes. You've found out that your famous sex-appeal won't work. There's nothing loose you can grab, and you're too smart an operator to tackle me bare-handed. Who's the captain of your team--you or the clothes-horse?" "Clothes-horse!" the statuesque brunette exclaimed, but her protests were drowned out. The blonde could--and did--talk louder, faster, and rougher. "Do you think you can get away with _this_?" she demanded. "Why, you ..." and the unexpurgated, trenchant, brilliantly detailed characterization could have seared its way through four-ply asbestos. "And just what do you think you're going to do with me?" "As to the first, I think so," Kinnison replied, ignoring the deep-space verbiage. "As to the second--as of now I don't know. What would you do if our situations were reversed?" "I'd blast you to a cinder--or else take a knife and...." "Hazel!" the brunette cautioned sharply. "Careful! You'll touch them off and they'll...." "Shut up, Jane! They won't hurt us any more than they have already; it's psychologically impossible. Isn't that true, copper?" Hazel lighted a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew a cloud of smoke at Kinnison's face. "Pretty much so, I guess," the Lensman admitted, frankly enough, "but we can put you away for the rest of your lives." "Space-happy? Or do you think I am?" she sneered. "What would you use for a case? We're as safe as if we were in God's pocket. And besides, our positions _will_ be reversed pretty quick. You may not know it, but the fastest ships in space are chasing us, right now." "For once you're wrong. We've got plenty of legs ourselves and we're blasting for rendezvous with a task-force. But enough of this chatter. I want to know what job you're on and why you picked on us. Give." "Oh, does 'oo?" Hazel cooed, venomously. "Come and sit on mama's lap, itty bitty soldier boy, and she'll tell you everything you want to know." Both Lensmen probed, then, with everything they had, but learned nothing of value. The women did not know what the Patrolmen were trying to do, but they were so intensely hostile that their mental blocks, unconscious although they were, were as effective as full-driven thought screens against the most insidious approaches the men could make. "Anything in their hand-bags, Mase?" Jack asked, finally. "I'll look.... Nothing much--just this," and the very tonelessness of Northrop's voice made Jack look up quickly. "Just a letter from the boy-friend." Hazel shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing hot--not even warm--go ahead and read it." "Not interested in what it says, but it might be smart to develop it, envelope and all, for invisible ink and whatnot." He did so, deeming it a worth-while expenditure of time. He already knew what the hidden message was; but no one not of the Patrol should know that no transmission of intelligence, however coded or garbled or disguised or by whatever means sent, could be concealed from any wearer of Arisia's Lens. "Listen, Hazel," Kinnison said, holding up the now slightly stained paper. "'Three six two'--that's you, I suppose, and you're the squad leader--'Men mentioned previously being investigated stop assign three nine eight'--that must be you, Jane--'and make acquaintance stop if no further instructions received by eighteen hundred hours liquidate immediately stop party one'." The blond operative lost for the first time her brazen control. "Why ... that code is _unbreakable_!" she gasped. "Wrong again, Gentle Alice. Some of us are specialists." He directed a thought at Northrop. "This changes things slightly, Mase. I was going to turn them loose, but now I don't know. Better we take it up with the boss, don't you think?" "Pos-i-_tive_-ly!" Samms was called, and considered the matter for approximately one minute. "Your first idea was right, Jack. Let them go. The message may be helpful and informative, but the women would not. They know nothing. Congratulations, boys, on the complete success of Operation Red Herring." "Ouch!" Jack grimaced mentally to his partner after the First Lensman had cut off. "They know enough to be in on bumping you and me off, but that ain't important, says he!" "And it ain't, bub," Northrop grinned back. "Moderately so, maybe, if they had got us, but not at all so now they can't. The Lensmen have landed and the situation is well in hand. It is written. Selah." "Check. Let's wrap it up." Jack turned to the blonde. "Come on, Hazel. Out. Number Four lifeboat. Do you want to come peaceably or shall I work on your neck again?" "You could think of other places that would be more fun." She got up and stared directly into his eyes, her lip curling. "That is, if you were a _man_ instead of a sublimated Boy Scout." Kinnison, without a word, wheeled and unlocked a door. Hazel swaggered forward, but the taller girl hung back. "Are you sure there's air--and they'll pick us up? Maybe they're going to make us breathe space...." "Huh? They haven't got the guts," Hazel sneered. "Come on, Jane. Number Four, you said, darling?" She led the way. Kinnison opened the portal. Jane hurried aboard, but Hazel paused and held out her arms. "Aren't you even going to kiss mama goodbye, baby boy?" she taunted. "Better not waste much more time. We blow this boat, sealed or open, in fifteen seconds." By what effort Kinnison held his voice level and expressionless, he hoped the wench would never know. She looked at him, started to say something, looked again. She had gone just about as far as it was safe to go. She stepped into the boat and reached for the lever. And as the valve was swinging smoothly shut the men heard a tinkling laugh, reminiscent of icicles breaking against steel bells. "Hell's--Brazen--Hinges!" Kinnison wiped his forehead as the lifeboat shot away. Hazel was something brand new to him; a phenomenon with which none of his education, training, or experience had equipped him to cope. "I've heard about the guy who got hold of a tiger by the tail, but...." His thought expired on a wondering, confused note. "Yeah." Northrop was in no better case. "We won--technically--I guess--or did we? That was a God-awful drubbing we took, mister." "Well, we got away alive, anyway.... We'll tell Parker his dope is correct to the proverbial twenty decimals. And now that we've escaped, let's call Spud and see how things came out." And Costigan-Jones assured them that everything had come out very well indeed. The shipment of thionite had been followed without any difficulty at all, from the space-ship clear through to Jones' own office, and it reposed now in Department Q's own safe, under Jones' personal watch and ward. The pressure had lightened tremendously, just as Kinnison and Northrop had thought it would, when they set up their diversion. Costigan listened impassively to the whole story. "Now _should_ I have shot her, or not?" Jack demanded. "Not whether I _could_ have or not--I couldn't--but _should_ I have, Spud?" "I don't know." Costigan thought for minutes. "I don't think so. No--not in cold blood. I couldn't have, either, and wouldn't if I could. It wouldn't be worth it. Somebody will shoot her some day, but not one of us--unless, of course, it's in a fight." "Thanks, Spud; that makes me feel better. Off." Costigan-Jones' desk was already clear, since there was little or no paper-work connected with his position in Department Q. Hence his preparations for departure were few and simple. He merely opened the safe, stuck the package into his pocket, closed and locked the safe, and took a company ground-car to the spaceport. Nor was there any more formality about his leaving the planet. Eridan had, of course, a Customs frontier of sorts; but since Uranium Inc. owned Eridan in fee simple, its Customs paid no attention whatever to company ships or to low-number, gold-badge company men. Nor did Jones need ticket, passport, or visa. Company men rode company ships to and from company plants, wherever situated, without let or hindrance. Thus, wearing the aura of power of his new position--and Gold Badge Number Thirty Eight--George W. Jones was whisked out to the uranium ship and was shown to his cabin. Nor was it surprising that the trip from Eridan to Earth was completely without incident. This was an ordinary freighter, hauling uranium on a routine flight. Her cargo was valuable, of course--the sine qua non of inter-stellar trade--but in no sense precious. Not pirate-bait, by any means. And only two men knew that this flight was in any whit different from the one which had preceded it or the one which would follow it. If this ship was escorted or guarded the fact was not apparent: and no Patrol vessel came nearer to it than four detets--Virgil Samms and Roderick Kinnison saw to that. The voyage, however, was not tedious. Jones was busy every minute. In fact, there were scarcely minutes enough in which to assimilate the material which Isaacson had given him--the layouts, flow-sheets, and organization charts of Works Number Eighteen, on Tellus. And upon arrival at the private spaceport which was an integral part of Works Number Eighteen, Jones was not surprised (he knew more now than he had known a few weeks before; and infinitely more than the man on the street) to learn that the Customs men of this particular North American Port of Entry were just as complaisant as were those of Eridan. They did not bother even to count the boxes, to say nothing of inspecting them. They stamped the ship's papers without either reading or checking them. They made a perfunctory search, it is true, of crewmen and quarters, but a low number gold badge was still a magic talisman. Unquestioned, sacrosanct, he and his baggage were escorted to the ground-car first in line. "Administration Building," Jones-Costigan told the hacker, and that was that. CHAPTER 16 It has been said that the basic drive of the Eddorians was a lust for power; a thought which should be elucidated and perhaps slightly modified. Their warrings, their strifes, their internecine intrigues and connivings were inevitable because of the tremendousness and capability--and the limitations--of their minds. Not enough _could_ occur upon any one planet to keep such minds as theirs even partially occupied; and, unlike the Arisians, they could not satiate themselves in a static philosophical study of the infinite possibilities of the Cosmic All. They had to be _doing_ something; or, better yet, making other and lesser beings do things to make the physical universe conform to their idea of what a universe should be. Their first care was to set up the various echelons of control. The second echelon, immediately below the Masters, was of course the most important, and after a survey of both galaxies they decided to give this high honor to the Ploorans. Ploor, as is now well known, was a planet of a sun so variable that all Plooran life had to undergo radical cyclical changes in physical form in order to live through the tremendous climatic changes involved in its every year. Physical form, however, meant nothing to the Eddorians. Since no other planet even remotely like theirs existed in this, our normal plenum, physiques like theirs would be impossible; and the Plooran mentality left very little to be desired. In the third echelon there were many different races, among which the frigid-blooded, poison-breathing Eich were perhaps the most efficient and most callous; and in the fourth there were millions upon millions of entities representing thousands upon thousands of widely-variant races. Thus, at the pinpoint in history represented by the time of Virgil Samms and Roderick Kinnison, the Eddorians were busy; and if such a word can be used, happy. Gharlane of Eddore, second in authority only to the All-Highest, His Ultimate Supremacy himself, paid little attention to any one planet or to any one race. Even such a mind as his, when directing the affairs of twenty million and then sixty million and then a hundred million worlds, can do so only in broad, and not in fine. And thus the reports which were now flooding in to Gharlane in a constantly increasing stream concerned classes and groups of worlds, and solar systems, and galactic regions. A planet might perhaps be mentioned as representative of a class, but no individual entity lower than a Plooran was named or discussed. Gharlane analyzed those tremendous reports; collated, digested, compared, and reconciled them; determined trends and tendencies and most probable resultants. Gharlane issued orders, the carrying out of which would make an entire galactic region fit more and ever more exactly into the Great Plan. But, as has been pointed out, there was one flaw inherent in the Boskonian system. Underlings, then as now, were prone to gloss over their own mistakes, to cover up their own incompetences. Thus, since he had no reason to inquire specifically, Gharlane did not know that anything whatever had gone amiss on Sol Three, the pestiferous planet which had formerly caused him more trouble than all the rest of his worlds combined. After the fact, it is easy to say that he should have continued his personal supervision of Earth, but can that view be defended? Egotistical, self-confident, arrogant, Gharlane _knew_ that he had finally whipped Tellus into line. It was the same now as any other planet of its class. And even had he thought it worth while to make such a glaring exception, would not the fused Elders of Arisia have intervened? Be those things as they may, Gharlane did not know that the new-born Galactic Patrol had been successful in defending Triplanetary's Hill against the Black Fleet. Nor did the Plooran Assistant Director in charge. Nor did any member of that dreadful group of Eich which was even then calling itself the Council of Boskone. The highest-ranking Boskonian who knew of the fiasco, calmly confident of his own ability, had not considered this minor reverse of sufficient importance to report to his immediate superior. He had already taken steps to correct the condition. In fact, as matters now stood, the thing was more fortunate than otherwise, in that it would lull the Patrol into believing themselves in a position of superiority--a belief which would, at election time, prove fatal. This being, human to the limit of classification except for a faint but unmistakable blue coloration, had been closeted with Senator Morgan for a matter of two hours. "In the matters covered, your reports have been complete and conclusive," the visitor said finally, "but you have not reported on the Lens." "Purposely. We are investigating it, but any report based upon our present knowledge would be partial and inconclusive." "I see. Commendable enough, usually. News of this phenomenon has, however, gone farther and higher than you think and I have been ordered to take cognizance of it; to decide whether or not to handle it myself." "I am thoroughly capable of...." "I will decide that, not you." Morgan subsided. "A partial report is therefore in order. Go ahead." "According to the procedure submitted and approved, a Lensman was taken alive. Since the Lens has telepathic properties, and hence is presumably operative at great distances, the operation was carried out in the shortest possible time. The Lens, immediately upon removal from the Patrolman's arm, ceased to radiate and the operative who held the thing died. It was then applied by force to four other men--workers, these, of no importance. All four died, thus obviating all possibility of coincidence. An attempt was made to analyze a fragment of the active material, without success. It seemed to be completely inert. Neither was it affected by electrical discharges or by sub-atomic bombardment, nor by any temperatures available. Meanwhile, the man was of course being questioned, under truth-drug and beams. His mind denied any knowledge of the nature of the Lens; a thing which I am rather inclined to believe. His mind adhered to the belief that he obtained the Lens upon the planet Arisia. I am offering for your consideration my opinion that the high-ranking officers of the Patrol are using hypnotism to conceal the real source of the Lens." "Your opinion is accepted for consideration." "The man died during examination. Two minutes after his death his Lens disappeared." "Disappeared? What do you mean? Flew away? Vanished? Was stolen? Disintegrated? Or what?" "No. More like evaporation or sublimation, except that there was no gradual diminution in volume, and there was no detectable residue, either solid, liquid, or gaseous. The platinum-alloy bracelet remained intact." "And then?" "The Patrol attacked in force and our expedition was destroyed." "You are sure of these observational facts?" "I have the detailed records. Would you like to see them?" "Send them to my office. I hereby relieve you of all responsibility in the matter of the Lens. In fact, even I may decide to refer it to a higher echelon. Have you any other material, not necessarily facts, which may have bearing?" "None," Morgan replied; and it was just as well for Virgilia Samms' continued well-being that the Senator did not think it worth while to mention the traceless disappearance of his Number One secretary and a few members of a certain unsavory gang. To his way of thinking, the Lens was not involved, except perhaps very incidentally. Herkimer, in spite of advice and orders, had probably got rough with the girl, and Samms' mob had rubbed him out. Served him right. "I have no criticism of any phase of your work. You are doing a particularly nice job on thionite. You are of course observing all specified precautions as to key personnel?" "Certainly. Thorough testing and unremitting watchfulness. Our Mr. Isaacson is about to promote a man who has proved very capable. Would you like to observe the proceedings?" "No. I have no time for minor matters. Your results have been satisfactory. Keep them that way. Good-bye." The visitor strode out. Morgan reached for a switch, then drew his hand back. No. He would like to sit in on the forthcoming interview, but he did not have the time. He had tested Olmstead repeatedly and personally; he knew what the man was. It was Isaacson's department; let Isaacson handle it. He himself must work full time at the job which only he could handle; the Nationalists must and would win this forthcoming election. And in the office of the president of Interstellar Spaceways, Isaacson got up and shook hands with George Olmstead. "I called you in for two reasons. First, in reply to your message that you were ready for a bigger job. What