not want either of our worlds to become as Jarnevon now is."

     "Hear! Bravo! Nor I!" came a chorus of thoughts, interrupted by an emanation

from one of the sparkling force-ball inter-galactic communicators.

     "Yes? Alcon acknowledging," the Tyrant took the call.

     It was a zwilnik upon far Lonabar, reporting through Lyrane VIII everything that

Cartiff had done. "I do not know —I have no idea—whether or not this matter is either

unusual or important," the observer concluded. "I would, however, rather report ten

unimportant things than miss one which might later prove to have had significance."

     "Right. Report received," and discussion raged. Was this affair actually what it

appeared upon the surface to be, or was it another subtle piece of the work of that

never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Lensman?

     The observer was recalled. Orders were given and were carried out. Then, after

it had been learned that Bleeko's palace and every particle of its contents had been

destroyed, that Cartiff had vanished utterly, and that nobody could be found upon the

face of Lonabar who could throw any light whatever upon the manner or the time of his

going; then, after it was too late to do anything about it, it was decided that this must

have been the work of THE Lensman. And it was useless to storm or to rage. Such a

happening could not have been reported sooner to so high an office; the routine events

of a hundred million worlds simply could not be considered at that level. And since this

Lensman never repeated —his acts were always different, alike only in that they were

drably routine acts until their crashing finales—the Boskonian observers never had been

and never would be able to report his activities in time.

     "But he got nothing this time, I am certain of that," the chief psychologist exulted.

     "How can you be so sure?" Alcon snapped.

     "Because Menjo Bleeko of Lonabar knew nothing whatever of our activities or of

our organization except at such times as one of my men was in charge of his mind," the

scientist gloated. "I and my assistants know mental surgery as those crude hypnotists

the Eich never will know it. Even our lowest agents are having those clumsy and

untrustworthy false teeth removed as fast as my therapists can operate upon their

minds."

     "Nevertheless, you are even now guilty of underestimating," Alcon reproved him

sharply, energizing a force-ball communicator. "It is quite eminently possible that he

who wrought so upon Lonabar may have been enabled—by pure chance, perhaps—to

establish a linkage between that planet and Lyrane . . ."

     The cold, crisply incisive thought of an Eich answered the Tyrant's call.

     "Have you of Lyrane perceived or encountered any unusual occurrences or

indications?" Alcon demanded.

     "We have not."

     "Expect them, then," and the Thrallian despot transmitted in detail all the new

developments.

     "We always expect new and untoward things," the Eich more than half sneered.

"We are prepared momently for anything that can happen, from a visitation by Star A

Star and any or all of his Lensmen up to an attack by the massed Grand Fleet of the

Galactic Patrol. Is there anything else, Your Supremacy?"

     "No. I envy you your self-confidence and assurance, but I mistrust exceedingly

the soundness of your judgment. That is all." Alcon turned his attention to the

psychologist. "Have you operated upon the minds of those Eich and those self-styled

Overlords as you did upon that of Menjo Bleeko?"

     "No!" the mind-surgeon gasped. "Impossible! Not physically, perhaps, but would

not such a procedure interfere so seriously with the work that it. . ."

     "That is your problem—solve it," Alcon ordered, curtly. "See to it, however it is

solved, that no traceable linkage exists between any of those minds and us. Any mind

capable of thinking such thoughts as those which we have just received is not to be

trusted."

     As has been said, Kinnison-ex-Cartiff was en route for Lyrane II while the

foregoing conference was taking place. Throughout the trip he kept in touch with

Clarrissa. At first he tried, with his every artifice of diplomacy, cajolery, and downright

threats, to make her lay off; he finally invoked all his Unattached Lensman's

transcendental authority and ordered her summarily to lay off.

     No soap. How did he get that way, she wanted furiously to know, to be ordering

her around as though she were an uncapped probe? She was a Lensman, too, by

Klono's curly whiskers! Solving this problem was her job—nobody else's— and she was

going to do it. She was on a definite assignment —his own assignment, too,

remember—and she wasn't going to be called off of it just because he had found out all

of a sudden that it might not be quite as safe as dunking doughnuts at a down-river

picnic. What kind of a sun-baked, space-tempered crust did he have to pull a crack like

that on her? Would he have the bare-faced, unmitigated gall to spring a thing like that

on any other Lensman in the whole cock-eyed universe?

     That stopped Dim—cold. Lensmen always went in; that was the Code. For any

Tellurian Lensman, anywhere, to duck or to dodge because of any personal danger was

sheerly, starkly unthinkable. The fact that she was, to him, the sum total of all the

femininity of the galaxy could not be allowed any weight whatever; any more than the

converse aspect had ever been permitted to sway him. Fair enough. Bitter, but

inescapable. This was one—just one—of the consequences which Mentor had

foreseen. He had foreseen it, too, in a dimly unreal sort of way, and now that it was here

he'd simply have to take it. QX.

     "But be careful, anyway," he surrendered. "Awfully careful —as careful as I would

myself."

     "I could be ever so much more careful than that and still be pretty reckless." Her

low, entrancing chuckle came through as though she were present in person. "And by

the way, Kim, did I ever tell you that I am fast getting to be a gray Lensman?"

     "You always were, ace—you couldn't very well be anything else."

     "No—I mean actually gray. Did you ever stop to consider what the laundry

problem would be on this heathenish planet?"

     "Cris, I'm surprised at you—what do you need of a laundry?" he derided her,

affectionately. "Here you've been blasting me to a cinder about not taking your

Lensmanship seriously enough, and yet you are violating one of the prime tenets—that

of conformation to planetary customs. Shame on you!"

     He felt her hot blush across all those parsecs of empty space. "I tried it at first,

Kim, but it was just simply terrible.'"

     "You've got to learn how to be a Lensman or else quit throwing your weight

around like you did a while back. No back chat, either, you insubordinate young jade, or

I'll take that Lens away from you and heave you into the clink."

     "You and what regiment of Valerians? Besides, it didn't make any difference,"

she explained, triumphantly. "These matriarchs don't like me one bit better, no matter

what I wear or don't wear."

     Time passed, and in spite of Kinnison's highly disquieting fears, nothing

happened. Right on schedule the Patrol ship eased down to a landing at the edge of the

Lyranian airport. Clarrissa was waiting; dressed now, not in nurse's white, but in

startlingly nondescript gray shirt and breeches.

     "Not the gray leather of my station, but merely dirt color," she explained to

Kinnison after the first fervent greetings. "These women are clean enough physically,

but I simply haven't got a thing fit to wear. Is your laundry working?"

     It was, and very shortly Sector Chief Nurse Clarrissa MacDougall appeared in

her wonted immaculately-white, stiffly-starched uniform. She would not wear the Grays

to which she was entitled; nor would she—except when defying Kinnison—claim as her

right any one of the perquisites or privileges which were so indubitably hers. She was

not, never had been, and never would or could be a real Lensman, she insisted. At best,

she was only a synthetic—or an imitation—or a sort of amateur—or maybe a "Red"

Lensman— handy to have around, perhaps, for certain kinds of jobs, but absolutely and

definitely not a regular Lensman. And it was this attitude which was to make the Red

Lensman not merely tolerated, but loved as she was loved by Lensmen, Patrolmen, and

civilians alike throughout the length, breadth, and thickness of Civilization's bounds.

     The ship lifted from the airport and went north into the uninhabited temperate

zone. The matriarchs did not have anything the Tellurians either needed or wanted; the

Lyranians disliked visitors so openly and so intensely that to move away from the

populated belt was the only logical and considerate thing to do.

     The Dauntless arrived a day later, bringing Worsel and Tregonsee; followed

closely by Nadreck in his ultra-refrigerated speedster. Five Lensmen, then, studied

intently a globular map of Lyrane II which Clarrissa had made. Four of them, the

oxygen-breathers, surrounded it in the flesh, while Nadreck was with them only in

essence. Physically he was far out in the comfortably sub-zero reaches of the

stratosphere, but his mind was en rapport with theirs; his sense of perception scanned

the markings upon the globe as carefully and as accurately as did theirs.

     "This belt which I have colored pink," the female Lensman explained,

"corresponding roughly to the torrid zone, is the inhabited area of Lyrane II. Nobody

lives anywhere else. Upon it I have charted every unexplained disappearance that I

have been able to find out about. Each of these black crosses is where one such person

lived. The black circle—or circles, for frequently there are more than one—connected to

each cross by a black line, marks the spot—or spots—where that person was seen for

die last time or times. If the black circle is around the cross it means that she was last

seen at home."

     The crosses were distributed fairly evenly all around the globe and throughout

the populated zone. The circles, however, tended markedly to concentrate upon the

northern edge of that zone; and practically all of the encircled crosses were very .close

to the northern edge of the populated belt.

     "Almost all the lines intersect at this point here," she went on, placing a finger-tip

near the north pole of the globe. "The few that don't could be observational errors, or

perhaps the person was seen there before she really disappeared. If it is Overlords,

their cavern must be within about fifty kilometers of the spot I've marked here. However,

I couldn't find any evidence that any Eich have ever been here; and if they haven't I

don't see how the Overlords could be here, either. That, gentlemen of the Second

Stage, is my report; which, I fear, is neither complete nor conclusive."

     "You err, Lensman MacDougall." Nadreck was the first to speak. "It is both. A

right scholarly and highly informative piece of work, eh, friend Worsel?"

     "It is so . . . it is indeed so," the Velantian agreed, the while a shudder rippled

along the thirty-foot length of his sinuous body. "I suspected many things, but not this. . .

certainly not this, ever, away out here."

     "Nor I." Tregonsee's four horn-lipped, toothless mouths snapped open and shut;

his cabled arms writhed.

     "Nor I," from Kinnison. "If I had, you'd never've got that Lens, Clarrissa May

MacDougall."

     His voice was the grimmest she had ever heard it. He was picturing to himself

her lovely body writhing in torment; stretched, twisted, broken; forgetting completely that

his thoughts were as clear as a tri-di to all the others.

     "If they had detected you . . . you know what they'd do to get hold of a mind and

a vital force such as yours . . ."

     He shook himself and drew a tremendously deep breath of relief. "But thank God

they didn't. So all I've got to say is that if we ever have any kids and they don't bawl

when I tell 'em about this, I'll certainly give 'em something to bawl about!"

CHAPTER 12

Helen Goes North

     "But listen, Kim!" Clarrissa protested. "all four of you are assuming that I've dead-

centered the target. I thought probably I was right, but since I couldn't find any Eich

traces, I expected a lot of argument."

     "No argument," Kinnison assured her. "You know how they work. They tune in on

some one mind, the stronger and more vital the better. In that connection, I wonder that

Helen is still around—the ones who disappeared were upper-bracket minds, weren't

they?"

     She thought a space. "Now that yon mention it, I believe so. Most of them,

certainly."

     "Thought so. That clinches it, if it needed clinching. They tune in; then drag 'em in

in a straight line."

     "But that would be so obvious!" she objected.

     "It was not obvious, Clarrissa," Tregonsee observed, "until your work made it so:

a task which, I would like to say here, could not have been accomplished by any other

entity of Civilization."

     "Thanks, Tregonsee. But they're smart enough to . . . you'd think they'd vary their

technique, at least enough to get away from those dead straight lines."

     "They probably can't," Kinnison decided. "A racial trait, bred into 'em for ages.

They've always worked that way; probably can't work any other way. The Eich

undoubtedly told "em to lay off those orgies, but they probably couldn't do it—the vice is

too habit-forming to break, would be my guess. Anyway, we're all in agreement that it's

the Overlords?"

     They were.

     "And there's no doubt as to what we do next?"

     There was none. Two great ships, the incomparable Dauntless and the

camouflaged warship which had served Kinnison-Cartiff so well, lifted themselves into

the stratosphere and headed north. The Lensmen did not want to advertise their

presence and there was no great hurry, therefore both vessels had their thought-

screens out and both rode upon baffled jets.

     Practically all of the crewmen of the Dauntless had seen Overlords in the

substance; so far as is known they were the only human beings who had ever seen an

Overlord and had lived to tell of it. Twenty two of their former fellows had seen

Overlords and had died. Kinnison, Worsel, and vanBuskirk had slain Overlords in

unscreened hand-to-hand combat in the fantastically incredible environment of a hyper-

spatial tube—that uncanny medium in which man and monster could and did occupy the

same space at the same time without being able to touch each other; in which the air or

pseudo-air is thick and viscous; in which the only substance common to both sets of

dimensions and thus available for combat purposes is dureum—a synthetic material so

treated and so saturated as to be of enormous mass and inertia.

     It is easier to imagine, then, than to describe the emotion which seethed through

the crew as the news flew around that the business next in order was the extirpation of

a flock of Overlords.

     "How about a couple or three nice duodec torpedoes. Kim, steered right down

into the middle of that cavern and touched off—POWIE!—slick, don't you think?"

Henderson insinuated.

     "Aw, let's not, Kim!" protested vanBuskirk, who, as one of the three Overlord-

slayers, had been called into the control room. "This ain't going to be in a tube, Kim; it's

in a cavern on a planet—made to order for axe-work. Let me and the boys put on our

screens and bash their ugly damn skulls in for 'em—how about it, huh?"

     "Not duodec, Hen . . . not yet, anyway," Kinnison decided. "As for axe-work,

Bus—maybe, maybe not. Depends. We want to catch some of them alive, so as to get

some information . . . but you and your boys will be good for that, too, so you might as

well go and start getting them ready." He turned his thought to his snakish comrade-in-

arms.

     "What do you think, Worsel, is this hide-out of theirs heavily fortified, or just

hidden?"

     "Hidden, I would say from what I know of them—well hidden," the Velantian

replied, promptly. "Unless they have changed markedly; and, like you, I do not believe

that a race so old can change that much. I could tune them in, but it might very well do

more harm than good."

     "Certain to, I'm afraid." Kinnison knew as well as did Worsel that a Velantian was

the tastiest dish which could be served up to any Overlord. Both knew also, however,

the very real mental ability of the foe; knew that the Overlords would be sure to suspect

that any Velantian so temptingly present upon Lyrane II must be there specifically for

the detriment of the Delgonian race; knew that they would almost certainly refuse the

proffered bait. And not only would they refuse to lead Worsel to their caverns, but in all

probability they would cancel even their ordinary activities, thus making it impossible to

find them at all, until they had learned definitely that the hook-bearing tid-bit and its

accomplices had left the Lyranian solar system entirely. "No, what we need right now is

a good, strong-willed Lyranian."

     "Shall we go back and grab one? It would take only a few minutes," Henderson

suggested, straightening up at his board.

     "Uh-uh," Kinnison demurred. "That might smell a bit on the cheesy side, too,

don't you think, fellows?" and Worsel and Tregonsee agreed that such a move would be

ill-advised.

     "Might I offer a barely tenable suggestion?" Nadreck asked diffidently.

     "I'll say you can—come in."

     "Judging by the rate at which Lyranians have been vanishing of late, it would

seem that we would not have to wait too long before another one comes hither under

her own power. Since the despised ones will have captured her themselves, and

themselves will have forced her to come to them, no suspicion will be or can be

aroused."

     "That's a thought, Nadreck—that is a thought!" Kinnison applauded. "Shoot us

up, will you, Hen? 'Way up, and hover over the center of the spread of intersections of

those lines. Put observers on every plate you've got here, and have Communications

'alert all observers aboard ship. Have half of them search the air all around as far as

they can reach for an airplane in flight; have the rest comb the terrain below, both on the

surface and underground, with spy-rays, for any sign of a natural or artificial cave."

