Gray Lensman - Audiolibro Gratis

XIX.

"Before you go anywhere; or, rather, whether you go anywhere or not, we want to knock down that Bronsecan base of Prellin's," Haynes declared to Kinnison in no uncertain voice. "It's a Galactic scandal, the way we've been letting them thumb their noses at us. Everybody in space thinks that the Patrol has gone soft all of a sudden. When are you going to let us smack them down? Do you know what they've done now?"

"No. What?"

"Gone out of business. We've been watching then so closely that they couldn't do any queer business—goods, letters, messages, or anything—so they closed up the Bronseca branch entirely. 'Unfavorable conditions,' they said. Locked up tight—telephones disconnected, communicators cut, everything."

"Hm-m-m. In that case we'd better take 'em, I guess. No harm done, anyway, now—maybe all the better. Let Boskone think that our strategy failed and we had to fall back on brute force."

"You say it easy. You think that it'll be a push-over, don't you?"

"Sure—why not?"

"You noticed the shape of their screens?"

"Roughly cylindrical"—in surprise. "They're hiding a lot of stuff, of course, but they can't possibly—"

"I'm afraid that they can, and will. I've been checking up on the building. Ten years old. Plans and permits QX except for the fact that nobody knows whether or not the inside of the building resembles the plans in any particular."

"Klono's whiskers!" Kinnison was aghast, his mind racing. "How could that be, chief? Inspectors—builders—contractors—workmen?"

"The city inspector who had the job came into money later, retired, and nobody has seen him since. Nobody can locate a single builder or workman who saw it constructed. No competent inspector has been in it since. Cominoche is lax—all cities are, for that matter—with an outfit as big as Wembleson's, that carries its own insurance, does its own inspecting, and won't allow outside interference. Wembleson's isn't alone in that attitude—they're not all zwilniks, either."

"You think that it's really fortified, then?"

"Sure of it. That's why we ordered a gradual, but complete, evacuation of the city, beginning a couple of months ago."

"How could you?" Kinnison was growing more surprised by the minute. "The businesses—the houses—the expense!"

"Martial law—the Patrol takes over in emergencies, you know. Businesses moved, and mostly carrying on very well. People ditto—very nice temporary camps, lake and river cottages, and so on. As for expense, the Patrol pays damages. We'll pay for rebuilding the whole city if we have to—much rather that than leave that Boskonian base standing there untouched."

"What a mess! Never thought of it that way, but you're right, as usual. They wouldn't be there at all unless they thought—but they must know, chief, that they can't hold off the stuff that you can bring to bear."

"Probably betting that we won't destroy our own city to get them—if so, they're wrong. Or possibly they hung on a few days too long."

"How about the observers?" Kinnison asked. "They have four auxiliaries there, you know."

"That's strictly up to you." Haynes was unconcerned. "Smearing that base is the only thing I insist on. We'll wipe out the observers or let them observe and report, whichever you say; but that base goes—it has been there far too long already."

"Be nicer to let them alone," Kinnison decided. "We're not supposed to know anything about them. You won't have to use the primaries, will you?"

"No. It's a fairly large building, as business blocks go, but it lacks a lot of being big enough to be a first-class base. We can burn the ground out from under all its foundations with our secondaries."

He called an adjutant. "Get me Sector 19." Then, as the seamed, scarred face of an old Lensman appeared upon a plate:

"You can go to work on Cominoche now, Parker. Twelve maulers. Twenty heavy caterpillars and about fifty units of Q-type screen, remote control. Supplies and service. Have them muster all available fire-fighting apparatus. If desirable, import some—we want to save as much of the place as we can. I'll come over in the Dauntless."

He glanced at Kinnison, one eye-brow raised quizzically.

"I feel as though I rate a little vacation; I think I'll go and watch this," he commented. "Got time to come along?"

"I think so. It's more or less on my way to Lundmark's Nebula."

Upon Bronseca, then, as the Dauntless ripped her way through protesting space, there converged structures of the void from a dozen nearby systems; each ship emblazoned with the device of ray-emitting intertwined spirals which is the emblem of the Galactic Patrol. There came maulers; huge, ungainly flying fortresses of stupendous might. There came transports, bearing the commissariat and the service units. Vast freighters, under whose unimaginable mass the Gargantuanly braced and latticed and trussed docks yielded visibly and groaningly, crushed to a standstill and disgorged their varied cargoes.

What Haynes had so matter-of-factly referred to as "heavy" caterpillars were all of that; and the mobile screens were even heavier. Clanking and rumbling, but with their weight so evenly distributed over huge, flat treads that they sank only a foot or so into even ordinary ground, they made their ponderous way along Cominoche's deserted streets.

What thoughts seethed within the minds of the Boskonians can only be imagined. They knew that the Patrol had landed in force, but what could they do about it? At first, when the Lensmen began to infest the place, they could have fled in safety; but at that time they were too certain of their immunity to abandon their richly established position. Even now, they would not abandon it until that course became absolutely necessary.

They could have destroyed the city, true; but it was not until after the non-combatant inhabitants had unobtrusively moved out that that course suggested itself as a desirability. Now the destruction of property would be a gesture worse than meaningless; it would be a waste of energy which would all too certainly be needed—badly and soon.

Hence, as the Patrol's land forces ground clangorously into position the enemy made no demonstration. The mobile screens were in place, surrounding the doomed section with a wall of force to protect the rest of the city from the hellish energies so soon to be unleashed. The heavy caterpillars, mounting projectors quite comparable in size and power with the warships' own—weapons similar in purpose and function to the railway-carriage coast-defense guns of an earlier day—were likewise ready. Far back of the line, but still too close, as they were to discover later, heavily armored men crouched at their remote controls behind their shields; barriers both of hard-driven, immaterial fields of force and of solid, grounded, ultrarefrigerated walls of the most refractory materials possible of fabrication. In the sky hung the maulers, poised stolidly upon the towering pillars of flame erupting from their under jets.

Cominoche, Bronseca's capital city, witnessed then what no one there present had ever expected to see; the warfare designed for the illimitable reaches of empty space being waged in the very heart of its business district!

For Port Admiral Haynes had directed the investment of this minor stronghold almost as though it were a regulation base, and with good reason. He knew that from their coigns of vantage afar four separate Boskonian observers were looking on, charged with the responsibility of recording and reporting everything that transpired, and he wanted that report to be complete and conclusive. He wanted Boskone, whoever and wherever he might be, to know that when the Galactic Patrol started a thing, that thing it finished; that the mailed fist of civilization would not spare an enemy base simply because it was so located within one of humanity's cities that its destruction must inevitably result in severe property damage. Indeed, the chief of staff had massed there thrice the force necessary; specifically and purposely to drive that message home.

At the word of command there flamed out, almost as one, a thousand lances of energy intolerable. Masonry, brickwork, steel, glass, and chromium trim disappeared; flaring away in sparkling, hissing vapor or cascading away in brilliantly mobile streams of fiery, corrosive liquid. Disappeared, revealing the unbearably incandescent surface of the Boskonian defensive screen.

Full-driven, that barrier held, even against the titanic thrusts of the maulers above and of the heavy defense guns below. Energy rebounded in scintillating torrents, shot off in blinding streamers, released itself in bolts of lightning hurling themselves frantically to ground.

The fury of the beams rebounded in scintillating torrents, shot off in blinding streamers—

Nor was that superbly disguised citadel designed for defense alone. Knowing now that the last faint hope of continuing in business upon Bronseca was gone, and grimly determined to take full toll of the hated Patrol, the defenders in turn loosed their beams. Five of them shot out simultaneously, and five of the panels of mobile screen flamed instantly into eye-tearing violet. Then black. These were not the comparatively feeble, antiquated rays which Haynes had expected, but were the output of up-to-the-minute, first-line space artillery!

Defenses down, it took but a blink of time to lick up the caterpillars. On, then, the destroying beams tore, each in a direct line for a remote-control station. Through tremendous edifices of masonry and steel they drove, the upper floors collapsing into the cylinders of annihilation only to be consumed almost as fast as they could fall.

"All screen-control stations, back, fast!" Haynes directed crisply. "Back, dodging! Put your screens on automatic block until you get back beyond effective range. Spy-ray men! See if you can locate the enemy observers directing fire!"

But no matter how far back they went, Boskonian beams still sought them out in grimly persistent attempts to slay. Their shielding fields blazed white, their refractories wavered in the high blue as the overdriven refrigerators strove mightily to cope with the terrific load. The operators, stifling, almost roasting in their armor of proof, shook sweat from the eyes they could not reach as they drove themselves and their mechanisms on to even greater efforts; cursing luridly, fulminantly the while at carrying on a space war in the hotly reeking, the hellishly reflecting and heat-retaining environment of a metropolis!

And all around the embattled structure, within the Patrol's now partially open wall of screen, spread holocaust supreme; holocaust spreading wider and wider during each fractional split second. In an instant, it seemed, nearby buildings burst into flame. The fact that they were fireproof meant nothing whatever. The air inside them, heated in moments to a point far above the ignition temperature of organic material, fed furiously upon furniture, rugs, drapes, and whatever else had been left in place. Even without such adventitious aids the air itself, expanding tremendously, irresistibly, drove outward before it the glass of windows and the solid brickwork of walls. And as they fell, glass and brick ceased to exist as such. Falling, they fused; coalescing and again splashing apart as they descended through the inferno of annihilatory vibrations in an appalling rain which might very well have been sprinkled from the hottest middle of the central core of hell itself. And in this fantastically potent, this incredibly corrosive flood the ground itself, the metaled pavement, the sturdily immovable foundations of skyscrapers, dissolved as do lumps of sugar in boiling coffee. Dissolved, slumped down, flowed away in blindingly turbulent streams. Super-structures toppled into disintegration, each discrete particle contributing as it fell to the utterly indescribable fervency of the whole.

More and more panels of mobile screen went down. They were not designed to stand up under such heavy projectors as "Wemblesons" mounted, and the Boskonians blasted them down in order to get at the remote-control operators back of them. Swath after swath of flaming ruin was cut through the Bronsecan capital as the enemy gunners tried to follow the dodging caterpillar tractors.

"Drop down, maulers!" the commander-in-chief ordered. "Low enough so that your screens touch ground. Never mind damage—they'll blast the whole city if we don't stop those beams. Surround him!"

Down the maulers came, ringwise; mighty protective envelopes overlapping; down until the screens bit ground. Now the caterpillar and mobile-screen crews were safe; powerful as Prellin's weapons were, they could not break through those maulers' screens.

Now holocaust waxed doubly infernal. The wall was tight, the only avenue of escape of all that fiercely radiant energy straight upward; and adding to the furor were the flaring under jets—themselves destructive agents by no means to be despised!

Inside the screens, then, raged pure frenzy. At the line raved the maulers' prodigious lifting blasts. Out and away, down every avenue of escape, swept torrents of superheated air at whose touch anything and everything combustible burst into flame. But there could be no fire-fighting—yet. Outlying fires, along the lines of destruction previously cut, yes; but personal armor has never been designed to enable life to exist in such an environment as that near those screens then was.

"Burn out the ground under them!" came the order. "Tip them over—slag them down!"

Sharply downward angled twoscore of the beams which had been expending their energies upon Boskone's radiant defenses. Downward into the lake of lava which had once been pavement. That lake had already been seething and bubbling; emitting momently bursts of lambent flame. Now it leaped into a frenzy of its own; a transcendent fury of volatilization. High-explosive shells by the hundred dropped also into the incandescent mess, hurling the fiery stuff afar; deepening and broadening the sulphurous moat.

"Deep enough," Haynes spoke into his microphone. "Tractors and pressors as assigned—tip him over."

The intensity of the bombardment did not slacken, but from the maulers to the north there reached out pressors, from those upon the south came tractors; each a beam of terrific power, each backed by all the mass and all the driving force of a veritable flying fortress.

Slowly that which had been a building leaned from the perpendicular, its inner defensive screen still intact.

"Chief?" From his post as observer, Kinnison flashed a thought to Haynes. "Are you beginning to think any funny thoughts about that ape down there?"

"No. Are you? What?" asked the port admiral, surprised.

"Maybe I'm nuts, but it wouldn't surprise me if he'd start doing a flit pretty quick. I've got a CRX tracer on him, just in case, and it might be smart to caution Henderson to keep up on his toes."

"Your diagnosis—'nuts'—is correct, I think," came the answering thought; but the port admiral followed the suggestion, nevertheless.

And none too soon. Deliberately, grandly, the Colossus was leaning over, bowing in stately fashion toward the awful lake in which it stood. But only so far. Then there was a flash, visible even in the inferno of energies already there at war, and the already coruscant lava was hurled to all points of the compass as the full-blast drive of a superdreadnought was cut loose beneath its surface!

