Galactic Patrol (36 page)

And when that observer went on duty his first act was to let Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, into Boskone's Grand Basel Low and fast Kinnison flew, while the observer so placed his body as to shield from any chance passer-by the all too revealing surface of his visiplate. In a few minutes the Lensman reached a portal of the dome itself. That door also opened-and closed behind him. Ire released the mind of the observer and watched briefly. Nothing happened. All was still well!

Then, in every barracks save one using whatever came to hand in the way of dog or other unshielded animal, Kinnison wrought briefly but effectively. He did not slay by mental force-he did not have enough of that to spare -but the mere turn of an inconspicuous valve would do just as well. Some of those now idle men would probably live to answer Helmuth's call to extra duty, but not too many-nor would those who obeyed that summons live long thereafter.

Down stairway after stairway he dove, down to the compartment in which was housed the great air-purifier. Now let them come! Even if they had a spy-ray on him now it would be too late to do them a bit of good. And now, by Mono's golden gills, that fleet had better be out there, getting ready to blast!

It was. From all over the galaxy Grand Fleet had come, every Patrol base had been stripped of almost everything mobile that could throw a beam. Every vessel carried either a Lensman or some other highly trusted officer, and each such officer had two detector nullifiers-one upon his person, the other in his locker-either of which would protect his whole ship from detection.

In long lines, singly and at intervals, those untold thousands of ships had crept between the vessels guarding Grand Base. Nor were the outpost crews to blame. They had been on duty for months, and not even an asteroid had relieved the monotony.

Nothing had happened or would. They watched their plates steadily enough-and, if they did nothing more, why should they have? And what could they have done? How could they suspect that such a thing as a detector nullifier had been invented?

The Patrol's Grand Fleet, then, was already massing over its primary objectives, each vessel in a rigidly assigned position. The pilots, captains, and navigators were chatting among themselves, jerkily and in low tones, as though even to raise their voices might reveal prematurely to the enemy the concentration of the Patrol forces. The firing officers were already at their boards, eyeing hungrily the small switches which they could not throw for so many long minutes yet.

And far below, beside the pirates' air-purifier, Kinnison released the locking toggles of his armor and leaped out. To burn a hole in the primary duct took only a second. To drop into that duct his container of thionite, to drench that container with the reagent which would in sixty seconds dissolve completely the container's substance without affecting either its contents or the metal of the duct, to slap a flexible adhesive patch over the hole in the duct, and to leap back into his armor, all these things required only a trifle over one minute. Eleven minutes to go--QX.

In the nearest barracks, even while the Lensman was arrowing up the stairways, a dog again deprived a sleeping man of his thought-screen. That man, however, instead of going to work, took up a pair of pliers and proceeded to cut the battery leads of every sleeper in the barracks, severing them so closely that no connection could be made without removing the armor.

As those leads were severed men woke up and dashed into the dome. Along catwalk after catwalk they raced, and apparently that was all they were doing. But each runner, as he passed a man on duty, flicked a battery plug out of its socket, and that observer, at Kinnison's command, opened the face-plate of his armor and breathed deeply of the now drug-laden atmosphere.

Thionite, as has been intimated, is perhaps the worst of all known habit-forming drugs. In almost infinitesimal doses it gives rise to a state in which the victim seems actually to experience the gratification of his every desire, whatever that desire may be.

The larger the dose, the more intense the sensation, until-and very quickly-the dosage is reached at which he passes into an ecstasy so unbearable that death ensues forthwith.

Thus there was no alarm, no outcry, no warning. Each observer sat or stood entranced, holding exactly the pose he had been in at the instant of opening his face-plate. But now, instead of paying attention to his duty, he was plunging deeper and deeper into the paroxysmally ecstatic profundity of a thionite debauch from which there was to be no awakening. Therefore half of that mighty dome was unmanned before Helmuth even realized that anything out of order was going on.