     "What kind of information do you think they may have, Kinnison?" asked

Tregonsee the Rigellian.

     "I don't know." Kinnison pondered for minutes. "Somebody—around here

somewhere—has got some kind of a tie-up with some Boskonian entity or group that is

fairly well up the ladder: I'm pretty sure of that. Bleeko sent ships here—one speedster,

certainly, and there's no reason to suppose that it was an isolated case . . ."

     "There is nothing to show, either, that it was not an isolated case," Tregonsee

observed, quietly, "and the speedster landed, not up here near the pole, but in the

populated zone. Why? To secure some of the women?" The Rigellian was not arguing

against Kinnison; he was, as they all knew, helping to subject every facet of the matter

to scrutiny.

     "Possibly—but this is a transfer point," Kinnison pointed out. "Illona was to start

out from here, remember. And those two ships . . . coming to meet her, or perhaps each

other, or . . ."

     "Or perhaps called there by the speedster's crew, for aid," Tregonsee completed

the thought.

     "One, but quite possibly not both," Nadreck suggested. "We are agreed, 1 think,

that the probability of a Boskonian connection is sufficiently large to warrant the taking

of these Overlords alive in order to read their minds?"

     They were; hence the discussion then turned naturally to the question of how this

none-too-easy feat was to be accomplished. The two Patrol ships had climbed and were

cruising in great, slow circles; the spy-ray men and the other observers were hard at

work. Before they had found anything upon or in the ground, however:

     "Plane, ho!" came the report, and both vessels, with spy-ray blocks out now as

well as thought-screens, plunged silently into a flatly-slanting dive. Directly over the slow

Lyranian craft, high above it, they turned as one to match its course and slowed to

match its pace.

     "Come to life, Kim—don't let them have her!" Clarrissa exclaimed. Being en

rapport with them all, she knew that both unhuman Worsel and monstrous Nadreck

were perfectly willing to let the helpless Lyranian become a sacrifice; she knew that

neither Kinnison nor Tregonsee had as yet given that angle of the affair a single

thought. "Surely, Kim, you don't have to let them kill her, do you? Isn't showing you the

gate or whatever it is, enough? Can't you rig up something to do something with when

she gets almost inside?"

     "Why . . . uh . . . I s'pose so." Kinnison wrenched his attention away from a plate.

"Oh, sure,. Cris. Hen! Drop us down a bit, and have the boys get ready to spear that

crate with a couple of tractors when I give the word."

     The plane held its course, directly toward a range of low, barren, precipitous hills.

As it approached them it dropped, as though to attempt a landing upon a steep and

rocky hillside.

     "She can't land there," Kinnison breathed, "and Overlords would want her alive,

not dead . . . suppose I've been wrong all the time? Get ready, fellows!" he snapped.

"Take her at the very last possible instant—before—she—crashes—NOW!"

     As he yelled the command the powerful beams leaped out, seizing the disaster-

bound vehicle in a gently unbreakable grip. Had they not done so, however, the

Lyranian would not have crashed; for in that last split second a section of the rugged

hillside fell inward. In the very mouth of that dread opening the little plane hung for an

instant, then:

     "Grab the woman, quick!" Kinnison ordered, for the Lyranian was very evidently

going to jump. And, such was the awful measure of the Overlord's compulsion, she did

jump; without a parachute, without knowing or caring what, if anything, was to break her

fall. But before she struck ground a tractor beam had seized her, and passive plane and

wildly struggling pilot were both borne rapidly aloft.

     "Why, Kim, it's Helen!" Clarrissa shrieked in surprise, then voice and manner

became transformed. "The poor, poor thing," she crooned. "Bring her in at number six

lock. I'll meet her there—you fellows keep clear. In the state she's in a

shock—especially such a shock as seeing such a monstrous lot of males—would knock

her off the beam, sure."

     Helen of Lyrane ceased struggling in the instant of being drawn through the

thought-screen surrounding the Dauntless. She had not been unconscious at any time.

She had known exactly what she had been doing; she had wanted intensely—such was

the insidiously devastating power of the Delgonian mind—to do just that and nothing

else. The falseness of values, the indefensibility of motivation, simply could not register

in her thoroughly suffused, completely blanketed mind. When the screen cut off the

Overlord's control, however, thus restoring her own, the shock of realization of what she

had done—what she had been forced to do—struck her like a physical blow. Worse

than a physical blow, for ordinary physical violence she could understand.

     This mischance, however, she could not even begin to understand. It was utterly

incomprehensible. She knew what had happened; she knew that her mind had been

taken over by some monstrously alien, incredibly powerful mentality, for some purpose

so obscure as to be entirely beyond her ken. To her narrow philosophy of existence, to

her one-planet insularity of viewpoint and outlook, the very existence, anywhere, of such

a mind with such a purpose was in simple fact impossible. For it actually to exist upon

her own planet, Lyrane II, was sheerly, starkly unthinkable.

     She did not recognize the Dauntless, of course. To her all space-ships were

alike. They were all invading warships, full of enemies. All things and all beings

originating elsewhere than upon Lyrane II were, perforce, enemies. Those outrageous

males, the Tellurian Lensman and his cohorts, had pretended not to be inimical, as had

the peculiar, white-swathed Tellurian near-person who had been worming itself into her

confidence in order to study the disappearances; but she did not trust even them.

     She now knew the manner of, if not the reason for, the vanishment of her fellow

Lyranians. The tractors of the space-ship had saved her from whatever fate it was that

impended. She did not, however, feel any thrill of gratitude. One enemy or another,

what difference did it make? Therefore, as she went through the blocking screen and

recovered control of her mind, she set herself to fight; to fight with every iota of her

mighty mind and with every fiber of her lithe, hard-schooled, tigress' body. The air-lock

doors opened and closed—she faced, not an armed and armored male all set to slay,

but the white-clad near-person whom she already knew better than she ever would

know any other non-Lyranian.

     "Oh, Helen!" the girl half sobbed, throwing both arms around the still-braced

Chief Person. "I'm so glad that we got to you in time! And there will be no more

disappearances, dear—the boys will see to that!"

     Helen did not know, really, what disinterested friendship meant. Since the nurse

had put her into a wide-open two-way, however, she knew beyond all possibility of

doubt that these Tellurians wished her and all her kind well, not ill; and the shock of that

knowledge, superimposed upon the other shocks which she had so recently undergone,

was more than she could bear. For the first and only time in her hard, busy, purposeful

life, Helen of Lyrane fainted; fainted dead away in the circle of the Earth-girl's arms.

     The nurse knew that this was nothing serious; in fact, she was professionally

quite in favor of it. Hence, instead of resuscitating the Lyranian, she swung the pliant

body into a carry—as has been previously intimated, Clarrissa MacDougall was no

more a weakling physically than she was mentally—and without waiting for orderlies

and stretcher she bore it easily away to her own quarters.

CHAPTER 13

In the Cavern

     In the meantime the more warlike forces of the Dauntless had not been idle. In

die instant of the opening of the cavern's doors the captain's talker issued orders, and

as soon as the Lyranian was out of the line of fire keen-eyed needle-ray men saw to it

that those doors were in no mechanical condition to close. The Dauntless settled

downward; landed in front of the entrance to the cavern. The rocky, broken terrain

meant nothing to her; .the hardest, jaggedest boulders crumbled instantly to dust as her

enormous mass drove the file-hard, inflexible armor of her mid-zone deep into the

ground. Then, while alert beamers watched the entrance and while spy-ray experts

combed the interior for other openings which Kinnison and Worsel were already

practically certain did not exist, the forces of Civilization formed for the attack.

     Worsel was fairly shivering with eagerness for the fray. His was, and with plenty

of reason, the bitterest by far of all the animosities there present against the Overlords.

For Delgon and his own native planet, Velantia, were neighboring worlds, circling about

the same sun. Since the beginning of Velantian space-flight the Overlords of Delgon

had preyed upon the Velantians; in fact, the Overlords had probably caused the first

Velantian space-ship to be built. They had called them, in a never-ending stream,

across the empty gulf of space. They had pinned them against their torture screens, had

flayed them and had tweaked them to bits, had done them to death in every one of the

numberless slow and hideous fashions which had been developed by a race of sadists

who had been specializing in the fine art of torture for thousands upon thousands of

years. Then, in the last minutes of the long-drawn-out agony of death, the Overlords

were wont to feed, with a passionate, greedy, ineradicably ingrained lust utterly

inexplicable to any civilized mind, upon the life-forces which the mangled bodies could

no longer contain.

     This horrible parasitism went on for ages. The Velantians fought vainly: their

crude thought-screens were almost useless until after the coming of the Patrol. Then,

with screens that were of real use, and with ships of power and with weapons of might,

Worsel himself had taken the lead in the clean-up of Delgon. He was afraid, of course.

Any Velantian was and is frightened to the very center of his being by the mere thought

of an Overlord. He cannot help it; it is in his heredity, bred into the innermost chemistry

of his body; the cold grue of a thousand thousand fiendishly tortured ancestors simply

will not be denied or cast aside.

     Many of the monsters had succeeded in fleeing Delgon, of course. Some

departed in the ships which had ferried their victims to the planet, some were removed

to other solar systems by the Eich. The rest were slain; and as the knowledge that a

Velantian could kill an Overlord gained headway, the emotions toward the oppressors

generated within minds such as the Velantians' became literally indescribable. Fear was

there yet and in abundance—it simply could not be eradicated. Horror and revulsion.

Sheer, burning hatred; and, more powerful than all, amounting almost to an obsession,

a clamoring, shrieking, driving urge for revenge which was almost tangible. All these,

and more, Worsel felt as he waited, twitching.

     The Valerians wanted to go in because it meant a hand-to-hand fight. Fighting

was their business, their sport, and their pleasure; they loved it for its own sweet sake,

with a simple, wholehearted devotion. To die in combat was a Valerian soldier's natural

and much-to-be-desired end; to die in any peaceful fashion was a disgrace and a

calamity. They did and do go into battle with very much the same joyous abandon with

which a sophomore goes to meet his date in Lover's Lane. And now, to make physical

combat all the nicer and juicier, they carried semi-portable tractors and pressors, for the

actual killing was not to take place until after the battle proper was over. Blasting the

Overlords out of existence would have been simplicity itself: but they were not to die

until after they had been forced to divulge whatever they might have of knowledge or of

information.

     Nadreck of Palain wanted to go in solely to increase his already vast store of

knowledge. His thirst for facts was a purely scientific one; the fashion in which it was to

be satisfied was the veriest, the most immaterial detail. Indeed, it is profoundly

impossible to portray to any human intelligence the serene detachment, the utterly

complete indifference to suffering exhibited by practically all of the frigid-blooded races,

even those adherent to Civilization, especially when the suffering is being done by an

enemy. Nadreck did know, academically and in a philological sense, from his reading,

the approximate significance of such words as "compunction", "sympathy", and

"squeamishness"; but he would have been astounded beyond measure at any

suggestion that they would apply to any such matter-of-fact business as the extraction

of data from the mind of an Overlord of Delgon, no matter what might have to be done

to the unfortunate victim in the process.

     Tregonsee went in simply because Kinnison did—to be there to help out in case

the Tellurian should need him.

     Kinnison went in because he felt that he had to. He knew full well that he was not

going to get any kick at all out of what was going to happen. He was not going to like it,

any part of it. Nor did he. In fact, he wanted to be sick— violently sick—before the

business was well started. And Nadreck perceived his mental and physical distress.

     "Why stay, friend Kinnison, when your presence is not necessary?" he asked,

with the slightly pleased, somewhat surprised, hellishly placid mental immobility which

Kinnison was later to come to know so well. "Even though my powers are admittedly

small, I feel eminently qualified to cope with such minor matters as the obtainment and

the accurate transmittal of that which you wish to know. I cannot understand your

emotions, but I realize fully that they are essential components of that which makes you

what you fundamentally are. There can be no justification for your submitting yourself

needlessly to such stresses, such psychic traumata."

     And Kinnison and Tregonsee, realizing the common sense of the Palainian's

statement and very glad indeed to have an excuse for leaving the outrageous scene,

left it forthwith.

     There is no need to go into detail as to what actually transpired within that

cavern's dark and noisome depths. It took a long time, nor was any of it gentle. The

battle itself, before the Overlords were downed, was bad enough in any Tellurian eyes.

Clad in armor of proof although they were, more than one of the Valerians died.

Worsel's armor was shattered and rent, his leather-hard flesh was slashed, burned, and

mangled before the last of the monstrous forms was pinned down and helpless.

Nadreck alone escaped unscathed —he did so, he explained quite truthfully, because

he did not go in there to fight, but to learn.

     What followed the battle, however, was infinitely worse. The Delgonians, as has

been said, were hard, cold, merciless, even among themselves; they were pitiless and

unyielding and refractory in the extreme. It need scarcely be emphasized then, that they

did not yield to persuasion either easily or graciously; that their own apparatus and

equipment had to be put to its fullest grisly use before those stubborn minds gave up

the secrets so grimly and so implacably sought. Worsel, the raging Velantian, used

those torture-tools with a vengeful savagery and a snarling ferocity which are at least

partially understandable; but Nadreck employed them with a calm capability, a coldly,

emotionlessly efficient callousness the mere contemplation of which made icy shivers

chase each other up and down Kinnison's spine.

     At long last the job was done. The battered Patrol forces returned to the

Dauntless, bringing with them their spoils and their dead. The cavern and its every

molecule of contents was bombed out of existence. The two ships took off; Cartiff's

heavily-armed "merchantman" to do the long flit back to Tellus, the Dauntless to drop

Helen and her plane off at her airport and then to join her sister super-dreadnoughts

which were already beginning to assemble in Rift Ninety Four.

     "Come down here, will you please, Kim?" came Clarrissa's thought. "I've been

keeping her pretty well blocked out, but she wants to talk to you—in fact, she insists on

it— before she leaves the ship."

     "Hm . . . that is something!" the Lensman exclaimed, and hurried to the nurse's

cabin.

     There stood the Lyranian queen; a full five inches taller than Clarissa's five feet

six, a good thirty five pounds heavier than her not inconsiderable one hundred and forty

five. Hard, fine, supple; erectly poised she stood there, an exquisitely beautiful statue of

pale bronze, her flaming hair a gorgeous riot. Head held proudly high, she stared only

slightly upward into the Earth-man's quiet, understanding eyes.

     "Thanks, Kinnison, for everything that you and yours have done for me and

mine," she said, simply; and held out her right hand in what she knew was the correct

Tellurian gesture.

     "Uh-uh, Helen," Kinnison denied, gently, making no motion to grasp the proffered

hand—which was promptly and enthusiastically withdrawn. "Nice, and it's really big of

you, but don't strain yourself to like us men too much or too soon; you've got to get used

to us gradually. We like you a lot, and we respect you even more, but we've been

around and you haven't. You can't be feeling friendly enough yet to enjoy shaking hands

with me—you certainly haven't got jets enough to swing that load—so this time we'll

take the thought for the deed. Keep trying, though, Toots old girl, and you'll make it yet.

In the meantime we're all pulling for you, and if you ever need any help, shoot us a call

on the communicator we've put aboard your plane. Clear ether, ace!"