makes you think that any such are available?" "Do I need to answer that?" "Perhaps not ... no." The magnate smiled quietly. Morgan was right; this man could not be accused of being dumb. "There is such a job, you are ready for it, and you have your successor trained in the work of harvesting. Second, why did you cut down, instead of increasing as ordered, the weight of broadleaf per trip? This, Olmstead, is really serious." "I explained why. It would have been more serious the other way. Didn't you believe I knew what I was talking about?" "Your reasoning may have been distorted in transmittal. I want it straight from you." "Very well. It isn't smart to be greedy. There's a point at which something that has been merely a nuisance becomes a thing that _has_ to be wiped out. Since I didn't want to be in that ferry when the Patrol blows it out of the ether, I cut down the take, and I advise you to keep it down. What you're getting now is a lot more than you ever got before, and a _hell_ of a lot more than none at all. Think it over." "I see. Upon what basis did you arrive at the figure you established?" "Pure guesswork, nothing else. I guessed that about three hundred percent of the previous average per month ought to satisfy anybody who wasn't too greedy to have good sense, and that more than that would ring a loud, clear bell right where we don't want any noise made. So I cut it down to three, and advised Ferdy either to keep it at three or quit while he was still all in one piece." "You exceeded your authority ... and were insubordinate ... but it wouldn't surprise me if you were right. You are certainly right in principle, and the poundage can be determined by statistical and psychological analysis. But in the meantime, there is tremendous pressure for increased production." "I know it. Pressure be damned. My dear cousin Virgil is, as you already know, a crackpot. He is visionary, idealistic, full of sweet and beautiful concepts of what the universe would be like if there weren't so many people like you and me in it; but don't ever make the mistake of writing him off as anybody's fool. And you know, probably better than I do, what Rod Kinnison is like. If I were you I'd tell whoever is doing the screaming to shut their damn mouths before they get their teeth kicked down their throats." "I'm very much inclined to take your advice. And now as to this proposed promotion. You are of course familiar in a general way with our operation at Northport?" "I could scarcely help knowing _something_ about the biggest uranium works on Earth. However, I am not well enough qualified in detail to make a good technical executive." "Nor is it necessary. Our thought is to make you a key man in a new and increasingly important branch of the business, known as Department Q. It is concerned neither with production nor with uranium." "Q as in 'quiet', eh? I'm listening with both ears. What duties would be connected with this ... er ... position? What would I really do?" Two pairs of hard eyes locked and held, staring yieldlessly into each other's depths. "You would not be unduly surprised to learn that substances other than uranium occasionally reach Northport?" "Not _too_ surprised, no," Olmstead replied dryly. "What would I do with it?" "We need not go into that here or now. I offer you the position." "I accept it." "Very well. I will take you to Northport, and we will continue our talk en route." And in a spy-ray-proof, sound-proof compartment of a Spaceways-owned stratoliner they did so. "Just for my information, Mr. Isaacson, how many predecessors have I had on this particular job, and what happened to them? The Patrol get them?" "Two. No; we have not been able to find any evidence that the Samms crowd has any suspicion of us. Both were too small for the job; neither could handle personnel. One got funny ideas, the other couldn't stand the strain. If you don't get funny ideas, and don't crack up, you will make out in a big--and I mean _really_ big--way." "If I do either I'll be more than somewhat surprised." Olmstead's features set themselves into a mirthless, uncompromising, somehow bitter grin. "So will I." Isaacson agreed. He knew what this man was, and just how case-hardened he was. He knew that he had fought Morgan himself to a scoreless tie after twisting Herkimer--and he was no soft touch--into a pretzel in nothing flat. At the thought of the secretary, so recently and so mysteriously vanished, the magnate's mind left for a moment the matter in hand. What was at the bottom of that affair--the Lens or the woman? Or both? If he were in Morgan's shoes ... but he wasn't. He had enough grief of his own, without worrying about any of Morgan's stinkeroos. He studied Olmstead's inscrutable, subtly sneering smile and knew that he had made a wise decision. "I gather that I am going to be one of the main links in the primary chain of deliveries. What's the technique, and how do I cover up?" "Technique first. You go fishing. You are an expert at that, I believe?" "You might say so. I won't have to do any faking there." "Some week-end soon, and _every_ week-end later on, we hope, you will indulge in your favorite sport at some lake or other. You will take the customary solid and liquid refreshments along in a lunch-box. When you have finished eating you will toss the lunch-box overboard." "That all?" "That's all." "The lunch-box, then, will be slightly special?" "More or less, although it will look ordinary enough. Now as to the cover-up. How would 'Director of Research' sound?" "I don't know. Depends on what the researchers are doing. Before I became an engineer I was a pure scientist of sorts; but that was quite a while ago and I was never a specialist." "That is one reason why I think you will do. We have plenty of specialists--too many, I often think. They dash off in all directions, without rhyme or reason. What we want is a man with enough scientific training to know in general what is going on, but what he will need mostly is hard common sense, and enough ability--mental force, you might call it--to hold the specialists down to earth and make them pull together. If you can do it--and if I didn't think you could I wouldn't be talking to you--the whole force will know that you are earning your pay; just as we could not hide the fact that your two predecessors weren't." "Put that way it sounds good. I wouldn't wonder if I could handle it." The conversation went on, but the rest of it is of little importance here. The plane landed. Isaacson introduced the new Director of Research to Works Manager Rand, who in turn introduced him to a few of his scientists and to the svelte and spectacular red-head who was to be his private secretary. It was clear from the first that the Research Department was not going to be an easy one to manage. The top men were defiant, the middle ranks were sullen, the smaller fry were apprehensive as well as sullen. The secretary flaunted chips on both shapely shoulders. Men and women alike expected the application of the old wheeze "a new broom sweeps clean" for the third time in scarcely twice that many months, and they were defying him to do his worst. Wherefore they were very much surprised when the new boss did nothing whatever for two solid weeks except read reports and get acquainted with his department. "How d'ya like your new boss, May?" another secretary asked, during a break. "Oh, not too bad ... I guess." May's tone was full of reservations. "He's quiet--sort of reserved--no passes or anything like that--it'd be funny if I finally got a boss that had something on the ball, wouldn't it? But you know what, Molly?" The red-head giggled suddenly. "I had a camera-fiend first, you know, with a million credits' worth of stereo-cams and such stuff, and then a golf-nut. I wonder what this Dr. Olmstead does with his spare cash?" "You'll find out, dearie, no doubt." Molly's tone gave the words a meaning slightly different from the semantic one of their arrangement. "I intend to, Molly--I _fully_ intend to." May's meaning, too, was not expressed exactly by the sequence of words used. "It must be tough, a boss's life. Having to sit at a desk or be in conference six or seven hours a day--when he isn't playing around somewhere--for a measly thousand credits or so a month. How do they get that way?" "You said it, May. You _really_ said it. But we'll get ours, huh?" Time went on. George Olmstead studied reports, and more reports. He read one, and re-read it, frowning. He compared it minutely with another; then sent red-headed May to hunt up one which had been turned in a couple of weeks before. He took them home that evening, and in the morning he punched three buttons. Three stiffly polite young men obeyed his summons. "Good morning, Doctor Olmstead." "Morning, boys. I'm not up on the fundamental theory of any one of these three reports, but if you combine this, and this, and this," indicating heavily-penciled sections of the three documents, "would you, or would you not, be able to work out a process that would do away with about three-quarters of the final purification and separation processes?" They did not know. It had not been the business of any one of them, or of all them collectively, to find out. "I'm making it your business as of now. Drop whatever you're doing, put your heads together, and find out. Theory first, then a small-scale laboratory experiment. Then come back here on the double." "Yes, sir," and in a few days they were back. "Does it work?" "In theory it should, sir, and on a laboratory scale it does." The three young men were, if possible, even stiffer than before. It was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that a Director of Research would seize credit for work which he was not capable of doing. "Good. Miss Reed, get me Rand ... Rand? Olmstead. Three of my boys have just hatched out something that may be worth quite a few million credits a year to us.... Me? Hell, no! Talk to them. I can't understand any one of the three parts of it, to say nothing of inventing it. I want you to give 'em a class AAA priority on the pilot plant, as of right now. If they can develop it, and I'm betting they can, I'm going to put their pictures in the Northport News and give 'em a couple of thousand credits apiece and a couple of weeks vacation to spend it in.... Yeah, I'll send 'em in." He turned to the flabbergasted three. "Take your dope in to Rand--now. Show him what you've got; then tear into that pilot plant." And, a little later, Molly and May again met in the powder room. "So your new boss is a _fisherman_!" Molly snickered. "And they say he paid over _two hundred credits_ for a _reel_! You were right, May; a boss's life must be mighty hard to take. And he sits around more and does less, they say, than any other exec in the plant." "_Who_ says so, the dirty, sneaking liars?" the red-head blazed, completely unaware that she had reversed her former position. "And even if it _was_ so, which it isn't, he can do more work sitting perfectly still than any other boss in the whole Works can do tearing around at forty parsecs a minute, so there!" George Olmstead was earning his salary. His position was fully consolidated when, a few days later, a tremor of excitement ran through the Research Department. "Heads up, everybody! Mr. Isaacson--himself--is coming--_here_! What for, I wonder? Y'don't s'pose he's going to take the Old Man away from us already, do you?" He came. He went through, for the first time, the entire department. He observed minutely, and he understood what he saw. Olmstead led the Big Boss into his private office and flipped the switch which supposedly rendered that sanctum proof against any and all forms of spying, eavesdropping, intrusion, and communication. It did not, however, close the deeper, subtler channels which the Lensmen used. "Good work, George. So _damned_ good that I'm going to have to take you out of Department Q entirely and make you Works Manager of our new plant on Vegia. Have you got a man you can break in to take your place here?" "Including Department Q? No." Although Olmstead did not show it, he was disappointed at hearing the word "Vegia". He had been aiming much higher than that--at the secret planet of the Boskonian Armed Forces, no less--but there might still be enough time to win a transfer there. "Excluding. I've got another good man here now for that. Jones. Not heavy enough, though, for Vegia." "In that case, yes. Dr. Whitworth, one of the boys who worked out the new process. It'll take a little time, though. Three weeks minimum." "Three weeks it is. Today's Friday. You've got things in shape, haven't you, so that you can take the week-end off?" "I was figuring on it. I'm not going where I thought I was, though, I imagine." "Probably not. Lake Chesuncook, on Route 273. Rough country, and the hotel is something less than fourth rate, but the fishing can't be beat." "I'm glad of that. When I fish, I like to catch something." "It would smell if you didn't. They stock lunch-boxes in the cafeteria, you know. Have your girl get you one, full of sandwiches and stuff. Start early this afternoon, as soon as you can after I leave. Be sure and see Jones, with your lunch-box, before you leave. Good-bye." "Miss Reed, please send Whitworth in. Then skip down to the cafeteria and get me a lunch-box. Sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. Provender suitable for a wet and hungry fisherman." "Yes, _sir_!" There were no chips now; the red-head's boss was the top ace of the whole plant. "Hi, Ned. Take the throne." Olmstead waved his hand at the now vacant chair behind the big desk. "Hold it down 'til I get back. Monday, maybe." "Going fishing, huh?" Gone was all trace of stiffness, of reserve, of unfriendliness. "You big, lucky stiff!" "Well, my brilliant young squirt, maybe you'll get old and fat enough to go fishing yourself some day. Who knows? 'Bye." Lunch-box in hand and encumbered with tackle, Olmstead walked blithely along the corridor to the office of Assistant Works Manager Jones. While he had not known just what to expect, he was not surprised to see a lunch-box exactly like his own upon the side-table. He placed his box beside it. "Hi, Olmstead." By no slightest flicker of expression did either Lensman step out of character. "Shoving off early?" "Yeah. Dropped by to let the Head Office know I won't be in 'til Monday." "O.K. So'm I, but more speed for me. Chemquassabamticook Lake." "Do you pronounce that or sneeze it? But have fun, my boy. I'm combining business with pleasure, though--breaking in Whitworth on my job. That Fairplay thing is going to break in about an hour, and it'll scare the pants off of him. But it'll keep until Monday, anyway, and if he handles it right he's just about in." Jones grinned. "A bit brutal, perhaps, but a sure way to find out. 'Bye." "So long." Olmstead strolled out, nonchalantly picking up the wrong lunch box on the way, and left the building. He ordered his Dillingham, and tossed the lunch-box aboard as carelessly as though it did not contain an unknown number of millions of credits' worth of clear-quill, uncut thionite. "I hope you have a nice week-end, sir," the yard-man said, as he helped stow baggage and tackle. "Thanks, Otto. I'll bring you a couple of fish Monday, if I catch that many," and it should be said in passing that he brought them. Lensmen keep their promises, under whatever circumstances or however lightly given. It being mid-afternoon of Friday, the traffic was already heavy. Northport was not a metropolis, of course; but on the other hand it did not have metropolitan multi-tiered, one-way, non-intersecting streets. But Olmstead was in no hurry. He inched his spectacular mount--it was a violently iridescent chrome green in color, with highly polished chromium gingerbread wherever there was any excuse for gingerbread to be--across the city and into the north-bound side of the superhighway. Even then, he did not hurry. He wanted to hit the inspection station at the edge of the Preserve at dusk. Ninety miles an hour would do it. He worked his way into the ninety-mile lane and became motionless relative to the other vehicles on the strip. It was a peculiar sensation; it seemed as though the cars themselves were stationary, with the pavement flowing backward beneath them. There was no passing, no weaving, no cutting in and out. Only occasionally would the formation be broken as a car would shift almost imperceptibly to one side or the other; speeding up or slowing down to match the assigned speed of the neighboring way. The afternoon was bright and clear, neither too hot nor too cold. Olmstead enjoyed his drive thoroughly, and arrived at the turn-off right on schedule. Leaving the wide, smooth way, he slowed down abruptly; even a Dillingham Super-Sporter could not make speed on the narrow, rough, and hilly road to Chesuncook Lake. At dusk he reached the Post. Instead of stopping on the pavement he pulled off the road, got out, stretched hugely, and took a few drum-major's steps to take the kinks out of his legs. "A lot of road, eh?" the smartly-uniformed trooper remarked. "No guns?" "No guns." Olmstead opened up for inspection. "From Northport. Funny, isn't it, how hard it is to stop, even when you aren't in any particular hurry? Guess I'll eat now--join me in a sandwich and some hot coffee or a cold lemon sour or cherry soda?" "I've got my own supper, thanks; I was just going to eat. But did you say a _cold_ lemon sour?" "Uh-huh. Ice-cold. Zero degrees Centigrade." "I _will_ join you, in that case. Thanks." Olmstead opened a frost-lined compartment; took out two half-liter bottles; placed them and his open lunch-box invitingly on the low stone wall. "Hm ... m ... m. Quite a zipper you got there, mister." The trooper gazed admiringly at the luxurious, two-wheeled monster; listened appreciatively to its almost inaudible hum. "I've heard about those new supers, but that is the first one I ever saw. Nice. All the comforts of home, eh?" "Just about. Sure you won't help me clean up on those sandwiches, before they get stale?" Seated on the wall, the two men ate and talked. If that trooper had known what was in the box beside his leg he probably would have fallen over backward; but how was he even to suspect? There was nothing crass or rough or coarse about any of the work of any of Boskone's high-level operators. Olmstead drove on to the lake and took up his reservation at the ramshackle hotel. He slept, and bright and early the next morning he was up and fishing--and