To the eye the thing simply and instantly disappeared; but not to the ultra-vision of the observers' plates, and especially not to the CRX tracers attached by Kinnison and by Henderson. They held, and the chief pilot, already warned, was on the trail as fast as he could punch his keys.

Through atmosphere, through stratosphere, into interplanetary space flew pursued and pursuer at ever-increasing speed. The Dauntless overtook her proposed victim fairly easily. The Boskonian was fast, but the Patrol's new flier was the fastest thing in space. But tractors would not hold against the now universal standard equipment of shears, and the heavy secondaries served only to push the fleeing vessel along all the faster. And the dreadful primary beams could not be used—yet.

"Not yet," cautioned the admiral. "Don't get too close—wait until there's nothing detectable in space."

Finally an absolutely empty region was entered, the word to close up was given, and Prellin drank of the bitter cup which so many commanders of vessels of the Patrol had had to drain—the gallingly fatal necessity of engaging a ship which was both faster and more powerful than his own. The Boskonian tried, of course. His beams raged out at full power against the screens of the larger ship, but without effect. Three primaries lashed out as one. The fleeing vessel, structure and contents, ceased to be. The Dauntless returned to the torn and ravaged city.

The maulers had gone. The lumbering caterpillars—what were left of them—were clanking away; reeking, smoking hot in every plate and member. Only the firemen were left, working like Trojans with explosives, rays, water, carbon-dioxide snow, clinging and smothering chemicals; anything and everything which would isolate, absorb, or dissipate any portion of the almost incalculable heat energy so recently and so profligately released.

Fire apparatus from four planets was at work. There were pumpers, ladder trucks, hose and chemical trucks. There were men in heavily insulated armor. Vehicles and men alike were screened against the specific wave lengths of heat; and under the direction of a fire marshal in his red speedster high in air they fought methodically and efficiently the conflagration which was the aftermath of battle. They fought, and they were winning.

And then it rained. As though the heavens themselves had been outraged by what had been done, they opened and rain sluiced down in level sheets. It struck hissingly the nearby structures, but it did not touch the central area at all. Instead, it turned to steam in mid-air, and, rising or being blown aside by the tempestuous wind, it concealed the redly glaring, raw wound beneath a blanket of crimson fog.

"Well, that is that," the port admiral said slowly. His face was grim and stern. "A good job of clean-up—expensive, but worth the price. So be it to every pirate base and every zwilnik hide-out in the Galaxy! Henderson, land us at Cominoche Spaceport."

And from four other cities of the planet four Boskonian observers, each unknown to all the others, took off in four spaceships for four different destinations. Each had reported fully and accurately to Jalte everything that had transpired until the two fliers had faded into the distance. Then, highly elated—and probably, if the truth could be known, no little surprised as well—at the fact that he was still alive, each had left Bronseca at maximum blast.

The Galactic director had done all that he could, which was little enough. At the Patrol's first warlike move he had ordered a squadron of Boskone's ablest fighting craft to Prellin's aid. It was almost certainly a useless gesture, he knew as he did it. Gone were the days when pirate bases dotted the Tellurian Galaxy; only by a miracle could those ships reach the Bronsecan's line of flight in time to be of service.

Nor could they. The howl of interfering vibrations which was smothering Prellin's communicator beam snapped off into silence while the would-be rescuers were many hours away. For minutes, then, Jalte sat immersed in thought at his great desk in the Center, his normally bluish face turning a sickly green, before he called the planet Jarnevon to report to Eichmil, his chief.

"There is, however, a bright side to the affair," he concluded. "Prellin's records were destroyed with him. Also, there are two facts—that the Patrol had to use such force as practically to destroy the city of Cominoche, and that our four observers escaped unmolested—which furnish conclusive proof that the vaunted Lensman failed completely to penetrate with his mental powers the defenses we have been using against him."

"Not conclusive proof," Eichmil rebuked him harshly. "Not proof at all, in any sense—scarcely a probability. Indeed, the display of force may very well mean that he has already attained his objective. He may have allowed the observers to escape, to lull our suspicions. You yourself are probably the next in line. How certain are you that your own base has not already been invaded?"

"Absolutely certain, sir." Jalte's face, however, turned a shade greener at the thought.

"You use the term 'absolutely' very loosely—but I hope that you are right. Use all the men and all the equipment we have sent you to make sure that it remains impenetrable."

XX.

In their nonmagnetic, practically invisible speedster, Kinnison and Worsel entered the terra incognita of the Second Galaxy and approached the solar system of the Eich, slowing down to a crawl as they did so. They knew as much concerning dread Jarnevon, the planet which was their goal, as did Jalte, from whom the knowledge had been acquired; but that was all too little.

They knew that it was the fifth planet out from the Sun and that it was bitterly cold. It had an atmosphere, but one containing no oxygen; one poisonous to oxygen-breathers. It had no rotation—or rather, its day coincided with its year—and its people dwelt upon its eternally dark hemisphere. If they had eyes, a point upon which there was doubt, they did not operate upon the frequencies ordinarily referred to as "visible" light. In fact, about the Eich as persons or identities they knew next to nothing. Jalte had seen them, but either he did not perceive them clearly or else his mind could not retain their true likeness; his only picture of the Eichlan physique being a confusedly horrible blur.

"I'm scared, Worsel," Kinnison declared. "Scared purple, and the closer we come the more scared I get."

And he was scared. He was afraid as he had never before been, in all his short life. He had been in dangerous situations before, certainly; not only that, he had been wounded almost unto death. In those instances, however, peril had come upon him suddenly. He had reacted to it automatically, having had little if any time to think about it beforehand.

Never before had he gone into a place in which he knew in advance that the advantage was all upon the other side; from which his chance of getting out alive was so terrifyingly small. It was worse, much worse, than going into that vortex. There, while the road was strange, the enemy was known to be one whom he had conquered before; and furthermore, he had had the Dauntless, its eager young crew, and the scientific self-abnegation of old Cardynge to back him. Here he had the speedster and Worsel—and Worsel was just as scared as he was.

The pit of his stomach felt cold, his bones seemed bits of rubber tubing. Nevertheless, the two Lensmen were going in. That was their job. They had to go in, even though they knew that the foe was at least their equal mentally, was overwhelmingly their superior physically, and was upon his own ground.

"So am I," Worsel admitted. "I'm scared to the tip of my tail. I have one advantage over you, however—I've been that way before." He was referring to the time when he had gone to Delgon, abysmally certain that he would not return. Nor would he have returned save for Kinnison and Van Buskirk. "What is fated, happens. Shall we prepare?"

They had spent many hours in discussion of what could be done, and in the end had decided that the only possible preparation was to make sure that if Kinnison failed, his failure would not bring disaster to the Patrol.

"Might as well. Come in; my mind's wide open."

The Velantian insinuated his mind into Kinnison's and the Earthman slumped down, unconscious. Then for many minutes Worsel wrought within the plastic brain. Finally:

"Thirty seconds after you leave me these inhibitions will become operative. When I release them your memory and your knowledge will be exactly as they were before I began to operate," he thought, slowly, intensely, clearly. "Until that time you know nothing whatever of any of these matters. No mental search, however profound; no truth drug, however potent; no probing, even of the subconscious, will or can discover them. They do not exist. They never have existed. They shall not exist until I so allow. These other matters have been, are, and shall be the facts until that instant. Kimball Kinnison, awaken!"

The Tellurian came to, not knowing that he had been out. Nothing had occurred; for him no time whatever had elapsed. He could not perceive even that his mind had been touched.

"Sure it's done, Worsel? I can't find a thing!" Kinnison, who had himself operated upon so many minds as tracelessly, could scarcely believe that his own had been tampered with.

"It is done. If you could detect any trace of the work it would have been poor work, and wasted."

The speedster dropped as nearly as the Lensmen dared toward Jarnevon's tremendous primary base. They did not know whether they were being observed or not. For all they knew, these incomprehensible beings might be able to see or to sense them as plainly as though their ship were painted with radium and were landing openly, with searchlights ablaze and with bells a-clang. Muscles tense, ready to hurl their tiny flier away at the slightest alarm, they wafted downward.

Through the screens they dropped. Power off, even to the gravity pads; thought, even, blanketed to zero. Nothing happened. They landed. They disembarked. Foot by foot they made their cautious way forward.

In essence the plan was simplicity itself. Worsel would accompany Kinnison until both were within the thought-screens of the dome. Then the Tellurian would get, some way or other, the information the Patrol had to have, and the Velantian would get it back to Prime Base. If the Gray Lensman could go, too, well and good. After all, there was no real reason to think that he couldn't—he was merely playing safe, on general principles. If, however, worst came to worst, well—

They arrived.

"Now remember, Worsel, no matter what happens to me, or around me, you stay out. Don't come in after me. Help me all you can with your mind, but not otherwise. Take everything I get, and at the first sign of danger you flit back to the speedster and give her the oof, whether I'm around or not. Check?"

"Check," Worsel agreed, quietly. Kinnison's was the harder part. Not because he was the leader, but because he was the better qualified. They both knew it. The Patrol came first. It was bigger, vastly more important than any being or any group of beings in it.

The man strode away and in thirty seconds underwent a weird and striking mental transformation. Three quarters of his knowledge disappeared so completely that he had no inkling that he had ever had it. A new name, a new personality were his, so completely and indisputably his that he had no faint glimmering of a recollection that he had ever been otherwise.

He was wearing his Lens. It could do no possible harm, since it was almost inconceivable that the Eich could be made to believe that any ordinary agent could have penetrated so far, and the fact should not be revealed to the foe that any Lensman could work without his Lens. That would explain far too much of what had already happened. Furthermore, it was a necessity in the only really convincing rôle which Kinnison could play in the event of his capture.

He would not think into that base until he was far enough away from Worsel so that the Velantian's hiding place, if it were not already known, would not be revealed. He did not then know that such a being as Worsel existed; he did not think into the stronghold simply because he was not yet close enough to work efficiently.

Closer he crept. Closer. There were pits beneath the pavement, he observed, big enough to hold a speedster. Traps. He avoided them. There were various mechanisms within the blank walls he skirted. More traps. He avoided them. Photo-cells, trigger beams, invisible rays, networks. He avoided them all. Close enough.

Delicately he sent out a mental probe, and almost in the instant of its sending, cables of steel came whipping from afar. He perceived them as they came, but he was unable to dodge them all. His projectors flamed briefly, only to be sheared away. The cables wrapped about his limbs, binding him fast. Helpless, he was carried through the atmosphere, into the dome, through an air lock into a chamber housing much grimly unmistakable apparatus. And in the council room, where the nine of Boskone and one armored Delgonian Overlord held meeting, a communicator buzzed and snarled.

At the first faint touch of Kim's mind, the Eich reacted. Tentacles like steel whips lashed out to bind and hold him, to drag him into the frowning fortress—

"Ah!" exclaimed Eichmil. "Our visitor has arrived and is awaiting us in the Delgonian hall of question. Shall we meet again, there?"

They did so; they of the Eich armored against the poisonous oxygen, the Overlord naked. All wore screens.

"Earthling, we are glad indeed to see you here," the First of Boskone welcomed the prisoner. "For a long time we have been anxious indeed—"

"I don't see how that can be," the Lensman blurted. "I just graduated. My first big assignment, and I have failed," he ended bitterly.

A start of surprise swept around the circle. Could this be?

"He is lying," Eichmil decided. "You of Delgon, take him out of his armor." The Overlord did so, the Tellurian's struggles meaningless to the reptile's superhuman strength. "Release your screen and see whether or not you can make him tell the truth."

After all, the man might not be lying. The fact that he could understand a strange language meant nothing at all. All Lensmen could.

"But in case he should be the one we seek—" The Overlord hesitated.

"We will see to it that no harm comes to you—"

"We cannot," the Ninth—the psychologist—broke in. "Before any screen is released I suggest that we question him verbally, under the influence of the drug which renders it impossible for any warm-blooded oxygen breather to tell anything except the complete truth."

The suggestion, so eminently sensible, was adopted forthwith.

"Are you the Lensman who has made it possible for the Patrol to drive us out of the Tellurian Galaxy?" came the sharp demand.

"No," was the flat and surprising reply.

"Who are you, then?"

"Philip Morgan, class of—"

"Oh, this will take forever!" snapped the Ninth. "Let me question him. Can you control minds at a distance and without previous treatment?"

"If they are not too strong, yes. All of us specialists in psychology can do that."

"Go to work upon him, Overlord!"

The now fully reassured Delgonian snapped off his screen and a battle of wills ensued which made the subether boil. For Kinnison, although he no longer knew what the truth was, still possessed a large part of his mental power, and the Delgonian's mind, as has already been made clear, was a capable one indeed.

"Desist!" came the command. "Earthman, what happened?"