     "Clear ether, MacDougall and Kinnison!" Helen's eyes were softer than either of

the Tellurians had ever seen them before. "There is, I think, something of wisdom, of

efficiency, in what you have said. It may be . . . that is, there is a possibility . . . you of

Civilization are, perhaps, persons—of a sort, that is,—after all. Thanks—really thanks, I

mean, this time—good-bye."

     Helen's plane had already been unloaded. She disembarked and stood beside it;

watching, with a peculiarly untranslatable expression, the huge cruiser until it was out of

sight.

     "It was just like pulling teeth for her to be civil to me," Kinnison grinned at his

fiancee, "but she finally made the lift. She's a grand girl, that Helen, in her peculiar,

poisonous way."

     "Why, Kim!" Clarrissa protested. "She's nice, really, when you get to know her.

And she's so stunningly, so ravishingly beautiful!"

     "Uh-huh," Kinnison agreed, without a trace of enthusiasm. "Cast her in chilled

stainless steel—she'd just about do as she is, without any casting—and she'd make a

mighty fine statue."

     "Kim! Shame on you!" the girl exclaimed. "Why, she's the most perfectly beautiful

thing I ever saw in my whole life!" Her voice softened. "I wish I looked like that," she

added wistfully.

     "She's beautiful enough—in her way—of course," the man admitted, entirely

unimpressed. "But then, so is a Radelegian cateagle, so is a spire of frozen helium, and

so is. a six-foot-long, armor-piercing punch. As for you wanting to look like her—that's

sheer tripe, Cris, and you know it. Beside you, all the Helens that ever lived, with

Cleopatra, Dessa Desplaines, and Illona Potter thrown in, wouldn't make a baffled flare .

. ."

     That was, of course, what she wanted him to say; and what followed is of no

particular importance here.

     Shortly after the Dauntless cleared the stratosphere, Nadreck reported that he

had finished assembling and arranging the data, and Kinnison called the Lensmen

together in his con room for an ultra-private conference. Worsel, it appeared, was still in

surgery.

     " 'Smaller, Doc?" Kinnison asked, casually. He knew that there was nothing really

serious the matter—Worsel had come out of the cavern under his own power, and a

Velantian recovers with startling rapidity from any wound which does not kill him outright

"Having trouble with your stitching?"

     "I'll say we are!" the surgeon grunted. "Have to bore holes with an electric drill

and use linemen's pliers. Just about through now, though—he'll be with you in a couple

of minutes," and in a very little more than the stipulated time the Velantian joined the

other Lensmen.

     He was bandaged and taped, and did not move at his customary headlong pace,

but he fairly radiated self-satisfaction, bliss, and contentment. He felt better, he

declared, than he had at any time since he cleaned out the last of Delgon's caverns.

     Kinnison stopped the inter-play of thoughts by starting up his Lensman's

projector. This mechanism was something like a tri-di machine, except that instead of

projecting sound and three-dimensional color, it operated via pure thought. Sometimes

the thoughts of one or more Overlords, at other times the thoughts of the Eich or other

beings as registered upon the minds of the Overlords, at still others the thoughts of

Nadreck or of Worsel amplifying a preceding thought-passage or explaining some detail

of the picture which was being shown at the moment. The spool of tape now being run,

with others, formed the Lensmen's record of what they had done. This record would go

to Prime Base under Lensman's Seal; that is, only a Lensman could handle it or see it.

Later, after the emergency had passed, copies of it would go to various Central

Libraries and thus become available to properly accredited students. Indeed, it is only

from such records, made upon the scene and at the time by keen-thinking, logical, truth-

seeking Lensmen, that such a factual, minutely-detailed history as this can be compiled;

and your historian is supremely proud that he was the first person other than a Lensman

to be allowed to study a great deal of this priceless data.

     Worsel knew the gist of the report, Nadreck the compiler knew it all; but to

Kinnison, Clarrissa, and Tregonsee the unreeling of the tape brought shocking news.

For, as a matter of fact, the Overlords had known more, and there was more in the

Lyranian solar system to know, than Kinnison's wildest imaginings had dared to

suppose. That system was one of the main focal points for the zwilnik business of an

immense volume of space; Lyrane II was the meeting-place, the dispatcher's office, the

nerve-center from which thousands of invisible, immaterial lines reached out to

thousands of planets peopled by warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. Menjo Bleeko had

sent to Lyrane II not one expedition, but hundreds of them; the affair of Illona and her

escorts had been the veriest, the most trifling incident.

     The Overlords, however, did not know of any Boskonian group in the Second

Galaxy. They had no superiors, anywhere. The idea of anyone or any thing anywhere

being superior to an Overlord was unthinkable. They did, however, cooperate

with—here came the really stunning fact—certain of the Eich who lived upon eternally

dark Lyrane VIII, and who managed things for the frigid-blooded, poison-breathing

Boskonians of the region in much the same fashion as the Overlords did for the warm-

blooded, light-loving races. To make the cooperation easier and more efficient, the two

planets were connected by a hyper-spatial tube.

     "Just a sec!" Kinnison interrupted, as he stopped the machine for a moment.

"The Overlords were kidding themselves a bit there, I think—they must have been. If

they didn't report to or get orders from the Second Galaxy or some other higher-up

office, the Eich must have; and since the records and plunder and stuff were not in the

cavern, the Eich must have them on Eight. Therefore, whether they realized it or not,

the Overlords must have been inferior to the Eich and under their orders. Check?"

     "Check," Nadreck agreed. "Worsel and I concluded that they knew the facts, but

were covering up even in their own minds, to save face. Our conclusions, and the data

from which they were derived, are in the introduction—another spool. Shall I get it?"

     "By no means—just glad to have the point cleared up, is all. Thanks," and the

showing went on.

     The principal reason why the Lyranian system had been chosen for that

important headquarters was that it was one of the very few outlying solar systems,

completely unknown to the scientists of the Patrol, in which both the Eich and the

Overlords could live in their natural environments. Lyrane VIII was, of course, intensely,

bitterly cold. This quality is not rare, since nearly all Number Eight planets are; its

uniqueness lay in the fact that its atmosphere was almost exactly like that of Jarnevon.

     And Lyrane II suited the Overlords perfectly. Not only did it have the correct

temperature, gravity, and atmosphere, but also it offered that much rarer thing without

which no cavern of Overlords would have been content for long—a native life-form

possessing strong and highly vital minds upon which they could prey.

     There was more, much more; but the rest of it was not directly pertinent to the

immediate questions. The tape ran out, Kinnison snapped off the projector, and the

Lensmen went into a five-way.

     Why was not Lyrane II defended? Worsel and Kinnison had already answered

that one. Secretiveness and power of mind, not armament, had always been the natural

defenses of all Overlords. Why hadn't the Eich interfered? That was easy, too. The Eich

looked after themselves—if the Overlords couldn't, that was just too bad. The two ships

that had come to aid and had remained to revenge had certainly not come from

Eight—their crews had been oxygen-breathers. Probably a rendezvous—immaterial

anyway. Why wasn't the whole solar system ringed with outposts and screens? Too

obvious. Why hadn't the Dauntless been detected? Because of her nullifiers; and if she

had been spotted by any short-range stuff she had been mistaken for another zwilnik

ship. They hadn't detected anything out of the way on Eight because it hadn't occurred

to anybody to swing an analyzer toward that particular planet. If they did they'd find that

Eight was defended plenty. Had the Eich had time to build defenses? They must have

had, or they wouldn't be there—they certainly were not taking that kind of chances. And

by the way, hadn't they better do a bit of snooping around Eight before they went back

to join the Z9M9Z and the Fleet? They had.

     Thereupon the Dauntless faced about and retraced her path toward the now

highly important system of Lyrane. In their previous approaches the Patrolmen had

observed the usual precautions to avoid revealing themselves to any zwilnik vessel

which might have been on the prowl. Those precautions were now intensified to the

limit, since they knew that Lyrane VIII was the site of a base manned by the Eich

themselves.

     As the big cruiser crept toward her goal, nullifiers full out and every instrument of

detection and reception as attentively out-stretched as the whiskers of a tomcat slinking

along a black alley at midnight, the Lensmen again pooled their brains in conference.

     The Eich. This was going to be NO pushover. Even the approach would have to

be figured to a hair; because, since the Boskonians had decided that it would be poor

strategy to screen in their whole solar system, it was a cold certainty that they would

have their own planets guarded and protected by every device which their inhuman

ingenuity could devise. The Dauntless would have to stop just outside the range of

electro-magnetic detection, for the Boskonians would certainly have a five hundred

percent overlap. Their nullifiers would hash up the electros somewhat, but there was no

use in taking too many chances. Previously, on right-line courses to and from Lyrane II,

that had not mattered, for two reasons—not only was the distance extreme for accurate

electro work, but also it would have been assumed that their ship was a zwilnik. Laying

a course for Eight, though, would be something else entirely. A zwilnik would take the

tube, and they would not, even if they had known where it was.

     That left the visuals. The cruiser was a mighty small target .at interplanetary

distances; but there were such things as electronic telescopes, and the occupation of

even a single star might prove disastrous. Kinnison called the chief pilot.

     "Stars must be thin in certain regions of the sky out here, Hen. Suppose you can

pick us out a line of approach along which we will occult no stars and no bright

nebulae?"

     "I should think so, Kim—just a sec; I'll see . . . Yes, easily. There's a lot of black

background, especially to the nadir," and the conference was resumed.

     They'd have to go through the screens of electros in Kinnison's inherently

indetectable black speedster. QX, but she was nobody's fighter—she didn't have a

beam hot enough to light a match. And besides, there were the thought-screens and the

highly-probable other stuff about which th~e Lensmen could know nothing.

     Kinnison quite definitely did not relish the prospect. He remembered all too vividly

what had happened when he had scouted the Eich's base on Jarnevon; when it was

only through Worsel's aid that he had barely—just barely—escaped with his life. And

Jarnevon's defenders had probably been exerting only routine precautions, whereas

these fellows were undoubtedly cocked and primed for THE Lensman. He would go in,

of course, but he'd probably come out feet first —he didn't know any more about their

defenses than he had known before, and that was nothing, fiat. . .

     "Excuse the interruption, please," Nadreck's thought apologized, "but it would

seem to appear more desirable, would it not, to induce the one of them possessing the

most information to come out to us?"

     "Huh?" Kinnison demanded. "It would, of course—but how in all your purple hells

do you figure on swinging that load?"

     "I am, as you know, a person of small ability," Nadreck replied in his usual

circuitous fashion. "Also, I am of almost negligible mass and strength. Of what is known

as bravery I have no trace—in fact, I have pondered long over that to me

incomprehensible quality and have decided that it has no place in my scheme of

existence. I have found it much more efficient to perform the necessary tasks in the

easiest and safest possible manner, which is usually by means of stealth, deceit,

indirection, and other cowardly artifices."

     "Any of those, or all of them, would be QX with me," Kinnison assured him.

"Anything goes, with gusto and glee, as far as the Eich are concerned. What I don't see

is how we can put it across."

     "Thought-screens interfered so seriously with my methods of procedure," the

Palainian explained, "that I was forced to develop a means of puncturing them without

upsetting their generators. The device is not generally known, you understand."

Kinnison understood. So did the other Lensmen.

     "Might I suggest that the four of you put on heated armor and come with me to

my vessel in the hold? It will take some little time to transfer my apparatus and

equipment to your speedster."

     "Is it non-ferrous—undetectable?" Kinnison asked.

     "Of course," Nadreck replied in surprise. "I work, as I told you, by stealth. My

vessel is, except for certain differences necessitated by racial considerations, a

duplicate of your own."

     "Why didn't you say so?" Kinnison wanted to know. "Why bother to move the

gadget? Why not use your speedster?"

     "Because I was not asked. We should not bother. The only reason for using your

vessel is so that you will not suffer the discomfort of wearing armor," Nadreck replied,

categorically.

     "Cancel it, then," Kinnison directed. "You've been wearing armor all the time you

were with us—turn about for a while will be QX. Better that way, anyway, as this is very

definitely your party, not ours. Not?"

     "As you say, and with your permission," Nadreck agreed. "Also it may very well

be that you will be able to suggest improvements in my device whereby its efficiency

may be increased."

     "I doubt it" The Tellurian's already great respect for this retiring, soft-spoken,

"cowardly" Lensman was increasing constantly. "But we would like to study it, and

perhaps copy it, if you so allow."

     "Gladly," and so it was arranged.

     The Dauntless crept along a black-background pathway and stopped. Nadreck,

Worsel, and Kinnison—three were enough and neither Clarrissa nor Tregonsee insisted

upon going— boarded the Palainian speedster.

     Away from the mother-ship it sped upon muffled jets, and through the far-flung,

heavily overlapped electro-magnetic detector zones. Through the outer thought-

screens. Then, ultra-slowly, as space-speeds go, the speedster moved forward, feeling

for whatever other blocking screens there might be.

     All three of those Lensmen were in fact detectors themselves—their Arisian-

imparted special senses made ethereal, even sub-ethereal, vibrations actually visible or

tangible—but they did not depend only upon their bodily senses. That speedster carried

instruments unknown to space-pilotry, and the Lensmen used them unremittingly. When

they came to a screen they opened it, so insidiously that its generating mechanisms

gave no alarms. Even a meteorite screen, which was supposed to forbid the passage of

any material object, yielded without protest to Nadreck's subtle manipulation.

     Slowly, furtively, a perfectly absorptive black body sinking through blackness so

intense as to be almost palpable, the Palainian speedster settled downward toward the

Boskonian fortress of Lyrane VIII.

CHAPTER 14

Nadreck at Work

     This is perhaps as good a place as any to glance in passing at the fashion in

which the planet Lonabar was brought under the aegis of Civilization. No attempt will or

can be made to describe it in any detail, since any adequate treatment of it would fill a

volume—indeed, many volumes have already been written concerning various phases

of the matter —and since it is not strictly germane to the subject in hand. However,

some knowledge of the modus operandi in such cases is highly desirable for the full

understanding of this history, in view of the vast number of planets which Coordinator

Kinnison and his associates did have to civilize before the Second Galaxy was made

secure.

     Scarcely had Cartiff-Kinnison moved out than the Patrol moved in. If Lonabar had

been heavily fortified, a fleet of appropriate size and power would have cleared the way.

As it was, the fleet which landed was one of transports, not of battleships, and all the

fighting from then on was purely defensive.

     Propagandists took the lead; psychologists; Lensmen skilled not only in

languages but also in every art of human relationships. The case of Civilization was

stated plainly and repeatedly, the errors and the fallacies of autocracy were pointed out.

A nucleus of government was formed; not of Civilization's imports, but of solid

Lonabarian citizens who had passed the Lensmen's tests of ability and trustworthiness.

     Under this local government a pseudo-democracy began haltingly to function. At

first its progress was painfully slow; but as more and more of the citizens perceived

what the Patrol actually was doing, it grew apace. Not only did the invaders allow—yes,

foster—free speech and statutory liberty; they suppressed ruthlessly any person or any

faction seeking to build a new dictatorship, whatever its nature, upon the ruins of the

old. That news traveled fast; and laboring always and mightily upon Civilization's side

were the always-present, however deeply-buried, urges of all intelligent entities toward

self-expression.

     There was opposition, of course. Practically all of those who had waxed fat upon

the old order were very strongly in favor of its continuance. There were the hordes of

the down-trodden who had so long and so dumbly endured oppression that they could

not understand anything else; in whom the above-mentioned urges had been beaten

and tortured almost out of existence. They themselves were not opposed to

Civilization—for them it meant at worst only a change of masters—but those who

sought by the same old wiles to re-enslave them were foes indeed.