this part of the performance he really enjoyed. He knew his stuff and the fish were there; big, wary, and game. He loved it. At noon he ate, and quite openly and brazenly consigned the "empty" box to the watery deep. Even if he had not had so many fish to carry, he was not the type to lug a cheap lunch-box back to town. He fished joyously all afternoon, without getting quite the limit, and as the sun grazed the horizon he started his putt-putt and skimmed back to the dock. The thing hadn't sent out any radiation yet, Northrop informed him tensely, but it certainly would, and when it did they'd be ready. There were Lensmen and Patrolmen all over the place, thicker than hair on a dog. And George Olmstead, sighing wearily and yet blissfully anticipatory of one more day of enthralling sport, gathered up his equipment and his fish and strolled toward the hotel. CHAPTER 17 Forty thousand miles from Earth's center the _Chicago_ loafed along a circular arc, inert, at a mere ten thousand miles an hour; a speed which, and not by accident, kept her practically stationary above a certain point on the planet's surface. Nor was it by chance that both Virgil Samms and Roderick Kinnison were aboard. And a dozen or so other craft, cruisers and such, whose officers were out to put space-time in their logs, were flitting aimlessly about; but never very far away from the flagship. And farther out--well out--a cordon of diesel-powered detector ships swept space to the full limit of their prodigious reach. The navigating officers of those vessels knew to a nicety the place and course of every ship lawfully in the ether, and the appearance of even one unscheduled trace would set in motion a long succession of carefully-planned events. And far below, grazing atmosphere, never very far from the direct line between the _Chicago_ and Earth's core, floated a palatial pleasure yacht. And this craft carried not one Lensman, or two, but eight; two of whom kept their eyes fixed upon their observation plates. They were watching a lunch-box resting upon the bottom of a lake. "Hasn't it radiated _yet_?" Roderick Kinnison demanded. "Or been approached, or moved?" "Not yet," Lyman Cleveland replied, crisply. "Neither Northrop's rig nor mine has shown any sign of activity." He did not amplify the statement, nor was there need. Mason Northrop was a Master Electronicist; Cleveland was perhaps the world's greatest living expert. Neither of them had detected radiation. Ergo, none existed. Equally certainly the box had not moved, or been moved, or approached. "No change, Rod," Doctor Frederick Rodebush Lensed the assured thought. "Six of us have been watching the plates in five-minute shifts." A few minutes later, however: "Here is a thought which may be of interest," DalNalten the Venerian announced, spraying himself with a couple pints of water. "It is natural enough, of course, for any Venerian to be in or on any water he can reach--I would enjoy very much being on or in that lake myself--but it may not be entirely by coincidence that one particular Venerian, Ossmen, is visiting this particular lake at this particular time." "What!" Nine Lensmen yelled the thought practically as one. "Precisely. Ossmen." It was a measure of the Venerian Lensman's concern that he used only two words instead of twenty or thirty. "In the red boat with the yellow sail." "Do you see any detector rigs?" Samms asked. "He wouldn't need any," DalNalten put in. "He will be able to see it. Or, if a little colane had been rubbed on it which no Tellurian could have noticed, any Venerian could smell it from one end of that lake to the other." "True. I didn't think of that. It may not have a transmitter after all." "Maybe not, but keep on listening, anyway," the Port Admiral ordered. "Bend a plate on Ossmen, and a couple more on the rest of the boats. But Ossmen is clean, you say, Jack? Not even a spy-ray block?" "He couldn't have a block, Dad. It'd give too much away, here on our home grounds. Like on Eridan, where their ops could wear anything they could lift, but we had to go naked." He flinched mentally as he recalled his encounter with Hazel the Hell-cat, and Northrop flinched with him. "That's right, Rod," Olmstead in his boat below agreed, and Conway Costigan, in his room in Northport, concurred. The top-drawer operatives of the enemy depended for safety upon perfection of technique, not upon crude and dangerous mechanical devices. "Well, since you're all so sure of it, I'll buy it," and the waiting went on. Under the slight urge of the light and vagrant breeze, the red boat moved slowly across the water. A somnolent, lackadaisical youth, who very evidently cared nothing about where the boat went, sat in its stern, with his left arm draped loosely across the tiller. Nor was Ossmen any more concerned. His only care, apparently, was to avoid interference with the fishermen; his under-water jaunts were long, even for a Venerian, and he entered and left the water as smoothly as only a Venerian--or a seal--could. "However, he could have, and probably has got, a capsule spy-ray detector," Jack offered, presently. "Or, since a Venerian can swallow anything one inch smaller than a kitchen stove, he could have a whole analyzing station stashed away in his stomach. Nobody's put a beam on him yet, have you?" Nobody had. "It might be smart not to. Watch him with 'scopes ... and when he gets up close to the box, better pull your beams off of it. DalNalten, I don't suppose it would be quite bright for you to go swimming down there too, would it?" "Very definitely not, which is why I am up here and dry. None of them would go near it." They waited, and finally Ossmen's purposeless wanderings brought him over the spot on the lake's bottom which was the target of so many Tellurian eyes. He gazed at the discarded lunch-box as incuriously as he had looked at so many other sunken objects, and swam over it as casually--and only the ultra-cameras caught what he actually did. He swam serenely on. "The box is still there," the spy-ray men reported, "but the package is gone." "Good!" Kinnison exclaimed, "Can you 'scopists see it on him?" "Ten to one they can't," Jack said. "He swallowed it. I expected him to swallow it box and all." "We can't see it, sir. He must have swallowed it." "Make sure." "Yes, sir.... He's back on the boat now and we've shot him from all angles. He's clean--nothing outside." "Perfect! That means he isn't figuring on slipping it to somebody else in a crowd. This will be an ordinary job of shadowing from here on in, so I'll put in the umbrella." The detector ships were recalled. The _Chicago_ and the various other ships of war returned to their various bases. The pleasure craft floated away. But on the other hand there were bursts of activity throughout the forest for a mile or so back from the shores of the lake. Camps were struck. Hiking parties decided that they had hiked enough and began to retrace their steps. Lithe young men, who had been doing this and that, stopped doing it and headed for the nearest trails. For Kinnison _pere_ had erred slightly in saying that the rest of the enterprise was to be an ordinary job of shadowing. No ordinary job would do. With the game this nearly in the bag it must be made absolutely certain that no suspicion was aroused, and yet Samms had to have _facts_. Sharp, hard, clear facts; facts so self-evidently facts that no intelligence above idiot grade could possibly mistake them for anything but facts. Wherefore Ossmen the Venerian was not alone thenceforth. From lake to hotel, from hotel to car, along the road, into and in and out of train and plane, clear to an ordinary-enough-looking building in an ordinary business section of New York, he was _never_ alone. Where the traveling population was light, the Patrol operatives were few and did not crowd the Venerian too nearly; where dense, as in a metropolitan station, they ringed him three deep. He reached his destination, which was of course spy-ray proofed, late Sunday night. He went in, remained briefly, came out. "Shall we spy-ray him, Virge? Follow him? Or what?" "No spy-rays. Follow him. Cover him like a blanket. At the usual time give him the usual spy-ray going-over, but not until then. This time, make it _thorough_. Make certain that he hasn't got it on him, in him, or in or around his house." "There'll be nothing doing here tonight, will there?" "No, it would be too noticeable. So you, Fred, and Lyman, take the first trick; the rest of us will get some sleep." When the building opened Monday morning the Lensmen were back, with dozens of others, including Knobos of Mars. There were also present or nearby literally hundreds of the shrewdest, most capable detectives of Earth. "So _this_ is their headquarters--one of them at least," the Martian thought, studying the trickle of people entering and leaving the building. "It is as we thought, Dal, why we could never find it, why we could never trace any wholesaler backward. None of us has ever seen any of these persons before. Complete change of personnel per operation; probably inter-planetary. Long periods of quiescence. Check?" "Check: but we have them now." "Just like that, huh?" Jack Kinnison jibed; and from his viewpoint his idea was the more valid, for the wholesalers were very clever operators indeed. From the more professional viewpoint of Knobos and DalNalten, however, who had fought a steadily losing battle so long, the task was not too difficult. Their forces were beautifully organized and synchronized; they were present in such overwhelming numbers that "tails" could be changed every fifteen seconds; long before anybody, however suspicious, could begin to suspect any one shadow. Nor was it necessary for the tails to signal each other, however inconspicuously, or to indicate any suspect at change-over time. Lensed thoughts directed every move, without confusion or error. And there were tiny cameras with tremendous, protuberant lenses, the "long eyes" capable of taking wire-sharp close ups from five hundred feet; and other devices and apparatus and equipment too numerous to mention here. Thus the wholesalers were traced and their transactions with the retail peddlers were recorded. And from that point on, even Jack Kinnison had to admit that the sailing was clear. These small fry were not smart, and their customers were even less so. None had screens or detectors or other apparatus; their every transaction could be and was recorded from a distance of many miles by the ultra-instruments of the Patrol. And not only the transactions. Clearly, unmistakeably, the purchaser was followed from buying to sniffing; nor was the time intervening ever long. Thionite, then as now, was bought at retail only to use, and the whole ghastly thing went down on tape and film. The gasping, hysterical appeal; the exchange of currency for drug; the headlong rush to a place of solitude; the rigid muscle-lock and the horribly ecstatic transports; the shaken, soul-searing recovery or the entranced death. It all went on record. It was sickening to have to record such things. More than one observer did sicken in fact, and had to be relieved. But Virgil Samms had to have concrete, positive, irrefutable evidence. He got it. Any possible jury, upon seeing that evidence, would know it to be the truth; no possible jury, after seeing that evidence, could bring in any verdict other than "guilty". Oddly enough, Jack Kinnison was the only casualty of that long and hectic day. A man--later proved to be a middle-sized potentate of the underworld--who was not even under suspicion at the time, for some reason or other got the idea that Jack was after him. The Lensman had, perhaps, allowed some part of his long eye to show; a fast and efficient long-range telephoto lens is a devilishly awkward thing to conceal. At any rate the racketeer sent out a call for help, just in case his bodyguards would not be enough, and in the meantime his personal attendants rallied enthusiastically around. They had two objects in view; One, to pass a knife expeditiously and quietly through young Kinnison's throat from ear to ear; and: Two, to tear the long eye apart and subject a few square inches of super-sensitive emulsion to the bright light of day. And if the Big Shot had known that the photographer was not alone, that the big, hulking bruiser a few feet away was also a bull, they might have succeeded. Two of the four hoods reached Jack just fractionally ahead of the other two; one to seize the camera, the other to swing the knife. But Jack Kinnison was fast; fast of brain and nerve and muscle. He saw them coming. In three flashing motions he bent the barrel of the telephoto into a neat arc around the side of the first man's head, ducked frantically under the fiercely-driven knife, and drove the toe of his boot into the spot upon which prize-fighters like to have their rabbit-punches land. Both of those attackers lost interest promptly. One of them lost interest permanently; for a telephoto lens in barrel is heavy, very rigid, and very, _very_ hard. While Battling Jack was still off balance, the other two guards arrived--but so did Mason Northrop. Mase was not quite as fast as Jack was; but, as has been pointed out, he was bigger and much stronger. When he hit a man, with either hand, that man dropped. It was the same as being on the receiving end of the blow of a twenty-pound hammer falling through a distance of ninety seven and one-half feet. The Lensmen had of course also yelled for help, and it took only a split second for a Patrol speedster to travel from any given point to any other in the same county. It took no time at all for that speedster to fill a couple of square blocks with patterns of force through which neither bullets nor beams could be driven. Therefore the battle ended as suddenly as it began; before more thugs, with their automatics and portables, could reach the scene. Kinnison _fils_ cursed and damned fulminantly the edict which had forbidden arms that day, and swore that he would never get out of bed again without strapping on at least two blasters; but he had to admit finally that he had nothing to squawk about. Kinnison _pere_ explained quite patiently--for him--that all he had got out of the little fracas was a split lip, that young Northrop's hair wasn't even mussed, and that if everybody had been packing guns some scatter-brained young damn fool like him would have started blasting and blown everything higher than up--would have spoiled Samms' whole operation maybe beyond repair. Now would he please quit bellyaching and get to hell out? He got. * * * * * "That buttons thionite up, don't you think?" Rod Kinnison asked. "And the lawyers will have plenty of time to get the case licked into shape and lined up for trial." "Yes and no." Samms frowned in thought. "The _evidence_ is complete, from original producer to ultimate consumer; but our best guess is that it will take years to get the really important offenders behind bars." "Why? I thought you were giving them altogether too much time when you scheduled the blow-off for three weeks ahead of election." "Because the drug racket is only a small part of it. We're going to break the whole thing at once, you know, and Mateese covers a lot more ground--murder, kidnapping, bribery, corruption, misfeasance--practically everything you can think of." "I know. What of it?" "Jurisdiction, among other things. With the President, over half of the Congress, much of the judiciary, and practically all of the political bosses and police chiefs of the Continent under indictment at once, the legal problem becomes incredibly difficult. The Patrol's Department of Law has been working on it twenty four hours a day, and the only thing they seem sure of is a long succession of bitterly-contested points of law. There are no precedents whatever." "Precedents be damned! They're guilty and everybody knows it. We'll change the laws so that...." "We will _not_!" Samms interrupted, sharply. "We want and we will have government by law, not by men. We have had too much of that already. Speed is not of the essence; justice very definitely is." "'Crusader' Samms, now and forever! But I'll buy it, Virge--now let's get back down to earth. Operation Zwilnik is all set. Mateese is going good. Zabriska tied into Zwilnik. That leaves Operation Boskone, which is, I suppose, still getting nowhere fast." The First Lensman did not reply. It was, and both men knew it. The shrewdest, most capable and experienced operatives of the Patrol had hit that wall with everything they had, and had simply bounced. Low-level trials had found no point of contact, no angle of approach. Middle level, ditto. George Olmstead, working at the highest possible level, was morally certain that he had found a point of contact, but had not been able to do anything with it. "How about calling a Council conference on it?" Kinnison asked finally. "Or Bergenholm at least? Maybe he can get one of his hunches on it." "I have discussed it with them all, just as I have with you. No one had anything constructive to offer, except to go ahead with Bennett as you are doing. The concensus is that the Boskonians know just as much about our military affairs as we know about theirs--no more." "It _would_ be too much to expect them to be dumb enough to figure us as dumb enough to depend only on our visible Grand Fleet, after the warning they gave us at The Hill," Kinnison admitted. "Yes. What worries me most is that they had a running start." "Not enough to count," the Port Admiral declared. "We can out-produce 'em and out-fight 'em." "Don't be over-optimistic. You can't deny them the possession of brains, ability, man-power and resources at least equal to ours." "I don't have to." Kinnison remained obstinately cheerful. "Morale, my boy, is what counts. Man-power and tonnage and fire-power are important, of course, but morale has won every war in history. And our morale right now is higher than a cat's back--higher than any time since John Paul Jones--and getting higher by the day." "Yes?" The question was monosyllabic but potent. "Yes. I mean just that--_yes_. From what we know of their system they _can't_ have the morale we've got. Anything they can do we can do more of and better. What you've got, Virge, is a bad case of ingrowing nerves. You've never been to Bennett, in spite of the number of times I've asked you to. I say take time right now and come along--it'll be good for what ails you. It will also be a very fine thing for Bennett and for the Patrol--you'll