Constance Kinnison did not waste much time in idle recriminations, even at

herself. Realizing at last that she was still not fully competent, and being able to define

exactly what she lacked, she went to Arisia for final treatment. She took that treatment

and emerged from it, as her brother and sisters had emerged, a completely integrated

personality.

     She had something of everything the others had, of course, as did they all; but

her dominants, the characteristics which had operated to make Worsel her favorite

Second-Stage Lensman, were much like those of the Velantian. Her mind, like his, was

quick and facile, yet of extraordinary power and range. She did not have much of her

father's fiat, driving urge or of his indomitable will to do; she was the least able of all the

Five to exert long-sustained extreme effort. Her top, however, was vastly higher than

theirs. Her armament was almost entirely offensive: she was far and away the deadliest

fighter of them all. She only of them all had more than a trace of pure killer instinct; and

when roused to full fighting pitch her mental bolts were weapons of as starkly

incomprehensible an effectiveness as the sphere of primary action of a super-atomic

bomb.

     As soon as Constance had left the Velan, remarking that she was going to Arisia

to take her medicine, Worsel called a staff meeting to discuss in detail the matter of the

"Hell-Hole in Space".

     That conference was neither long nor heated; it was unanimously agreed that the

phenomenon was—must be—simply another undiscovered cavern of Overlords.

     In view of the fact that Worsel and his crew had been hunting down and killing

Overlords for more than twenty years, the only logical course of action was for them to

deal similarly with one more, perhaps the only remaining large group of their hereditary

foes. Nor did any doubt of their ability to do so enter any one of the Velantian's minds.

     How wrong they were!

     They did not have to search for the "Hell-Hole." Long since, to stop its dreadful

toll, a spherical cordon of robot guard-ships had been posted to warn all traffic away

from the outer fringes of its influence. Since they merely warned against, but could not

physically prohibit, entry into the dangerous space, Worsel did not pay any attention to

the guard-ships or to their signals as the Velan went through the warning web. His plans

were, he thought, well laid. His ship was free. Its speed, by Velantian standards, was

very low. Each member of his crew wore a full-coverage thought-screen; a similar and

vastly more powerful screen would surround the whole vessel if one of Worsel's minor

members were either to tighten or to relax its grip upon a spring-mounted control.

Worsel was, he thought, ready for anything.

     But the "Hell-Hole in Space" was not a cavern of Overlords. No sun, no planet,

nothing material existed within that spherical volume of space. But something was

there. Slow as was the Velan's pace, it was still too fast by far; for in a matter of

seconds, through the supposedly impervious thought-screens, there came an attack of

utterly malignant ferocity; an assault which tore at Worsel's mind in a fashion he had

never imagined possible; a poignant, rending, unbearably crescendo force whose

violence seemed to double with every mile of distance.

     The Velan's all-encompassing screen snapped on—uselessly. Its tremendous

power was as unopposed as were the lesser powers of the personal shields; that highly

inimical thought was coming past, not through, the barriers. An Arisian, or one of the

Children of the Lens, would have been able to perceive and to block that band; no one

of lesser mental stature could.

     Strong and fast as Worsel was, mentally and physically, he acted just barely in

time. All his resistance and all his strength had to be called into play to maintain his

mind's control over his body; to enable him to spin his ship end for end and to kick her

drive up to maximum blast. To his surprise, his agony decreased with distance as

rapidly as it had built up; disappearing entirely as the Velan reached the web she had

crossed such a short time before.

     Groggy, sick, and shaken, hanging slackly from his bars, the Velantian Lensman

was roused to action by the mental and physical frenzy of his crew. Ten of them had

died in the Hell-Hole; six more were torn to bits before their commander could muster

enough force to stop their insane rioting. Then Master Therapist Worsel went to work;

and one by one he brought the survivors back. They remembered; but he made those

memories bearable.

     He then called Kinnison. ". . . but there didn't seem to be anything personal about

it, as one would expect from an Overlord," he concluded his brief report. "It did not

concentrate on us, reach for us, or follow us as we left. Its intensity seemed to vary only

with distance—perhaps inversely as distance squared; it might very well have been

radiated from a center. While it is nothing like anything I ever felt before, I still think it

must be an Overlord—maybe a sort of second-stage Overlord, just as you and I are

Second-Stage Lensmen. He's too strong for me now, just as they used to be too strong

for us before we met you. By the same reasoning, however, I'm pretty sure that if you

can come over here, you and I together could figure out a way of taking him. How about

it?"