     Menjo Bleeko's sycophants and retainers were told to work or starve. The fat

hogs could support the new order—or else. The thugs and those who tried to prey upon

and exploit the dumb masses were arrested and examined. Some were cured, some

were banished, some were shot.

     Little could be done, however, about the dumb themselves, for in them the spark

was feeble indeed. The new government nursed that spark along, the while ruling them

as definitely, although not as harshly, as had the old; the Lensmen backing the

struggling young Civilization knowing full well that in the children or in the children's

children of these unfortunates the spark would flame up into a great white light.

     It is seen that this government was not, and could not for many years become, a

true democracy. It was in fact a benevolent semi-autocracy; autonomous in a sense, yet

controlled by the Galactic Council through its representatives, the Lensmen. It was,

however, so infinitely more liberal than anything theretofore known by the Lonabarians

as to be a political revelation, and since corruption, that cosmos-wide curse of

democracy, was not allowed a first finger-hold, the principles of real democracy and of

Civilization took deeper root year by year.

     To get back into the beam of narrative, Nadreck's blackly indetectable speedster

settled to ground far from the Boskonians' central dome; well beyond the far-flung

screens. The Lensmen knew that no life existed outside that dome and they knew that

no possible sense of perception could pierce those defenses. They did not know,

however, what other resources of detection, of offense, or of defense the foe might

possess; hence the greatest possible distance at which they could work efficiently was

the best distance.

     "I realize that it is useless to caution any active mind not to think at all," Nadreck

remarked as he began to manipulate various and sundry controls, "but you already

know from the nature of our problem that any extraneous thought will wreak untold

harm. For that reason I beg of you to keep your thought-screens up at all times, no

matter what happens. It is, however, imperative that you be kept informed, since I may

require aid or advice at any moment. To that end I ask you to hold these electrodes,

which are connected to a receptor. Do not hesitate to speak freely to each other or to

me; but please use only a spoken language, as I am averse to Lensed thoughts at this

juncture. Are we agreed? Are we ready?"

     They were agreed and ready. Nadreck actuated Ms peculiar drill—a tube of force

somewhat analogous to a Q-type helix except in that it operated within the frequency-

range of thought—and began to increase, by almost infinitesimal increments, its power.

Nothing, apparently, happened; but finally the Palainian's instruments registered the fact

that it was through.

     "This is none too safe, friends," the Palainian announced from one part of his

multi-compartmented brain, without distracting any part of his attention from the

incredibly delicate operation he was performing. "May I suggest, Kinnison, in my

cowardly way, that you place yourself at the controls and be ready to take us away from

this planet at speed and without notice?"

     "I'll say you may!" and the Tellurian complied, with alacrity. "Right now, cowardice

is indicated—copiously!"

     But through course after course of screen the hollow drill gnawed its cautious

way without giving alarm; until at length there began to come through the interloping

tunnel a vague impression of foreign thought. Nadreck stopped the helix, then advanced

it by tiny steps until the thoughts came in coldly clear—the thoughts of the Eich going

about their routine businesses. In the safety of their impregnably shielded dome the

proudly self-confident monsters did not wear their personal thought-screens; which, for

Civilization's sake, was just as well.

     It had been decided previously that the mind they wanted would be that of a

psychologist; hence the thought sent out by the Palainian was one which would appeal

only to such a mind; in fact, one practically imperceptible to any other. It was extremely

faint; wavering uncertainly upon the very threshold of perception. It was so vague, so

formless, so inchoate that it required Kinnison's intensest concentration even to

recognize it as a thought. Indeed, so starkly unhuman was Nadreck's mind and that of

his proposed quarry that it was all the Tellurian Lensman could do to so recognize it. It

dealt, fragmentarily and in the merest glimmerings, with the nature and the mechanisms

of the First Cause; with the fundamental ego, its ration d'etre, its causation, its

motivation, its differentiation; with the stupendously awful concepts of the Prime Origin

of all things ever to be.

     Unhurried, monstrously patient, Nadreck neither raised the power of the thought

nor hastened its slow tempo. Stolidly, for minute after long minute he held it, spraying it

throughout the vast dome as mist is sprayed from an atomizer nozzle. And finally he got

a bite. A mind seized upon that wistful, homeless, incipient thought; took it for its own. It

strengthened it, enlarged upon it, built it up. And Nadreck followed it.

     He did not force it; he did nothing whatever to cause any suspicion that the

thought was or ever had been his. But as the mind of the Eich busied itself with that

thought he all unknowingly let down the bars to Nadreck's invasion.

     Then, perfectly in tune, the Palainian subtly insinuated into the mind of the Eich

the mildly disturbing idea that he had forgotten something, or had neglected to do some

trifling thing. This was the first really critical instant, for Nadreck had no idea whatever of

what his victim's duties were or what he could have left undone. It had to be something

which would take him out of the dome and toward the Patrolman's concealed speedster,

but what it was, the Eich would have to develop for himself; Nadreck could not dare to

attempt even a partial control at this stage and at this distance.

     Kinnison clenched his teeth and held his breath, his big hands clutching fiercely

the pilot's bars; Worsel unheedingly coiled his supple body into an ever smaller, ever

harder and more compact bale.

     "Ah!" Kinnison exhaled explosively. "It worked!" The psychologist, at Nadreck's

impalpable suggestion, had finally thought of the thing. It was a thought-screen

generator which had been giving a little trouble and which really should have been

checked before this.

     Calmly, with the mild self-satisfaction which comes of having successfully

recalled to mind a highly elusive thought, the Eich opened one of the dome's

unforceable doors and made his unconcerned way directly toward the waiting Lensmen;

and as he approached Nadreck stepped up by logarithmic increments the power of his

hold.

     "Get ready, please, to cut your screens and to synchronize with me in case

anything slips and he tries to break away," Nadreck cautioned; but nothing slipped.

     The Eich came up unseeing to die speedster's side and stopped. The drill

disappeared. A thought-screen encompassed die group narrowly. Kinnison and Worsel

released their screens and also tuned in to die creature's mind. And Kinnison swore

briefly, for what they found was meager enough.

     He knew a great deal concerning die zwilnik doings of die First Galaxy; but so did

die Lensmen; they were not interested in diem. Neither were they interested, at die

moment, in the files or hi die records. Regarding die higher-ups, he knew of two, and

only two, personalities. By means of an inter-galactic communicator he received orders

from, and reported to, a clearly-defined, somewhat Eich-like entity known to him as

Kandron; and vaguely, from occasional stray and unintentional thoughts of this

Kandron, he had visualized as being somewhere in die background a human being

named Alcon. He supposed that die planets upon which these persons lived were

located in die Second Galaxy, but he was not certain, even of that. He had never seen

either of diem; he was pretty sure that none of his group ever would be allowed to see

diem. He had no means of tracing diem and no desire whatsoever to do so. The only

fact he really knew was dial at irregular intervals Kandron got into communication with

this base of die Eich.

     That was all. Kinnison and Worsel let go and Nadreck, with a minute attention to

detail which would be wearisome here, jockeyed die unsuspecting monster back into die

dome. The native knew full where he had been, and why. He had inspected the

generator and found it in good order. Every second of elapsed time was accounted for

exactly. He had not the slightest inkling dial anything out of the ordinary had happened

to him or anywhere around him.

     As carefully as die speedster had approached die planet, she departed from it.

She rejoined the Dauntless, in whose control room Kinnison lined out a solid

communicator beam to the Z9M9Z and to Port Admiral Haynes. He reported crisply,

rapidly, everything that had transpired.

     "So our best bet is for you and the Fleet to get out of here as fast as Klono will let

you," he concluded. "Go straight out Rift Ninety Four, staying as far away as possible

from both the spiral arm and the galaxy proper. Unlimber every spotting-screen you've

got—put them to work along the line between Lyrane and the Second Galaxy. Plot all

the punctures, extending the line as fast as you can. We'll join you at max and transfer

to the Z9M9Z—her tank is just what the doctors ordered for the job we've got to do."

     "Well, if you say so, I suppose that's the way it's got to be," Haynes grumbled. He

had been growling and snorting under his breath ever since it had become evident what

Kinnison's recommendation was to be. "I don't like this thing of standing by and letting

zwilniks thumb their noses at us, like Prellin did on Bronseca. That once was once too

damned often."

     "Well, you got him, finally, you know," Kinnison reminded, quite cheerfully, "and

you can have these Eich, too—sometime."

     "I hope," Haynes acquiesced, something less than sweetly. "QX, then—but put

out a few jets. The quicker you get out here the sooner we can get back and clean out

this hoo-raw's nest."

     Kinnison grinned as he cut his beam. He knew that it would be some time before

the Port Admiral could hurl the metal of the Patrol against Lyrane VIII; but even he did

not realize just how long a time it was to be.

     What occasioned the delay was not the fact that the communicator was in

operation only at intervals: so many screens were out, they were spaced so far apart,

and the punctures were measured and aligned so accurately that the periods of non-

operation caused little or no loss of time. Nor was it the vast distance involved; since, as

has already been pointed out, the matter in the inter-galactic void is so tenuous that

spaceships are capable of enormously greater velocities than any attainable in the far

denser medium filling interstellar space.

     No: what gave the Boskonians of Lyrane VIII their greatly lengthened reprieve

was simply the direction of the line established by the communicator-beam punctures.

Reasoning from analogy, the Lensmen had supposed that it would lead them into a

star-cluster, fairly well away from the main body of the Second Galaxy, in either the

zenith or the nadir direction. Instead of that, however, when the Patrol surveyors got

close enough so that their possible error was very small, it became clear that their

objective lay inside the galaxy itself.

     "I don't like this line a bit, chief," Kinnison told the admiral then. "It'd smell like

Limburger to have a fleet of this size and power nosing into their home territory, along

what must be one of the hottest lines of communication they've got."

     "Check," Port Admiral Haynes agreed. "QX so far, but it would begin to stink

pretty quick now. We've got to assume that they know about spotting screens, whether

they really do or not. If they do, they'll have this line trapped from stem to gudgeon, and

the minute they detect us they'll cut this line out entirely. Then where'll you be?"

     "Right back where I started from—that's what I'm yowling about. To make

matters worse, it's credits to millos that the ape we're looking for isn't going to be

anywhere near the end of this line."

     "Huh? How do you figure that?" Haynes demanded.

     "Logic. We're getting up now to where these zwilniks can really think. We've

already assumed that they know about our beam tracers and detector nullifiers. Aren't

they apt to know that we have inherently indetectable ships and almost perfectly

absorptive coatings? Where does that land you?"

     "Urn . . . m . . . m. I see. Since they can't change the nature of the beam, they'll

run it through a series of relays . . . with each leg trapped with everything they can think

of . . . at the first sign of interference they'll switch, maybe half way across the galaxy.

Also, they might very well switch around once in a while, anyway, just on general

principles."

     "Check. That's why you'd better take the fleet back home, leaving Nadreck and

me to work the rest of this line with our speedsters."

     "Don't be dumb, son; you can think straighter than that." Haynes gazed

quizzically at the younger man.

     "What else? Where am I overlooking a bet?" Kinnison demanded.

     "It is elementary tactics, young man," the admiral instructed, "to cover up any

small, quiet operation with a large and noisy one. Thus, if I want to make an exploratory

sortie in one sector I should always attack in force in another."

     "But what would it get us?" Kinnison expostulated. "What's the advantage to be

gained, to make up for the unavoidable losses?"

     "Advantage? Plenty! Listen!" Haynes' bushy gray hair fairly bristled in eagerness.

"We've been on the defensive long enough. They must be weak, after their losses at

Tellus; and now, before they can rebuild, is the time to strike. It's good tactics, as I said,

to make a diversion to cover you up, but I want to do more than that. We should start an

actual, serious invasion, right now. When you can swing it, the best possible

defense—even in general—is a powerful offense, and we're all set to go. We'll begin it

with this fleet, and then, as soon as we're sure that they haven't got enough power to

counter-invade, we'll bring over everything that's loose. We'll hit them so hard that they

won't be able to worry about such a little thing as a communicator line."

     "Hm . . . m. Never thought of it from that angle, but it'd be nice. We were coming

over here sometime, anyway —why not now? I suppose you'll start on the edge, or in a

spiral arm, just as though you were going ahead with the conquest of the whole

galaxy?"

     "Not 'just as though'," Haynes declared. "We are going through with it. Find a

planet on the outer edge of a spiral arm, as nearly like Tellus as-possible . . ."

     "Make it nearly enough like Tellus and maybe I can use it for our headquarters on

this 'coordinator' thing," Kinnison grinned.

     "More truth than poetry in that, fellow. We find it and take over. Comb out the

zwilniks with a fine-tooth comb. Make it the biggest, toughest base the universe ever

saw—like Jarnevon, only more so. Bring in everything we've got and expand from that

planet as a center, cleaning everything out as we go. We'll civilize 'em!"

     And so, after considerable ultra-range communicator work, it was decided that

the Galactic Patrol would forthwith assume the offensive.

     Haynes assembled Grand Fleet. Then, while the two black speedsters kept

unobtrusively on with the task of plotting the line, Civilization's mighty armada moved a

few thousand parsecs aside and headed at normal touring blast for the nearest

outcropping of the Second Galaxy.

     There was nothing of stealth in this maneuver, nothing of finesse, excepting in

the arrangements of the units. First, far in the van, flew the prodigious, irregular cone of

scout cruisers. They were comparatively small, not heavily armed or armored, but they

were ultra-fast and were provided with the most powerful detectors, spotters, and

locators known. They adhered to no rigid formation, but at the will of their individual

commanders, under the direct supervision of Grand Fleet Operations in the Z9M9Z,

flashed hither and thither ceaselessly—searching, investigating, mapping, reporting.

     Backing them up came the light cruisers and the cruising bombers—a new type,

this latter, designed primarily to bore in to close quarters and to hurl bombs of negative

matter. Third in order were the heavy defensive cruisers. These ships had been

developed specifically for hunting down Boskonian commerce raiders within the galaxy.

They wore practically impenetrable screen, so that they could lock to and hold even a

super-dreadnought. They had never before been used in Grand Fleet formation; but

since they were now equipped with tractor zones and bomb-tubes, theoretical strategy

found a good use for them in this particular place.

     Next came the real war-head—a solidly packed phalanx of maulers. All the ships

up ahead had, although in varying degrees, freedom of motion and of action. The

scouts had practically nothing else; fighting was not their business. They could fight, a

little, if they had to; but they always ran away if they could, in whatever direction was

most expedient at the time. The cruising bombers could either take their fighting or

leave it alone, depending upon circumstances—in other words, they fought light

cruisers, but ran away from big stuff, stinging as they ran. The heavy cruisers would

fight anything short of a mauler, but never in formation: they always broke ranks and

fought individual dog-fights, ship to ship.

     But that terrific spear-head of maulers had no freedom of motion whatever. If

knew only one direction—straight ahead. It would swerve aside for an inert planet, but

for nothing smaller; and when it swerved it did so as a whole, not by parts. Its function

was to blast through—straight through— any possible opposition, if and when that

opposition should have been successful in destroying or dispersing the screens of

lesser vessels preceding it. A sunbeam was the only conceivable weapon with which

that stolid, power-packed mass of metal could not cope; and, the Patrolmen devoutly

hoped, the zwilniks didn't have any sunbeams—yet.