find yourself no stranger there." "You may have something there ... I'll do it." Port Admiral and First Lensman went to Bennett, not in the _Chicago_ or other superdreadnaught, but in a two-man speedster. This was necessary because space-travel, as far as that planet was concerned, was a strictly one-way affair except for Lensmen. Only Lensmen could leave Bennett, under any circumstances or for any reason whatever. There was no out-going mail, express, or freight. Even the war-vessels of the Fleet, while on practice maneuvers outside the bottle-tight envelopes surrounding the system, were so screened that no unauthorized communication could possibly be made. "In other words," Kinnison finished explaining, "we slapped on everything anybody could think of, including Bergenholm and Rularion; and believe me, brother, that was a lot of stuff." "But wouldn't the very fact of such rigid restrictions operate against morale? It is a truism of psychology that imprisonment, like everything else, is purely relative." "Yeah, that's what I told Rularion, except I used simpler and rougher language. You know how sarcastic and superior he is, even when he's wrong?" "_How_ I know!" "Well, when he's right he's too damned insufferable for words. You'd've thought he was talking to the prize boob of a class of half-wits. As long as nobody on the planet knew that there was any such thing as space-travel, or suspected that they were not the only form of intelligent life in the universe, it was all right. No such concept as being planet-bound could exist. They had all the room there was. But after they met us, and digested all the implications, they would develop the colly-wobbles no end. This, of course, is an extreme simplification of the way the old coot poured it into me; but he came through with the solution, so I took it like a little man." "What was the solution?" "It's a shame you were too busy to come in on it. You'll see when we land." But Virgil Samms was quick on the uptake. Even before they landed, he understood. When the speedster slowed down for atmosphere he saw blazoned upon the clouds a welter of one many-times repeated signal; as they came to ground he saw that the same set of symbols was repeated, not only upon every available cloud, but also upon airships, captive balloons, streamers, roofs and sides of buildings--even, in multi-colored rocks and flower-beds, upon the ground itself. "Twenty Haress," Samms translated, and frowned in thought. "A date of the Bennettan year. Would it by any chance happen to coincide with our Tellurian November fourteenth of this present year?" "Bright boy!" Kinnison applauded. "I thought you'd get it, but not so fast. Yes--election day." "I see. They know what is going on, then?" "Everything that counts. They know what we stand to win--and lose. They've named it Liberation Day, and everything on the planet is building up to it in a grand crescendo. I was a little afraid of it at first, but if the screens are really tight it won't make any difference how many people know it, and if they aren't the beans would all be spilled anyway. And it really works--I get a bigger thrill every time I come here." "I can see where it might work." Bennett was a fully Tellurian world in mass, in atmosphere and in climate; her native peoples were human to the limit of classification, both physically and mentally. And First Lensman Samms, as he toured it with his friend, found a world aflame with a zeal and an ardor unknown to blase Earth since the days of the Crusades. The Patrol's cleverest and shrewdest psychologists, by merely sticking to the truth, had done a marvelous job. Bennett knew that it was the Arsenal and the Navy Yard of Civilization, and it was proud of it. Its factories were humming as they had never hummed before; every industry, every business, every farm was operating at one hundred percent of capacity. Bennett was dotted and spattered with spaceports already built, and hundreds more were being rushed to completion. The already staggering number of ships of war operating out of those ports was being augmented every hour by more and ever more ultra-modern, ultra-fast, ultra-powerful shapes. It was an honor to help build those ships; it was a still greater one to help man them. Competitive examinations were being held constantly, nor were all or even most of the applicants native Bennettans. Samms did not have to ask where these young people were coming from. He knew. From all the planets of Civilization, attracted by carefully-worded advertisements of good jobs at high pay on new and highly secret projects on newly discovered planets. There were hundreds of such ads. Most were probably the Patrol's, and led here; many were of Spaceways, Uranium Incorporated, and other mercantile firms. The possibility that some of them might lead to what was now being called Boskonia had been tested thoroughly, but with uniformly negative results. Lensmen had applied by scores for those non-Patrol jobs and had found them bona-fide. The conclusion was unavoidable--Boskone was doing its recruiting on planets unknown to any wearer of Arisia's Lens. On the other hand, more than a trickle of Boskonians were applying for Patrol jobs, but Samms was almost certain that none had been accepted. The final screening was done by Lensmen, and in such matters Lensmen did not make many or serious mistakes. Bennett had been informed of the First Lensman's arrival, and Kinnison had been guilty of a gross understatement indeed in telling Samms that he would not be regarded as a stranger. Wherever Samms went he was met by wildly enthusiastic crowds. He had to make speeches, each of which was climaxed by a tremendous roar of "TO LIBERATION DAY!" "No Lensman material here, you say, Rod?" Samms asked, after the first city-shaking demonstration was over. One of his prime concerns, throughout his life, was this. "With all this enthusiasm? Sure?" "We haven't found any good enough to refer to you yet. However, in a few years, when the younger generation gets a little older, there certainly will be." "Check." The tour of inspection and acquaintance was finished, the two Lensmen started back to Earth. "Well, my skeptical and pessimistic friend, was I lying, or not?" Kinnison asked, as soon as the speedster's ports were sealed. "Can they match that or not?" "You weren't--and I don't believe they can. I have never seen anything like it. Autocracies have parades and cheers and demonstrations, of course, but they have always been forced--artificial. Those were spontaneous." "Not only that, but the enthusiasm will carry through. We'll be piping hot and ready to go. But about this stumping--you said I'd better start as soon as we get back?" "Within a few days, I'd say." "I wouldn't wonder, so let's use this time in working out a plan of campaign. My idea is to start out like this...." CHAPTER 18 Conway Costigan, leaving behind him scores of clues, all highly misleading, severed his connection with Uranium, Inc. as soon as he dared after Operation Zwilnik had been brought to a successful close. The technical operation, that is; the legal battles in which it figured so largely were to run on for enough years to make the word "zwilnik" a common noun and adjective in the language. He came to Tellus as unobtrusively as was his wont, and took an inconspicuous but very active part in Operation Mateese, now in full swing. "Now is the time for all good men and true to come to the aid of the party, eh?" Clio Costigan giggled. "You can play that straight across the keyboard of your electric, pet, and not with just two fingers, either. Did you hear what the boss told 'em today?" "Yes." The girl's levity disappeared. "They're so _dirty_, Spud--I'm really afraid." "So am I. But we're not too lily-fingered ourselves if we have to be, and we're covering 'em like a blanket--Kinnison and Samms both." "Good." "And in that connection, I'll have to be out half the night again tonight. All right?" "Of course. It's so nice having you home at all, darling, instead of a million light-years away, that I'm practically delirious with delight." It was sometimes hard to tell what impish Mrs. Costigan meant by what she said. Costigan looked at her, decided she was taking him for a ride, and smacked her a couple of times where it would do the most good. He then kissed her thoroughly and left. He had very little time, these days, either to himself or for his lovely and adored wife. For Roderick Kinnison's campaign, which had started out rough and not too clean, became rougher and rougher, and no cleaner, as it went along. Morgan and his crew were swinging from the heels, with everything and anything they could dig up or invent, however little of truth or even of plausibility it might contain, and Rod the Rock had never held even in principle with the gentle precept of turning the other cheek. He was rather an Old Testamentarian, and he was no neophyte at dirty fighting. As a young operative, skilled in the punishing, maiming techniques of hand-to-hand rough-and-tumble combat, he had brawled successfully in most of the dives of most of the solarian planets and of most of their moons. With this background, and being a quick study, and under the masterly coaching of Virgil Samms, Nels Bergenholm, and Rularion of North Polar Jupiter, it did not take him long to learn the various gambits and ripostes of this non-physical, but nevertheless no-holds-barred, political mayhem. And the "boys and girls" of the Patrol worked like badgers, digging up an item here and a fact there and a bit of information somewhere else, all for the day of reckoning which was to come. They used ultra-wave scanners, spy-rays, long eyes, stool-pigeons--everything they could think of to use--and they could not _always_ be blocked out or evaded. "We've _got_ it, boss--now let's _use_ it!" "No. Save it! Nail it down, solid! Get the facts--names, dates, places, and amounts. Prove it first--then save it!" _Prove it! Save it!_ The joint injunction was used so often that it came to be a slogan and was accepted as such. Unlike most slogans, however, it was carefully and diligently put to use. The operatives proved it and saved it, over and over, over and over again; by dint of what unsparing effort and selfless devotion only they themselves ever fully knew. Kinnison stumped the Continent. He visited every state, all of the big cities, most of the towns, and many villages and hamlets; and always, wherever he went, a part of the show was to demonstrate to his audiences how the Lens worked. "Look at me. You know that no two individuals are or ever can be alike. Robert Johnson is not like Fred Smith; Joe Jones is entirely different from John Brown. Look at me again. Concentrate upon whatever it is in your mind that makes me Roderick Kinnison, the individual. That will enable each of you to get into as close touch with me as though our two minds were one. I am not talking now; you are reading my mind. Since you are reading my very mind, you know exactly what I am _really_ thinking, for better or for worse. It is impossible for my mind to lie to yours, since I can change neither the basic pattern of my personality nor my basic way of thought; nor would I if I could. Being in my mind, you know that already; you know what my basic quality is. My friends call it strength and courage; Pirate Chief Morgan and his cut-throat crew call it many other things. Be that as it may, you now know whether or not you want me for your President. I can do nothing whatever to sway your opinion, for what your minds have perceived you know to be the truth. That is the way the Lens works. It bares the depths of my mind to yours, and in return enables me to understand your thoughts. "But it is in no sense hypnotism, as Morgan is so foolishly trying to make you believe. Morgan knows as well as the rest of us do that even the most accomplished hypnotist, with all his apparatus, CAN NOT AFFECT A STRONG AND DEFINITELY OPPOSED WILL. He is therefore saying that each and every one of you now receiving this thought is such a spineless weakling that--but you may draw your own conclusions. "In closing, remember--nail this fact down so solidly that you will never forget it--a sound and healthy mind CAN NOT LIE. The mouth can, and does. So does the typewriter. But the mind--NEVER! I can hide my thoughts from you, even while we are en rapport, like this ... but I CAN NOT LIE TO YOU. That is why, some day, all of your highest executives will have to be Lensmen, and not politicians, diplomats, crooks and boodlers. I thank you." As that long, bitter, incredibly vicious campaign neared its vitriolic end tension mounted higher and ever higher: and in a room in the Samms home three young Lensmen and a red-haired girl were not at ease. All four were lean and drawn. Jack Kinnison was talking. "... not the party, so much, but Dad. He started out with bare fists, and now he's wading into 'em with spiked brass knuckles." "You can play _that_ across the board," Costigan agreed. "He's really giving 'em hell," Northrop said, admiringly. "Did you boys listen in on his Casper speech last night?" They hadn't; they had been too busy. "I could give it to you on your Lenses, but I couldn't reproduce the tone--the exquisite way he lifted large pieces of hide and rubbed salt into the raw places. When he gets excited you know he can't help but use voice, too, so I got some of it on a record. He starts out on voice, nice and easy, as usual; then goes onto his Lens without talking; then starts yelling as well as thinking. Listen:" "You ought to have a Lensman president. You may not believe that any Lensman is, and as a matter of fact _must_ be incorruptible. That is my belief, as you can feel for yourselves, but I cannot _prove_ it to you. Only time can do that. It is a self-evident fact, however, which you can feel for yourselves, that a Lensman president could not lie to you except by word of mouth or in writing. You could demand from him at any time a Lensed statement upon any subject. Upon some matters of state he could and should refuse to answer; but not upon any question involving moral turpitude. If he answered, you would know the truth. If he refused to answer, you would know why and could initiate impeachment proceedings then and there. "In the past there have been presidents who used that high office for low purposes; whose very memory reeks of malfeasance and corruption. One was impeached, others should have been. Witherspoon never should have been elected. Witherspoon should have been impeached the day after he was inaugurated. Witherspoon should be impeached now. We know, and at the Grand Rally at New York Spaceport three weeks from tonight we are going to PROVE, that Witherspoon is simply a minor cog-wheel in the Morgan-Towne-Isaacson machine, 'playing footsie' at command with whatever group happens to be the highest bidder at the moment, irrespective of North America's or the System's good. Witherspoon is a gangster, a cheat, and a God damn liar, but he is of very little actual importance; merely a boodling nincompoop. Morgan is the real boss and the real menace, the Operating Engineer of the lowest-down, lousiest, filthiest, rottenest, most corrupt machine of murderers, extortionists, bribe-takers, panderers, perjurers, and other pimples on the body politic that has ever disgraced any so-called civilized government. Good night." "Wow!" Jack Kinnison yelped. "That's high, even for him!" "Just a minute, Jack," Jill cautioned. "The other side, too. Listen to this choice bit from Senator Morgan." "It is not exactly hypnotism, but something infinitely worse; something that steals away your very minds; that makes anyone listening believe that white is yellow, red, purple, or pea-green. Until our scientists have checked this menace, until we have every wearer of that cursed Lens behind steel bars, I advise you in all earnestness not to listen to them at all. If you do listen your minds will surely be insidiously decomposed and broken; you will surely end your days gibbering in a padded cell. "And murders? _Murders!