Galactic Patrol (33 page)

"She has, but to avoid all argument I've fixed that up, too. Here's a tape, telling all about what happened. It ends up with my recommendation for a full pardon for each of you, and for a job at whatever he is found best fitted for. Signed with my thumb-print.

Give it or send it to Port Admiral Haynes as soon as you land. I've got enough jets, I think, so that it will go as it lays."

"Jets? You? Right-o! You've got jets enough to lift fourteen freighters off the North Pole of Valeria. What next?"

"Stores and supplies for my speedster. I'm doing a long flit and this ship has supplies to burn, so load me up, Plimsoll down."

The speedster was stocked forthwith. Then, with nothing more than a casually waved salute in the way of farewell, Kinnison boarded his tiny spaceship and shot away toward his distant goal. Crandall, the pilot, sought his bunk, while Blakeslee started his long trick at the board. In an hour or so the head nurse strolled in.

"Kim?" she queried, doubtfully.

"No, Miss MacDougall-Blakeslee. Sorry . . . . “

"Oh, I'm glad of that-that means that everything's settled. Where's the Lensman-in bed?"

"He has gone, Miss."

"Gone! Without a word? Where?"

"He didn't say."

"He wouldn't, of course." The nurse turned away, exclaiming inaudibly, "Gone! I'd like to cuff him for that, the lug! GONE! Why, the great, big, lobsterly clinker!"

CHAPTER 22

Preparing for the Test

But Kinnison
was not heading for Helmuth's base yet. He was splitting the ether toward Aldebaran instead, as fast as his speedster could go, and she was one of the fastest things in the galaxy. He had two good reasons for going there before tackling Boskone's Grand Base. First, to try out his skill upon non-human intellects. If be could handle the Wheelmen he was ready to take the far greater hazard. Second, he owed those wheelers something, and he did not like to call in the whole Patrol to help him pay his debts. He could, he thought, handle that base himself.

Knowing exactly where it was, he had no difficulty in finding the volcanic shaft which was its entrance. Down that shaft his sense of perception sped. He found the lookout plates and followed their power leads. Gently, carefully, he insinuated his mind into that of the Wheelman at the board, discovering, to his great relief, that that monstrosity was no more difficult to handle than had been the Radeligian observer. Mind or intellect, he found, were not affected at all by the shape of the brains concerned, quality, reach, and power were the essential factors. Therefore he let himself in and took position in the same room from which he had been driven so violently. Kinnison examined with interest the wall through which he had been blown, noting that it had been repaired so perfectly that he could scarcely find the joints which had been made.

These wheelers, the Lensman knew, had explosives, since the bullets which had torn their way through his armor and through his flesh had been propelled by that agency.

Therefore, to the mind within his grasp he suggested "the place where explosives are kept?" and the thought of that mind flashed to the storeroom in question. Similarly, the thought of the one who had access to that room pointed out to the Lensman the particular Wheelman he wanted. It was as easy as that, and since he took care not to look at any of the weird beings, he gave no alarm.

Kinnison withdrew his mind delicately, leaving no trace of its occupancy, and went to investigate the arsenal. There he found a few cases of machine-rifle cartridges, and that was all. Then into the mind of the munitions officer, where he discovered that the heavy bombs were kept in a distant crater, so that no damage would be done by any possible explosion.

"Not quite as simple as I thought," Kinnison ruminated, "but there's a way out of that, too."

There was. It took an hour or so of time, and he had to control two Wheelmen instead of one, but he found that he could do that. When the munitions master took out a bomb-scow after a load of H.E., the crew had no idea that it was anything except a routine job. The only Wheelman who would have known differently, the one at the lookout board, was the other whom Kinnison had to keep under control. The scow went out, got its load, and came back. Then, while the Lensman was flying out into space, the scow dropped down the shaft. So quietly was the whole thing done that not a creature in that whole establishment knew that anything was wrong until it was too late to act-and then none of them knew anything at all. Not even the crew of the scow realized that they were dropping too fast.