     A similar formation of equally capable maulers, meeting it head-on, could break it

up, of course. Theoretical results and war-game solutions of this problem did not agree,

either with each other or among themselves, and the thing had never been put to the

trial of actual battle. Only one thing was certain—when and if that trial did come there

was bound to be, as in the case of the fabled meeting of the irresistible force with the

immovable object, a lot of very interesting by-products.

     Flanking the maulers, streaming gracefully backward from their massed might in

a parabolic cone, were arranged the heavy battleships and the super-dreadnoughts;

and directly behind the bulwark of flying fortresses, tucked away inside the protecting

envelope of big battle-wagons, floated the Z9M9Z—the brains of the whole outfit.

     There were no free planets, no negaspheres of planetary anti-mass, no

sunbeams. Such things were useful either, hi the defense of a Prime Base or for an all-

out, ruthlessly destructive attack upon such a base. Those slow, cumbersome,

supremely powerful weapons would come later, after the Patrol had selected the planet

which they intended to hold against everything the Boskonians could muster. This

present expedition had as yet no planet to defend, it sought no planet to destroy. It was

the vanguard of Civilization, seeking a suitable foothold hi the Second Galaxy and

thoroughly well equipped to argue with any force mobile enough to bar its way.

     While it has been said that there was nothing of stealth in this approach, to the

Second Galaxy, it must not be thought that it was unduly blatant or obvious: any

carelessness or ostentation would have been very poor tactics indeed. Civilization's

Grand Fleet advanced in strict formation, with every routine military precaution. Its

nullifiers were full on, every blocking screen was out, every plate upon every. ship was

hot and was being scanned by alert and keen-eyed observers.

     But every staff officer from Port Admiral Haynes down, and practically every line

officer as well, knew that the enemy would locate the invading fleet long before it

reached even the outer fringes of the galaxy toward which it was speeding. That

stupendous tonnage of ferrous metal could not be disguised; nor could it by any

possible artifice be made to simulate any normal tenant of the space which it occupied.

     The gigantic flares of the heavy stuff could not be baffled, and the combined

grand flare of Grand Fleet made a celestial object which would certainly attract the

electronic telescopes of plenty of observatories. And the nearest such "scopes,

instruments of incredible powers of resolution, would be able to pick them out, almost

ship by ship, against the relatively brilliant background of their own flares.

     The Patrolman, however, did not care. This was, and was intended to be, an

open, straightforward invasion; the first wave of an attack which would not cease until

the Galactic Patrol had crushed Boskonia throughout the entire Second Galaxy.

     Grand Fleet bored serenely on. Superbly confident in her awful might, grandly

contemptuous of whatever she was to face, she stormed along; uncaring that at that

very moment the foe was massing his every defensive arm to hurl her back or to blast

her out of existence.

CHAPTER 15

Klovia

     As Haynes and the Galactic Council had already surmised, Boskonia was now

entirely upon the defensive. She had made her supreme bid in the effort which had

failed so barely to overcome the defenses of hard-held Tellus. It was, as has been seen,

a very near thing indeed, but the zwilnik chieftains did not and could not know that.

Communication through the hyper-spatial tube was impossible, no ordinary

communicator beam could be driven through the Patrol's scramblers, no Boskonian

observers could be stationed near enough to the scene of action to perceive or to

record anything that had occurred, and no single zwilnik ship or entity survived to tell of

how nearly Tellus had come to extinction.

     And, in fine, it would have made no difference in the mind of Alcon of Thrale if he

had known. A thing which was not a full success was a complete failure; to be almost a

success meant nothing. The invasion of Tellus had failed. They had put everything they

had into that gigantically climactic enterprise. They had shot the whole wad, and it had

not been enough. They had, therefore, abandoned for the nonce humanity's galaxy

entirely, to concentrate their every effort upon the rehabilitation of their own depleted

forces and upon the design and construction of devices of hitherto unattempted

capability and power.

     But they simply had not had enough time to prepare properly to meet the

invading Grand Fleet of Civilization. It takes time—lots of time—to build such heavy stuff

as maulers and flying fortresses, and they had not been allowed to have it. They had

plenty of lighter stuff, since the millions of Boskonian planets could furnish upon a few

hours' notice more cruisers, and even more first-line battleships, than could possibly be

used efficiently, but their back-bone of brute force and fire-power was woefully weak.

     Since the destruction of a solid center of maulers was.

     theoretically, improbable to the point of virtual impossibility, neither Boskonia nor

the Galactic Patrol had built up any large reserve of such structures. Both would now

build up such a reserve as rapidly as possible, of course, but half-built structures could

not fight.

     The zwilniks had many dirigible planets, but they were too big. Planets, as has

been seen, are too cumbersome and unwieldly for use against a highly mobile and

adequately-controlled fleet.

     Conversely, humanity's Grand Fleet was up to its maximum strength and

perfectly balanced. It had suffered losses in the defense of Prime Base, it is true; but

those losses were of comparatively light craft, which Civilization's inhabited world could

replace as quickly as could Boskonia's.

     Hence Boskonia's fleet was at a very serious disadvantage as it formed to defy

humanity just outside the rim of its galaxy. At two disadvantages, really, for Boskonia

then had neither Lensmen nor a Z9M9Z; and Haynes, canny old master strategist that

he was, worked upon them both.

     Grand Fleet so far had held to one right-line course, and upon this line the zwilnik

defense had been built. Now Haynes swung aside, forcing the enemy to re-form: they

had to engage him, he did not have to engage them. Then, as they shifted—raggedly,

as he had supposed and had hoped that they would—he swung again. Again, and

again; the formation of the enemy becoming more and more hopelessly confused with

each shift.

     The scouts had been reporting constantly; in the seven-hundred-foot lenticular

tank of the Z9M9Z there was spread in exact detail the disposition of every unit of the

foe. Four Rigellian Lensmen, now thoroughly trained and able to perform the task

almost as routine, condensed the picture— summarized it—in Haynes' ten-foot tactical

tank. And finally, so close that another swerve could not be made, and with the line of

flight of his solid fighting core pointing straight through the loosely disorganized nucleus

of the enemy, Haynes gave the word to engage.

     The scouts, remaining free, flashed aside into their prearranged observing

positions. Everything else went inert and bored ahead. The light cruisers and the

cruising bombers clashed first, and a chill struck at Haynes' stout old heart as he

learned that the enemy did have negative-matter bombs.

     Upon that point there had been much discussion. One view was that the

Boskonians would have them, since they had seen them in action and since their

scientists were fully as capable as were those of Civilization. The other was that, since it

had taken all the massed intellect of the Conference of Scientists to work out a method

of handling and of propelling such bombs, and since the Boskonians were probably not

as cooperative as were the civilized races, they could not have them.

     Approximately half of the light cruisers of Grand Fleet were bombers. This was

deliberate, for in the use of the new arm there were involved problems which theoretical

strategy could not completely solve. Theoretically, a bomber could defeat a

conventional light cruiser of equal tonnage one hundred percent of the time,

provided—here was the rub!—that the conventional cruiser did not blast her out of the

ether before she could get her bombs into the vitals of the foe. For, in order to

accommodate the new equipment, something of the old had to be decreased:

something of power, of armament, of primary or secondary beams, or of defensive

screen. Otherwise the size and mass must be so increased that the ship would no

longer be a light cruiser, but a heavy one.

     And the Patrol's psychologists had had ideas, based upon facts which they had

gathered from Kinnison and from Illona and from many spools of tape—ideas by virtue

of which it was eminently possible that the conventional light cruisers of Civilization, with

their heavier screen and more and hotter beams, could vanquish the light cruisers of the

foe, even though they should turn out to be negative-matter bombers.

     Hence the fifty-fifty division of types; but, since Haynes was not thoroughly sold

upon either the psychologists or their ideas, the commanders of his standard light

cruisers had received very explicit and definite orders. If the Boskonians should have

bombs and if the high-brows' idea did not pan out, they were to turn tail and run, at

maximum and without stopping to ask questions or to get additional instructions.

     Haynes had not really believed that the enemy would have negabombs, they

were so new and so atrociously difficult to handle. He wanted—but was unable—to

believe implicitly in the psychologist's findings. Therefore, as soon as he saw what was

happening, he abandoned his tank for a moment to seize a plate and get into full touch

with the control room of one of the conventional light cruisers then going into action.

     He watched it drive boldly toward a Boskonian vessel which was in the act of

throwing bombs. He saw that the agile little vessel's tractor zone was out. He watched

the bombs strike that zone and bounce. He watched the tractor-men go to work and he

saw the psychologists' idea bear splendid fruit. For what followed was a triumph, not of

brute force and striking power, but of morale and manhood. The brain-men bad said,

and it was now proved, that the -Boskonian gunners, low-class as they were and driven

to their tasks like the slaves they were, would hesitate long enough before using tractor-

beams as pressors so that the Patrolmen could take their own bombs away from them!

     For negative matter, it must be remembered, is the exact opposite of ordinary

matter. To it a pull is, or becomes, a push; the tractor beam which pulls ordinary matter

toward its projector actually pushed negative matter away.

     The "boys" of the Patrol knew that fact thoroughly. They knew all about what they

were doing, and why. They were there because they wanted to be, as Illona had so

astoundingly found out, and they worked with their officers, not because of them. With

the Patrol's gun-crews it was a race to see which crew could capture the first bomb and

the most.

     Aboard the Boskonian how different it was! There the dumb cattle had been told

what to do, but not why. They did not know the fundamental mechanics of the bomb-

tubes they operated by rote; did not know that they were essentially tractor-beam

projectors. They did know, however, that tractor beams pulled things toward them; and

when they were ordered to swing their ordinary tractors upon the bombs which the

Patrolmen were so industriously taking away from them, they hesitated for seconds,

even under the lash.

     This hesitation was fatal. Haynes' gleeful gunners, staring through their special

finders, were very much on their toes; seconds were enough. Their fierce-driven tractors

seized the inimical bombs in mid-space, and before the Boskonians could be made to

act in the only possible opposition hurled them directly backward against the ships

which had issued them. Ordinary defensive screen did not affect them; repulsor screen,

meteorite- and wall-shields only sucked them inward the faster.

     And ordinary matter and negative matter cannot exist in contact. In the instant of

touching, the two unite and disappear, giving rise to vast quantities of intensely hard

radiation. One negabomb was enough to put any cruiser out of action, but here there

were usually three or four at once. Sometimes as many as ten; enough almost, to

consume the total mass of a ship.

     A bomb struck; ate in. Through solid armor it melted. Atmosphere rushed out, to

disappear en route—for air is normal matter. Along beams and trusses the hellish

hyper-sphere travelled freakishly, although usually in the direction of greatest mass. It

clung, greedily. Down stanchions it flowed; leaving nothing in its wake, flooding all

circumambient space with lethal emanations. Into and through converters. Into pressure

tanks, which blew up enthusiastically. Men's bodies it did not seem to favor—not

massive enough, perhaps—but even them it did not refuse if offered. A Boskonian,

gasping frantically for air which was no longer there and already half mad, went

completely mad as he struck savagely at the thing and saw his hand and his arm to the

shoulder vanish instantaneously, as though they had never been.

     Satisfied, Haynes wrenched his attention back to his tank. Most of his light

cruisers were through and in the clear; they were reporting by thousands. Losses were

very small. The conventional-type cruisers had won either by using the enemies' own

bombs, as he had seen them used, or by means of their heavier armor and armament.

The bombers had won in almost every case; not by superior force, for in arms and

equipment they were to all intents and purposes identical with their opponents, but

because of their infinitely higher quality of personnel. To brief it, scarcely a handful of

Boskonia's light cruisers got away.

     The heavy cruisers came up, broke formation, and went doggedly to work. They

were the blockers. Each took one ship—a heavy cruiser or a battleship—out of the line,

and held it out. It tried to demolish it with every weapon it could swing, but even if it

could not vanquish its foe, it could and did hang on until some big bruiser of a battleship

could come up and administer the coup de grace.

     And battleships and super-dreadnoughts were coming up in then: thousands and

their myriads. All of them, in fact, save enough to form a tight globe, packed screen to

screen, around the Z9M9Z.

     Slowly, ponderously, inert, the war-head of maulers came crawling up. The

maulers and fortresses of the Boskonians were hopelessly outnumbered and were

badly scattered in position. Hence this meeting of the ultra-heavies was not really a

battle at all, but a slaughter. Ten or more of Haynes' gigantic structures could

concentrate their entire combined fire-power upon any luckless one of the enemy; with

what awful effect it would be superfluous to enlarge upon.

     When the mighty fortresses had done their work they en-globed the Z9M9Z,

enabling the guarding battleships to join their sister moppers-up; but there was very little

left to do. Civilization had again triumphed; and, this time, at very little cost. Some of the

pirates had escaped, of course; observers from afar might very well have had scanners

and recorders upon the entire conflict; but, whatever of news was transmitted or how,

Alcon of Thrale and Boskonia's other master minds would or could derive little indeed of

comfort from the happenings of this important day.

     "Well, that's probably that—for a while, at least, don't you mink?" Haynes asked

his Council of War.

     It was decided that it was; that if Boskonia could not have mustered a heavier

center for her defensive action here, she would be in no position to make any really

important attack for months to come.

     Grand Fleet, then, was re-formed; this time into a purely defensive and

exploratory formation. In the center, of course, was the Z9M9Z. Around her was a close-

packed quadruple globe of maulers. Outside of them in order, came sphere after sphere

of super-dreadnoughts, of battleships, of heavy cruisers, and of light cruisers. Then, not

in globe at all, but ranging far and wide, were the scouts. Into the edge of the nearest

spiral arm of the Second Galaxy the stupendous formation advanced, and along it it

proceeded at dead slow blast. Dead slow, to enable the questing scouts to survey

thoroughly each planet of every solar system as they came to it.

     And finally an Earth-like planet was found. Several approximately Tellurian

worlds had been previously discovered and listed as possibilities; but this one was so

perfect that the search ended then and there. Apart from the shape of the continents

and the fact that there was somewhat less land-surface and a bit more salt water, it was

practically identical with Tellus. As was to be expected, its people were human to the

limit of classification. Entirely unexpectedly, however, the people of Klovia—which is as

close as English can come to the native name—were not zwilniks. They had never

heard of, nor had they ever been approached by, the Boskonians. Space-travel was to

them only a theoretical possibility, as was atomic energy.

     They had no planetary organization, being still divided politically into sovereign

states which were all too often at war with each other. In fact, a world war had just

burned itself out, a war of such savagery that only a fraction of the world's population

remained alive. There had been no victor, of course. All had lost everything—the

survivors of each nation, ruined as they were and without either organization or

equipment, were trying desperately to rebuild some semblance of what they had once

had.

     Upon learning these facts the psychologists of the Patrol breathed deep sighs of

relief. This kind of thing was made to order; civilizing this planet would be simplicity

itself. And it was. The Klovians did not have to be overawed by a show of superior force.

Before this last, horribly internecine war, Klovia had been a heavily industrialized world,

and as soon as the few remaining inhabitants realized what Civilization had to offer, that

no one of their neighboring competitive states was to occupy a superior position, and

that full, worldwide production was to be resumed as soon as was humanly possible,

their relief and joy were immeasurable.

     Thus the Patrol took over without difficulty. But they were, the Lensmen knew,

working against time. As soon as the zwilniks could get enough heavy stuff built they

would attack, grimly determined to blast Klovia and everything upon it out of space.