As soon as he realized that something was amiss, however, he sounded the "all hands on duty" alarm and rapped out instructions to the officers in the barracks. But the cloud of death had arrived there first, and to his consternation not one-quarter of those officers responded. Quite a number of men did get into the dome, but every one of them collapsed before reaching the catwalks. And three-fourths of his working force died before he located Kinnison's speeding messengers.

"Blast them down!" Helmuth shrieked, pointing, gesticulating madly.

Blast whom down? The minions of the Lensmen were themselves blasting away now, right and left, shouting contradictory but supposedly authoritative orders.

"Blast those men not on duty!" Helmuth's rating voice now filled the dome. "You, at board 4791 Blast that man on catwalk 28, at board 4951"

With such detailed instructions, Kinnison's agents one by one ceased to be. But as one was beamed down another took his place, and soon every one of the few remaining living pirates in the dome was blasting indiscriminately at every other one. And then, to cap the Saturnalian climax, came the zero second.

*

The Galactic Patrol's Grand Fleet had assembled. Every cruiser, every battleship, every mauler hung poised above its assigned target. Every vessel was stripped for action. Every accumulator cell was full to its ultimate watt, every generator and every arm was tuned and peaked to its highest attainable efficiency. Every firing officer upon every ship, eat tensely at his board, his hand hovering near, but not touching, his firing key, his eyes fixed glaringly upon the second-hand of his precisely synchronized timer, his ears scarcely hearing the droning, soothing voice of Port Admiral Haynes.

For the Old Man had insisted upon giving the firing order himself, and he now sat at the master timer, speaking into the master microphone. Beside him sat von Hohendorff, the grand old Commandant of Cadets. Both of these veterans had thought long since that they were done with space-war forever, but only an order of the full Galactic Council could have kept either of them at home. They were grimly determined that they were going to be in at the death, even though they were not at all certain whose death it was to be. If it should turn out that it was to be Helmuth's, well and good-everything would be on the green. If, on the other hand, young Kinnison had to go, they would in all probability have to go, too-and so be it.

"Now, remember, boys, keep your hands oft of those keys until I give you the word," Haynes' soothing voice droned on, giving no hint of the terrific strain he himself was under. "I'll give you lots of warning . . . . I am going to count the last five seconds far
you. I know
that you all want to shoot the first bolt, but remember that I personally will strangle any and every one of you who beats my signal by a thousandth of a second. It won't be long now, the second hand is starting around an its last lap . . . . Seep your hands off of those keys . . . . keep away from them, I tell you, or I’ll smack you down . . .

. fifteen seconds yet . . . . stay away, boys, let 'em alone . . . . going to start counting now." His voice dropped lower and lower. "Five -four-three-two-one-FIRE! he yelled.

Perhaps some of the boys did beat the gun a trifle, but not many, or much.
To
all intents and purposes it
was
one simultaneous blast of destruction that flashed down from
a
hundred thousand projectors, each delivering the maximum blast of which it was capable. There was no thought now
of
service life of equipment or
of
holding anything back for
a
later effort. They had to hold that blast for only fifteen minutes, and if the task ahead of them could not be done yin those fifteen minutes it probably could not be done at all.

Therefore it is entirely useless even
to
attempt to describe what happened then, or to portray the spectacle that ensued when beam met screen. Why try to describe pink to a man born blind? Suffice it
to
say that those Patrol beams bid down, and that Helmuth's automatic screens resisted to the limit of their ability. Nor was that resistance small.

Had Helmuths customary staff
of
keen-eyed, quick-witted lieutenants been at their posts, to reenforce those Primary screens with the practically unlimited power which could have been put behind them, his defense would not have failed under even the unimaginable force of that Titanic thrust, but those lieutenants were not at their posts.

The screens of the twenty-six primary objectives failed, and the twenty-six stupendous flotillas moved slowly, grandly, each along its designated line.