_ The feeble remnants of the gangs which our government has all but wiped out may perhaps commit a murder or so per year; the perpetrators of which are caught, tried, and punished. But how many of your sons and daughters has Roderick Kinnison murdered, either personally or through his uniformed slaves? Think! Read the record! Then make him explain, if he can; but do not listen to his lying, mind-destroying Lens. "Democracy? Bah! What does 'Rod the Rock' Kinnison--the hardest, most vicious tyrant, the most relentless and pitiless martinet ever known to any Armed Force in the long history of our world--know of democracy? Nothing! He understands only force. All who oppose him in anything, however small, or who seek to reason with him, die without record or trace; and if he is not arrested, tried, and executed, all such will continue, tracelessly and without any pretense of trial, to die. "But at bottom, even though he is not intelligent enough to realize it, he is merely one more in the long parade of tools of ruthless and predatory wealth, the MONIED POWERS. _They_, my friends, never sleep; they have only one God, one tenet, one creed--the almighty CREDIT. _That_ is what they are after, and note how craftily, how stealthily, they have done and are doing their grabbing. Where is your representation upon that so-called Galactic Council? How did this criminal, this vicious, this outrageously unconstitutional, this irresponsible, uncontrollable, and dictatorial monstrosity come into being? How and when did you give this bloated colossus the right to establish its own currency--to have the immeasurable effrontery to debar the solidest currency in the universe, the credit of North America, from inter-planetary and inter-stellar commerce? Their aim is clear; they intend to tax you into slavery and death. Do not forget for one instant, my friends, that the power to tax is the power to destroy. THE POWER TO TAX IS THE POWER TO DESTROY. Our forefathers fought and bled and died to establish the principle that taxation without rep...." "And so on, for one solid hour!" Jill snarled, as she snapped the switch viciously. "How do you like _them_ potatoes?" "Hell's--Blazing--Pinnacles!" This from Jack, silent for seconds, and: "Rugged stuff ... very, _very_ rugged," from Northrop. "No wonder you look sort of pooped, Spud. Being Chief Bodyguard must have developed recently into quite a chore." "You ain't just snapping your choppers, bub," was Costigan's grimly flippant reply. "I've yelled for help--in force." "So have I, and I'm going to yell again, right now," Jack declared. "I don't know whether Dad is going to kill Morgan or not--and don't give a damn--but if Morgan isn't going all out to kill Dad it's because they've forgotten how to make bombs." He Lensed a call to Bergenholm. "Yes, Jack?... I will refer you to Rularion, who has had this matter under consideration." "Yes, John Kinnison, I have considered the matter and have taken action," the Jovian's calmly assured thought rolled into the minds of all, even Lensless Jill's. "The point, youth, was well taken. It was your thought that some thousands--perhaps five--of spy-ray operators and other operatives will be required to insure that the Grand Rally will not be marred by episodes of violence." "It was," Jack said, flatly. "It still is." "Not having considered all possible contingencies nor the extent of the field of necessary action, you err. The number will approach nineteen thousand very nearly. Admiral Clayton has been so advised and his staff is now at work upon a plan of action in accordance with my recommendation. Your suggestions, Conway Costigan, in the matter of immediate protection of Roderick Kinnison's person, are now in effect, and you are hereby relieved of that responsibility. I assume that you four wish to continue at work?" The Jovian's assumption was sound. "I suggest, then, that you confer with Admiral Clayton and fit yourselves into his program of security. I intend to make the same suggestion to all Lensmen and other qualified persons not engaged in work of more pressing importance." Rularion cut off and Jack scowled blackly. "The Grand Rally is going to be held three weeks before election day. I _still_ don't like it. I'd save it until the night before election--knock their teeth out with it at the last possible minute." "You're wrong, Jack; the Chief is right," Costigan argued. "Two ways. One, we can't play that kind of ball. Two, this gives them just enough rope to hang themselves." "Well ... maybe." Kinnison-like, Jack was far from being convinced. "But that's the way it's going to be, so let's call Clayton." "First," Costigan broke in. "Jill, will you please explain why they have to waste as big a man as Kinnison on such a piffling job as president? I was out in the sticks, you know--it doesn't make sense." "Because he's the only man alive who can lick Morgan's machine at the polls," Jill stated a simple fact. "The Patrol can get along without him for one term, after that it won't make any difference." "But Morgan works from the side-lines. Why couldn't he?" "The psychology is entirely different. Morgan _is_ a boss. Pops Kinnison isn't. He's a leader. See?" "Oh ... I guess so.... Yes. Go ahead." * * * * * Outwardly, New York Spaceport did not change appreciably. At any given moment of day or night there were so many hundreds of persons strolling aimlessly or walking purposefully about that an extra hundred or so made no perceptible difference. And the spaceport was only the end-point. The Patrol's activities began hundreds or thousands or millions or billions of miles away from Earth's metropolis. A web was set up through which not even a grain-of-sand meteorite could pass undetected. Every space-ship bound for Earth carried at least one passenger who would not otherwise have been aboard; passengers who, if not wearing Lenses, carried Service Special equipment amply sufficient for the work in hand. Geigers and other vastly more complicated mechanisms flew toward Earth from every direction in space; streamed toward New York in Earth's every channel of traffic. Every train and plane, every bus and boat and car, every conveyance of every kind and every pedestrian approaching New York City was searched; with a search as thorough as it was unobtrusive. And every thing and every entity approaching New York Spaceport was combed, literally by the cubic millimeter. No arrests were made. No package was confiscated, or even disturbed, throughout the ranks of public check boxes, in private offices, or in elaborate or casual hiding-places. As far as the enemy knew, the Patrol had no suspicion whatever that anything out of the ordinary was going on. That is, until the last possible minute. Then a tall, lean, space-tanned veteran spoke softly aloud, as though to himself: "Spy-ray blocks--interference--umbrella--on. Report." That voice, low and soft as it was, was picked up by every Service Special receiver within a radius of a thousand miles, and by every Lensman listening, wherever he might be. So were, in a matter of seconds, the replies. "Spy-ray blocks on, sir." "Interference on, sir." "Umbrella on, sir." No spy-ray could be driven into any part of the tremendous port. No beam, communicator or detonating, could operate anywhere near it. The enemy would now know that something had gone wrong, but he would not be able to do anything about it. "Reports received," the tanned man said, still quietly. "Operation Zunk will proceed as scheduled." And four hundred seventy one highly skilled men, carrying duplicate keys and/or whatever other specialized apparatus and equipment would be necessary, quietly took possession of four hundred seventy one objects, of almost that many shapes and sizes. And, out in the gathering crowd, a few disturbances occurred and a few ambulances dashed busily here and there. Some women had fainted, no doubt, ran the report. They always did. And Conway Costigan, who had been watching, without seeming even to look at him, a porter loading a truck with opulent-looking hand-luggage from a locker, followed man and truck out into the concourse. Closing up, he asked: "Where are you taking that baggage, Charley?" "Up Ramp One, boss," came the unflurried reply. "Flight Ninety will be late taking off, on accounta this jamboree, and they want it right up there handy." "Take it down to the...." Over the years a good many men had tried to catch Conway Costigan off guard or napping, to beat him to the punch or to the draw--with a startlingly uniform lack of success. The Lensman's fist traveled a bare seven inches: the supposed porter gasped once and traveled--or rather, staggered backward--approximately seven feet before he collapsed and sprawled unconscious upon the pavement. "Decontamination," Costigan remarked, apparently to empty air, as he picked the fellow up and draped him limply over the truckful of suitcases. "Deke. Front and center. Area forty-six. Class Eff-ex--hotter than the middle tailrace of hell." "You called Deke?" A man came running up. "Eff-ex six--nineteen. This it?" "Check. It's yours, porter and all. Take it away." Costigan strolled on until he met Jack Kinnison, who had a rapidly-developing mouse under his left eye. "How did _that_ happen, Jack?" he demanded sharply. "Something slip?" "Not exactly." Kinnison grinned ruefully. "I have the _damndest_ luck! A woman--an old lady at that--thought I was staging a hold-up and swung on me with her hand-bag--southpaw and from the rear. And if you laugh, you untuneful harp, I'll hang one right on the end of your chin, so help me!" "Far be it from such," Costigan assured him, and did not--quite--laugh. "Wonder how we came out? They should have reported before this--p-s-s-t! Here it comes!" Decontamination was complete; Operation Zunk had been a one-hundred-percent success; there had been no casualties. "Except for one black eye," Costigan could not help adding; but his Lens and his Service Specials were off. Jack would have brained him if any of them had been on. Linking arms, the two young Lensmen strode away toward Ramp Four, which was to be their station. This was the largest crowd Earth had ever known. Everybody, particularly the Nationalists, had wondered why this climactic political rally had been set for three full weeks ahead of the election, but their curiosity had not been satisfied. Furthermore, this meeting had been advertised as no previous one had ever been; neither pains nor cash had been spared in giving it the greatest build-up ever known. Not only had every channel of communication been loaded for weeks, but also Samms' workers had been very busily engaged in starting rumors; which grew, as rumors do, into things which their own fathers and mothers could not recognize. And the baffled Nationalists, trying to play the whole thing down, made matters worse. Interest spread from North America to the other continents, to the other planets, and to the other solar systems. Thus, to say that everybody was interested in, and was listening to, the Cosmocrats' Grand Rally would not be too serious an exaggeration. Roderick Kinnison stepped up to the battery of microphones; certain screens were cut. "Fellow entities of Civilization and others: while it may seem strange to broadcast a political rally to other continents and to beam it to other worlds, it was necessary in this case. The message to be given, while it will go into the political affairs of the North American Continent of Tellus, will deal primarily with a far larger thing; a matter which will be of paramount importance to all intelligent beings of every inhabited world. You know how to attune your minds to mine. Do it now." He staggered mentally under the shock of encountering practically simultaneously so many minds, but rallied strongly and went on, via Lens: "My first message is not to you, my fellow Cosmocrats, nor to you, my fellow dwellers on Earth, nor even to you, my fellow adherents to Civilization; but to THE ENEMY. I do not mean my political opponents, the Nationalists, who are almost all loyal fellow North Americans. I mean the entities who are using the leaders of that Nationalist party as pawns in a vastly larger game. "I know, ENEMY, that you are listening. I know that you had goon squads in this audience, to kill me and my superior officer. Know now that they are impotent. I know that you had atomic bombs, with which to obliterate this assemblage and this entire area. They have been disassembled and stored. I know that you had large supplies of radio-active dusts. They now lie in the Patrol vaults near Weehauken. All the devices which you intended to employ are known, and all save one have been either nullified or confiscated. "That one exception is your war-fleet, a force sufficient in your opinion to wipe out all the Armed Forces of the Galactic Patrol. You intended to use it in case we Cosmocrats win this forthcoming election; you may decide to use it now. Do so if you like; you can do nothing to interrupt or to affect this meeting. This is all I have to say to you, Enemy of Civilization. "Now to you, my legitimate audience. I am not here to deliver the address promised you, but merely to introduce the real speaker--First Lensman Virgil Samms...." A mental gasp, millions strong, made itself tellingly felt. "... Yes--First Lensman Samms, of whom you all know. He has not been attending political meetings because we, his advisers, would not let him. Why? Here are the facts. Through Archibald Isaacson, of Interstellar Spaceways, he was offered a bribe which would in a few years have amounted to some fifty billion credits; more wealth than any individual entity has ever possessed. Then there was an attempt at murder, which we were able--just barely--to block. Knowing there was no other place on Earth where he would be safe, we took him to The Hill. You know what happened; you know what condition The Hill is in now. This warfare was ascribed to pirates. "The whole stupendous operation, however, was made in a vain attempt to kill one man--Virgil Samms. The Enemy knew, and we learned, that Samms is the greatest man who has ever lived. His name will last as long as Civilization endures, for it is he, and _only_ he, who can make it possible for Civilization _to_ endure. "Why was I not killed? Why was I allowed to keep on making campaign speeches? Because I do not count. I am of no more importance to the cause of Civilization than is my opponent Witherspoon to that of the Enemy. "I am a wheel-horse, a plugger. You all know me--'Rocky Rod' Kinnison, the hard-boiled egg. I've got guts enough to stand up and fight for what I _know_ is right. I've got the guts and the inclination to stand up and slug it out, toe to toe, with man, beast, or devil. I would make and WILL MAKE a good president; I've got the guts and inclination to keep on slugging after you elect me; before God I promise to smash down every machine-made crook who tries to hold any part of our government down in the reeking muck in which it now is. "I am a plugger and a slugger, with no spark of the terrific flame of inspirational genius which makes Virgil Samms what he so uniquely is. My _kind_ may be important, but I individually am not. There are _so_ many of us! If they had killed me another slugger would have taken my place and the effect upon the job would have been nil. "Virgil Samms, however, _can not be replaced_ and the Enemy knows it. He is unique in all history. No one else can do his job. If he is killed before the principles for which he is working are firmly established Civilization will collapse back into barbarism. It will not recover until another such mind comes into existence, the probability of which occurrence I will let you compute for yourselves. "For those reasons Virgil Samms is not here in person. Nor is he in The Hill, since the Enemy may now possess weapons powerful enough to destroy not only that hitherto impregnable fortress, but also the whole Earth. And they would destroy Earth, without a qualm, if in so doing they could kill the First Lensman. "Therefore Samms is now out in deep space. Our fleet is waiting to be attacked. If we win, the Galactic Patrol will go on. If we lose, we hope you shall have learned enough so that we will not have died uselessly." "Die? Why should _you_ die? _You_ are safe on Earth!" "Ah, one of the goons sent that thought. If our fleet is defeated no Lensman, anywhere, will live a week. The Enemy will see to that. "That is all from me. Stay tuned. Come in, First Lensman Virgil Samms ... take over, sir." It was psychologically impossible for Virgil Samms to use such language as Kinnison had just employed. Nor was it either necessary or desirable that he should; the ground had been prepared. Therefore--coldly, impersonally, logically, tellingly--he told the whole terrific story. He revealed the most important things dug up by the Patrols' indefatigable investigators, reciting names, places, dates, transactions, and amounts. Only in the last couple of minutes did he warm up at all. "Nor is this in any sense a smear campaign or a bringing of baseless charges to becloud the issue or to vilify without cause and upon the very eve of election a political opponent. These are facts. Formal charges are now being preferred; every person mentioned, and many others, will be put under arrest as soon as possible. If any one of them were in any degree innocent our case against him could be made to fall in less than the three weeks intervening before election day. That is why this meeting is being held at this time. "Not one of them is innocent. Being guilty, and knowing that we can and will prove guilt, they will adopt a policy of delay and recrimination. Since our courts are, for the most part, just, the accused will be able to delay the trials and the actual presentation of evidence until after election day. Forewarned, however, you will know exactly why the trials will have been delayed, and in spite of the fog of misrepresentation you will know where the truth lies. You will know how to cast your votes. You will vote for Roderick Kinnison and for those who support him. "There is no need for me to enlarge upon the character of Port Admiral Kinnison. You know him as well as I do. Honest, incorruptible, fearless, you know that he will make the best president we have ever had. If you do not already know it, ask any one of the hundreds of thousands of strong, able, clear-thinking young men and women who have served under him in our Armed Forces. "I thank you, everyone who has listened, for your interest." CHAPTER 19 As long as they were commodores, Clayton of North America and Schweikert of Europe had stayed fairly close to the home planet except for infrequent vacation trips. With the formation of the Galactic Patrol, however, and their becoming Admiral and Lieutenant-Admiral of the First Galactic Region, and their acquisition of Lenses, the radius of their sphere of action was tremendously increased. One or the other of them was always to be found in Grand Fleet Headquarters at New York Spaceport, but only very seldom were both of them there at once. And if the absentee were not to be found on Earth, what of it? The First Galactic Region included all of the solar systems and all of the planets adherent to Civilization, and the absentee could, as a matter of business and duty, be practically anywhere. Usually, however, he was not upon any of the generally-known planets, but upon Bennett--getting acquainted with the officers, supervising the drilling of Grand Fleet in new maneuvers, teaching classes in advanced strategy, and holding skull-practice generally. It was hard work, and not too inspiring, but in the end it paid off big. They knew their men; their men knew them. They could work together with a snap, a smoothness, a precision otherwise impossible; for imported top brass, unknown to and unacquainted with the body of command, can not have and does not expect the deep regard and the earned respect so necessary to high morale. Clayton and Schweikert had both. They started early enough, worked hard enough, and had enough stuff, to earn both. Thus it came about that when, upon a scheduled day, the two admirals came to Bennett together, they were greeted as enthusiastically as though they had been Bennettans born and bred; and their welcome became a planet-wide celebration when Clayton issued the orders which all Bennett had been waiting so long and so impatiently to hear. Bennettans were at last to leave Bennett! Group after group, sub-fleet after sub-fleet, the component units of the Galactic Patrol's Grand Fleet took off. They assembled in space; they maneuvered enough to shake themselves down into some semblance of unity; they practiced the new maneuvers; they blasted off in formation for Sol. And as the tremendous armada neared the Solar System it met--or, rather, was joined by--the Patrol ships about which Morgan and his minions already knew; each of which fitted itself into its long-assigned