"Nothing," Kinnison replied truthfully. "Each of us could resist the other; neither could penetrate or control."

"Ah!" and nine Boskonian screens snapped off. Since the Lensman could not master one Delgonian, he would not be a menace to the massed minds of the nine of Boskone, and the questioning need not wait upon the slowness of speech. Thoughts beat into Kinnison's brain from all sides.

This power of mind was relatively new, yes. He did not know what it was. He went to Arisia, fell asleep, and woke up with it. A refinement, he thought, of hypnotism. Only advanced students in psychology could do it. He knew nothing except by hearsay of the old Brittania—he was a cadet then. He had never heard of Blakeslee, or of anything unusual concerning any one hospital ship. He did not know who had scouted Helmuth's base, or put the thionite into it. He had no idea who it was who had killed Helmuth. As far as he knew, nothing had ever been done about any Boskonian spies in Patrol bases. He had never happened to hear of the planet Medon, or of anyone named Bominger, or Madame Desplaines, or Prellin. He was entirely ignorant of any unusual weapons of offense—he was a psychologist, not an engineer or a physicist. No, he was not unusually adept with DeLameters—

"Hold on!" Eichmil commanded. "Stop questioning him, everybody! Now, Lensman, instead of telling us what you do not know, give us positive information, in your own way. How do you work? I am beginning to suspect that the man we really want is a director, not an operator."

This was a more productive line. Lensmen, hundreds of them, each worked upon a definite assignment. None of them had ever seen or ever would see the man who issued orders. He had not even a name, but was a symbol—Star A Star. They received orders through their Lenses, wherever they might be in space. They reported back to him in the same way. Yes, Star A Star knew what was going on in that room. He was reporting constantly—

A knife descended viciously. Blood spurted. The stump was dressed, roughly but effectively. They did not wish their victim to bleed to death when he died, and he was not to die in any fashion—yet.

And in the instant that Kinnison's Lens went dead, Worsel, from his safely distant nook, reached out direct to the mind of his friend, thereby putting his own life in jeopardy. He knew that there was an Overlord in that room, and the grue of a thousand helplessly sacrificed generations of forebears swept his sinuous length at the thought, despite his inward certainty of the new powers of his mind. He knew that of all the entities in the Universe, the Delgonians were most sensitive to the thought vibrations of Velantians. Nevertheless, he did it.

He narrowed the beam down to the smallest possible coverage, employed a frequency as far as possible from that ordinarily used by the Overlords, and continued to observe. It was risky, but it was necessary. It was beginning to appear as though the Earthman might not be able to escape, and he must not die in vain.

"Can you communicate now?" In the ghastly chamber the relentless questioning went on.

"I cannot communicate."

"It is well. In one way I would not be averse to letting your Star A Star know what happens when one of his minions dares to spy upon the Council of Boskone itself, but the information is as yet a trifle premature. Later, he shall learn—"

Kinnison did not consciously thrill at that thought. He did not know that the news was going beyond his brain; that he had achieved his goal. Worsel, however, did; and Worsel thrilled for him. The Gray Lensman had finished his job; all that was left to do was to destroy this world and the power of Boskone would be broken. Kinnison could die, now, content.

But no thought of leaving entered Worsel's mind. He would, of course, stand by as long as there remained the slightest shred of hope, or until some development threatened his ability to leave the planet with his priceless information. And the pitiless inquisition went on.

Star A Star had sent him to investigate their planet, to discover whether or not there was any connection between it and the zwilnik organization. He had come alone, in a speedster. No, he could not tell them even approximately where the speedster was. It was so dark, and he had come such a long distance on foot. In an hour or so, though, it would start sending out a thought signal which he could detect—

"But you must have some ideas about this Star A Star!" This director was the man they wanted so desperately to get. They believed implicitly in this figment of a Lensman director. Fitting in so perfectly with their own ideas of efficient organization, it was more convincing by far than the actual truth would have been. They knew now that he would be hard to find. They did not now insist upon facts; they wanted every possible crumb of surmise. "You must have wondered who and where Star A Star is? You must have tried to trace him?"

Yes, he had tried, but the problem could not be solved. The Lens was non-directional, and the signals came in at practically the same strength, anywhere in the Galaxy. They were, however, very much fainter out here. That might be taken to indicate that Star A Star's office was in a star cluster, well out in either the zenith or the nadir direction—

The victim sucked dry, eight of the Council departed, leaving Eichmil and the Overlord with the Lensman.

"What you have in mind to do, Eichmil, is childish. Your basic idea is excellent, but your technique is pitifully inadequate."

"What could be worse?" Eichmil demanded. "I am going to dig out his eyes, smash his bones, flay him alive, roast him, cut him up into a dozen pieces, and send him back to his Star A Star with a warning that every creature he sends into this Galaxy will be treated the same way. What would you do?"

"You of the Eich lack finesse," the Delgonian sighed. "You have no subtlety, no conception of the nicer possibilities of torture, either of an individual or of a race. For instance, to punish Star A Star adequately this man must be returned to him alive, not dead."

"Impossible! He dies—here!"

"You misunderstand me. Not alive as he is now—but not entirely dead. Bones broken, yes, and eyes removed; but those minor matters are but a beginning. If I were doing it, I should then apply several of these devices here, successively; but none of them to the point of complete incompatibility with life. I should inoculate the extremities of his four limbs with an organism which grows—shall we say—unpleasantly? Finally, I should extract his life force and consume it—as you know, that essence is a rarely satisfying delicacy with us—taking care to leave just enough to maintain a bare existence. I would then put what is left of him aboard his ship, start it toward the Tellurian Galaxy, and send notice to the Patrol as to its exact course and velocity."

"But they would find him alive!" Eichmil stormed.

"Exactly. For the fullest vengeance they must, as I have said. Which is worse, think you? To find a corpse, however dismembered, and to dispose of it with full military honors, or to find and to have to take care of for a full lifetime a something that has not enough intelligence even to swallow food placed in its mouth? Remember also that the organism will be such that they themselves will be obliged to amputate all four of the creature's limbs to save its life."

While thinking thus the Delgonian shot out a slender tentacle which, slithering across the floor, flipped over the tiny switch of a small mechanism in the center of the room. This entirely unexpected action surprised Worsel. He had been debating for minutes whether or not to release the Gray Lensman's inhibitions. He would have done so instantly if he had had any warning of what the Delgonian was about to do. Now it was too late.

"I have set up a thought-screen about the room. I do not wish to share this titbit with any of my fellows, as there is not enough to divide," the monster explained, parenthetically. "Have you any suggestions as to how my plan may be improved?"

"No. You have shown that you understand torture better than we do."

"I should, since we Overlords have practiced it as a fine art since our beginnings as a race. Do you wish the pleasure of co-operating with me in the work?"

"I do not torture for pleasure. Since you do, you may carry out the procedure as outlined. All I require is the assurance that he will be a warning and an object lesson to Star A Star of the Galactic Patrol."

"I can assure you definitely that he will be both. More, I will show you the results when I have finished with him. Or, if you like, I would be glad to have you stay and look on—you will find the spectacle interesting, entertaining and highly instructive."

"No, thanks—that is, not if you are sure that you can handle him alone."

"Handle him! This pitiful weakling?" The Overlord snorted contemptuously. "I could handle seven like him. He is on the verge of fainting already. Observe, please, his reaction to the fungus-culture injections."

Four times the Delgonian rammed the needle home; and, true to prediction, Kinnison's body went limp in its shackles.

"Ah, yes; a weak race, physically—very weak," Eichmil observed, as he left the room; and the Overlord, alone with his victim, cast off the chains in order to stretch the Lensman out upon one of the sinister machines so close at hand.

But Kinnison had not fainted. He had not allowed himself to feel the hurt of the knife, of the needle, nor of the injected fluid. Never before had he been more coldly, intently alert than in this, the climactic minute of his life. The full of his powers he did not have, perhaps, yet even now he was better equipped, mentally and physically, than the Kinnison of even a short year ago, able to establish a nerve block that would permit full and unshaken concentration on every move of offense and defense he might make, whatever frightful toll of pain and injury the inhumanly powerful, semireptilian Delgonian might inflict in the struggle that the Lensman now proposed. Thus, upon the first instant of opportunity, he exploded into action with a violence which took even the trigger-nerved Overlord entirely by surprise.

In practically one motion he rolled, ducked, gathered himself together and launched a kick behind which there was the driving force of every ounce of his powerful body and the concentrated urge of every cell of his brain. It struck its mark squarely—the hard toe of the Lensman's heavy boot crashed squarely against the Overlord's plated neck at the exact base of the skull. That kick would have pulped any human or near-human head—it would have slain a horse—it staggered momentarily even the reptilianly armored monstrosity which was the Delgonian.

Kinnison went leaping across the room toward a rack of implements and weapons, only to be buried in mid-course beneath a hurtling avalanche of fury. For a moment man and monster stood poised, almost en tableau, then they crashed to the floor together—talons and fingers clawing, gouging at eyes; wings, feet, hard-gnarled hands, scimitared tail, balled fist, boots and teeth wreaking every ultimate possibility of damage. Against the frightfully armed and naturally armored body of the Delgonian, human physical weapons and human strength were near useless; but, insulated against the agony of snapping bones and bludgeon blows of the mighty tail by that hard-held nerve block, the Lensman's furiously active mind had a goal—a vaguely understood goal—toward which he directed the deadly struggle he could not control or hope to win—

Upon and over the thought-screen generator rolled the madly warring pair, and as the delicate mechanism disintegrated it ceased to function.

Worsel's prodigious mentality had been beating ceaselessly against that screen ever since its erection, and in the very instant of its fall Kinnison became again the Gray Lensman of old. And in the next instant both of those mighty minds—the two most powerful then known to civilization—had hurled themselves against that of the Delgonian. Bitter though the ensuing struggle was, it was brief. Nothing short of an Arisian mentality could have withstood the venomous intensity, the berserk power, of that concerted and synchronized attack.

Brain half burned out, the Overlord wilted; and, docility itself, he energized the communicator.

"Eichmil? The work is done. Thoroughly done, and well."

"So soon?"

"Yes. I was hungry—and, as I intimated, Tellurians are much too weak to furnish any real sport. Do you wish to inspect what is left of the Lensman?" This question was safe enough; Worsel knew exactly how Kinnison had fared during his whirlwind bodily encounter with the frightfully armed, heavily armored engine of destruction which was the Delgonian.

"No." Eichmil, as a high executive, was accustomed to delegating far more important matters to competent underlings. "If you say that it is well done, that is sufficient."

"Clear the way for me, then, please," the Overlord requested. Then, picking up the hideously mangled thing that was Kinnison's body, he incased it in its armor and, donning his own, wriggled boldly away with his burden. "I go to place this residuum within its ship and to return it to Star A Star."

"You will be able to find the speedster?"

"Certainly. He was to find it. Whatever he could have done, I, working through the cells of his brain, can likewise do."

"Can you handle him alone, Kinnison?" Worsel asked presently. "Can you hold out until you reach the boat?"

"Yes, to both. I can handle him—we softened him down plenty. I will last—I'll make myself last, long enough."

"I go, then, lest they be observing with spy rays."

To the black flier the completely subservient Delgonian then bore his physically disabled master, and carefully he put him aboard. Worsel helped openly there, for he had put out screens against all forms of intrusion. The vessel took off and the Overlord wriggled blithely back toward the dome. He was full of the consciousness of a good job, well done. He even felt the sensation of repletion concomitant with having consumed much vital force!

"I hate to let him go!" Worsel's thought was a growl of baffled fury. "It gripes me to the tail to let him think that he has done everything he set out to do; that he will never even know how he got those bruises and contusions. I wanted—I still want—to tear him apart for what he has done to you, my friend."

"Thanks, old snake." Kinnison's thought came faintly. "Just temporary. He's living on borrowed time. He'll get his. You've got everything under control, haven't you?"

"On the green. Why?"

"Because I can't hold this nerve block any longer.... It hurts.... I'm sick.... I think I'm going to—"

He fainted. More, he plunged parsecs deep into the blackest depths of oblivion as outraged nature took the toll she had been so long denied.

Worsel hurled a call to Earth, then turned to his maimed and horribly broken companion. He applied splints to the shattered limbs, he dressed and bandaged the hideous wounds and the raw sockets which had once held eyes, he ministered to the raging, burning thirst. Whenever Kinnison's mind wearied he held for him the nerve block, the priceless anodyne without which the Gray Lensman must have died from sheerest agony.

"Why not allow me, friend, to relieve you of all consciousness until help arrives?" the Velantian asked pityingly.

"Can you do it without killing me?"

"If you so allow, yes. If you offer any resistance, I do not believe that any mind in the Universe could."

"I won't resist you. Come in," and Kinnison's suffering ended.