Kinnison did not know what would happen if a mind – to say nothing of two of them – died while in his mental grasp, and he did not care to find out. Therefore, a fraction of a second before the crash, he jerked free and watched.

The explosion and its consequences did not look at all impressive from the Lensman's coign of vantage. The mountain trembled a little, then subsided noticeably.

From its summit there erupted an unimportant little flare of flame, some smoke, and an insignificant shower of rock and debris.

However, when the scene had cleared there was no longer any shaft leading downward from that crater, a floor of solid rock began almost at its lip. Nevertheless the Lensman explored thoroughly all the region where the stronghold had been, making sure that the clean-up had been one hundred percent effective.

Then, and only then, did he point the speedster's streamlined nose toward star cluster AC 257-4736.

*

In his hidden retreat so far from the galaxy's crowded suns and worlds, Helmuth was in no enviable or easy frame of mind. Four times he had declared that that accursed Lensman, whoever he might be, must be destroyed, and had mustered his every available force to that end, only to have his intended prey slip from his grasp as effortlessly as a droplet of mercury eludes the clutching fingers of a child.

That Lensman, with nothing except a speedster and a bomb, had taken and had studied one of Boskone's new battleships, thus obtaining for his Patrol the secret of cosmic energy. Abandoning his own vessel, then crippled and doomed to capture or destruction, he had stolen one of the ships searching for him and in it he had calmly sailed to Velantia, right through Helmuth's screen of blockading vessels. He had in some way so fortified Velantia as to capture six Boskonian battleships. In one of those ships he had won his way back to Prime Base, with information of such immense importance that it had robbed the Boskonian organization of its then overwhelming superiority. More, he had found or had developed new items of equipment which, save for Helmuth's own success in obtaining them, would have given the Patrol a definite and decisive superiority over Boskonia. Now both sides were equal, except for that Lensman and . . . . the Lens.

Helmuth still quailed inwardly whenever he thought of what he had undergone at the Arisian barrier, and he had given up all thought of securing the secret of the Lens by force or from Arisia. But there must be other ways of getting it . . . . .

And just then there came in the urgent call from Boyssia II, followed by the stunningly successful revolt of the hitherto innocuous Blakeslee, culminating as it did in the destruction of Helmuth's every Boyssian device of vision or of communication. Blue-white with fury, the Boskonian flung his net abroad to take the renegade, but as he settled back to await results a thought struck him like a blow from a fist. Blakeslee was innocuous. He never had had, did not now have and never would have, the cold nerve and the sheer, dominating power he had just shown. Toward what conclusion did that fact point?

The furious anger disappeared from Helmuth's face as though it had been wiped therefrom with a sponge, and he became again the cold calculating mechanism of flesh and blood that he ordinarily was. This conception changed matters entirely. This was not an ordinary revolt of an ordinary subordinate. The man had done something which he could not possibly do. So what? The Lens again . . . . . again that accursed Lensman, the one who had somehow learned really to use his Lens!

"Wolmark call every vessel at Boyssia base," he directed crisply. "Keep on calling them until someone answers. Get whoever is in charge there now and put him on me here."

A few minutes of silence followed, then Vice-Commander Krimsky reported in full everything that had happened and told of the threatened destruction of the base.

"You have an automatic speedster there, have you not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Turn over command to the next in line, with orders to move to the nearest base, taking with him as much equipment as is possible. Caution him to leave on time, however, for I very strongly suspect that it is now too late to do anything to prevent the destruction of the base. You, alone, take the speedster and bring away the personal files of the men who went with Blakeslee. A speedster will meet you at a point to be designated later and relieve you of the records."

An hour passed. Two, then three.

"Wolmark! Blakeslee and the hospital ship have vanished, I presume?"

"They have." The underling, expecting a verbal flaying, was greatly surprised at the mildness of his chief's tone and at the studious serenity of his face.

