Second Stage Lensman (23 page)

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Helen," Kinnison denied, gently, making no motion to grasp the proffered hand—which was promptly and enthusiastically withdrawn.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 the 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, flat…

"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."