But kindly Worsel could do nothing about the fantastically atrocious growths which were transforming the Earthman's legs and arms into monstrosities out of nightmare.

He could only wait—wait for the skilled assistance which he knew must be so long in coming.

XXI.

When Worsel's hard-driven call impinged upon the port admiral's lens, Haynes dropped everything to take the report himself. Characteristically Worsel sent first and Haynes first recorded a complete statement of the successful mission to Jarnevon. Last came personalities, the tale of Kinnison's ordeal and of his present plight.

"Are they following you in force, or can't you tell?"

"Nothing has been detectable, and at the time of our departure there had been no suggestion of any such action," Worsel replied carefully.

"We'll come in force, anyway, and fast. Keep him alive until we meet you," Haynes urged, and disconnected.

It was an unheard-of occurrence for the port admiral to turn over his very busy and extremely important desk to a subordinate without notice and without giving him detailed instructions, but Haynes did it now.

"Take charge of everything, Southworth!" he snapped. "I'm called away—emergency. Kinnison found Boskone—got away—hurt—I'm going after him in the Dauntless. Taking the new flotilla with me. Time indefinite—probably a few weeks."

He strode toward the communicator desk. The Dauntless was, as always, completely serviced and ready for any emergency. Where was that fleet of her sister ships, on its shakedown cruise? He'd shake them down! They had with them the new hospital ship, too—the only Red Cross ship in space that could leg it, parsec for parsec, with the Dauntless.

"Get me Navigations.... Figure best point of rendezvous for the Dauntless and Flotilla ZKD, both at full blast, en route to Lundmark's Nebula. Fifteen minutes departure. Figure approximate time of meeting with speedster, also at full blast, leaving that nebula hour nine fourteen today. Correction! Cancel speedster meeting; we can compute that more accurately later. Advise adjutant. Vice-Admiral Southworth will send order, through channels. Get me Base Hospital.... Lacy, please.... Kinnison's hurt, sawbones, bad. I'm going out after him. Coming along?"

"Yes. How about—"

"On the green. Flotilla ZKD, including your new two-hundred-million-credit hospital, is going along. Slip twelve, Dauntless, eleven and one half minutes from now. Hipe!" And the surgeon general "hiped."

Two minutes before the scheduled take-off Base Navigations called the chief navigating officer of the Dauntless.

"Course to rendezvous with Flotilla ZKD latitude three fifty-four dash thirty longitude nineteen dash forty-two time approximately twelve dash seven dash twenty-six place one dash three dash oh outside arbitrary galactic rim check and repeat," rattled from the speaker without pause or punctuation. Nevertheless, the chief navigator got it, recorded it, checked and repeated it.

"Figures only approximations because of lack of exact data on variations in density of medium and on distance necessarily lost in detouring stars," the speaker chattered on. "Suggest instructing your second navigator to communicate with navigating officers Flotilla ZKD at time twelve dash oh dash oh to correct courses to compensate unavoidably erroneous assumptions in computation Base Navigations off."

"I'll say he's off—'way off!" growled the second. "What does he think I am—a complete nitwit? Pretty soon he'll be telling me that two plus two equals four point oh."

The fifteen-second warning bell sounded. Every man came to the ready at his post, and precisely upon the designated second the superdreadnought blasted off. For six miles she rose inert upon her under jets, sirens and flaring lights clearing her way. Then she went free, her needle prow slanted sharply upward, her full battery of main driving projectors burst into action, and to all intents and purposes she vanished.

The Earth fell away from her at an incredible rate, dwindling away into invisibility in less than a minute. In two minutes the Sun itself was merely a bright star, in five it had merged indistinguishably into the sharply defined, brilliantly white belt of the Milky Way.

Hour after hour, day after day, the Dauntless hurtled through space, swinging almost imperceptibly this way and that to avoid the dense ether in the neighborhood of suns through which the designated course would have led; but never leaving far or for long the direct line, almost exactly in the equatorial plane of the Galaxy, between Tellus and the place of meeting. Behind her the Milky Way clotted, condensed, gathered itself together; before her and around her the stars began rapidly to thin out. Finally there were no more stars in front of her. She had reached the "arbitrary rim" of the Galaxy, and the second navigator plugged into Communications.

"Please get me Flotilla ZDK, Flagship Navigations," he requested; and, as a clean-cut young face appeared upon his plate: "Hi, Harvey, old spacehound! Fancy meeting you out here! It's a small Universe, ain't it? Say, did that crumb back there at Base tell you, too, to be sure and start checking course before you overran the rendezvous? If he was singling me out to make that pass at, I'm going to take steps, and not through channels, either."

"Yeah, he told me the same. I thought it was funny, too—an oiler's boy would know enough to do that without being told. We figured maybe he was jittery on account of us meeting the admiral or something. What's burned out all the jets, Paul, to get the big brass hats 'way out here and all dithered up, and to pull us offa the cruise this way? Must be a hell of an important flit! You're computing the Old Man himself; you oughta know something. What's all this about a speedster that we're going to escort? Spill it—give us the dope!"

"I don't know a thing, Harvey, honest, any more than you do. They didn't put out a word. Well, we'd better be getting onto the course—'to compensate unavoidably erroneous assumptions in computation,'" he mimicked caustically. "What do you read on my lambda? Fourteen—three—oh point six—decrement—"

The conversation became a technical jargon; because of which, however, the courses of the flying spaceships changed subtly. The flotilla swung around, through a small arc of a circle of prodigious radius, decreasing by a tenth its driving force. Up to it the Dauntless crept; through it and into the van. Then again in cone formation, but with fifty-five units instead of fifty-four, the flotilla screamed forward at maximum blast.

Well before the calculated time of meeting the speedster a Velantian Lensman who knew Worsel well put himself en rapport with him and sent a thought out far ahead of the flying squadron. It found its goal—Lensmen of that race, as has been brought out, have always been extraordinarily capable communicators—and once more the course was altered slightly. In due time Worsel reported that he could detect the fleet, and shortly thereafter:

"Worsel says to cut your drive to zero," the Velantian transmitted. "He's coming up. He's close. He's going to go inert and start driving. We're to stay free until we see what his intrinsic velocity is. Watch for his flare."

It was a weird sensation, this of knowing that a speedster—quite a sizable chunk of boat, really—was almost in their midst, and yet having all their instruments, even the electros, register empty space.

There it was! The flare of the driving blast, a brilliant streamer of fierce white light, sprang into being and drifted rapidly away to one side of their course. When it had attained a safe distance:

"All ships of the flotilla except the Dauntless go inert," Haynes directed. Then, to his own pilot, "Back us off a bit, Henderson, and do the same," and the new flagship also went inert.

"How can I get onto the Pasteur the quickest, Haynes?" Lacy demanded.

"Take a gig," the admiral grunted. "Strapped down, you can use as much acceleration as you like. Three G's is all we can use without warning and preparation."

There followed a curious and fascinating spectacle, for the hospital ship had an intrinsic velocity entirely different from that of either Kinnison's speedster or Lacy's powerful gig. The Pasteur, gravity pads cut to zero, was braking down by means of her under jets at a conservative one point four gravities, since hospital ships were not allowed to use the brutal inert accelerations employed as a matter of course by ships of war.

The gig was on her brakes at five gravities, all that Lacy wanted to take—but the speedster! Worsel had put his patient into a pressure pack and had hung him on suspension, and was "balancing her down on her tail" at everything he could stand—a full eleven gravities!

But even at that, the gig first matched the velocity of the hospital ship. The intrinsics of those two were at least of the same order of magnitude, since both had come from the same galaxy. Therefore, Lacy boarded the Red Cross vessel and was escorted to the office of the chief nurse while Worsel was still blasting at eleven G's—fifty thousand miles distant then and getting farther away by the second—to kill the speedster's Lundmarkian intrinsic velocity. Nor could the tractors of the warships be of any assistance—the speedster's own vicious jets were fully capable of supplying more acceleration than even unhuman Worsel could endure!

"How do you do, Dr. Lacy? Everything is ready." Clarrissa MacDougall met him, hand outstretched. Her saucy white cap was worn as jerkily cocked as ever; perhaps even more so, now that it was emblazoned with the cross-surmounted wedge which is the insignia of sector chief nurse. Her flaming hair was as gorgeous, her smile was as radiant, her bearing as confidently—Kinnison has said of her more than once that she is the only person he has ever known who can strut sitting down!—as calmly poised. "I'm very glad to see you, doctor. It's been quite a while—" Her voice died away, for the man was looking at her with an expression defying analysis.

For Lacy was thunderstruck. If he had ever known it—and he must have—he had forgotten completely that MacDougall had this ship. This was awful—terrible!

"Oh, yes ... yes, of course. How do you do? Mighty glad to see you again. How's everything going?" He pumped her hand vigorously, thinking frantically the while what he would—what he could—say next. "Oh, by the way, who is to be in charge of the operating room?"

"Why, I am, of course," she replied in surprise. "Who else would be?"

"Anyone else," he wanted to say, but did not—then. "Why, that isn't at all necessary. I would suggest—"

"You'll suggest nothing of the kind!" She stared at him intently; then, as she realized what his expression really meant—she had never before seen such a look of pitying anguish upon his usually sternly professional face—her own turned white and both hands flew to her throat.

"Not Kim, Lacy!" she gasped. Gone now was everything of poise, of insouciance, which had so characterized her a moment before. She who had worked unflinchingly upon all sorts of dismembered, fragmentary, maimed and mangled men was now a pleading, stricken, desperately frightened girl. "Not Kim—please! Oh, merciful God, don't let it be my Kim!"

"You can't be there, Mac." He did not need to tell her. She knew; he knew that she knew. "Somebody else—anybody else."

"No!" came the hot negative, although the blood drained completely from the chief nurse's face, leaving it as white as the immaculate uniform she wore. Her eyes were black, burning holes. "It's my job, Lacy, in more ways than one. Do you think that I would ever let anyone else work on him?" she finished passionately.

"You'll have to," he declared. "I didn't want to tell you this, but he's a ghastly mess. Altogether too much so for any woman, to say nothing of one who loves him." This, from a surgeon of Lacy's long and wide experience, was an unthinkable statement. Nevertheless:

"All the more reason why I've got to do it. No matter what shape he's in, I'll let no one else work on my Kim."

"I say no. That's an order—official!"

"Damn such orders!" she flamed. "There's nothing back of it—you know that as well as I do!"

"See here, young woman—"

"Do you think that you can get away with ordering me not to perform the very duties I have taken an oath to do?" she stormed. "And even if it were not my job, I'd come in and work on him if I had to get a torch and cut the ship apart, plate by plate, to do it! The only way you can keep me out of that operating room, Lacy, is to have about ten of your men put me into a strait jacket—and if you do that I'll have you kicked out of the service bodily. You know that I could and that I would!"

"QX, MacDougall, you win." She had him there. This girl could and would do exactly that. "But if you faint, I swear that I'll make you wish—"

"You know me better than that, doctor." She was cold now as a woman of marble. "If he dies, I'll die, too, right then. But if he lives, I'll stand by as long as I can do a single thing, however small, to help."

"You would, at that," the surgeon admitted. "Probably you would be able to hold together better than anyone else could. But there'll be after-effects in your case, you know."

"I know." Her voice was bleak. "I'll live through them—if Kim lives." She became all nurse in the course of a breath. White, cold, inhuman; strung to highest tension and yet placidly calm, as only a truly loving woman in life's great crises can be. "You have had reports on him, doctor. What is your provisional diagnosis?"

"Something like elephantiasis, only worse, affecting both arms and both legs. Drastic amputations indicated. Eye sockets require attention. Various multiple and compound fractures. Punctured and incised wounds. Traumatism, ecchymosis, extensive extravasations, œdema. Profound systemic shock, of course. The prognosis, however, seems to be distinctly favorable, as far as we can tell."

"Oh, I'm glad of that!" she breathed, the woman for a moment showing through the armor of the nurse. She had not dared even to think of prognosis. Then she had a thought. "Is that really true, or are you just giving me a shot in the arm?" she demanded.

"The truth—strictly," he assured her. "Worsel has an excellent sense of perception, and he has reported fully and clearly. Kinnison's mind, brain, and spine are not affected in any way, and we should be able to save his life. That is the one good feature of the whole thing."

The speedster finally matched the velocity of the hospital ship. She went free, flashed up to the Pasteur, inerted, and maneuvered briefly. The larger vessel engulfed the smaller. The Gray Lensman was carried into the operating room. The anæsthetist approached the table and Lacy was stunned at a thought from Kinnison.

They wheeled Kim out of the speedster, grim Worsel's vast strength gentle to help him into the hospital ship.

"Never mind the anæsthetic, Dr. Lacy. You can't make me unconscious without killing me. Go ahead with your work. I'll hold a nerve block while you're doing what has to be done. I can do it perfectly—I've had lots of practice."