place. Every planet of Civilization had sent its every vessel capable of putting out a screen or of throwing a beam, but so immense was the number of warships in Grand Fleet that this increment, great as it intrinsically was, made no perceptible difference in its size. On Rally Day Grand Fleet lay poised near Earth. As soon as he had introduced Samms to the intensely interested listeners at the Rally, Roderick Kinnison disappeared. Actually, he drove a bug to a distant corner of the spaceport and left the Earth in a light cruiser, but to all intents and purposes, so engrossed was everyone in what Samms was saying, Kinnison simply vanished. Samms was already in the _Boise_; the Port Admiral went out to his old flagship, the _Chicago_. Nor, in case any observer of the Enemy should be trying to keep track of him, could his course be traced. Cleveland and Northrop and Rularion and all they needed of the vast resources of the Patrol saw to that. Neither Samms nor Kinnison had any business being with Grand Fleet in person, of course, and both knew it; but everyone knew why they were there and were glad that the two top Lensmen had decided to live or die with their Fleet. If Grand Fleet won, they would probably live; if Grand Fleet lost they would certainly die--if not in the pyrotechnic dissolution of their ships, then in a matter of days upon the ground. With the Fleet their presence would contribute markedly to morale. It was a chance very much worth taking. Nor were Clayton and Schweikert together, or even near each other. Samms, Kinnison, and the two admirals were as far away from each other as they could get and still remain in Grand Fleet's fighting cylinder. Cylinder? Yes. The Patrol's Board of Strategy, assuming that the enemy would attack in conventional cone formation and knowing that one cone could defeat another only after a long and costly engagement, had long since spent months and months at war-games in their tactical tanks, in search of a better formation. They had found it. Theoretically, a cylinder of proper composition could defeat, with negligible loss and in a very short time, the best cones they were able to devise. The drawback was that the ships composing a theoretically efficient cylinder would have to be highly specialized and vastly greater in number than any one power had ever been able to put into the ether. However, with all the resources of Bennett devoted to construction, this difficulty would not be insuperable. This, of course, brought up the question of what would happen if cylinder met cylinder--if the Black strategists should also have arrived at the same solution--and this question remained unanswered. Or, rather, there were too many answers, no two of which agreed; like those to the classical one of what would happen if an irresistible force should strike an immovable object. There would be a lot of intensely interesting by-products! Even Rularion of Jove did not come up with a definite solution. Nor did Bergenholm; who, although a comparatively obscure young Lensman-scientist and not a member of the Galactic Council, was frequently called into consultation because of his unique ability to arrive at correct conclusions via some obscurely short-circuiting process of thought. "Well," Port Admiral Kinnison had concluded, finally, "_If_ they've got one, too, we'll just have to shorten ours up, widen it out, and pray." "Clayton to Port Admiral Kinnison," came a communication through channels. "Have you any additional orders or instructions?" "Kinnison to Admiral Clayton. None," the Port Admiral replied, as formally, then went on via Lens: "No comment or criticism to make, Alex. You fellows have done a job so far and you'll keep on doing one. How much detection have you got out?" "Twelve detets--three globes of diesels. If we sit here and do nothing the boys will get edgy and go stale, so if you and Virge agree we'll give 'em some practice. Lord knows they need it, and it'll keep 'em on their toes. But about the Blacks--they may be figuring on delaying any action until we've had time to crack from boredom. What's your idea on that?" "I've been worried about the same thing. Practice will help, but whether enough or not I don't know. What do you think, Virge? Will they hold it up deliberately or strike fast?" "Fast," the First Lensman replied, promptly and definitely. "As soon as they possibly can, for several reasons. They don't know our real strength, any more than we know theirs. They undoubtedly believe, however, the same as we do, that they are more efficient than we are and have the larger force. By their own need of practice they will know ours. They do not attach nearly as much importance to morale as we do; by the very nature of their regime they can't. Also, our open challenge will tend very definitely to force their hands, since face-saving is even more important to them than it is to us. They will strike as soon as they can and as hard as they can." Grand Fleet maneuvers were begun, but in a day or so the alarms came blasting in. The enemy had been detected; coming in, as the previous Black Fleet had come, from the direction of Coma Berenices. Calculating machines clicked and whirred; orders were flashed, and a brief string of numbers; ships by the hundreds and the thousands flashed into their assigned positions. Or, more precisely, _almost_ into them. Most of the navigators and pilots had not had enough practice yet to hit their assigned positions exactly on the first try, since a radical change in axial direction was involved, but they did pretty well; a few minutes of juggling and jockeying were enough. Clayton and Schweikert used a little caustic language--via Lens and to their fellow Lensmen only, of course--but Samms and Kinnison were well enough pleased. The time of formation had been very satisfactorily short and the cone was smooth, symmetrical, and of beautifully uniform density. The preliminary formation was a cone, not a cylinder. It was not a conventional Cone of Battle in that it was not of standard composition, was too big, and had altogether too many ships for its size. It was, however, of the conventional shape, and it was believed that by the time the enemy could perceive any significant differences it would be too late for him to do anything about it. The cylinder would be forming about that time, anyway, and it was almost believed--at least it was strongly hoped--that the enemy would not have the time or the knowledge or the equipment to do anything about that, either. Kinnison grinned to himself as his mind, en rapport with Clayton's, watched the enemy's Cone of Battle enlarge upon the Admiral's conning plate. It was big, and powerful; the Galactic Patrol's publicly-known forces would have stood exactly the chance of the proverbial snowball in the nether regions. It was not, however, the Port Admiral thought, big enough to form an efficient cylinder, or to handle the Patrol's real force in any fashion--and unless they shifted within the next second or two it would be too late for the enemy to do anything at all. As though by magic about ninety-five percent of the Patrol's tremendous cone changed into a tightly-packed double cylinder. This maneuver was much simpler than the previous one, and had been practiced to perfection. The mouth of the cone closed in and lengthened; the closed end opened out and shortened. Tractors and pressors leaped from ship to ship, binding the whole myriad of hitherto discrete units into a single structure as solid, even comparatively as to size, as a cantilever bridge. And instead of remaining quiescent, waiting to be attacked, the cylinder flashed forward, inertialess, at maximum blast. Throughout the years the violence, intensity, and sheer brute power of offensive weapons had increased steadily. Defensive armament had kept step. One fundamental fact, however, had not changed throughout the ages and has not changed yet. Three or more units of given power have always been able to conquer one unit of the same power, if engagement could be forced and no assistance could be given; and two units could practically always do so. Fundamentally, therefore, strategy always has been and still is the development of new artifices and techniques by virtue of which two or more of our units may attack one of theirs; the while affording the minimum of opportunity for them to retaliate in kind. The Patrol's Grand Fleet flashed forward, almost exactly along the axis of the Black cone; right where the enemy wanted it--or so he thought. Straight into the yawning mouth, erupting now a blast of flame beside which the wildest imaginings of Inferno must pale into insignificance; straight along that raging axis toward the apex, at the terrific speed of the two directly opposed velocities of flight. But, to the complete consternation of the Black High Command, nothing much happened. For, as has been pointed out, that cylinder was not of even approximately normal composition. In fact, there was not a normal war-vessel in it. The outer skin and both ends of the cylinder were purely defensive. Those vessels, packed so closely that their repellor fields actually touched, were all screen; none of them had a beam hot enough to light a match. Conversely, the inner layer, or "Liner", was composed of vessels that were practically all offense. They had to be protected at every point--but how they could ladle it out! The leading and trailing edges of the formation--the ends of the gigantic pipe, so to speak--would of course bear the brunt of the Black attack, and it was this factor that had given the Patrol's strategists the most serious concern. Wherefore the first ten and the last six double rings of ships were special indeed. They were _all_ screen--nothing else. They were drones, operated by remote control, carrying no living thing. If the Patrol losses could be held to eight double rings of ships at the first pass and four at the second--theoretical computations indicated losses of six and two--Samms and his fellows would be well content. All of the Patrol ships had, of course, the standard equipment of so-called "violet", "green", and "red" fields, as well as duodecaplylatomate and ordinary atomic bombs, dirigible torpedoes and transporters, slicers, polycyclic drills, and so on; but in this battle the principal reliance was to be placed upon the sheer, brutal, overwhelming power of what had been called the "macro beam"--now simply the "beam". Furthermore, in the incredibly incandescent frenzy of the chosen field of action--the cylinder was to attack the cone at its very strongest part--no conceivable material projectile could have lasted a single microsecond after leaving the screens of force of its parent vessel. It could have flown fast enough; ultra-beam trackers could have steered it rapidly enough and accurately enough; but before it could have traveled a foot, even at ultra-light speed, it would have ceased utterly to be. It would have been resolved into its sub-atomic constituent particles and waves. Nothing material could exist, except instantaneously, in the field of force filling the axis of the Black's Cone of Battle; a field beside which the exact center of a multi-billion-volt flash of lightning would constitute a dead area. That field, however, encountered no material object. The Patrol's "screeners", packed so closely as to have a four hundred percent overlap, had been designed to withstand precisely that inconceivable environment. Practically all of them withstood it. And in a fraction of a second the hollow forward end of the cylinder engulfed, pipe-wise, the entire apex of the enemy's war-cone, and the hitherto idle "sluggers" of the cylinder's liner went to work. Each of those vessels had one heavy pressor beam, each having the same push as every other, directed inward, toward the cylinder's axis, and backward at an angle of fifteen degrees from the perpendicular line between ship and axis. Therefore, wherever any Black ship entered the Patrol's cylinder or however, it was driven to and held at the axis and forced backward along that axis. None of them, however, got very far. They were perforce in single file; one ship opposing at least one solid ring of giant sluggers who did not have to concern themselves with defense, but could pour every iota of their tremendous resources into offensive beams. Thus the odds were not merely two or three to one; but never less than eighty, and very frequently over two hundred to one. Under the impact of those unimaginable torrents of force the screens of the engulfed vessels flashed once, practically instantaneously through the spectrum, and went down. Whether they had two or three or four courses made no difference--in fact, even the ultra-speed analyzers of the observers could not tell. Then, a couple of microseconds later, the wall-shields--the strongest fabrics of force developed by man up to that time--also failed. Then those ravenous fields of force struck bare, unprotected metal, and every molecule, inorganic and organic, of ships and contents alike, disappeared in a bursting flare of energy so raw and so violent as to stagger even those who had brought it into existence. It was certainly vastly more than a mere volatilization; it was deduced later that the detonating unstable isotopes of the Black's own bombs, in the frightful temperatures already existing in the Patrol's quasi-solid beams, had initiated a chain reaction which had resulted in the fissioning of a considerable proportion of the atomic nuclei of usually completely stable elements! The cylinder stopped; the Lensmen took stock. The depth of erosion of the leading edge had averaged almost exactly six double rings of drones. In places the sixth ring was still intact; in others, which had encountered unusually concentrated beaming, the seventh was gone. Also, a fraction of one percent of the manned war-vessels had disappeared. Brief though the time of engagement had been, the enemy had been able to concentrate enough beams to burn a few holes through the walls of the attacking cylinder. It had not been hoped that more than a few hundreds of Black vessels could be blown out of the ether at this first pass. General Staff had been sure, however, that the heaviest and most dangerous ships, including those carrying the enemy's High Command, would be among them. The mid-section of the apex of the conventional Cone of Battle had always been the safest place to be; therefore that was where the Black admirals had been and therefore they no longer lived. In a few seconds it became clear that if any Black High Command existed, it was not in shape to function efficiently. Some of the enemy ships were still blasting, with little or no concerted effort, at the regulation cone which the cylinder had left behind; a few were attempting to get into some kind of a formation, possibly to attack the Patrol's cylinder. Indecision was visible and rampant. To turn that tremendous cylindrical engine of destruction around would have been a task of hours, but it was not necessary. Instead, each vessel cut its tractors and pressors, spun end for end, reconnected, and retraced almost exactly its previous course; cutting out and blasting into nothingness another "plug" of Black warships. Another reversal, another dash; and this time, so disorganized were the foes and so feeble the beaming, not a single Patrol vessel was lost. The Black fleet, so proud and so conquering of mien a few minutes before, had fallen completely apart. "That's enough, Rod, don't you think?" Samms thought then. "Please order Clayton to cease action, so that we can hold a parley with their senior officers." "Parley, hell!" Kinnison's answering thought was a snarl. "We've got 'em going--mop 'em up before they can pull themselves together! Parley be damned!" "Beyond a certain point military action becomes indefensible butchery, of which our Galactic Patrol will never be guilty. That point has now been reached. If you do not agree with me, I'll be glad to call a Council meeting to decide which of us is right." "That isn't necessary. You're right--that's one reason I'm not First Lensman." The Port Admiral, fury and fire ebbing from his mind, issued orders; the Patrol forces hung motionless in space. "As President of the Galactic Council, Virge, take over." Spy-rays probed and searched; a communicator beam was sent. Virgil Samms spoke aloud, in the lingua franca of deep space. "Connect me, please, with the senior officer of your fleet." There appeared upon Samms' plate a strong, not unhandsome face; deep-stamped with the bitter hopelessness of a strong man facing certain death. "You've got us. Come on and finish us." "Some such indoctrination was to be expected, but I anticipate no trouble in convincing you that you have been grossly misinformed in everything you have been told concerning us; our aims, our ethics, our morals, and our standards of conduct. There are, I assume, other surviving officers of your rank, although of lesser seniority?" "There are ten other vice-admirals, but I am in command. They will obey my orders or die." "Nevertheless, they shall be heard. Please go inert, match our intrinsic velocity, and come aboard, all eleven of you. We wish to explore with all of you the possibilities of a lasting peace between our worlds." "Peace? Bah! Why lie?" The Black commander's expression did not change. "I know what you are and what you do to conquered races. We prefer a clean, quick death in your beams to the kind you deal out in your torture rooms and experimental laboratories. Come ahead--I intend to attack you as soon as I can make a formation." "I repeat, you have been grossly, terribly, _shockingly_ misinformed." Samms' voice was quiet and steady; his eyes held those of the other. "We are civilized men, not barbarians or savages. Does not the fact that we ceased hostilities so soon mean anything to you?" For the first time the stranger's face changed subtly, and Samms pressed the slight advantage. "I see it does. Now if you will converse with me mind to mind...." The First Lensman felt for the man's ego and began to tune to it, but this was too much. "I will not!" The Black put up a solid block. "I will have nothing to do with your cursed Lens. I know what it is and will have none of it!" "Oh, what's the use, Virge!" Kinnison snapped. "Let's get on with it!" "A great deal of use, Rod," Samms replied, quietly. "This is a turning-point. I _must_ be right--I _can't_ be that far wrong," and he again turned his attention to the enemy commander. "Very