*

Every alarm in Helmuths dome had burst into frantic warning as the massed might of the Galactic Patrol was hurled against the twenty,-six vital points of Grand Base, but those alarms clamored in vain. No hands were raised to the switches whose closing would unleash the hellish energies of Boskone's irresistible projectors, no eyes were upon the sighting devices which would align them against the attacking ships of war. Only Helmuth, in his Innershielded control compartment, was left, and Helmuth was the directing intelligence, the master mind, and not a mere operator. And, now that he had no operators to direct, he was utterly helpless. He could see the stupendous fleet of the Patrol, he could understand fully its dire menace, but he could neither stiffen his screens nor energize a single beam. He could only sit, grinding his teeth in helpless fury, and watch the destruction of the armament which, if it could only have been in operation, would have blasted those battleships and maulers from the skies as
though they
had been so many fluffy bits of thistledown.

Time after time he leaped to his feet, as if about to dash across to one of the control stations, but each time he sank back into his seat at the desk. One firing-station would be little, if any, better than none at all. Besides, that accursed Lensman was back of this. He was-must be right here in the dome, somewhere. He
wanted
him to leave this desk-that was what he was waiting fort As long as he stayed at the desk he himself was safe. For that matter, this whole dome was safe. The projector had never been mounted that could break down
those
screens. No-no matter what happened, he would stay at the desk!

Kinnison, watching, marveled at his fortitude. He himself could not have stayed there, he knew, and he also knew now that Helmuth was going to stay. Time was flying, five of the fifteen minutes were gone. He had hoped that Helmuth would leave that well-protected inner sanctum, with its unknown potentialities, but if the pirate would not come out, the Lensman would go in. The storming of that inner stronghold was what his new armor was for.

In he went, but he did not catch Helmuth napping. ,Even before he crashed the screens his own defensive zones burst into furiously coruscant activity, and through that flame there came tearing the metallic slugs of a high-power machine rifle.

Ha ! There was a rifle, even
though he
had not been able to find it! Clever guy, that Helmuth! And what a break that he had taken time to learn how to hold this suit up against the trickiest kind of machine-rifle fire!

Kinnison's screens were almost those of a battleship, his armor almost, relatively, as strong. And he could hold that armor upright. Therefore through the raging beam of the semiportable projector he plowed and straight up that torrent of raging steel he drove his way. And now from his own mighty projector, against Helmuth's armor, there raved out a beam scarcely less potent than that of a semiportable. The Lensman's armor did not mount a water-cooled machine rifle-there was a limit to what even that powerful structure could carry-but grimly, with every faculty of his newly enlarged mind concentrated upon that thought screened, armored head behind the belching gun, Kinnison held his line and forged ahead.

Well it was that the Lensman was concentrating upon that screened head, for when the screen weakened slightly and a thought began to seep through it toward an enigmatically sparkling ball of force, Kinnison was ready. He blanketed the thought savagely, before it could take form, and attacked the screen so viciously that Helmuth had either to restore full coverage instantly or die then and there. For the Lensman had studied that ball long and earnestly. It was the one thing about the whole base that he could not understand, the one thing, therefore, of which he had been afraid.

But he was afraid of it no longer. It was operated, he now knew, by thought, and, no matter how terrific its potentialities might be, it now was and would remain perfectly harmless, for if the pirate chief softened his screen enough to emit a thought, he would never think again.

Therefore he rushed. At full blast he hurdled the rifle and crashed full against the armored figure behind it. Magnetic clamps locked and held, and, driving projectors furiously ablaze, he whirled around and forced the madly struggling Helmuth back, toward the line along which the bellowing rifle was still spewing forth a continuous storm of metal.

Helmuth's utmost efforts sufficed only to throw the Lensman out of balance, and both figures crashed to the floor. And now the madly fighting armored pair rolled over and over-straight into the line of fire.

First Kinnison, the bullets whining, shrieking off the armor of his personal battleship and crashing through or smashing ringingly against whatever happened to be in the ever-changing line or ricochet. Then Helmuth, and as the fierce-driven metal slugs tore in their multitudes through his armor and through and through his body, riddling his every vital organ, that was