"But we can't, man!" Lacy exclaimed. "You've got to be under a general for this job—we can't have you conscious. You're raving, I think. It will work, surely; it always has. Let us try it, anyway, won't you?"

"Sure. It'll save me the trouble of holding the block, even though it won't do anything else. Go ahead."

The attendant physician did so, with the same cool skill and to the same end point as in thousands of similar and successful undertakings. At its conclusion: "Gone now, aren't you, Kinnison?" Lacy asked, through his Lens.

"No," came the surprising reply. "Physically, it worked. I can't feel a thing and I can't move a muscle, but mentally I am as wide awake as I ever was."

"But you shouldn't be!" Lacy protested. "Perhaps you were right, at that—we can't give you much more without danger of collapse. But you've got to be unconscious! Isn't there some way in which you can be made so?"

"Yes, there is. But why do I have to be unconscious?" Kinnison asked curiously.

"To avoid mental shock—seriously damaging," the surgeon explained. "In your case particularly the mental aspect is much graver than the purely physical one."

"Maybe you're right but you can't do it with drugs. Call Worsel; he has done it before. He had me unconscious most of the way over here, except when he had to give me a drink or something to eat. He's the only man this side of Arisia who can operate on my mind."

Worsel came. "Sleep, my friend," he commanded, gently but firmly. "Sleep profoundly, body and mind, with no physical or mental sensations, no consciousness, no perception even of the passage of time. Sleep until someone having authority to do so bids you awaken."

And Kinnison slept; so deeply that even Lacy's probing Lens could elicit no response.

"He will stay that way?" the surgeon asked in awe.

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"Indefinitely. Until one of you doctors or nurses tells him to wake up, or until he dies for lack of food or water."

"We will see to it that he gets nourishment. He would make a much better recovery if we could keep him in that state until his injuries are almost healed. Would that do him harm, think you?"

"None whatever."

Then the surgeons and the nurses went to work. Lacy was not guilty of exaggeration when he described Kinnison as being a "ghastly mess." He was all of that. The job was long and hard. It was heartbreaking, even for those to whom Kinnison was merely another case, not a beloved personality. What they had to do they did, and the white marble chief nurse carried on through every soul-wrenching second, through every shocking, searing motion of it. She did her part, stoically, unflinchingly, as efficiently as though the patient upon the table were a total stranger undergoing a simple appendectomy and not the one man in her entire universe suffering radical dismemberment. Nor did she faint—then.

Back in Base Hospital, then, time wore on until Lacy decided that the Lensman could be aroused from his trance. Clarrissa it was who woke him up. She had fought for the privilege; first claiming it as a right and then threatening to commit mayhem upon the person of anyone else who dared even to think of doing it.

"Wake up, Kim, dear," she whispered. "The worst of it is over now. You are getting well."

The Gray Lensman came to instantly, in full command of every faculty, knowing everything that had happened up to the instant of his hypnosis by Worsel. He stiffened, ready to establish again the nerve block against the intolerable agony to which he had been subjected so long, but there was no need. His body was, for the first time in untold æons, free from pain; and he relaxed blissfully, reveling in the sheer comfort of it.

"I'm so glad that you're awake, Kim," the nurse went on. "I know that you can't talk to me—we can't unbandage your jaw until next week—and you can't think at me, either, because your new Lens hasn't come yet. But I can talk to you and you can listen. Don't be discouraged, Kim. Don't let it get you down. I love you just as much as I ever did, and as soon as you can talk we're going to get married. I am going to take care of you—"

"Don't 'poor dear' me, Mac," he interrupted her with a vigorous thought. "You didn't say it, I know, but you were thinking it. I'm not half as helpless as you think I am. I can still communicate, and I can see as well as I ever could, or better. And if you think that I'm going to let you marry me to take care of me, you're crazy."

"You're raving! Delirious! Stark, staring mad!" She started back, then controlled herself with an effort. "Maybe you can think at people without a Lens—of course you can, since you just did, at me—but you can't see, Kim, possibly. Believe me, boy, I know that you can't. I was there—"

"I can, though," he insisted. "I got a lot of stuff on my second trip to Arisia that I couldn't let anybody know about then, but I can now. I've got as good a sense of perception as Tregonsee has—maybe better. To prove it, you look thin, worn—whittled down to a nub. You've been working too hard—on me."

"Deduction," she scoffed. "You would know that I would."

"QX. How about those roses over there on the table? White ones, yellow ones, and red ones? With ferns?"

"You can smell them, perhaps"—dubiously. Then, with more assurance: "You would know that practically all the flowers known to botany would be here."

"Well, I'll count 'em and point 'em out to you, then—or, better, how about that little gold locket, with 'CM' engraved on it, that you're wearing under your uniform? I can't smell that, nor the picture in it—" The man's thought faltered in embarrassment. "My picture! Klono's whiskers, Mac, where did you get that—and why?"

"It's a reduction that Admiral Haynes let me have made. I am wearing it because I love you—I've said that before."

The girl's entrancing smile was now in full evidence. She knew now that he could see, that he would never be the helpless hulk which she had so gallingly thought him doomed to become, and her spirits rose in ecstatic relief. But he would never take the initiative now. Well, then, she would; and this was as good an opening as she ever would have with the stubborn brute. Therefore:

"More than that, as I said before, I am going to marry you, whether you like it or not." She blushed a heavenly—and discordant—magenta, but went on unfalteringly: "And not out of pity, either, Kim, or just to take care of you. It's older than that—much older."

"It can't be done, Mac." His thought was a protest to high Heaven at the injustice of Fate. "I've thought it over out in space a thousand times—thought until I was black in the face—but I get the same result every time. It's just simply no soap. You are much too fine a woman—too splendid, too vital, too much of everything a woman should be—to be tied down for life to a thing that's half steel, rubber, and phenoline. It just simply is not on the wheel, that's all."

"You're full of pickles, Kim." Gone was all her uncertainty and nervousness. She was calm, poised; glowing with a transcendent inward beauty. "I didn't really know until this minute that you love me, too, but I do now. Don't you realize, you big, dumb, wonderful clunker, that as long as there's one single, little bit of a piece of you left alive I'll love that piece more than I ever could any other man's entire being?"

"But I can't, I tell you!" He groaned the thought. "I can't and I won't! My job isn't done yet, either, and the next time they'll probably get me. I can't let you waste yourself, Mac, on a fraction of a man for a fraction of a lifetime!"

"QX, Gray Lensman." Clarrissa was serene, radiantly untroubled. She could make things come out right now; everything was on the green. "We'll put this back up on the shelf for a while. I'm afraid that I have been terribly remiss in my duties as a nurse. Patients mustn't be excited or quarreled with, you know."

"That's another thing. How come you, a sector chief, to be on ordinary room duty, and night duty at that?"

"Sector chiefs assign duties, don't they?" she retorted sunnily. "Now I'll give you a rub and change some of these dressings."

XXII.

"Hi, Skeleton-gazer!"

"Ho, Big Chief Feet-on-the-desk!"

"I see that your red-headed sector chief is still occupying all strategic salients in force." Haynes had paused in the surgeon general's office on his way to another of his conferences with the Gray Lensman. "Can't you get rid of her or don't you want to?"

"Don't want to. Couldn't, anyway, probably. The young vixen would tear down the hospital—she might even resign, marry him out of hand, and lug him off somewhere. You want him to recover, don't you?"

"Don't be any more of an idiot than you have to. What a question!"

"Don't work up a temperature about MacDougall, then. As long as she's around him—and that's twenty-four hours a day—he'll get everything in the Universe that he can get any good out of."

"That's so, too. This other thing's out of our hands now, anyway. Kinnison can't hold his position long against her and himself both—overwhelmingly superior force. Just as well, too—civilization needs more like those two."

"Check, but the affair isn't out of our hands yet, by any means. We've got quite a little more fine work to do there, as you'll see, before it's a really good job. But about Kinnison—"

"Yes. When are you going to fit arms and legs on him? He should be practicing with them at this stage of the game, I should think—I was."

"You should think—but, unfortunately, you don't, about anything except war," was the surgeon's dry rejoinder. "If you did, you would have paid more attention to what Phillips has been doing. He is making the final test today. Come along—your conference with Kinnison can wait half an hour."

In the research laboratory which had been assigned to Phillips they found von Hohendorff with the Posenian. Haynes was surprised to see the old commandant of cadets, but Lacy quite evidently had known that he was to be there.

"Phillips," the surgeon general began, "explain to Admiral Haynes, in nontechnical language, what you are doing."

"The original problem was to discover what hormone or other agent caused proliferation of neural tissue—"

"Wait a minute; I'd better do it," Lacy broke in. "Anyway, you wouldn't do yourself justice. The first thing that Phillips found out was that the problem of repairing damaged nervous tissue was inextricably involved with several other unknown things, such as the original growth of such tissue, its relationship to growth in general, the regeneration of lost members in lower forms, and so on. You see, Haynes, it is a known fact that nerves do grow, or else they could not exist; and in some lower forms of life they regenerate. Those facts were all he had, at first. In higher forms, even during the growth stage, regeneration does not occur spontaneously. Phillips set out to find out why.

"The thyroid controls growth, but does not initiate it, he learned. This fact seemed to indicate that there was an unknown hormone involved—that certain lower types possess an endocrine gland which is either atrophied or non-existent in higher types. If the latter, he was sunk. He reasoned, however, that, since higher types evolved from lower, the gland in question might very well exist in a vestigial stage. He studied animals, thousands of them, from the germ upward. He exhausted the patience of the Posenian authorities; and when they cut off his appropriation, on the ground that the thing was impossible, he came here. We gave him carte blanche.

"The man is a miracle of perseverence, a keen observer, a shrewd reasoner, and a mechanic par excellence—a born researcher. Therefore, in time he learned what it must be: to cut it short, the pineal body. Then he had to find the stimulant. Drugs, chemicals, and spectrum of radiation; singly and in combination. Years of plugging, with just enough progress to keep him at it. Visits to other planets peopled by races human to two places or more; learning everything that had been done along the line of his problem. When you fellows moved Medon over here he visited it as a matter of routine, and there he hit the jackpot. Wise himself is a surgeon, and the Medonians have for centuries been having warfare and grief enough, steadily and in heroic doses, to develop the medical and surgical arts no end.

"They knew how to stimulate the pineal—a combination of drugs and specific radiations—but their method was dangerous. With Phillips' fresh viewpoint, his wide, new knowledge, and his mechanical genius, they worked out a new and highly satisfactory technique. He was going to try it out on a pirate going into the lethal chamber, but von Hohendorff heard about it and insisted that it should be tried on him. Got up on his Unattached Lensman's high horse and won't come down. So here we are."

"Hm-m-m—interesting!" The admiral had listened attentively. "You're pretty sure that it will work, aren't you?"

"As sure as we can be of anything that hasn't been tried. Ninety-percent probability, say—certainly not over ninety-five."

"Good enough odds." Haynes turned to the commandant. "What do you mean, you old reprobate, by sneaking around behind my back and horning in on my reservation? I rate Unattached, too, you know, and it's mine. You're out, von."

"I saw it first and I refuse to relinquish." Von Hohendorff was adamant.

"You've got to," Haynes insisted. "He isn't your cub any more; he's my Lensman. Besides, I'm a better test than you are—I've got more parts to replace than you have."

"Four or five make just as good a test as a dozen," the commandant declared.

"Gentlemen, think!" the Posenian pleaded. "Please consider that the pineal is actually inside the brain. It is true that I have not been able to discover any brain injury so far, but the process has not yet been applied to a reasoning brain and I can offer no assurance whatever that some obscure injury will not result."

"What of it?" and the two old Unattached Lensmen resumed their battle, hammer and tongs. Neither would yield a millimeter.

"Operate on them both, then, since they are both above law or reason," Lacy finally ordered in exasperation. "There ought to be a law to reduce Gray Lensmen to the ranks when they begin to suffer from ossification of the intellect."

"Starting with yourself, perhaps?" the admiral shot back, not at all abashed.

Haynes relented enough to let von Hohendorff go first, and both were given the necessary injections. The commandant was then strapped solidly into a chair; his head was clamped so firmly that he could not move it in any direction.

The Posenian swung his needle rays into place; two of them, diametrically opposed, each held rigidly upon micrometered racks and each operated by two huge, double, rock-steady hands. The operator looked entirely aloof—being eyeless and practically headless, it is impossible to tell from a Posenian's attitude or posture anything about the focal point of his attention—but the watchers knew that he was observing in microscopic detail the tiny gland within the old Lensman's skull.

Then Haynes. "Is this all there is to it, or do we come back for more?" he asked, when he was released from his shackles.