     "Mighty interesting, and I'd like to, but I'm right in the middle of a job," Kinnison

replied, and went on to explain rapidly what he, as Bradlow Thyron, had done and what

he still had to do. "As soon as I can get away I'll come over. In the meantime, chum,

keep away from there. Do a flit—find something else to keep you amused until I can join

you."

     Worsel set out, and after a few day—or weeks? Idle time means practically

nothing to a Velantian—a sharply-Lensed thought drove in.

     "Help! A Lensman calling help! Line this thought and come fast. . ." The message

ended as sharply as it had begun; in a flare of agony which, Worsel knew, meant that

that Lensman, whoever he was, had died.

     Since the thought, although broadcast, had come in strong and clear, Worsel

knew that its sender had been close by. While the time had been very short indeed, he

had been able to get a line of sorts. Into that line he . .whirled the Velan's sharp prow

and along it she hurtled at the literally inconceivable pace of her maximum drive. As the

Gray Lensman had often remarked, the Velantian super-dreadnought had more legs

than a centipede, and now she was using them all. In minutes, then, the scene of battle

grew large upon her plates.

     The Patrol ship, hopelessly outclassed, could last only minutes longer. Her

screens were down; her very wall-shield was dead. Red pock-marks sprang into being

along her sides as the Boskonian needle-beamers wiped out her few remaining

controls. Then, as the helplessly raging Worsel looked on, his brain seething with

unutterable Velantian profanity, the enemy prepared to board; a course of action which,

Worsel could see, was changed abruptly by the fact—and perhaps as well by the terrific

velocity—of his own unswerving approach. The conquered Patrol cruiser disappeared in

a blaze of detonating duodec; the conqueror devoted his every jet to the task of running

away; strewing his path as he did so with sundry hems of solid and explosive

destruction. Such things, however, whether inert or free, were old and simple stuff to the

Velan's war-wise crew. Their spotters and detectors were full out, as was also a forefan

of annihilating and disintegrating beams.

     Thus none of the Boskonian's missiles touched the Velan, nor, with all his speed,

could he escape. Few indeed were the ships of space able to step it, parsec for parsec,

with Worsel's mighty craft, and this luckless pirate vessel was not one of them. Up and

up the Velan rushed; second by second the intervening distance lessened. Tractors

shot out, locked on, and pulled briefly with all the force of their stupendous generators.

     Briefly, but long enough. As Worsel had anticipated, that savage yank had, in the

fraction of a second required for the Boskonian commander to recognize and to cut the

tractors, been enough to bring the two inertialess warcraft almost screen to screen.

     "Primaries! Blast!" Worsel hurled the thought even before his tractors snapped.

He was in no mood for a long-drawn-out engagement. He might be able to win with his

secondaries, his needles, his tremendously powerful short-range stuff, and his other

ordinary offensive weapons; but he was taking no chances.

     One! Two! Three! The three courses of Boskonian defensive screen scarcely

winked as each, locally overloaded, flared through the visible into the black and went

down.

     Crash! The stubborn fabric of the wall-shield offered little more resistance before

it, too, went down, exposing the bare metal of the Boskonian hull—and, as is well

known, any conceivable material substance simply vanishes at the touch of such fields

of force as those.

     Driving projectors carved away and main batteries silenced, Worsel's needle-

beamers proceeded systematically to riddle every control panel and every lifeboat, to

make of the immense space-rover a completely helpless hulk.

     "Hold!" An observer flashed the thought. "Number Eight slip is empty—Number

Eight lifeboat got away!" "Damnation!" Worsel, at the head of his armed and armored

storming party, as furiously eager as they to come to grips with the enemy, paused

briefly. "Trace it—or can you?"

     "I did. My tracers can hold it for fifteen minutes, perhaps twenty. No longer than

twenty."

     Worsel thought intensely. Which had first call, ship or lifeboat? The ship, he

decided. Its resources were vastly greater; most of its personnel were probably

unharmed. Given any time at all, they might be able to jury-rig a primary, and that would

be bad—very bad. Besides, there were more people here; and even if, as was distinctly

possible, the Boskonian captain had abandoned his vessel and his crew in an attempt

to save his own life, there was plenty of time.

     "Hold that lifeboat," he instructed the observer. "Ten minutes is all we need here."

     - And it was. The Boskonians—barrel-bodied, blocky-limbed monstrosities

resembling human beings about as much as they did the Velantians—wore armor,

possessed hand-weapons of power, and fought viciously. They had even managed to

rig a few semi-portable projectors, but none of these was allowed a single blast. Spy-ray

observers were alert, and needle-beam operators; hence the fighting was all at hand to

hand, with hand-weapons only. For, while the Velantians to a man lusted to kill, they

had had it drilled into them for twenty years that the search for information came first;

the pleasure of killing, second.