Even though they had known nothing about the planet previously, it was idle to hope

that they were still in ignorance either of its existence or of what was in general going on

there.

     Haynes' first care was to have the heaviest metalry of the Galactic Patrol—loose

planets, negaspheres, sunbeams, fortresses, and the like—rushed across the void to

Klovia at maximum. Then, as well as putting every employable of the new world to work,

at higher wages than he had ever earned before, the Patrol imported millions upon

millions of men, with their women and families, from hundreds of Earth-like planets in

the First Galaxy.

     They did not, however, come blindly. They came knowing that Klovia was to be

primarily a military base, the most supremely powerful base that had ever been built.

They knew that it would bear the brunt of the most furious attacks that Boskone could

possibly deliver; they knew full well that it might fall. Nevertheless, men and women,

they came in their multitudes. They came with high courage and high determination,

glorying in that which they were to do. People who could and did so glory were the only

ones who came; which fact accounts in no small part for what Klovia is today.

     People came, and worked, and stayed. Ships came, and trafficked. Trade and

commerce increased tremendously. And further and further abroad, as there came into

being upon that formerly almost derelict planet some seventy-odd gigantic defensive

establishments, there crept out an ever-widening screen of scout-ships, with all their

high-powered feelers hotly outstretched.

     Meanwhile Kinnison and frigid-blooded Nadreck had worked their line, leg by

tortuous leg, to Onlo and thence to Thrale. A full spool should be devoted to that

working alone: but, unfortunately, as space here must be limited to the barest

essentials, it can scarcely be mentioned. As Kinnison and Haynes had foreseen, that

line was heavily trapped. Luckily, however, it had not been moved so radically that the

searchers could not re-discover it; the zwilniks were, as Haynes had promised, very

busily engaged with other and more important matters. All of those traps were deadly,

and many of them were ingenious indeed—so ingenious as to test to the utmost the

"cowardly" Palainian's skill and mental scope. All, however, failed. The two Lensmen

held to the line in spite of the pitfalls and followed it to the end. Nadreck stayed upon or

near Onlo, to work in its frightful environment against the monsters to whom he was

biologically so closely allied, while the Tellurian went on to try conclusions with Alcon,

the Tyrant of Thrale.

     Again he had to build up an unimpeachable identity and here there were no

friendly thousands to help him do it. He had to get close—really close—to Alcon, without

antagonizing him or in any way arousing his hair-trigger suspicions. Kinnison had

studied that problem for days. Not one of his previously-used artifices would work, even

had he dared to repeat a procedure. Also, time was decidedly of the essence.

     There was a way. It was not an easy way, but it was fast and, if it worked at all, it

would work perfectly. Kinnison would not have risked it even a few months back, but

now he was pretty sure that he had jets enough to swing it.

     He needed a soldier of about his own size and shape— details were unimportant.

The man should not be in Alcon's personal troops, but should be in a closely-allied

battalion, from which promotion into that select body would be logical. He should be

relatively inconspicuous, yet with a record of accomplishment, or at least of initiative,

which would square up with the rapid promotions which were to come.

     The details of that man-hunt are interesting, but not of any real importance here,

since they did not vary in any essential from other searches which have been described

at length. He found him—a lieutenant in the Royal Guard—and the ensuing mind-study

was as assiduous as it was insidious. In fact, the Lensman memorized practically every

memory-chain in the fellow's brain. Then the officer took his regular -furlough and

started for home—but he never got there.

     Instead, it was Kimball Kinnison who wore the Thralian's gorgeous full-dress

uniform and who greeted in exactly appropriate fashion the Thralian's acquaintances

and life-long friends. A few of these, who chanced to see the guardsman first, wondered

briefly at his changed appearance or thought that he was a stranger. Very few,

however, and very briefly; for the Lensman's sense of perception was tensely alert and

his mind was strong. In moments, then, those chance few forgot that they had ever had

the slightest doubt concerning this soldiers' identity; they knew calmly and as a matter of

fact that he was the Traska Gannel whom they had known so long.

     Living minds presented no difficulty except for the fact that of course he could not

get in touch with everyone who had ever known the real Gannel. However, he did his

best. He covered plenty of ground and he got most of them—all that could really matter.

     Written records, photographs, and tapes were something else again. He had

called Worsel in on that problem long since, and the purely military records of the Royal

Guard were QX before Gannel went on leave. Although somewhat tedious, that task

had not proved particularly difficult. Upon a certain dark night a certain light-circuit had

gone dead, darkening many buildings. Only one or two sentries or guards saw anything

amiss, and they never afterward recalled having done so. And any record that has ever

been made can be remade to order by the experts of the Secret Service of the Patrol!

     And thus it was also with the earlier records. He had been bora in a hospital.

QX—that hospital was visited, and thereafter Gannel's baby foot-prints were actually

those of infant Kinnison. He had gone to certain schools—those schools' records also

were made to conform to the new facts.

     Little could be done, however, about pictures. No man can possibly remember

how many times he has had his picture taken, or who has the negatives, or to whom he

had given photographs, or in what papers, books, or other publications his likeness has

appeared.

     The older pictures, Kinnison decided, did not count. Even if the likenesses were

good, he looked enough like Gannel so that the boy or the callow youth might just about

as well have developed into something that would pass for Kinnison in a photograph as

into the man which he actually did become. Where was the dividing line? The Lensman

decided—or rather, the decision was forced upon him—that it was at his graduation

from the military academy.

     There had been an annual, in which volume appeared an individual picture, fairly

large, of each member of the graduating class. About a thousand copies of the book

had been issued, and now they were scattered all over space. Since it would be idle

even to think of correcting them all, he could not correct any of them. Kinnison studied

that picture for a long time. He didn't like it very well. The cub was just about grown up,

and this photo looked considerably more like Gannel than it did like Kinnison. However,

the expression was self-conscious, the pose strained—and, after all, people hardly ever

looked at old annuals. He'd have to take a chance on that. Later poses—formal

portraits, that is; snap-shots could not be considered—would have to be fixed up.

     Thus it came about that certain studios were raided very surreptitiously. Certain

negatives were abstracted and were deftly re-touched. Prints were made therefrom, and

in several dozens of places in Gannel's home town, in albums and in frames, stealthy

substitutions were made.

     The furlough was about to expire. Kinnison had done everything that he could do.

There were holes, of course—there couldn't help but be—but they were mighty small

and, if he played his cards right, they would never show up. Just to be on the safe side,

however, he'd have Worsel stick around for a couple of weeks or so, to watch

developments and to patch up any weak spots that might develop. The Velantian's

presence upon Thrale would not create suspicion—there were lots of such folks flitting

from planet to planet—and if anybody did get just a trifle suspicious of Worsel, it might

be all the better.

     Mentor of Arisia, however, knew many things that Kinnison of Tellus did not; he

had powers of which Kinnison would never dream. Mentor knew exactly what entity

stood behind Tyrant Alcon's throne; knew exactly what it could and would do; knew that

this was one of the most critical instants of Civilization's long history.

     Wherefore every negative of every picture that had ever been taken of Traska

Gannel, and every print and reproduction made therefrom, was made to conform;

nowhere, throughout the reaches of space or the vistas of time, was there any iota of

evidence that the present Traska Gannel had not borne that name since infancy.

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

duty.

CHAPTER 16

Gannel Fights a Duel

     Nadreck, the furtive palainian, had prepared as thoroughly in his own queerly

underhanded fashion as had Kinnison in his bolder one. Nadreck was cowardly, in

Earthly eyes, there can be no doubt of that; as cowardly as he was lazy. To his race,

however, those traits were eminently sensible; and those qualities did in fact underlie

his prodigious record of accomplishment. Being so careful of his personal safety, he had

lived long and would live longer: by doing everything in the easiest possible way he had

conserved his resources. Why take chances with a highly valuable life? Why be so

inefficient as to work hard hi the performance of a task when it could always be done in

some easy way?

     Nadreck moved in upon Onlo, men, absolutely imperceptibly. His dark, cold,

devious mind, so closely akin to those of the Onlonians, reached out, indetectably en

rapport with theirs. He studied, dissected, analyzed and neutralized their defenses, one

by one. Then, his ultra-black speedster securely hidden from their every prying

mechanism and sense, although within easy working distance of the control dome itself,

he snuggled down into his softly-cushioned resting place and methodically, efficiently,

he went to work.

     Thus, when Alcon of Thrale next visited his monstrous henchmen, Nadreck

flipped a switch and every thought of the zwilniks' conference went permanently on

record.

     "What have you done, Kandron, about the Lensman?" the Tyrant demanded,

harshly. "What have you concluded?"

     "We have done very little," the chief psychologist replied, coldly. "Beyond the

liquidation of a few Lensmen—with nothing whatever to indicate that any of them had

any leading part in our recent reverses—our agents have accomplished nothing.

     "As to conclusions, I have been unable to draw any except the highly negative

one that every Boskonian psychologist who has ever summed up the situation has, in

some respect or other, been seriously in error."

     "And only you are right!" Alcon sneered. "Why?"

     "I am right only in that I admit my inability to draw any valid conclusions^"

Kandron replied, imperturbably. "The available data are too meager, too inconclusive,

and above all, too contradictory to justify any positive statements. There is a possibility

that there are two Lensmen who have been and are mainly responsible for what has

happened. One of these, the lesser, may be—note well that I say 'may be', not ‘is'—a

Tellurian or an Aldebaranian or some other definitely human being; the other and by far

the more powerful one is apparently entirely unknown, except by his works."

     "Star A Star," Alcon declared.

     "Call him so if you like," Kandron assented, flatly. "But this Star A Star is an

operator. As the supposed Director of Lensmen he is merely a figment of the

imagination."

     "But this information came from the Lensman Morgan!" Alcon protested. "He was

questioned under the drug of truth; he was tortured and all but slain; the Overlord of

Delgon consumed all his life-force except for the barest possible moiety!"

     "How do you know all these things?" Kandron asked, unmoved. "Merely from the

report of the Overlords and from the highly questionable testimony of one of the Eich,

who was absent from the scene during all of the most important time."

     "You suspect, then, that . . ." Alcon broke off, shaken visibly.

     "I do," the psychologist replied, dryly. "I suspect very strongly indeed that there is

working against us a mind of a power and scope but little inferior to my own. A mind

able to overcome that of an Overlord; one able, at least if unsuspected and hence

unopposed, to deceive even the admittedly capable minds of the Eich. I suspect that the

Lensman Morgan was, if he existed at all, merely a puppet. The Eich took him too easily

by far. It is therefore eminently possible that he had no physical actuality of existence . .

."

     "Oh, come, now! Don't be ridiculous!" Alcon snapped. "With all Boskone there .as

witnesses? Why, his hand and Lens remained!"

     "Improbable, perhaps, I admit—but still eminently possible," Kandron insisted.

"Admit for the moment that he was actual, and that he did lose a hand—but remember

also that the hand and the Lens may very well have been brought along and left there

as reassurance; we cannot be sure even that the Lens matched the hand. But admitting

all this, I am still of the opinion that Lensman Morgan was not otherwise tortured, that he

lost none of his vital force, that he and the unknown I have already referred to returned

practically unharmed to their own galaxy. And not only did they return, they must have

carried with them the information which was later used by the Patrol in the destruction of

Jarnevon."

     "Preposterous!" Alcon snorted. 'Tell me, if you can, upon what facts you have

been able to base such fantastic opinions?"

     "Gladly," Kandron assented. "I have been able to come to no really valid

conclusions, and it may very well be that your fresh viewpoint will enable us to succeed

where I alone have failed. I will therefore summarize very briefly the data which seem to

me most significant. Attend closely, please:

     "For many years, as you know, everything progressed smoothly. Our first set-

back came when a Tellurian warship, manned by Tellurians and Valerians, succeeded

in capturing almost intact one of the most modern and most powerful of our vessels.

The Valerians may be excluded from consideration, insofar as mental ability is

concerned. At least one Tellurian escaped, in one of our own, supposedly derelict,

vessels. This one, whom Helmuth thought of, and reported, as 'the' Lensman, eluding

all pursuers, went to Velantia; upon which planet he so wrought as to steal bodily six of

our ships sent there specifically to hunt him down. In those ships he won his way back

to Tellus in spite of everything Helmuth and his force could do.

     "Then there were the two episodes of the Wheelmen of Aldebaran I. In the first

one a Tellurian Lensman was defeated—possibly killed. In the second our base was

destroyed—tracelessly. Note, however, that the base next above it in order was, so far

as we know, not visited or harmed.

     "There was the Boyssia affair, in which the human being Blakeslee did various

unscheduled things. He was obviously under the control of some far more powerful

mind; a mind which did not appear, then or ever.

     "We jump then to this, our own galaxy—the sudden, inexplicable disappearance

of the planet Medon.

     "Back to theirs again—the disgraceful and closely-connected debacles at

Shingvors and Antigan. Traceless both, but again neither was followed up to any higher

headquarters."

     Nadreck grinned at that, if a Palainian can be said to grin. Those matters were

purely his own. He had done what he had been requested to do—thoroughly—no

following up had been either necessary or desirable.

     "Then Radelix." Kandron's summary went concisely on. "The female agents,

Bominger, the Kalonian observers—all wiped out. Was or was not some human

Lensman to blame? Everyone, from Chester Q. Forsyce down to a certain laborer upon

the docks, was suspected, but nothing definite could be learned.

     "The senselessly mad crew of the 27L462P—Wynor— Grantlia. Again

completely traceless. Reason obscure, and no known advantage gained, as this

sequence also has dropped."

     Nadreck pondered briefly over this material. He knew nothing of any such

matters nor, he was pretty sure, did Kinnison. THE Lensman apparently was getting

credit for something that must have been accidental or wrought by some internal

enemy. QX. He listened again:

     "After the affair of Bronseca, in which so many Lensmen were engaged that

particularization was impossible, and which again was not followed up, we jump to the

Asteroid Euphrosyne, Miner's Rest, and Wild Bill Williams of Aldebaran II. If it was a

coincidence that Bill Williams became William Williams and followed our line to Tressilia,

it is a truly remarkable one—even though, supposedly, said Williams was so stupefied

with drugs as to be incapable either of motion or perception.

     "Jalte's headquarters was, apparently, missed. However, it must have been

invaded—tracelessly—for it was the link between Tressilia and Jarnevon, and Jarnevon

was found and was destroyed.

     "Now, before we analyze the more recent events, what do you yourself deduce

from the above facts?" Kandron asked.

     While the tyrant was cogitating, Nadreck indulged in a minor gloat. This

psychologist, by means of impeccable logic and reasoning from definitely known facts,

had arrived at such erroneous conclusions! However, Nadreck had to admit, his own

performances and those in which Kinnison had acted indetectably, when added to those

of some person or persons unknown, did make a really impressive total.

     "You may be right," Alcon admitted finally. "At least two entirely different

personalities and methods of operation. Two Lensmen are necessary to satisfy the

above requirements . . . and, as far as we know, sufficient. One of the necessary two is

a human being, the other an unknown. Caitiff was, of course, the human Lensman. A

masterly piece of work, that —but, with the cooperation of the Patrol, both logical and

fairly simple. This human being is always in evidence, yet is so cleverly concealed by

his very obviousness that nobody ever considers him important enough to be worthy of

a close scrutiny. Or . . . perhaps . . ."