"That's all," Lacy answered. "One stimulation lasts for life, as far as we know. But if the treatment is successful you'll come back—about day after tomorrow, I think—to go to bed here. Your spare equipment won't fit and your stumps may require surgical attention."

Sure enough, Haynes did come back to the hospital, but not to go to bed. He was too busy. Instead, he got a wheel chair, and in it he was taken back to his now-boiling office. And in a few more days he called Lacy in high exasperation.

"Know what you've done?" he demanded. "Not satisfied with taking my perfectly good parts away from me, you've taken my teeth, too. They don't fit—I can't eat a thing! And I'm hungry as a wolf—I was never so hungry before in all my life! I can't live on soup, man; I've got work to do. What are you going to do about it?"

"Ho-ho-haw!" Lacy roared. "Serves you right—von Hohendorff is taking it easy here; sitting right on top of the world. Easy, now, sailor, don't rupture your aorta. I'll send a nurse over with a soft-boiled egg and a spoon. Teething—at your age—Haw-ho-haw!"

But it was no ordinary nurse who came, a few minutes later, to see the port admiral; it was the sector chief herself. She looked at him pityingly as she trundled him into his private office and shut the door, thereby establishing complete coverage.

"I had no idea, Admiral Haynes, that you ... that there—" She paused.

"That I was so much of a machine-shop rebuild?"—complacently. "Except in the matter of eyes—which he doesn't need, anyway—our mutual friend Kinnison has very little on me, my dear. I got so handy with the replacements that very few people knew how much of me was artificial. But it's these teeth that are taking all the joy out of life. I'm hungry, confound it! Have you got anything really satisfying that I can eat?"

"I'll say I have!" She fed him; then, bending over, she squeezed him tight and kissed him emphatically. "You and the commandant are just perfectly wonderful old darlings, and I love you all to pieces," she declared. "I think Lacy was simply poisonous to laugh at you the way he did. Why, you two are the world's greatest heroes! He knew perfectly well all the time, the lug, that of course you'd be hungry; that you'd have to eat twice as much as usual while your legs and things were growing. Don't worry, admiral, I'll feed you until you bulge. I want you to hurry up with this, so that they'll do it to Kim."

"Thanks, Mac," and as she wheeled him back into the main office he considered her anew. A ravishing creature, but sound. Rash, and a bit stubborn, perhaps; impetuous and head-strong; but clean, solid metal all the way through. She had what it takes—she qualified. She and Kinnison would make a mighty fine couple when the lad got some of that heroic damn nonsense knocked out of his head—but there was work to do.

There was. The Galactic Council had considered thoroughly Kinnison's reports; its every member had conferred with him and with Worsel at length. Throughout the First Galaxy the Patrol was at work in all its prodigious might, preparing to wipe out the menace to civilization which was Boskone. First-line superdreadnoughts—no others would go upon that mission—were being built and armed, rebuilt and rearmed.

Well it was that the Galactic Patrol had previously amassed an almost inexhaustible supply of wealth, for its "reserves of expendible credit" were running like water.

Weapons, supposedly of irresistible power, were made even more powerful. Screens already "impenetrable" were stiffened into even greater stubbornness.

Primary projectors were made to take even higher loads, for longer times. New and heavier Q-type helices were designed and built. Larger and more destructive duodec bombs were hurled against already ruined, torn, and quivering test planets. Uninhabited worlds were being equipped with super-Bergenholms and with driving projectors. The negasphere, the most incredible menace to navigation which had ever existed in space, was being patrolled by a cordon of guard ships.

And all this activity centered in one vast building and culminated in one man—Port Admiral Haynes, Galactic councilor and chief of staff. And Haynes could not get enough to eat because he was cutting a new set of teeth!

He cut them, all thirty-two of them. His new limbs grew perfectly, even to the nails. Hair grew upon what had for years been a shining expanse of pate. But, much to Lacy's relief, it was old skin, not young, which covered the new limbs. It was white hair, not brown, that was dulling the glossiness of Haynes' bald old head. His bifocals, unchanged, were still necessary if he were to see anything clearly, near or far.

"Our experimental animals aged and died normally," Lacy explained graciously, "but I was beginning to wonder if we had rejuvenated you two, or perhaps endowed you with eternal life. Glad to see that the new parts have the same physical age as the rest of you—it would be mildly embarrassing to have to kill two Gray Lensmen to get rid of them."

"You aren't even as funny as a rubber crutch," Haynes grunted. "When are you going to give young Kinnison the works? Don't you realize that we need him?"

"Pretty soon now—just as soon as we give you and von your psychological examinations."

"Bah! That isn't necessary—my brain's QX!"

"That's what you think, but what do you know about brains? Worsel will tell us what shape your mind—if any—is in."

The Velantian put both Haynes and von Hohendorff through a grueling examination, finding that their minds had not been affected in any way by the stimulants applied to their pineal glands.

Then and only then did Phillips operate upon Kinnison; and in his case, too, the operation was a complete success. Arms and legs and eyes replaced themselves flawlessly. The scars of his terrible wounds disappeared, leaving no sign of ever having been.

He was a little slower, however; somewhat clumsy, and woefully weak. Therefore, instead of discharging him from the hospital as cured, which procedure would have restored to him automatically all the rights and privileges of an Unattached Lensman, the Council decided to transfer him to a physical-culture camp. A few weeks there would restore to him entirely the strength, speed, and agility which had formerly been his, and he would then be allowed to resume active duty.

Just before he left the hospital, Kinnison strolled with Clarrissa out to a bench in the grounds.

"—and you're making a perfect recovery," the girl was saying. "You'll be exactly as you were before. But things between us aren't just as they were, and they never can be again. You know that, Kim. We've got unfinished business to transact—let's take it down off the shelf before you go."

"Better let it lay, Mac," and all the newfound joy of existence went out of the man's eyes. "I'm whole, yes, but that angle was really the least important of all. You never yet have faced squarely the fact that my job isn't done and that my chance of living through it is just about one in ten. Even Phillips can't do anything about a corpse."

"No, and I won't face it, either, unless and until I must." Her reply was tranquillity itself. "Most of the troubles people worry about in advance never do materialize. And even if I did, you ought to know that I ... that any woman would rather ... well, that half a loaf is better than no bread."

"QX. I haven't ever mentioned the worst thing. I didn't want to—but if you've got to have it, here it is," the man wrenched out. "Look at what I am. A barroom brawler. A rum-dum. A hard-boiled egg. A cold-blooded, ruthless murderer, even of my own men—"

"Not that, Kim, ever, and you know it," she rebuked him.

"What else can you call it?" he grated. "A killer besides; a red-handed butcher if there ever was one—then, now, and forever. I've got to be. I can't get away from it. Do you think that you, or any other decent woman, could stand it to live with me? That you could feel my arms around you, feel my gory paws touching you, without going sick at the stomach?"

"Oh, so that's what's really been griping you all this time!" Clarrissa was surprised and entirely unshaken. "I don't have to think about that, Kim—I know. If you were a murderer or had the killer instinct, that would be different, but you aren't and you haven't. You are hard, of course. You have to be—but do you think that I would ever run a temperature over a softy? You brawl, yes—like the world's champion you are. Anybody you ever killed needed killing, there's no question of that. You don't do those things for fun; and the fact that you can drive yourself to do the things that have to be done shows your true caliber.

"Nor have you ever thought of the obverse; that you lean over backward in wielding that terrific power of yours. The Desplaines woman, the countess—lots of other instances. I respect and honor you more than any other man I have ever known. Any woman who really knew you would—she must! And I know! Remember that wide-open two-way put me in your mind for an instant—long enough—that let me understand something of the horrible weight you have to carry, something of the terrible power you must—for civilization—leash or release, direct and control. I know—no words you may say now can add to or change that single, full-view understanding I got then.

"Listen, Kim. Read my mind, all of it. You will know me then, and understand me better than I can ever explain myself."

"Have you got a picture of me doing that?" he asked flatly.

"No, you big, unreasonable clunker, I haven't!" she flared, "and that's just what's driving me mad!" Then, voice dropping to a whisper, almost sobbing: "Cancel that, Kim—I didn't mean it. You wouldn't—you couldn't, I suppose, and still be you, the man I love. But isn't there something—anything—that will make you understand what I really am?"

"I know what you are." Kinnison's voice was uninflected, weary. "As I told you before—the Universe's best. It's what I am that's clogging the jets. What I have been and what I have to keep on being. I simply don't rate up, and you'd better lay off me, Mac, while you can. There's a poem by one of the ancients—Kipling—the 'Ballad of Boh Da Thone'—that describes it exactly. You wouldn't know it—"

"You just think that I wouldn't"—nodding brightly. "The only trouble is that you always think of the wrong verses. Part of it really is descriptive of you. You know, where all the soldiers of the Black Tyrone thought so much of their captain?"

She recited:

"And worshiped with fluency, fervor, and zeal

The mud on the boot heels of Crook O'Neil.

"That describes you exactly."

"You're crazy for the lack of sense," he demurred. "I don't rate like that."

"Sure, you do," she assured him. "All the men think of you that way. And not only men. Women, too, darn 'em—and the very next time that I catch one of them at it I'm going to kick her cursed teeth out, one by one!"

Kinnison laughed, albeit a trifle sourly. "You're raving, Mac. Imagining things. But to get back to that poem, what I was referring to went like this—"

"I know how it goes. Listen:

"But the captain had quitted the long-drawn strife

And in far Simoorie had taken a wife;

"And she was a damsel of delicate mold,

With hair like the sunshine and heart of gold.

"And little she knew the arms that embraced

Had cloven a man from the brow to the waist;

"And little she knew that the loving lips

Had ordered a quivering life's eclipse,

"And the eyes that lit at her lightest breath

Had glared unawed in the Gates of Death.

"(For these be matters a man would hide,

As a general thing, from an innocent bride.)

"That's what you, mean, isn't it?" she asked quietly.

"Mac, you know a lot of things that you've got no business knowing." Instead of answering her question, he stared at her speculatively. "My sprees and brawls, Dessa Desplaines and the Countess Avondrin, and now this. Would you mind telling me how you get the stuff?"

"I'm closer to you than you suspect, Kim, and have been for a long time. Worsel calls it being 'en rapport,' I believe. You don't need to think at me—in fact, you have to put up a conscious block to keep me out. So I know a lot that I shouldn't, but Lensmen aren't the only ones who don't talk. You have been thinking about that poem a lot—it worried you—so I went to the library and looked it up. I memorized most of it."

"Well, to get the true picture of me you'll have to multiply that by a thousand. Also, don't forget that loose heads might be rolling onto your breakfast table almost any morning instead of only once."

"So what?" she countered evenly. "Do you think that I could sit for Kipling's portrait of Mrs. O'Neil? Nobody ever called my mold delicate, and he would have said of me:

"With hair like a conflagration

And a heart of solid brass!

"Captain O'Neil's bride, as well as being innocent and ignorant, strikes me as having been a good deal of a sissy, something of a weeping willow, and no little of a shrinking violet. Tell me, Kim, do you think that she would have made good as a sector chief nurse?"

"No, but that's neither here—"

"It is, too," she interrupted. "You've got to consider what I did, and that it's no job for a girl with a weak stomach. Besides, the Boh's head took the fabled Mrs. O'Neil by surprise. She didn't know that her husband used to be in the wholesale mayhem-and-killing business. I do.

"And lastly, you big lug, do you think that I'd be making such barefaced passes at you—playing the brazen hussy this way—unless I was very, very certain of the truth?"

"Huh?" he demanded, blushing furiously. "I thought that you were running a blazer on me before—you really do know, then, that—" He would not say it, even then.

"Of course I know!" She nodded; then, as the man spread his hands helplessly, she abandoned her attempts to keep the conversation upon a light level.

"I know, my dear; there is nothing we can do about it yet." Her voice was unsteady, her heart in every word. "You have to do your job, and I honor you for that, too; even if it does take you from me. It will be easier for you, though, I think, and I know that it will be easier for me, to have us both know the truth. Whenever you are ready, Kim, I'll be here—or somewhere—waiting. Clear ether, Gray Lensman!" and, rising to her feet, she turned back toward the hospital.

"Clear ether, Chris!" Unconsciously he used the pet name by which he had thought of her so much. He stared after her for a minute, hungrily. Then, squaring his shoulders, he strode away.

And upon far Jarnevon Eichmil, the First of Boskone, was conferring with Jalte via communicator. Long since, the Kalonian had delivered through devious channels the message of Boskone to an imaginary director of Lensmen; long since he had transmitted this cryptically direful reply:

"Lensman Morgan lives, and so does Star A Star."