     Worsel himself went straight for the Boskonian officer in command. That wight

had a couple of guards with him, but they did not matter—needle-ray men took care of

them. He also had a pair of heavy blasters, which he held steadily on the Velantian.

Worsel paused momentarily; then, finding his screens adequate, he slammed the

control-room door shut with a flick of his tail and launched himself, straight and level at

his foe, with an acceleration of ten gravities. The Boskonian tried to dodge but could

not. The frightful impact did not kill him, but it hurt him, badly. Worsel, on the other hand,

was scarcely jarred. Hard, tough, and durable, Velantians are accustomed from birth to

knockings-about which would pulverize human bones.

     Worsel batted the Boskonian's guns away with two terrific blows of an armored

paw, noting as he did so that violent contact with a steel wall didn't do their interior

mechanisms a bit of good. Then, after cutting off both his enemy's screens and his own,

he batted the Boskonian's helmet; at first experimentally, then with all his power.

Unfortunately, however, it held. So did the thought-screen, and there were no external

controls. That armor, damn it, was good stuff!

     Leaping to the ceiling, he blasted his whole mass straight down upon the

breastplate, striking it so hard this time that he hurt his head. Still no use. He wedged

himself between two heavy braces, flipped a loop of tail around the Boskonian's feet,

and heaved. The armored form flew across the room, struck the heavy steel wall,

bounced, and dropped. The bulges of the armor were flattened by the force of the

collision, the wall was dented—but the thought-screen still held!

     Worsel was running out of time, fast. He couldn't treat the thing very much

rougher without killing him, if he wasn't dead already. He couldn't take him aboard; he

had to cut that screen here and now! He could see how the armor was put together; but,

armored as he was, he could not take it apart. And, since the whole ship was empty of

air, he could not open his own.

     Or could he? He could. He could breathe space long enough to do what had to

be done. He cut off his air, loosened a plate enough to release four or five hands, and,

paying no attention to his laboring lungs, set furiously to work. He tore open the

Boskonian's armor, snapped off his thought-screen. The creature wasn't quite dead

yet—good! He didn't know a damn thing, though, nor did any member of his crew . . .

but. . . a ground-gripper—a big shot—had got away. Who, or what was he?

     'Tell me!" Worsel demanded, with the full power of mind and Lens, even while he

was exploring with all his skill and speed. 'TELL ME!"

     But the Boskonian was dying fast. The ungentle treatment, and now the lack of

air, were taking toll. His patterns were disintegrating by the second, faster and faster.

Meaningless blurs, which, under Worsel's vicious probing, condensed into something

which seemed to be a Lens.

     A Lensman? Impossible—starkly unthinkable! But jet back —hadn't Kim

intimated a while back that there might be such things as Black Lensmen?

     But Worsel himself wasn't feeling so good. He was only half conscious. Red,

black, and purple spots were dancing in front of every one of his eyes. He sealed his

suit, turned on his ah-, gasped, and staggered. Two of the nearest Velantians, both of

whom had been en rapport with him throughout, came running to his aid; arriving just as

he recovered full control.

     "Back to the Velan, everybody!" he ordered. "No time for any more fun—we've

got to get that lifeboat!" Then, as soon as he had been obeyed: "Bomb that hulk . . .

Good! Flit!"

     Overtaking the lifeboat did not take long. Spearing it with a tractor and yanking it

alongside required only seconds. For all his haste, Worsel found in it only a something

that looked as though it once might have been a Delgonian Lensman. It had blown itself

apart. Because of its reptilian tenacity of life, however, it was not quite dead: its Lens

still showed an occasional flicker of light and its disintegrating mind was not yet entirely

devoid of patterns. Worsel studied that mind until all trace of life had vanished. Then he

called Kinnison.

     ". . . so you see I guessed wrong. The Lens was too dim to read, but he must

have been a Black Lensman. The only readable thought in his mind was an extremely

fuzzy one of the planet Lyrane Nine. I hate to have hashed the job up so; especially

since I had one chance in two of guessing right."

     "Well, no use squawking now . . ." Kinnison paused in thought. "Besides, he

could have done it anyway, and would have. You haven't done too badly, at that. You

found a Black Lensman who isn't a Kalonian, and you've got confirmation of Boskonian

interest in Lyrane Nine. What more do you want? Stick around fairly close to the Hell-