well, sir, we will continue to use spoken language. I repeat, please come aboard with your ten fellow vice-admirals. You will not be asked to surrender. You will retain your side-arms--as long as you make no attempt to use them. Whether or not we come to any agreement, you will be allowed to return unharmed to your vessels before the battle is resumed." "What? Side-arms? Returned? You swear it?" "As President of the Galactic Council, in the presence of the highest officers of the Galactic Patrol as witnesses, I swear it." "We will come aboard." "Very well. I will have ten other Lensmen and officers here with me." The _Boise_, of course, inerted first; followed by the _Chicago_ and nine of the tremendous tear-drops from Bennett. Port Admiral Kinnison and nine other Lensmen joined Samms in the _Boise's_ con room; the tight formation of eleven Patrol ships blasted in unison in the space-courtesy of meeting the equally tight formation of Black warships half-way in the matter of intrinsic velocity. Soon the two little sub-fleets were motionless in respect to each other. Eleven Black gigs were launched. Eleven Black vice-admirals came aboard, to the accompaniment of the full military honors customarily granted to visiting admirals of friendly powers. Each was armed with what seemed to be an exact duplicate of the Patrol's own current blaster; Lewiston, Mark Seventeen. In the lead strode the tall, heavy, gray-haired man with whom Samms had been dealing; still defiant, still sullen, still concealing sternly his sheer desperation. His block was still on, full strength. The man next in line was much younger than the leader, much less wrought up, much more intent. Samms felt for this man's ego, tuned to it, and got the shock of his life. This Black vice-admiral's mind was not at all what he had expected to encounter--it was, in every respect, of Lensman grade! "Oh ... how? You are not speaking, and ... I see ... the Lens ... THE LENS!" The stranger's mind was for seconds an utterly indescribable turmoil in which relief, gladness, and high anticipation struggled for supremacy. In the next few seconds, even before the visitors had reached their places at the conference table, Virgil Samms and Corander of Petrine exchanged thoughts which would require many thousands of words to express; only a few of which are necessary here. "The LENS ... I have dreamed of such a thing, without hope of realization or possibility. _How_ we have been misled! They are, then, actually available upon your world, Samms of Tellus?" "Not exactly, and not at all generally," and Samms explained as he had explained so many times before. "You will wear one sooner than you think. But as to ending this warfare. You survivors are practically all natives of your own world. Petrine?" "Not 'practically', we are Petrinos all. The 'teachers' were all in the Center. Many remain upon Petrine and its neighboring worlds, but none remain alive here." "Ohlanser, then, who assumed command, is also a Petrino? So hard-headed, I had assumed otherwise. He will be a stumbling-block. Is he actually in supreme command?" "Only by and with our consent, under such astounding circumstances as these. He is a reactionary, of the old, die-hard, war-dog school. He would ordinarily be in supreme command and would be supported by the teachers if any were here; but I will challenge his authority and theirs; standing upon my right to command my own fleet as I see fit. So will, I think, several others. So go ahead with your meeting." "Be seated, Gentlemen." All saluted punctiliously and sat down. "Now, Vice-Admiral Ohlanser...." "How do you, a stranger, know my name?" "I know many things. We have a suggestion to offer which, if you Petrinos will follow it, will end this warfare. First, please believe that we have no designs upon your planet, nor any quarrel with any of its people who are not hopelessly contaminated by the ideas and the culture of the entities who are back of this whole movement; quite possibly those whom you refer to as the 'teachers'. You did not know whom you were to fight, or why." This was a statement, with no hint of question about it. "I see now that we did not know all the truth," Ohlanser admitted, stiffly. "We were informed, and given proof sufficient to make us believe, that you were monsters from outer space--rapacious, insatiable, senselessly and callously destructive to all other forms of intelligent life." "We suspected something of the kind. Do you others agree? Vice-Admiral Corander?" "Yes. We were shown detailed and documented proofs; stereos of battles, in which no quarter was given. We saw system after system conquered, world after world laid waste. We were made to believe that our only hope of continued existence was to meet you and destroy you in space; for if you were allowed to reach Petrine every man, woman, and child on the planet would either be killed outright or tortured to death. I see now that those proofs were entirely false; completely vicious." "They were. Those who spread that lying propaganda and all who support their organization must be and shall be weeded out. Petrine must be and shall be given her rightful place in the galactic fellowship of free, independent, and cooperative worlds. So must any and all planets whose peoples wish to adhere to Civilization instead of to tyranny and despotism. To further these ends, we Lensmen suggest that you re-form your fleet and proceed to Arisia...." "Arisia!" Ohlanser did not like the idea. "Arisia," Samms insisted. "Upon leaving Arisia, knowing vastly more than you do now, you will return to your home planet, where you will take whatever steps you will then know to be necessary." "We were told that your Lenses are hypnotic devices," Ohlanser sneered, "designed to steal away and destroy the minds of any who listen to you. I believe _that_, fully. I will not go to Arisia, nor will any part of Petrine's Grand Fleet. I will not attack my home planet. I will not do battle against my own people. This is final." "I am not saying or implying that you should. But you continue to close your mind to reason. How about you, Vice-Admiral Corander? And you others?" In the momentary silence Samms put himself en rapport with the other officers, and was overjoyed at what he learned. "I do not agree with Vice-Admiral Ohlanser," Corander said, flatly. "He commands, not Grand Fleet, but his sub-fleet merely, as do we all. I will lead my sub-fleet to Arisia." "Traitor!" Ohlanser shouted. He leaped to his feet and drew his blaster, but a tractor beam snatched it from his grasp before he could fire. "You were allowed to wear side-arms, not to use them," Samms said, quietly. "How many of you others agree with Corander; how many with Ohlanser?" All nine voted with the younger man. "Very well. Ohlanser, you may either accept Corander's leadership or leave this meeting now and take your sub-fleet directly back to Petrine. Decide now which you prefer to do." "You mean you aren't going to kill me, even now? Or even degrade me, or put me under arrest?" "I mean exactly that. What is your decision?" "In that case ... I was--must have been--wrong. I will follow Corander." "A wise choice. Corander, you already know what to expect; except that four or five other Petrinos now in this room will help you, not only in deciding what must be done upon Petrine, but also in the doing of it. This meeting will adjourn." "But ... no reprisals?" Corander, in spite of his newly acquired knowledge, was dubious, almost dumbfounded. "No invasion or occupation? No indemnities to your Patrol, or reparations? No punishment of us, our men, or our families?" "None." "That does not square up even with ordinary military usage." "I know it. It does conform, however, to the policy of the Galactic Patrol which is to spread throughout our island universe." "You are not even sending your fleet, or heavy units of it, with us, to see to it that we follow your instructions?" "It is not necessary. If you need any form of help you will inform us of your requirements via Lens, as I am conversing with you now, and whatever you want will be supplied. However, I do not expect any such call. You and your fellows are capable of handling the situation. You will soon know the truth, and know that you know it; and when your house-cleaning is done we will consider your application for representation upon the Galactic Council. Good-bye." Thus the Lensmen--particularly First Lensman Virgil Samms--brought another sector of the galaxy under the aegis of Civilization. CHAPTER 20 After the Rally there were a few days during which neither Samms nor Kinnison was on Earth. That the Cosmocrats' presidential candidate and the First Lensman were both with the Fleet was not a secret; in fact, it was advertised. Everyone was told why they were out there, and almost everyone approved. Nor was their absence felt. Developments, fast and terrific, were slammed home. Cosmocratic spellbinders in every state of North America waved the flag, pointed with pride, and viewed with alarm, in the very best tradition of North American politics. But above all, there appeared upon every news-stand and in every book-shop of the Continent, at opening time of the day following Rally Day, a book of over eighteen hundred pages of fine print; a book the publication of which had given Samms himself no little concern. "But I'm afraid of it!" he had protested. "_We_ know it's true; but there's material on almost every page for the biggest libel and slander suits in history!" "I know it," the bald and paunchy Lensman-attorney had replied. "Fully. I hope they _do_ take action against us, but I'm absolutely certain they won't." "You hope they do?" "Yes. If they take the initiative they can't prevent us from presenting our evidence in full; and there is no court in existence, however corrupt, before which we could not win. What they want and must have is delay; avoidance of any issue until after the election." "I see." Samms was convinced. The location of the Patrol's Grand Fleet had been concealed from all inhabitants of the Solarian system, friends and foes alike; but the climactic battle--liberating as it did energies sufficient to distort the very warp and woof of the fabric of space itself--could not be hidden or denied, or even belittled. It was not, however, advertised or blazoned abroad. Then as now the newshawks wanted to know, instantly and via long-range communicators, vastly more than those responsible for security cared to tell; then as now the latter said as little as it was humanly possible to say. Everyone knew that the Patrol had won a magnificent victory; but nobody knew who or what the enemy had been. Since the rank and file knew it, everyone knew that only a fraction of the Black fleet had actually been destroyed; but nobody knew where the remaining vessels went or what they did. Everyone knew that about ninety five percent of the Patrol's astonishingly huge Grand Fleet had come from, and was on its way back to, the planet Bennett, and knew--since Bennettans would in a few weeks be scampering gaily all over space--in general _what_ Bennett was; but nobody knew _why_ it was. Thus, when the North American Contingent landed at New York Spaceport, everyone whom the newsmen could reach was literally mobbed. However, in accordance with the aphorism ascribed to the wise old owl, those who knew the least said the most. But the Telenews ace who had once interviewed both Kinnison and Samms wasted no time upon small fry. He insisted on seeing the two top Lensmen, and kept on insisting until he did see them. "Nothing to say," Kinnison said curtly, leaving no doubt whatever that he meant it. "All talking--if any--will be done by First Lensman Samms." "Now, all you millions of Telenews listeners, I am interviewing First Lensman Samms himself. A little closer to the mike, please, First Lensman. Now, sir, what everybody wants to know is--who are the Blacks?" "I don't know." "You don't know? On the Lens, sir?" "On the Lens. I still don't know." "I see. But you have suspicions or ideas? You can guess?" "I can guess; but that's all it would be--a guess." "And my guess, folks, is that his guess would be a very highly informed guess. Will you tell the public, First Lensman Samms, what your guess is?" "I will." If this reply astonished the newshawk, it staggered Kinnison and the others who knew Samms best. It was, however, a coldly calculated political move. "While it will probably be several weeks before we can furnish detailed and unassailable proof, it is my considered opinion that the Black fleet was built and controlled by the Morgan-Towne-Isaacson machine. That they, all unknown to any of us, enticed, corrupted, and seduced a world, or several worlds, to their program of domination and enslavement. That they intended by armed force to take over the Continent of North America and through it the whole earth and all the other planets adherent to Civilization. That they intended to hunt down and kill every Lensman, and to subvert the Galactic Council to their own ends. This is what you wanted?" "That's fine, sir--_just_ what we wanted. But just one more thing, sir." The newsman had obtained infinitely more than he had expected to get; yet, good newsmanlike, he wanted more. "Just a word, if you will, Mr. Samms, as to these trials and the White Book?" "I can add very little, I'm afraid, to what I have already said and what is in the book; and that little can be classed as 'I told you so'. We are trying, and will continue to try, to force those criminals to trial; to break up, to prohibit, an unending series of hair-splitting delays. We want, and are determined to get, legal action; to make each of those we have accused defend himself in court and under oath. Morgan and his crew, however, are working desperately to avoid any action at all, because they know that we can and will prove every allegation we have made." The Telenews ace signed off, Samms and Kinnison went to their respective offices, and Cosmocratic orators throughout the nation held a field-day. They glowed and scintillated with triumph. They yelled themselves hoarse, leather-lunged tub-thumpers though they were, in pointing out the unsullied purity, the spotless perfection of their own party and its every candidate for office; in shuddering revulsion at the never-to-be-sufficiently-condemned, proved and demonstrated villainy and blackguardy of the opposition. And the Nationalists, although they had been dealt a terrific and entirely unexpected blow, worked near-miracles of politics with what they had. Morgan and his minions ranted and raved. They were being jobbed. They were being crucified by the Monied Powers. All those allegations and charges were sheerest fabrications--false, utterly vicious, containing nothing whatever of truth. They, not the Patrol, were trying to force a show-down; to vindicate themselves and to confute those unspeakably unscrupulous Lensmen before Election Day. And they were succeeding! Why, otherwise, had not a single one of the thousands of accused even been arrested? Ask that lying First Lensman, Virgil Samms! Ask that rock-hearted, iron-headed, conscienceless murderer, Roderick Kinnison! But do not, at peril of your sanity, submit your minds to their Lenses! And why, the reader asks, were not at least some of those named persons arrested before Election Day? And your historian must answer frankly that he does not know. He is not a lawyer. It would be of interest--to some few of us--to follow in detail at least one of those days of legal battling in one of the high courts of the land; to quote verbatim at least a few of the many thousands of pages of transcript: but to most of us the technicalities involved would be boring in the extreme. But couldn't the voters tell easily enough which side was on the offensive and which on the defensive? Which pressed for action and which insisted on postponement and delay? They could have, easily enough, if they had cared enough about the basic issues involved to make the necessary mental effort, but almost everyone was too busy doing something else. And it was so much easier to take somebody else's word for it. And finally, _thinking_ is an exercise to which all too few brains are accustomed. But Morgan neither ranted nor raved nor blustered when he sat in conference with his faintly-blue superior, who had come storming in as soon as he had learned of the crushing defeat of the Black fleet. The Kalonian was very highly concerned; so much so that the undertone of his peculiar complexion was turning slowly to a delicate shade of green. "How did _that_ happen? How _could_ it happen? Why was I not informed of the Patrol's real power--how could you be guilty of such stupidity? Now I'll have to report to Scrwan of the Eich. He's pure, undiluted poison--and if word of this catastrophe ever gets up to Ploor...!!!" "Come down out of the stratosphere, Fernald," Morgan countered, bitingly. "Don't try to make _me_ the goat--I won't sit still for it. It happened because they could build a bigger fleet than we could. You were in on that--all of it. You knew what we were doing, and approved it--all of it. You were as badly fooled as I was. You were not informed because I could find out nothing--I could learn no more of their Bennett than they could of our Petrine. As to reporting, you will of course do as you please; but I would advise you not to cry too much before you're really hurt. This battle isn't over yet, my friend." The Kalonian had been a badly shaken entity; it was a measure of his state of mind that he did not liquidate the temerarious Tellurian then and there. But since Morgan was as undisturbed as ever, and as sure of himself, he began to regain his wonted aplomb. His color became again its normal pale blue. "I will forgive your insubordination this time, since there were no witnesses, but use no more such language to me," he said, stiffly. "I fail to perceive any basis for your optimism. The only chance now remaining is for you to win the election, and how can you do that? You are--must be--losing ground steadily and rapidly." "Not as much as you might think." Morgan pulled down a large, carefully-drawn chart. "This line represents the hide-bound Nationalists, whom nothing we can do will alienate from the party; this one the equally hide-bound Cosmocrats. The balance of power lies, as always, with the independents--these here. And many of them are not as independent as is supposed. We can buy or bring pressure to bear on half of them--that cuts them down to