"Come to the center." Then, when the lieutenant was seated, "I do not suppose that you as yet realize what – or rather, who – it is that is doing this?"

"Why, Blakeslee is doing it, of course."

"I thought so, too, at first. That was what the one who really did it wanted us to think."

"It must have been Blakeslee. We saw him do it, sir – how could it have been anyone else?"

"I do not know. I do know, however, and so should you, that he could not have done it. Blakeslee, of himself, is of no importance whatever."

"We'll catch him, sir, and make him talk. He can't get away."

"You will find that you will not catch him and that he can get away. Blakeslee alone, of course, could not do so, any more than he could have done the things he apparently did do. No. Wolmark, we are not dealing with Blakeslee."

"Who then, sir?"

"haven't you deduced that yet? The Lensman, fool -- the same Lensman who has been thumbing his nose at us ever since he took one of our first-class battleships with a speed-boat and a firecracker."

"But-how could he?"

"Again I admit that I do not know-yet. The connection, however, is quite evident.

Thought. Blakeslee was thinking thoughts utterly beyond him. The Lens comes from Arisia. The Arisians are masters of thought-of mental forces and processes incomprehensible to any of us. These are the elements which, when fitted together, will give us the complete picture."

"I don't see how they fit.'

"Neither do I-yet. However, surely he can't trace . . . . “

"Just a moment! The time has come when it is no longer safe to say what that Lensman can or cannot do. Our communicator beams are hard and tight, yes. But any beam can be tapped if enough power be applied to it, and any beam that can be tapped can be traced. I expect him to visit us here, and we shall be prepared for his visit. That is the reason for this conference with you. Here is a device which generates a field through which no thought can penetrate. I have had this device for some time, but for obvious reasons have not released it. Here are the diagrams and complete constructional data.

Have a few hundred of them made with all possible speed, and see to it that every being upon this planet wears one continuously. Impress upon everyone, and I will also, that it is of the utmost importance that absolutely continuous protection be maintained, even while changing batteries.

"Experts have been working for some time upon the problem of protecting the entire planet with a screen, and there is some little hope of success in the near future, but individual protection will still be of the utmost importance. We cannot impress it too forcibly upon everyone that every man's life is dependent upon each one maintaining his thought-screen in full operation at all times. That is all."

When the messenger brought in the personal files of Blakeslee and the other deserters, Helmuth and his psychologists went over them with minutely painstaking care.

The more they studied them the clearer it became that the chief's conclusion was the correct one. THE Lensman could read minds.

Reason and logic told Helmuth that the Lensman's only purpose in attacking the Boyssian base was to get a line on Grand Base, that Blakeslee's flight and the destruction of the base were merely diversions to obscure the real purpose of the visit, that the Lensman had staged that theatrical performance especially to hold him, Helmuth, while his beam was being traced, and that that was the only reason why the visiset was not sooner put out of action, and finally, that the Lensman had scored another clean hit.

He, Helmuth himself, had been caught flat-footed, and his face hardened and his jaw set at the thought. But he had not been taken in. He was forewarned and he would be ready, for he was coldly certain that Grand Base and he himself were the real objectives of the Lensman. That Lensman knew full well that any number of ordinary bases, ships, and men could be destroyed without damaging materially the Boskonian cause.

Steps must be taken to make Grand Base as impregnable to mental forces as it already was to physical ones. Otherwise, it might well be that even Helmuth's own life would presently be at stake-a thing precious indeed. Therefore council after council was held, every contingency that could be thought of was brought up and discussed, every possible precaution was taken. In short, every resource of Grand Base was devoted to the warding off of any possible mental threat which might be forthcoming.

*

Kinnison approached that star cluster with care. Small though it was, as cosmic groups go, it yet was composed of some hundreds of stars and an unknown number of planets. Any one of those planets might be the one he sought, and to approach it unknowingly might prove disastrous. Therefore he slowed down to a crawl and crept up, light-year by light-year, with his ultra-powered detectors fanning out before him to the limit of their unimaginable reach.