     "That is better," Kandron commented. "You are beginning to see why I was so

careful in saying that the known Tellurian factor 'may be', not 'is', of any real

importance."

     "But he must be!" Alcon protested. "It was a human being who tried and executed

our agent; Cartiff was a human being—to name only two."

     "Of course," Kandron admitted, half contemptuously. "But we have no proof

whatever that any of those human beings actually did, of their own volition, any of the

things for which they have been given credit. Thus, it is now almost certain that that

widely advertised 'mind-ray machine' was simply a battery of spot-lights—the man

operating them may very well have done nothing else. Similarly, Cartiff may have been

an ordinary gangster controlled by the Lensman— we may as well call him Star A Star

as anything else—or a Lensman or some other member of the Patrol acting as a

dummy to distract our attention from Star A Star, who himself did the real work, all

unperceived."

     "Proof?" the Tyrant snapped.

     "No proof—merely a probability," the Onlonian stated flatly. "We know, however,

definitely and for a fact—visiplates and long-range communicators cannot be

hypnotized— that Blakeslee was one of Helmuth's own men. Also that he-was the same

man, both as a loyal Boskonian of very ordinary mental talents and as an enemy having

a mental power which he as Blakeslee never did and never could possess."

     "I see." Alcon thought deeply. "Very cogently put. Instead of there being two

Lensmen, working sometimes together and sometimes separately, you think that there

is only one really important mind and that this mind at times works with or through some

Tellurian?"

     "But not necessarily the same Tellurian—exactly. And there is nothing to give us

any indication whatever as to Star A Star's real nature or race. We cannot even deduce

whether or not he is an oxygen-breather . . . and that is bad."

     "Very bad," the Tyrant assented. "Star A Star, or Car-tiff, or both working

together, found Lonabar. They learned of the Overlords, or at least of Lyrane II. . ."

     "By sheer accident, if they learned it there at all, I am certain of that," Kandron

insisted. "They did not get any information from Menjo Bleeko's mind; there was none

there to get."

     "Accident or not, what boots it?" Alcon impatiently brushed aside the

psychologist's protests. "They found Bleeko and killed him. A raid upon the cavern of

the Overlords of Lyrane II followed immediately. From the reports sent by the Overlords

to the Eich of Lyrane VIII we know that there were two Patrol ships involved. One, not

definitely identified as Caitiffs, took no part in the real assault The other, the super-

dreadnought Dauntless, did that alone. She was manned by Tellurians, Valerians, and

at least one Velantian. Since they went to the trouble of taking the Overlords alive, we

may take it for granted that they obtained from them all the information they possessed

before they destroyed them and their cavern?"

     "It is at" least highly probable that they did so," Kandron admitted.

     "We have, then, many questions and few answers," and the Tyrant strode up and

down the dimly blue-lit room. "It would be idle indeed, in view of the facts, to postulate

that Lyrane II was left, as were some others, a dead end. Has Star A Star attempted

Lyrane VIII? If not, why has he delayed? If so, did he succeed or fail in penetrating the

defenses of the Eich? They swear that he did not, that he could not. . ."

     "Of course," Kandron sneered. "But while asking questions why not ask why the

Patrol chose this particular time to invade our galaxy in such force as to wipe out our

Grand Fleet? To establish themselves so strongly as to make it necessary for us of the

High Command to devote our entire attention to the problem of dislodging them?"

     "What!" Alcon exclaimed, then sobered quickly and thought for minutes. "You

think, then, that. . ." His thoughts died away.

     "1 do so think," Kandron thought, glumly. "It is very decidedly possible—perhaps

even probable—that the Eich of Lyrane VIII were able to offer no more resistance to the

penetration of Star A Star than was Jalte the Kalonian. That this massive thrust was

timed to cover the insidious tracing of our lines of communication or whatever other

leads the Lensman had been able to discover."

     "But the traps—the alarms—the screens and zones!" Alcon exclaimed,

manifestly jarred by this new and disquietingly keen thought.

     "No alarm was tripped, as you know; no trap was sprung," Kandron replied,

quietly. "The fact that we have not as yet been attacked here may or may not be

significant. Not only is Onlo very strongly held, not only is it located in such a central

position that their lines of communication would be untenable, but also . . ."

     "Do you mean to admit that you may have been invaded and

searched—tracelessly?" Alcon fairly shrieked the thought.

     "Certainly," the psychologist replied, coldly. "While I do not believe that it has

been done, the possibility must be conceded. What we could do, we have done; but

what science can do, science can circumvent. To finish my thought, it is a virtual

certainty that it is not Onlo and I who are their prime objectives, But Thrale and you.

Especially you."

     "You may be right. You probably are right; but with no data whatever upon who

or what Star A Star really is, with no tenable theory as to how he could have done what

actually has been done, speculation is idle."

     Upon this highly unsatisfactory note the interview closed. Alcon the Tyrant went

back to Thrale; and as he entered his palace grounds he passed within forty inches of

his Nemesis. For Star-A-Star-Kinnison-Traska-Gannel was, as Alcon himself so clearly

said, rendered invisible and imperceptible by his own obviousness.

     Although obvious, Kinnison was very busy indeed. As a lieutenant of

Guardsmen, the officer in charge of a platoon whose duties were primarily upon the

ground, he had very little choice of action. His immediate superior, the first lieutenant of

the same company, was not much better off. The captain had more authority and scope,

since he commanded aerial as well as ground forces. Then, disregarding side-lines of

comparative seniority, came the major, the colonel, and finally the general, who was in

charge of all the regular armed forces of Thrale's capital city. Alcon's personal troops

were of course a separate organization, but Kinnison was not interested in them—yet.

     The major would be high enough, Kinnison decided. Big enough to have

considerable authority and freedom of motion, and yet not important enough to attract

undesirable attention.

     The first lieutenant, a stodgy, strictly rule-of-thumb individual, did not count. He

could step right over his head into the captaincy. The real Gannel had always, in true

zwilnik fashion, hated his captain and had sought in devious ways to undermine him.

The pseudo-Gannel despised the captain as well as hating him, and to the task of

sapping he brought an ability enormously greater than any which the real Gannel had

ever possessed.

     Good Boskonian technique was to work upward by stealth and treachery, aided

by a carefully-built-up personal following of spies and agents. Gannel had already

formed such a staff; had already selected the man who, in the natural course of events,

would assassinate the first lieutenant. Kinnison retained Gannel's following, but

changed subtly its methods of operation. He worked almost boldly. He himself criticized

the captain severely, within the hearing of two men whom he knew to belong, body and

soul, to his superior.

     This brought quick results. He was summoned brusquely to the captain's office;

and, knowing that the company commander would not dare to have him assassinated

there, he went. In that office there were a dozen people: it was evident that the captain

intended this rebuke to be a warning to all upstarts.

     "Lieutenant Traska Gannel, I have had my eye on you and your subversive

activities for some time," the captain orated. "Now, purely as a matter of form, and in

accordance with paragraph 5, section 724 of General Regulations, you may offer

whatever you have of explanation before I reduce you to the ranks for insubordination."

     "I have a lot to say," Kinnison replied, coolly. "I don't know what your spies have

reported, but to whatever it was I would like to add that having this meeting here as you

are having it proves that you are as fat in the head as you are in the belly . . ."

     "Silence! Seize him, men!" the captain commanded, fiercely. He was not really

fat. He had only a scant inch of equatorial bulge; but that small surplusage was a sore

point indeed. "Disarm him!"

     "The first man to move dies in his tracks," Kinnison countered; his coldly

venemous tone holding the troopers motionless. He wore two hand weapons more or

less similar to DeLameters, and now his hands rested lightly upon their butts. "I cannot

be disarmed until after I have been disrated, as you know very well; and that will never

happen. For if you demote me I will take an appeal, as is my right, to the colonel's court;

and there I will prove that you are stupid, inefficient, cowardly, and unfit generally to

command. You really are, and you know it. Your discipline is lax and full of favoritism;

your rewards and punishments are assessed, not by logic, but by whim, passion, and

personal bias. Any court that can be named would set you down into the ranks, where

you belong, and would give me your place. If this is insubordination and if you want to

make something out of it, you pussy-gutted, pusillanimous, brainless tub of lard, cut in

your jets!"

     The maligned officer half-rose, white-knuckled hands gripping the arms of his

chair, then sank back craftily. He realized now that he had blundered; he was in no

position to face the rigorous investigation which Gannel's accusation would bring on.

But there was a way out. This could now be made a purely personal matter, in which a

duel would be de rigueur. And in Boskonian duelling the superior officer, not the

challenged, had the choice of weapons. He was a master of the saber; he had out-

pointed Gannel regularly in the regimental games. Therefore he choked down his wrath

and:

     "These personal insults, gratuitous and false as they are, make it a matter of

honor," he declared smoothly. "Meet me, then, tomorrow, half an hour before sunset, in

the Place of Swords. It will be sabers."

     "Accepted," Kinnison meticulously followed the ritual. 'To first blood or to the

death?" This question was superfluous —the stigma of the Lensman's epithets,

delivered before such a large group, could not possibly be expunged by the mere letting

of a little blood.

     "To the death," curtly.

     "So be it, Oh captain!" Kinnison saluted punctiliously, executed a snappy about-

face, and marched stiffly out of the room.

     QX. This was fine—strictly according to Hoyle. The captain was a swordsman, of

course; but Kinnison was no slouch. He didn't think he'd have to use a thought-beam to

help him. He had had five years of intensive training. Quarter-staff, night-stick, club,

knife, and dagger; foil, epee, rapier, saber, broadsword, scimitar, bayonet, what-have-

you—with practically any nameable weapon any Lensman had to be as good as be was

with fists and feet.

     The Place of Swords was in fact a circular arena, surrounded by tiers of

comfortably-padded seats. It was thronged with uniforms, with civilian formal afternoon

dress, and with modish gowns; for such duels as this were sporting events of the first

magnitude.

     To guard against such trickery as concealed armor, the contestants were almost

naked. Each wore only silken trunks and a pair of low shoes, whose cross-ribbed,

flexible composition soles could not be made to slip upon the corrugated surface of the

cork-like material of the arena's floor.

     The colonel himself, as master of ceremonies, asked the usual perfunctory

questions. No, reconciliation was impossible. No, the challenged would not apologize.

No, the challenger's honor could not be satisfied with anything less than mortal combat.

He then took two sabers from an orderly, measuring them to be sure that they were of

precisely the same length. He tested each edge for keenness, from hilt to needle point,

with an expert thumb. He pounded each hilt with a heavy testing club. Lastly, still in view

of the spectators, he slipped a guard over each point and put his weight upon the

blades. They bent alarmingly, but neither broke and both snapped back truly into shape.

No spy or agent, everyone then knew, had tampered with either one of those beautiful

weapons.

     Removing the point-guards, the colonel again inspected those slenderly lethal

tips and handed one saber to each of the duelists. He held out a baton, horizontal and

shoulder-high. Gannel and the captain crossed their blades upon it. He snapped his

stick away and the duel was on.

     Kinnison fought in Gannel's fashion exactly; in his characteristic crouch and with

his every mannerism. He was, however, the merest trifle faster than Gannel had ever

been —just enough faster so that by the exertion of everything he had of skill and

finesse, he managed to make the zwilnik's blade meet steel instead of flesh during the

first long five minutes of furious engagement. The guy was good, no doubt of that. His

saber came writhing in, to disarm. Kinnison flicked his massive wrist. Steel slithered

along steel; hilt clanged against heavy basket hilt. Two mighty right arms shot upward,

straining to the limit. Breast to hard-ridged breast, left arms pressed against bulgingly-

corded backs, every taut muscle from floor-gripping feet up to powerful shoulders

thrown into the effort, the battlers stood motionlessly en tableau for seconds.

     The ape wasn't fat, at that, Kinnison realized then; he was as hard as cord-wood

underneath. Not fat enough, anyway, to be anybody's push-over; although he was

probably not in good enough shape to last very long—he could probably wear him

down. He wondered fleetingly, if worst came to worst, whether he would use his mind or

not. He didn't want to . . . but he might have to. Or would he, even then—could he? But

he'd better snap out of it. He couldn't get anywhere with this body-check business; the

zwilnik was just about as strong as he was.

     They broke, and in the breaking Kinnison learned a brand new cut. He sensed it

coming, but he could not parry or avoid it entirely; and the crowd shrieked wildly as the

captain's point slashed into Cancel's trunks and a stream of crimson trickled down

Gannel's left leg.

     Stamp! Stamp! Cut, thrust, feint, slash and parry, the grim game went on. Again,

in spite of all he could do, Kinnison was pinked; this time by a straight thrust aimed at

his heart. He was falling away from it, though, so got only half an inch or so of the point

in the fleshy part of his left shoulder. It bled spectacularly, however, and the throng

yelled ragingly for the kill. Another—he never did know exactly how he got that one—in

the calf of his right leg; and the bloodthirsty mob screamed still louder.

     Then, the fine edge of the captain's terrific attack worn off, Kinnison was able to

assume the offensive. He maneuvered his foe into an awkward position, swept his

blade aside, and slashed viciously at the neck. But the Thralian was able partially to

cover. He ducked frantically, even while his parrying blade was flashing up. Steel

clanged, sparks flew, but the strength of the Lensman's arm could not be entirely

denied. Instead of the whole head, however, Kinnison's razor-edged weapon snicked off

only an ear and a lock of hair.

     Again the spectators shrieked frenzied approval. They did not care whose blood

was shed, so long as it was shed; and this duel, of two superb swordsmen so evenly

matched, was the best they had seen for years. It was, and promised to keep on being,

a splendidly gory show indeed.

     Again and again the duelists engaged at their flashing top speed; once again

each drew blood before the colonel's whistle shrilled.

     Time out for repairs: to have either of the contestants bleed to death, or even to

the point of weakness, was no part of the code. The captain had out-pointed the

lieutenant, four to two, just as he always did in the tournaments; but he now derived

very little comfort from the score. He was weakening, while Gannel seemed as strong

and fast as at the bout's beginning.

     Surgeons gave hasty but effective treatment, new and perfect sabers replaced

the nicked weapons, the ghastly thing went on. The captain tired slowly but surely;

Gannel took, more and more openly and more and more savagely, the offensive.

     When it was over Kinnison flipped his saber dexterously, so that its point struck

deep into the softly resilient floor beside that which had once been his captain. Then,

while the hilt swung back and forth in slow arcs, he faced one segment of the now

satiated throng and crisply saluted the colonel.

     "Sir, I trust that I have won honorably the right to be examined for fitness to

become the captain of my company?" he asked, formally; and:

     "You have, sir," the colonel as formally replied.

CHAPTER 17

Into Nth Space

     Kinnison's wounds, being superficial, healed rapidly. He passed the examination

handily. He should have; since, although it was rigorous and comprehensive, Traska

Gannel himself could have passed and Kinnison, as well as knowing practically

everything that the Thralian had ever learned, had his own vast store of knowledge

upon which to draw. Also, if necessary, he could have read the answers from the minds

of the examiners.

     As a captain, the real Gannel would have been a hard and brilliant commander,

noticeable even among the select group of tried and fire-polished veterans who

officered the Guards. Hence Kinnison became so; in fact, considerably more so than

most. He was harsh, he was relentless and inflexible; but he was absolutely fair. He did

not punish a given breach of discipline with twenty lashes one time and with a mere

reprimand the next; fifteen honest, scarring strokes it became for each and every time,

whoever the offender. Whatever punishment a man deserved by the book he got,

promptly and mercilessly; whatever reward was earned was bestowed with equal

celerity, accompanied by a crisply accurate statement of the facts in each case, at the

daily parade-review.