Jalte had not been able to report to his chief any news concerning the fate of that which the speedster bore, since spies no longer existed within the reservations of the Patrol. He had learned of no discovery that any Lensman had made. He could not venture any hypothesis as to how this Star A Star had heard of Jarnevon or had learned of its location in space. He was sure of only one thing, and that was a grimly disturbing fact indeed. The Patrol was re-arming throughout the Galaxy, upon a scale theretofore unknown. Eichmil's thought was cold:

"That means but one thing. A Lensman invaded you and learned of us here—in no other way could knowledge of Jarnevon have come to them."

"Why me?" Jalte demanded. "If there exists a mind of power sufficient to break my screens and tracelessly to invade my mind, what of yours?"

"It is a thing proven by the outcome." The Boskonian's statement was a calm summation of fact. "The messenger sent against you succeeded; the one sent against us failed. The Patrol intends and is preparing: certainly to wipe out our remaining forces within the Tellurian Galaxy; probably to attack your stronghold; eventually to invade our own galaxy. It is well—for that reason, in part, was the Lensman Morgan sent back as he was sent."

"Let them come!" snarled the Kalonian. "We can and we will hold this planet forever against anything they can bring through space!"

"I would not be too sure of that," cautioned the superior. "In fact, if—as I am beginning to regard as a probability—the Patrol does make a concerted drive against any significant number of our planetary organizations, you should abandon your base there and return to Kalonia, after disbanding and so preserving for future use as many as possible of the planetary units."

"Future use? In that case there will be no future."

"There will be," Eichmil replied, coldly vicious. "We are strengthening the defenses of Jarnevon to withstand any conceivable assault. If they do not attack us here of their own free will, we shall compel them to do so. Then, after destroying their every mobile force, we shall again take over their galaxy. Arms for that purpose are even now in the building. Is the matter entirely clear?"

"It is clear. We shall warn all our groups that such orders may issue; and we shall prepare to abandon this base if such a step should become desirable."

So it was planned: neither Eichmil nor Jalte even suspecting two startling truths:

First, that when the Patrol was ready it would strike hard and without warning, and,

Second, that it would strike—not low, but high!

XXIII.

Kinnison played, worked, rested, ate, and slept. He boxed, strenuously and viciously, with masters of the craft. He practiced with his DeLameters until he had regained his old-time speed and dead-center accuracy. He swam for hours at a time, he ran in cross-country races. He lolled, practically naked, in hot sunshine. And finally, when his muscles were writhing and rippling as of yore beneath the bronzed satin of his skin, Lacy answered his insistent demands by coming to see him.

The Gray Lensman met the flier eagerly, but his face fell when he saw that the surgeon general was alone.

"No, MacDougall didn't come—she isn't around any more," he explained guilefully.

"Huh?" came the startled query. "How come?"

"Out in space—out Borova way somewhere. What do you care? After the way you acted you've got the crust of a rhinoceros to think that—"

"You're crazy, Lacy! Why, we ... she—It's all fixed up."

"Funny kind of fixing. Moping around Base, crying her red head off. Finally, though, she decided that she had some Scotch pride left, and I let her go aboard again. If she isn't all done with you, she ought to be." This, Lacy figured, would be good for what ailed the big saphead. "Come on, and I'll see whether you're fit to go back to work or not."

He was fit. "QX, lad, flit!" Lacy discharged him informally with a slap upon the back. "Get dressed and I'll take you back to Haynes—he's been snapping at me like a turtle ever since you've been out here."

At Prime Base, Kinnison was welcomed enthusiastically by the admiral.

"Feel those fingers, Kim!" he exclaimed. "Perfect! Just like the originals!"

"Mine, too. They do feel good."

"It's a pity that you got your new ones so quick. You'd appreciate 'em much more after a few years without 'em. But to get down to business. The fleets have been taking off for a couple of weeks—we're to join up as the line passes. If you haven't anything better to do, I'd like to have you aboard the Z9M9Z."

"I don't know of any place I'd rather be, sir—thanks."

"QX. Thanks should be the other way. You can make yourself mighty useful between now and zero time." He eyed the young man speculatively.

Haynes had a special job for him, Kinnison knew. As a Gray Lensman, he could not be given any military rank or post, and he could not conceive of the admiral of Grand Fleet wanting him around as an aid-de-camp.

"Spill it, chief," he invited. "Not orders, of course—I understand that perfectly. Requests or ... ah-hum ... suggestions."

"I will crown you with something yet, you whelp!" Haynes snorted, and Kinnison grinned. These two were very close, in spite of their disparity in years; and very much of a piece. "As you get older you will realize that it is good tactics to stick pretty close to Gen Regs. Yes, I have got a job for you, and it's a nasty one. Nobody else has been able to handle it, not even two companies of Rigellians. Grand Fleet Operations."

"Grand Fleet Operations!" Kinnison was aghast. "Holy ... Klono's ... brazen ... bowels! What makes you think I've got jets enough to swing that load, chief?"

"I haven't any idea whether you can or not. I know, however, that if you can't, nobody can; and in spite of all the work we've done on the thing we'll have to operate as a mob, as we did before, and not as a fleet. If so, I shudder to think of the results."

"QX. If you'll send for Worsel, we'll try it a fling or two. It'd be a shame to build a whole ship around an Operations tank and then not be able to use it; I'll see what I can do. By the way, I haven't seen my head nurse—Miss MacDougall, you know—any place lately. Have you? I ought to tell her 'thanks' or something—maybe send her a flower."

"Nurse? MacDougall? Oh, yes, the redhead. Let me see—did hear something about her the other day. Married? No, that wasn't it.... She took a hospital ship somewhere. Alsakan—Vandemar—somewhere; didn't pay any attention. She doesn't need thanks—or flowers, either—she's getting paid for her work. Much more important, don't you think, to get Operations straightened out?"

"Undoubtedly, sir," Kinnison replied stiffly, and as he went out Lacy came in.

The two old conspirators greeted each other with knowing grins. Was Kinnison taking it big! He was falling, like ten thousand bricks down a well.

"Do him good to undermine his position a bit. Too cocky altogether. But how they suffer!"

"Check!"

Kinnison rode toward the flagship in a mood which even he could not have described. He had expected to see her, as a matter of course—he wanted to see her—confound it, he had to see her! Why did she have to do a flit now, of all the times on the calendar? She knew that the fleet was shoving off, and that he'd have to go along—and nobody knew where she was. When he got back he'd find her if he had to chase her all over the Galaxy. He'd put an end to this. Duty was duty, of course—but Chris was CHRIS—and half a loaf was better than no bread!

He jerked back to reality as he entered the gigantic teardrop which was technically the Z9M9Z, socially the Directrix, and ordinarily GFHQ. She had been designed and built specifically to be Grand Fleet Headquarters, and nothing else. She bore no offensive armament; but since she had to protect the presiding geniuses of combat, she had every possible defense.

Port Admiral Haynes had learned a bitter lesson during the expedition to Helmuth's base. Long before that relatively small Grand Fleet got there he was sick to the core, realizing that fifty thousand vessels simply could not be controlled or maneuvered as a group. If that base had been capable of an offensive, or even of a real defensive, or if Boskone could have put their fleets into that star cluster in time, the Patrol would have been defeated ignominiously; and Haynes, wise old tactician that he was, knew it only too well.

Therefore, immediately after the return from that "triumphant" venture, he gave orders to design and to build, at whatever cost, a flagship capable of directing efficiently a million combat units.

The "tank"—the three-dimensional galactic chart which is a necessary part of every pilot room—had grown and grown as it became evident that it must be the prime agency in Grand Fleet Operations. Finally, in this last rebuilding, the tank was seven hundred feet in diameter and eighty feet thick in the middle—over seventeen million cubic feet of space in which more than two million tiny lights crawled hither and thither in hopeless confusion. For, after the technicians and designers had put that tank into actual service, they had discovered that it was useless. No available mind had been able either to perceive any situation as a whole, or to identify with certainty any light or group of lights needing correction. And as for linking up any particular light with its individual, blanket-proof communicator in time to issue orders in space combat—

Kinnison looked at the tank, then around the full circle of the million-plug board encircling it. He observed the horde of operators, each one trying frantically to do something. Next he shut his eyes, the better to perceive everything at once, and studied the problem for an hour.

"Attention, everybody!" he thought then. "Open all circuits—do nothing at all for a while." He then called Haynes.

"I think that we can clean up this mess if you'll send over some Simplex analyzers and the crew of technicians. Helmuth had a sweet set-up on multiplex controls, and Jalte had some ideas that we can adapt to fit this tank. If we add them all together, we may have something."

And by the time Worsel arrived, they did.

"Red lights are fleets already in motion," Kinnison explained rapidly to the Velantian. "Greens are fleets still at their bases. Ambers are the planets the greens took off from—connected, you see, by Ryerson string-lights. The white star is us, the Directrix. That violet cross 'way over there is Jalte's planet, our first objective. The pink comets are our free planets, their tails showing their intrinsic velocities. Being so slow, they had to start long ago. The purple circle is the negasphere. It's on its way, too. You take that side, I'll take this. They were supposed to start from the edge of the twelfth sector. The idea was to make it a smooth, bowl-shaped sweep across the Galaxy, converging upon the objective, but each of the fleet commanders apparently wants to run this war to suit himself. Look at that guy there—he's beating the gun by nine thousand parsecs. Watch me pin his ears back!"

He pointed his Simplex at the red light which had so offendingly sprung into being. There was a whirring click and the number 449276 flashed above a board. An operator flicked a switch.

"Grand Fleet Operations!" Kinnison snapped. "Why are you taking off without orders?"

"Why, I ... I'll give you the vice-admiral, sir—"

"No time! Tell your vice-admiral that one more such break will put him in irons. Land at once! GFO—off!"

"With around a million fleets to handle, we can't spend much time on anyone," he thought at Worsel, "but after we get them lined up and get our Rigellians broken in, it won't be so bad."

The breaking in did not take long; definite and meaningful orders flew faster and faster along the tiny, but steel-hard beams of the communicators.

"Take off.... Increase drive four point five.... Decrease drive two point seven.... Change course to—" and so it went, hour after hour and day after day.

And with the passage of time came order out of chaos. The red lights formed a gigantically sweeping, curving wall, its almost imperceptible crawl representing an actual velocity of almost one hundred parsecs an hour. Behind that wall blazed a sea of amber, threaded throughout with the brilliant filaments which were the Ryerson lights. Ahead of it lay a sparkling, almost solid blaze of green. Closer and closer the wall crept toward the bright white star.

And in the "reducer"—the standard, ten-foot tank in the lower well—the entire spectacle was reproduced in miniature. It was plainer there, clearer and much more readily seen; but it was so crowded that details were indistinguishable.

Haynes stood beside Kinnison's padded chair one day, staring up into the immense lens and shaking his head. He went down the flight of stairs to the reducer, studied that, and again shook his head.

"This is very pretty, but it doesn't mean a thing," he thought at Kinnison. "It begins to look as though I'm going along just for the ride. You—or you and Worsel—will have to do the fighting, too, I'm afraid."

"Uh-huh," Kinnison demurred. "What do we—or anyone else—know about tactics, compared to you? You've got to be the brains. That's why we had the boys rig up the original working model there, for a reducer. On that you can watch and figure out the gross developments and tell us in general terms what to do. Knowing that, we will know who ought to do what, from the big tank here, and we will pass your orders along."

"Say, that will work, at that!" and Haynes brightened visibly. "Looks as though a couple of those reds are going to knock our star out of the tank, doesn't it?"

"It'll be close in that reducer. They'll probably touch. Close enough in real space—less than three parsecs."

The zero hour came and the Tellurian armada of eighty-one sleek destroyers—eighty superdreadnoughts and the Directrix—spurned Earth and took its place in that hurtling wall of crimson. Solar system after solar system was passed; fleet after fleet leaped into the ether and fitted itself into the smoothly geometrical pattern which GFO was nursing along so carefully.

Through the Galaxy the formation swept, and out of it, toward a star cluster. It slowed its mad pace; the center hanging back, the edges advancing and folding in.

"Surround the cluster and close in," the admiral directed; and, under the guidance now of two hundred Rigellians, civilization's vast Grand Fleet closed smoothly in and went inert. Drivers flared white as they fought to match the intrinsic velocity of the cluster.

"Vice admirals of all fleets, attention! Using secondaries only, fire at will upon any enemy object coming within range. Engage outlying structures and such battle craft as may appear. Keep assigned distance from planet and stiffen cosmic screens to maximum. Haynes—off!"

From untold millions of projectors there raved out gigantic rods, knives, and needles of force, under the impact of which the defensive screens of Jalte's guardian citadels flamed into terrible refulgence. Duodec bombs were hurled—tight-beam-directed monsters of destruction which, swinging around in huge circles to attain the highest possible measure of momentum, flung themselves against Boskone's defenses in Herculean attempts to smash them down. They exploded; each as it burst filling all nearby space with blindingly intense violet light and with flying scraps of metal. Q-type helices, driven with all the frightful kilowattage possible to Medonian conductors and insulation, screwed in, biting, gouging, tearing in wild abandon. Shear-planes, hellish knives of force beside which Tellurian lightning is pale and wan, struck and struck and struck again—fiendishly, crunchingly.