this size here. So, no matter what the Patrol does, it can affect only this relatively small block here, and it is this block we are fighting for. We are losing a little ground, and steadily, yes; since we can't conceal from anybody with half a brain the fact that we're doing our best to keep the cases from ever coming to trial. But here's the actual observed line of sentiment, as determined from psychological indices up to yesterday; here is the extrapolation of that line to Election Day. It forecasts us to get just under forty nine percent of the total vote." "And is there anything cheerful about that?" Fernald asked frostily. "I'll say there is!" Morgan's big face assumed a sneering smile, an expression never seen by any voter. "This chart deals only with living, legally registered, bona-fide voters. Now if we can come that close to winning an absolutely honest election, how do you figure we can possibly lose the kind this one is going to be? We're in power, you know. We've got this machine and we know how to use it." "Oh, yes, I remember--vaguely. You told me about North American politics once, a few years ago. Dead men, ringers, repeaters, ballot-box stuffing, and so on, you said?" "'And so on' is right, Chief!" Morgan assured him, heartily. "Everything goes, this time. It'll be one of the biggest landslides in North American history." "I will, then, defer any action until after the election." "That will be the smart thing to do, Chief; then you won't have to take any, or make any report at all," and upon this highly satisfactory note the conference closed. And Morgan was actually as confident as he had appeared. His charts were actual and factual. He knew the power of money and the effectiveness of pressure; he knew the capabilities of the various units of his machine. He did not, however, know two things: Jill Samms' insidious, deeply-hidden Voters' Protective League and the bright flame of loyalty pervading the Galactic Patrol. Thus, between times of bellowing and screaming his carefully-prepared, rabble-rousing speeches, he watched calmly and contentedly the devious workings of his smooth and efficient organization. Until the day before election, that is. Then hordes of young men and young women went suddenly and briefly to work; at least four in every precinct of the entire nation. They visited, it seemed, every residence and every dwelling unit, everywhere. They asked questions, and took notes, and vanished; and the machine's operatives, after the alarm was given, could not find man or girl or notebook. And the Galactic Patrol, which had never before paid any attention to elections, had given leave and ample time to its every North American citizen. Vessels of the North American Contingent were grounded and practically emptied of personnel; bases and stations were depopulated; and even from every distant world every Patrolman registered in any North American precinct came to spend the day at home. Morgan began then to worry, but there was nothing he could do about the situation--or was there? If the civilian boys and girls were checking the registration books--and they were--it was as legally-appointed checkers. If the uniformed boys and girls were all coming home to vote--and they were--that, too, was their inalienable right. But boys and girls were notoriously prone to accident and to debauchery ... but again Morgan was surprised; and, this time, taken heavily aback. The web which had protected Grand Rally so efficiently, but greatly enlarged now, was functioning again; and Morgan and his minions spent a sleepless and thoroughly uncomfortable night. Election Day dawned clear, bright, and cool; auguring a record turn-out. Voting was early and extraordinarily heavy; the polls were crowded. There was, however, very little disorder. Surprisingly little, in view of the fact that the Cosmocratic watchers, instead of being the venal wights of custom, were cold-eyed, unreachable men and women who seemed to know by sight every voter in the precinct. At least they spotted on sight and challenged without hesitation every ringer, every dead one, every repeater, and every imposter who claimed the right to vote. And those challenges, being borne out in every case by the carefully-checked registration lists, were in every case upheld. Not all of the policemen on duty, especially in the big cities, were above suspicion, of course. But whenever any one of those officers began to show a willingness to play ball with the machine a calm, quiet-eyed Patrolman would remark, casually: "Better see that this election stays straight, bud, and strictly according to the lists and signatures--or you're apt to find yourself listed in the big book along with the rest of the rats." It was not that the machine liked the way things were going, or that it did not have goon squads on the job. It was that there were, everywhere and always, more Patrolmen than there were goons. And those Patrolmen, however young in years some of them might have appeared to be, were space-bronzed veterans, space-hardened fighting men, armed with the last word in blasters--Lewiston, Mark Seventeen. To the boy's friends and neighbors, of course, his Lewiston was practically invisible. It was merely an article of clothing, the same as his pants. It carried no more of significance, of threat or of menace, than did the pistol and the club of the friendly Irish cop on the beat. But the goon did not see the Patrolman as a friend. He saw the keen, clear, sharply discerning eyes; the long, strong fingers; the smoothly flowing muscles, so eloquent of speed and of power. He saw the Lewiston for what it was; the deadliest, most destructive hand-weapon known to man. Above all he saw the difference in numbers: six or seven or eight Patrolmen to four or five or six of his own kind. If more hoods arrived, so did more spacemen; if some departed, so did a corresponding number of the wearers of the space-black and silver. "Ain't you getting tired of sticking around here, George?" One mobster asked confidentially of one Patrolman. "I am. What say we and some of you fellows round up some girls and go have us a party?" "Uh-uh," George denied. His voice was gay and careless, but his eyes were icy cold. "My uncle's cousin's stepson is running for second assistant dog-catcher, and I can't leave until I find out whether he wins or not." Thus nothing happened; thus the invisible but nevertheless terrific tension did not erupt into open battle; and thus, for the first time in North America's long history, a presidential election was ninety nine and ninety nine one-hundredths percent pure! Evening came. The polls closed. The Cosmocrats' headquarters for the day, the Grand Ballroom of the Hotel van der Voort, became the goal of every Patrolman who thought he stood any chance at all of getting in. Kinnison had been there all day, of course. So had Joy, his wife, who for lack of space has been sadly neglected in these annals. Betty, their daughter, had come in early, accompanied by a husky and personable young lieutenant, who has no other place in this story. Jack Kinnison arrived, with Dimples Maynard--dazzlingly blonde, wearing a screamingly red wisp of silk. She, too, has been shamefully slighted here, although she was never slighted anywhere else. "The first time I ever saw her," Jack was wont to say, "I went right into a flat spin, running around in circles and biting myself in the small of the back, and couldn't pull out of it for four hours!" That Miss Maynard should be a very special item is not at all surprising, in view of the fact that she was to become the wife of one of THE Kinnisons and the mother of another. The First Lensman, who had been in and out, came in to stay. So did Jill and her inseparable, Mason Northrop. And so did others, singly or by twos or threes. Lensmen and their wives. Conway and Clio Costigan, Dr. and Mrs. Rodebush, and Cleveland, Admiral and Mrs. Clayton, ditto Schweikert, and Dr. Nels Bergenholm. And others. Nor were they all North Americans, or even human. Rularion was there; and so was blocky, stocky Dronvire of Rigel Four. No outsider could tell, ever, what any Lensman was thinking, to say nothing of such a monstrous Lensman as Dronvire--but that hotel was being covered as no political headquarters had ever been covered before. The returns came in, see-sawing maddeningly back and forth. Faster and faster. The Maritime Provinces split fifty-fifty. Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, Cosmocrat. New York, upstate, Cosmocrat. New York City, on the basis of incomplete but highly significant returns, was piling up a huge Nationalist majority. Pennsylvania--labor--Nationalist. Ohio--farmers--Cosmocrat. Twelve southern states went six and six. Chicago, as usual, solidly for the machine; likewise Quebec and Ottawa and Montreal and Toronto and Detroit and Kansas City and St. Louis and New Orleans and Denver. Then northern and western and far southern states came in and evened the score. Saskatchewan, Alberta, Britcol, and Alaska, all went Cosmocrat. So did Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Newmex, and most of the states of Mexico. At three o'clock in the morning the Cosmocrats had a slight but definite lead and were, finally, holding it. At four o'clock the lead was larger, but California was still an unknown quantity--California could wreck everything. _How_ would California go? Especially, how would California's two metropolitan districts--the two most independent and free-thinking and least predictable big cities of the nation--how _would_ they go? At five o'clock California seemed safe. Except for Los Angeles and San Francisco, the Cosmocrats had swept the state, and in those two great cities they held a commanding lead. It was still mathematically possible, however, for the Nationalists to win. "It's in the bag! Let's start the celebration!" someone shouted, and others took up the cry. "Stop it! No!" Kinnison's parade-ground voice cut through the noise. "No celebration is in order or will be held until the result becomes certain or Witherspoon concedes!" The two events came practically together: Witherspoon conceded a couple of minutes before it became mathematically impossible for him to win. Then came the celebration, which went on and on interminably. At the first opportunity, however, Kinnison took Samms by the arm, led him without a word into a small office, and shut the door. Samms, also saying nothing, sat down in the swivel chair, put both feet up on the desk, lit a cigarette, and inhaled deeply. "Well, Virge--satisfied?" Kinnison broke the silence at last. His Lens was off. "We're on our way." "Yes, Rod. Fully. At last." No more than his friend did he dare to use his Lens; to plumb the depths he knew so well were there. "Now it will roll--under its own power--no one man now is or ever will be indispensable to the Galactic Patrol--_nothing_ can stop it now!" EPILOGUE The murder of Senator Morgan, in his own private office, was never solved. If it had occurred before the election, suspicion would certainly have fallen upon Roderick Kinnison, but as it was it did not. By no stretch of the imagination could anyone conceive of "Rod the Rock" kicking a man after he had knocked him down. Not that Morgan did not have powerful and vindictive enemies in the underworld: he had so many that it proved impossible to fasten the crime to any one of them. Officially, Kinnison was on a five-year leave of absence from the Galactic Patrol, the office of Port Admiral had been detached entirely from the fleet and assigned to the Office of the President of North America. Actually, however, in every respect that counted, Roderick Kinnison was still Port Admiral, and would remain so until he died or until the Council retired him by force. Officially, Kinnison was taking a short, well-earned vacation from the job in which he had been so outstandingly successful. Actually, he was doing a quick flit to Petrine, to get personally acquainted with the new Lensmen and to see what kind of a job they were doing. Besides, Virgil Samms was already there. He arrived. He got acquainted. He saw. He approved. "How about coming back to Tellus with me, Virge?" he asked, when the visiting was done. "I've got to make a speech, and it'd be nice to have you hold my head." "I'd be glad to," and the _Chicago_ took off. Half of North America was dark when they neared Tellus; all of it, apparently, was obscured by clouds. Only the navigating officers of the vessel knew where they were, nor did either of the two Lensmen care. They were having too much fun arguing about the talents and abilities of their respective grandsons. The _Chicago_ landed. A bug was waiting. The two Lensmen, without an order being given, were whisked away. Samms had not asked where the speech was to be given, and Kinnison simply did not realize that he had not told him all about it. Thus Samms had no idea that he was just leaving Spokane Spaceport, Washington. After a few miles of fast, open-country driving the bug reached the city. It slowed down, swung into brightly-lighted Maple Street, and passed a sign reading "Cannon Hill" something-or-other--neither of which names meant anything to either Lensman. Kinnison looked at his friend's red-thatched head and glanced at his watch. "Looking at you reminds me--I need a haircut," he remarked. "Should have got one aboard, but didn't think of it Joy told me if I come home without it she'll braid it in pigtails and tie it up with pink ribbons, and you're shaggier than I am. You've got to get one or else buy yourself a violin. What say we do it now?" "Have we got time enough?" "Plenty." Then, to the driver: "Stop at the first barber shop you see, please." "Yes, sir. There's a good one a few blocks further along." The bug sped down Maple Street, turned sharply into plainly-marked Twelfth Avenue. Neither Lensman saw the sign. "Here you are, sir." "Thanks." There were two barbers and two chairs, both empty. The Lensmen, noticing that the place was neatly kept and meticulously clean, sat down and resumed their discussion of two extremely unusual infants. The barbers went busily to work. "Just as well, though--better, really--that the kids didn't marry each other, at that," Kinnison concluded finally. "The way it is, we've each got a grandson--it'd be tough to have to share one with _you_." Samms made no reply to this sally, for something was happening. The fact that this fair-skinned, yellow-haired blue-eyed barber was left-handed had not rung any bells--there were lots of left-handed barbers. He had neither seen nor heard the cat--a less-than-half-grown, gray, tiger-striped kitten--which, after standing up on its hind legs to sniff ecstatically at his nylon-clad ankles, had uttered a couple of almost inaudible "meows" and had begun to purr happily. Crouching, tensing its strong little legs, it leaped almost vertically upward. Its tail struck the barber's elbow. Hastily brushing the kitten aside, and beginning profuse apologies both for his awkwardness and for the presence of the cat--he had never done such a thing before and he would drown him forthwith--the barber applied a styptic pencil and recollection hit Samms a pile-driver blow. "Well, I'm a...!" He voiced three highly un-Samms-like, highly specific expletives which, as Mentor had foretold so long before, were both self-derogatory and profane. Then, as full realization dawned, he bit a word squarely in two. "Excuse me, please, Mr. Carbonero, for this outrageous display. It was not the scratch, nor was any of it your fault. Nothing you could have done would have...." "You know my name?" the astonished barber interrupted. "Yes. You were ... ah ... recommended to me by a ... a friend...." Whatever Samms could say would make things worse. The truth, wild as it was, would have to be told, at least in part. "You do not look like an Italian, but perhaps you have enough of that racial heritage to believe in prophecy?" "Of course, sir. There have always been prophets--_true_ prophets." "Good. This event was foretold in detail; in such complete detail that I was deeply, terribly shocked. Even to the kitten. You call it Thomas." "Yes, sir. Thomas Aquinas." "It is actually a female. In here, Thomasina!" The kitten had been climbing enthusiastically up his leg; now, as he held a pocket invitingly open, she sprang into it, settled down, and began to purr blissfully. While the barbers and Kinnison stared pop-eyed Samms went on: "She is determined to adopt me, and it would be a shame not to requite such affection. Would you part with her--for, say, ten credits?" "_Ten credits!_ I'll be glad to give her to you for nothing!" "Ten it is, then. One more thing. Rod, you always carry a pocket rule. Measure this scratch, will you? You'll find it's mighty close to three millimeters long." "Not 'close', Virge--it's _exactly_ three millimeters, as near as this vernier can scale it." "And just above and parallel to the cheek-bone." "Check. Just above and as parallel as though it had been ruled there by a draftsman." "Well, that's that. Let's get finished with the haircuts, before you're late for your speech," and the barbers, with thoughts which will be left to the imagination, resumed their interrupted tasks. "Spill it, Virge!" Kinnison Lensed the pent-up thought. If Carbonero, who did not know Samms at all, had been amazed at what had been happening, Kinnison, who had known him so long and so well, had been literally and completely dumbfounded. "What in hell's behind this? What's the story? GIVE!" Samms told him, and a mental silence fell; a silence too deep for intelligible thought. Each was beginning to realize that he never would and never could know what Mentor of Arisia really was. * * * * * The Secret Planet No human had ever landed on the hidden planet of Arisia. A mysterious space barrier turned back both men and ships. Then the word came to Earth; "Go to Arisia!" Samms of the Galactic Patrol went--and came back with the Lens, the strange device that gave its wearer powers no man had ever possessed before. Samms knew the price of that power would be high. But even he had no idea of the ultimate cost, and the weird destiny waiting for the First Lensman A PYRAMID BOOK 60¢ Cover: Jack Gaughan Printed in U.S.A. * * * * * NOVELS OF SCIENCE-FICTION by "DOC" SMITH _The Skylark Series_ THE SKYLARK OF SPACE SKYLARK THREE SKYLARK OF VALERON SKYLARK DUQUESNE _The Lensman Series_ TRIPLANETARY FIRST LENSMAN GALACTIC PATROL GRAY LENSMAN SECOND STAGE LENSMAN CHILDREN OF THE LENS * * * * *