     His men hated him, of course. His non-coms and lieutenants, besides hating him,

kept on trying to cut him down. All, however, respected him and obeyed him without

delay and without question, which was all that any Boskonian officer could expect and

which was far more than most of them ever got.

     Having thus consolidated his position, Kinnison went blithely to work to

undermine and to supplant the major. Since Alcon, like all dictators everywhere, was in

constant fear of treachery and of revolution, war-games were an almost constant form

of drill. The general himself planned and various officers executed the mock attacks, by

space, air, and land; the Royal Guards and Alcon's personal troops, heavily

outnumbered, always constituted the defense. An elaborate system of scoring had been

worked out long since, by means of which the staff officers could study in detail every

weak point that could be demonstrated.

     "Captain Gannel, you will have to hold passes 25, 26, and 27," the obviously

worried major told Kinnison, the evening before a particularly important sham battle was

to take place. The Lensman was not surprised. He himself had insinuated the idea into

his superior's mind. Moreover, he already knew, from an intensive job of spying, that his

major was to be in charge of the defense, and that the colonel, who was to direct the

attacking forces, had decided to route his main column through Pass 27.

     "Very well, sir," Kinnison acknowledged. "I wish to protest formally, however,

against those orders. It is manifestly impossible, sir, to hold all three of those passes

with two platoons of infantry and one squadron of speedsters. May I offer a suggestion .

. ."

     "You may not," the major snapped. "We have deduced that the real attack is

coming from the north, and that any activity in your sector will be merely a feint. Orders

are orders, captain!"

     "Yes, sir," Kinnison replied, meekly, and signed for the thick sheaf of orders

which stated in detail exactly what he was to do.

     The next evening, after Kinnison had won the battle by disregarding every order

he had been given, he was summoned to the meeting of the staff. He had expected

that, too, but he was not at all certain of how it was coming out. It was in some

trepidation, therefore, that he entered the lair of the Big Brass Hats.

     "Har-rumph!" he was greeted by the adjutant. "You have been called . . ."

     "I know why I was called," Kinnison interrupted, brusquely. "Before we go into

that, however, I wish to prefer charges before the general against Major Delios of

stupidity, incompetence, and inefficiency."

     Astonishment resounded throughout the room in a ringing silence, broken finally

by the general, 'Those are serious charges indeed, Captain Gannel; but you may state

your case."

     "Thank you, sir. First, stupidity: He did not perceive, at even as late a time as

noon, when he took all my air away from me to meet the feint from the north, that the

attack was not to follow any orthodox pattern. Second, incompetence: The orders he

gave me could not possibly have stopped any serious attack through any one of the

passes I was supposed to defend. Third, inefficiency: No efficient commander refuses to

listen to suggestions from his officers, as he refused to listen to me last night."

     "Your side, Major?" and the staff officers listened to a defense based upon blind,

dumb obedience to orders.

     "We will take this matter under advisement," the general announced then. "Now,

Captain, what made you suspect that the colonel was coming through Pass 27?"

     "I didn't," Kinnison replied, mendaciously. "To reach any one of those passes,

however, he would have to come down this valley," tracing it with his forefinger upon the

map. "Therefore I held my whole force back here at Hill 562, knowing that, warned by

my air of his approach, I could reach any one of the passes before he could."

     "Ah. Then, when your air was sent elsewhere?"

     "I commandeered a flitter—my own, by the way—and sent it up so high as to be

indetectable. I then ordered motorcycle scouts out, for the enemy to capture; to make

the commander of any possible attacking or reconnaissance force think that I was still

blind."

     "Ah . . . smart work. And then?"

     "As soon as my scout reported troop movements in the valley, I got my men

ready to roll. When it became certain that Pass 27 was the objective, I rushed

everything I had into preselected positions commanding every foot of that pass. Then,

when the colonel walked into the trap, I wiped out most of his main column. However, I

had a theoretical loss of three-quarters of my men in doing it," bitterly. "If I had been

directing the defense I would have wiped out the colonel's entire force, ground and air

both, with a loss of less than two percent."

     This was strong talk. "Do you realize, Captain Gannel, that this is sheer

insubordination?" the general demanded. "That you are in effect accusing me also of

stupidity in planning and in ordering such an attack?"

     "Not at all, sir," Kinnison replied instantly. "It was quite evident, sir, that you did it

deliberately, to show all of us junior officers the importance of thought. To show us that,

while unorthodox attacks may possibly be made by unskilled tacticians, any such attack

is of necessity fatally weak if it be opposed by good tactics. In other words, that

orthodox strategy is the only really good strategy. Was not that it, sir?"

     Whether it was or not, that viewpoint gave the general an out, and he was not

slow in taking advantage of it. He decided then and there, and the always subservient

staff agreed with him, that Major Delios had indeed been stupid, incompetent, and

inefficient; and Captain Gannel forthwith became Major Gannel.

     Then the Lensman took it easy. He wangled and finagled various and sundry

promotions and replacements, until he was once more surrounded by a thoroughly

subsidized personal staff and in good position to go to work upon the colonel. Then,

however, instead of doing so, he violated another Boskonian precedent by having a

frank talk with the man whom normally he should have been trying to displace.

     "You have found out that you can't kill me, colonel," he told his superior, after

making sure that the room was really shielded. "Also that I can quite possibly kill you.

You know that I know more than you do—that all my life, while you other fellows were

helling around, I have been working and learning—and that I can, in a fairly short time,

take your job away from you without killing you. However, I don't want it."

     "You don't want it!" The colonel stared, narrow-eyed. "What do you want, then?"

He knew, of course, that Gannel wanted something.

     "Your help," Kinnison admitted, candidly. "I want to get onto Alcon's personal

staff, as adviser. With my experience and training, I figure that there's more in it for me

there than here in the Guards. Here's my proposition—if I help you, by showing you how

to work out your field problems and in general building you up however I can instead of

tearing you down, will you use your great influence with the general and Prime Minister

Fossten to have me transferred to the Household?"

     "Will I? I'll say I will!" the colonel agreed, with fervor. He did not add "If I can't kill

you first"—that was understood.

     And Kinnison did build the colonel up. He taught him things about the military

business which that staff officer had never even suspected; he sounded depths of

strategy theretofore completely unknown to the zwilnik. And the more Kinnison taught

him, the more eager the colonel became to get rid of him. He had been suspicious and

only reluctantly cooperative at first; but as soon as he realized that he could not kill his

tutor and that if the latter stayed in the Guards it would be only a matter of days—at

most of weeks—until Gannel would force himself into the colonelcy by sheer force of

merit, he pulled in earnest every wire he could reach.

     Before the actual transfer could be effected, however, Kinnison received a call

from Nadreck.

     "Excuse me, please, for troubling you," the Palainian apologized, "but there has

been a development hi which you may perhaps be interested. This Kandron has been

given orders by Alcon to traverse a hyper-spatial tube, the terminus of which will appear

at coordinates 217-493-28 at hour eleven of the seventh Thralian day from the present."

     "Fine business! And you want to chase him, huh?" Kinnison jumped at the

conclusion. "Sure—go ahead. I'll meet you there. I'll fake up some kind of an excuse to

get away from here and we'll run him ragged . . ."

     "I do not," Nadreck interrupted, decisively. "If I leave my work here it will all come

undone. Besides, it would be dangerous—foolhardy. Not knowing what lies at the other

end of that tube, we could make no plans and could have no assurance of safety, or

even of success. You should not go, either—that is unthinkable. I am reporting this

matter in view of the possibility that you may think it significant enough to warrant the

sending of some observer whose life is of little or no importance."

     "Oh . . . uh-huh . . . I see. Thanks, Nadreck." Kinnison did not allow any trace of

his real thought to go out before he broke the line. Then:

     "Funny ape, Nadreck," he cogitated, as he called Haynes. "I don't get his angle at

all—I simply can't figure him out. . . Haynes? Kinnison," and he reported in full.

     "The Dauntless has all the necessary generators and equipment, and the place is

far enough out so that she can make the approach without any trouble," the Lensman

concluded. "We'll burn whatever is at the other end of that tube clear out of the ether.

Send along as many of the old gang as you can spare. Wish we had time to get

Cardynge— he'll howl like a wolf at being left out—but we've got only a week . . ."

     "Cardynge is here," Haynes broke in. "He has been working out some stuff for

Thorndyke on the sunbeam. He is finished now, though, and will undoubtedly want to go

along."

     "Fine!" and explicit arrangements for the rendezvous were made.

     It was not unduly difficult for Kinnison to make his absence from duty logical,

even necessary. Scouts and observers reported inexplicable interferences with certain

communications lines. With thoughts of THE Lensman suffusing the minds of the

higher-ups, and because of Gannel's already-demonstrated prowess and keenness, he

scarcely had to signify a willingness to investigate the phenomena in order to be

directed to do so.

     Nor did he pick a crew of his own sycophants. Instead, he chose the five highest-

ranking privates of the battalion to accompany him upon this supposedly extremely

dangerous mission; apparently entirely unaware that two of them belonged to the

colonel, two to the general, and one to the captain who had taken his place.

     The colonel wished Major Gannel luck—verbally—even while hoping fervently

that THE Lensman would make cold meat of him in a hurry; and Kinnison gravely gave

his well-wisher thanks as he set out. He did not, however, go near any communications

lines; although his spying crew did not realize the fact. They did not realize anything;

they did not know even that they became unconscious within five minutes after leaving

Thrale.

     They remained unconscious while the speedster in which they were was drawn

into the Dauntless' capacious hold. In the Patrol ship's sick-bay, under expert care, they

remained unconscious during the entire duration of their stay on board.

     The Patrol pilots picked up Kandron's flying vessel with little difficulty; and,

nullifiers full out, followed it easily. When the zwilnik ship slowed down to feel for the

vortex the Dauntless slowed also, and baffled her driving jets as she sneaked up to the

very edge of electro-detector range. When the objective disappeared from three-

dimensional space the point of vanishment was marked precisely, and up to that point

the Patrol ship flashed in seconds.

     The regular driving blasts were cut off, the special generators were cut in. Then,

as the force-fields of the ship reacted against those of the Boskonian "shore" station,

the Patrolmen felt again in all their gruesome power the appallingly horrible sensations

of inter-dimensional acceleration. For that sensation is, literally, indescribable. A man in

good training can overcome sea-sickness, air-sickness, and space-sickness. He can

overcome the nausea and accustom himself to the queasily terrifying endless-fall

sensation of weightlessness. He can become inured to the physical and mental ills

accompanying inertialessness. No man ever has, however, been able to get used to

inter-dimensional acceleration.

     It is best likened to a compression; not as a whole, but atom by atom. A man

feels as though he were being twisted —corkscrewed in some monstrously obscure

fashion which permits him neither to move from his place nor to remain where he is. It is

a painless but utterly revolting transformation, progressing in a series of waves; a re-

arrangement, a writhing, crawling distortion, an incomprehensibly impossible extrusion

of each ultimate particle of his substance in an unknowable, ordinarily non-existent

direction.

     The period of acceleration over, the Dauntless began to travel at uniform velocity

along whatever course it was that the tube took. The men, although highly

uncomfortable and uneasy, could once more move about and work. Sir Austin

Cardynge in particular was actually happy and eager as he flitted from one to another of

the automatic recording instruments upon his special panel. He resembled more closely

than ever a lean, gray tomcat, Kinnison thought—he almost expected to see him begin

to lick his whiskers and purr.

     "You see, my ignorant young friend," the scientist almost did purr as one of the

recording pens swung wildly across the ruled paper, "it is as I told you—the lack of

exact data upon even one tiny factor of this extremely complex phenomenon is

calamitous. While my notes were apparently complete and were certainly accurate, our

experimental tubes did not function perfectly. The time factor was

irreconcilable—completely so, in every aspect, even that of departure from and return to

normal space—and it is unthinkable that time, one of the fundamental units, is or can be

intrinsically variable . . ."

     "You think so?" Kinnison broke in. "Look at that," pointing to the ultimate of

timepieces, Cardynge's own triplex chronometer. "Number One says we've been in this

tube for an hour, Number Two says a little over nine minutes, and according to Number

Three we won't be starting for twenty minutes yet—it must be running backwards—let's

see you comb that out of your whiskers!"

     "Oh-h . . . ah . . . a-hum." But only momentarily was Sir Austin taken aback. "Ah, I

was right all the time!" he cackled gleefully. "I thought it was practically impossible for

me to commit an error or to overlook any possibilities, and I have now proved that I did

not Time, in this hyper-spatial region or condition, is intrinsically variable, and in major

degree!"

     "And what does that get you?" Kinnison asked, pointedly.

     "Much, my impetuous youngster, much," Cardynge replied. "We observe, we

note facts. From the observations and facts we theorize and we deduce; thus arriving

very shortly at the true inwardness of time."

     "You hope," the Lensman snorted, dubiously; and in his skepticism he was right

and Sir Austin was wrong. For the actual nature and mechanism of time remained, and

still constitute, a mystery, or at least an unsolved problem. The

Arisians—perhaps—understand time; no other race does.

     To some of the men, then, and to some of the clocks and other time-measuring

devices, the time seemed—or actually was?—very long; to other "and similar beings

and mechanisms it seemed—or was—short. Short or long, however, the Dauntless did

not reach the Boskonian end of the hyper-spatial tube.

     In mid-flight there came a crunching, twisting cloonk! and an abrupt reversal of

the inexplicably horrible inter-dimensional acceleration—a deceleration as sickeningly

disturbing, both physically and mentally, as the acceleration had been.

     While within the confines of the hyper-spatial tube every eye of the Dauntless

had been blind. To every beam upon every frequency, visible or invisible, ether-borne or

carried upon the infinitely faster waves of the sub-ether, the murk was impenetrable.

Every plate showed the same mind-numbing blankness; a vague, eerily-shifting,' quasi-

solid blanket of formless, textureless grayness. No lightness or darkness, no stars or

constellation or nebulae, no friendly, deep-space blackness—nothing.

     Deceleration ceased; the men felt again the wonted homeliness and comfort of

normal pseudo-gravity. Simultaneously the gray smear of the visiplates faded away into

commonplace areas of jetty black, pierced by the brilliantly dimensionless vari-colored

points of light which were the familiar stars of their own familiar space.

     But were they familiar? Was that our galaxy, or anything like it? They were not. It

was not. Kinnison stared into his plate, aghast.

     He would not have been surprised to have emerged into three-dimensional

space anywhere within the Second Galaxy. In that case, he would have seen a Milky

Way; and from its shape, apparent size, and texture he could have oriented himself

fairly closely in a few minutes. But the Dauntless was not within any lenticular

galaxy—nowhere was there any sign of a Milky Way!

     He would not have been really surprised to have found himself and his ship out in

open inter-galactic space. In that case he would have seen a great deal of dead-black

emptiness, blotched with lenticular bodies which were in fact galaxies. Orientation would

then have been more difficult; but, with the aid of the Patrol charts, it could have been

accomplished. But here there were no galaxies—no nebulae of any kind!

CHAPTER 18

Prime Minister Fossten

     Here, upon a background of a blackness so intense as to be obviously barren of

nebular material, there lay a multitude of blazingly resplendent stars—and nothing