But those grimly stolid fortresses could take it. They had been repowered; their defenses stiffened to such might as to defy, in the opinion of Boskone's experts, any projectors capable of being mounted upon mobile bases. And not only could they take it—those formidably armed and armored planetoids could dish it out as well. The screens of the Patrol ships flared high into the spectrum under the crushing force of sheer enemy power. Not a few of those defenses were battered down, clear to the wall shields, before the unimaginable ferocity of the Boskonian projectors could be neutralized.

And at this spectacularly frightful deep-space engagement Jalte, Boskone's galactic director, and through him Eichmil, First of Boskone itself, stared in stunned surprise.

"It is insane!" Jalte gloated. "The fools judged our strength by that of Helmuth; not considering that we, as well as they, would be both learning and doing during the intervening time. They have a myriad of ships, but mere numbers will never conquer my outposts, to say nothing of my works here."

"They are not fools. I am not sure—" Eichmil cogitated.

He would have been even less sure could he have listened to a conversation which was even then being held.

"QX, Thorndyke?" Kinnison asked.

"On the green," came instant reply. "Intrinsic, placement, releases—everything on the green!"

"Cut!" and the lone purple circle disappeared from tank and from reducer. The master technician had cut his controls and every pound of metal and other substance surrounding the negasphere had been absorbed by that enigmatic volume of nothingness. No connection or contact with it was now possible; and with its carefully established intrinsic velocity it rushed engulfingly toward the doomed planet. One of the mastodonic fortresses which lay in its path vanished utterly, with nothing save a burst of invisible cosmics to mark its passing. It approached its goal. It was almost upon the planet before any of the defenders perceived it; and even then they could neither understand nor grasp it. All detectors and other warning devices remained static, but:

"Look! There! Something's coming!" an observer jittered, and Jalte swung his plate.

Jalte saw—nothing. Eichmil saw the same thing. There was nothing to see. A vast, intangible nothing—yet a nothing tangible enough to occult everything material in a full third of the cone of vision! Jalte's operators hurled into it their mightiest beams. Nothing happened. They struck nothing and disappeared. They loosed their heaviest duodec torpedoes; gigantic missiles whose warheads contained enough of that frightfully violent detonate to disrupt a world. Nothing happened—not even an explosion. Not even the faintest flash of light. Shell and contents alike merely and, oh, so incredibly peaceful, ceased to exist. There were important bursts of cosmics, but they were invisible and inaudible; and neither Jalte nor any member of his crew were to live long enough to realize how terribly they had already been burned.

Gigantic pressors shoved against it; beams of power sufficient to deflect a satellite; beams whose projectors were braced, in steel-laced concrete down to bedrock, against any conceivable thrust. But this was negative, not positive, matter—matter negative in every respect of mass, inertia, and force. To it a push was a pull. Pressors to it were tractors—at contact they pulled themselves up off their massive foundations and hurtled into the appalling blackness.

Then the negasphere struck. Or did it? Can nothing strike anything? It would be better, perhaps, to say that the spherical hyperplane which was the three-dimensional cross-section of the negasphere began to occupy the same volume of space as that in which Jalte's unfortunate world already was. And at the surface of contact of the two the materials of both disappeared. The substance of the planet vanished; the incomprehensible nothingness of the negasphere faded away into the ordinary vacuity of empty space.

Jalte's base, all the three hundred square miles of it, was taken at the first gulp. A vast pit opened where it had been, a hole which deepened and widened with horrifying rapidity. And as the yawning abyss enlarged itself the stuff of the planet fell into it, in turn to vanish. Mountains tumbled into it, oceans dumped themselves into it. The hot, frightfully compressed and nascent material of the planet's core sought to erupt—but instead of moving, it, too, vanished. Vast areas of the world's surface crust, tens of thousands of square miles in extent, collapsed into it, splitting off along crevasses of appalling depth, and became nothing. The stricken globe shuddered, trembled, ground itself to bits in paroxysm after ghastly paroxysm of disintegration.

What was happening? Eichmil did not know, since his "eye" was destroyed before any really significant developments could eventuate. He and his scientists could only speculate and deduce—which, with surprising accuracy, they did. The officers of the Patrol ships, however, knew what was going on, and they were scanning with intently narrowed eyes the instruments which were recording instant by instant the performance of the new cosmic super-screens which were being assaulted so brutally.

For, as has been said, the negasphere was composed of negative matter. Instead of electrons, its building blocks were positrons—the "Dirac holes" in an infinity of negative energy. Whenever the field of a positron encountered that of an electron, the two neutralized each other, giving rise to two quanta of hard radiation. And, since those encounters were occurring at the rate of countless trillions per second, there was tearing at the Patrol's defenses a flood of cosmic rays of an intensity which no spaceship had ever before been called upon to withstand. But the new screens had been figured with a factor of safety of five, and they stood up.

The planet dwindled with soul-shaking rapidity to a moon, to a moonlet, and finally to a discreetly conglomerate aggregation of meteorites before the mutual neutralization ceased.

"Primaries now," Haynes ordered briskly, as the needles of the cosmic-ray-screen meters dropped back to the points of normal functioning. The probability was that the defenses of the Boskonian citadels would now be automatic only, that no life had endured through that awful flood of lethal radiation; but he was taking no chances. Out flashed the penetrant super rays and the fortresses, too, ceased to exist save as the impalpable infradust of space.

And the massed Grand Fleet of the Galactic Patrol, making its formation, hurtled outward through the intergalactic void.

XXIV.

"They are not fools. I am not so sure—" Eichmil had said; and when the last force-ball, his last means of intergalactic communication, went dead, the First of Boskone became very unsure indeed. The Patrol undoubtedly had something new—he himself had had glimpses of it—but what was it?

That Jalte's base was gone was obvious. That Boskone's hold upon the Tellurian Galaxy was gone, followed as a corollary. That the Patrol was or would soon be wiping out Boskone's regional and planetary units was a logical inference. Star A Star, that accursed director of Lensmen, had—must have—succeeded in stealing Jalte's records, to be willing to destroy out of hand the base which had housed them.

Nor could Boskone do anything to help the underlings, now that the long-awaited attack upon Jarnevon itself was almost certainly coming. Let them come—Boskone was ready. Or was it—quite? Jalte's defenses had been strong, but they had not withstood that unknown weapon even for seconds.

Eichmil called a joint meeting of Boskone and the Academy of Science. Coldly and precisely he told them everything that he had seen. Discussion followed.

"Negative matter beyond a doubt," a scientist summed up the consensus of opinion. "It has long been surmised that in some other, perhaps hyperspatial universe there must exist negative matter of mass sufficient to balance the positive material of the universe we know. It is conceivable that by hyperspatial explorations and manipulations the Tellurians have discovered that other universe and have transported some of its substance into ours."

"Can they manufacture it?" Eichmil demanded.

"The probability that such material can be manufactured is exceedingly small," was the studied reply. "An entirely new mathematics would be necessary. In all probability they found it already existent."

"We must find it also, then, and at once."

"We will try. Bear in mind, however, that the field is large, and do not be optimistic of an early success. Note, also, that the substance is not necessary—perhaps not even desirable—in a defensive action."

"Why not?"

"Because, by directing pressors against such a bomb, Jalte actually pulled it into his base, precisely where the enemy wished it to go. As a surprise attack, against those ignorant of its true nature, such a weapon would be effective indeed; but against us it will prove a boomerang. All that is needful is to mount tractor heads upon pressor bases, and thus drive the bombs back upon those who send them." It did not occur, even to the coldest scientist of them all, that that bomb had been of planetary mass. Not one of the Eich suspected that all that remained of the entire world upon which Jalte's base had stood was a handful of meteorites.

"Let them come, then," the First of Boskone announced grimly. "Their dependence upon a new and supposedly unknown weapon explains what would otherwise be insane tactics. With that weapon impotent, they cannot possibly win a long war waged so far from their bases. We can match them ship for ship, and more; and our supplies and munitions are close at hand. We will wear them down—blast them out—the Tellurian Galaxy shall yet be ours!"

Admiral Haynes spent almost every waking hour setting up and knocking down tactical problems in the practice tank, and gradually his expression changed from one of strained anxiety to one of pleased satisfaction. He went over to his sealed-band transmitter, called all communications officers, and ordered:

"Each vessel will direct its longest-range detector, at highest possible power, centrally upon the objective galaxy. The first observer to find enemy activity will report it instantly to us here. We will send out a general C. B., at which every vessel will cease blasting at once, remaining motionless until further orders." He then called Kinnison.

"Look here," he directed the attention of the younger man into the reducer, which now represented intergalactic space, with a portion of the Second Galaxy filling one edge. "I have a solution, but its practicability depends upon whether or not it calls for the impossible from you, Worsel, and your Rigellians. You remarked at the start that I knew my tactics. I wish that I knew more—or at least could be certain that Boskone and I agree upon what constitutes good tactics. I feel quite safe in assuming, however, that we shall meet their Grand Fleet well outside the Galaxy—"

"Why?" asked the startled Kinnison. "If I were Eichmil, I'd pull every ship I had in around Jarnevon and keep it there; they can't force engagement with us!"

"Poor tactics. The very presence of their fleet out in space will force us to engage, and decisively at that. From his viewpoint, if he defeats us there, that ends it. If he loses, that is only his first line of defense. His observers will have reported fully. He will have invaluable data upon which to work, and much time before even his outlying fortresses can be threatened.

"From our viewpoint, we cannot refuse battle if his fleet is there. It would be suicidal for us to enter that Galaxy, leaving intact outside it a fleet as powerful as that one is bound to be."

"Why? Harrying us from the rear might be bothersome, but I don't see how it could be disastrous."

"Not that. They could, and would, attack Tellus."

"Oh—I never thought of that. But couldn't they, anyway—two fleets?"

"No. He knows that Tellus is very strongly held, and that this is no ordinary fleet. He will have to concentrate everything he has upon either one or the other—it is almost inconceivable that he would divide his forces."

"QX. I said that you're the brains of the outfit, and you are!"

"Thanks, lad. At the first sign of detection, we stop. They may be able to detect us, but I doubt it, since we are looking for them with special instruments. But that's immaterial. What I want to know is, can you and your crew split the fleet, making two big, hollow hemispheres of it? Let this group of ambers represent the enemy. Since they know that we will have to carry the battle to them, they will probably be in fairly close formation. Set your two hemispheres—the reds—there and there. Close in, making a sphere, like this—englobing their whole fleet. Can you do it?"

Kinnison whistled through his teeth; a long, low, unmelodious whistle. "Yes—but Klono's brazen claws, chief, suppose they catch you at it?"

"How can they? If you were using detectors, instead of double-ended, tight-beam binders, how many of our own vessels could you locate?"

"That's right, too—less than one percent of them. They couldn't tell that they were being englobed until long after it was done. They could, however, globe up inside us—"

"Yes—and that would give them the tactical advantage of position," the admiral admitted. "We probably have, however, enough superiority in firing power, if not in actual tonnage, to make up the difference. Also, we have speed enough, I think, so that we could retire in good order. But you are assuming that they can maneuver as rapidly and as surely as we can, a condition which I do not consider at all probable. If, as I believe much more likely, they have no better Grand Fleet Operations than we had in Helmuth's star cluster—if they haven't the equivalent of you and Worsel and this supertank here—then what?"

"In that case it'd be just too bad. Just like pushing baby chicks into a pond." Kinnison saw the possibilities clearly enough after they had been explained to him.

"How long will it take you?"

"With Worsel and both full crews of Rigellians I would guess it at about ten hours—eight to compute and assign positions and two to get there."

"Fast enough—faster than I would have thought possible. Oil up your calculating machines and Simplexes and get ready."

In due time the enemy fleet was detected and detection was confirmed. The "Cease Blasting" signal was sent out. Civilization's prodigious fleet stopped dead, hanging motionless in space with its nearest units at the tantalizing limit of detectability from the warships awaiting them. For eight hours two hundred Rigellians stood at whirring calculators, each solving course-and-distance problems at the rate of ten per minute. Two hours or less of free flight, and Haynes rejoiced audibly in the perfection of the two red hemispheres shown in his reducer. The two immense bowls flashed together, rim to rim. The sphere began inexorably to contract. Each ship put out a red K6T screen as a combined battle flag and identification, and the greatest naval engagement of the age was on.

It soon became evident that the Boskonians could not maneuver their forces efficiently. Their fleet was too huge, too unwieldy for their operations officers to handle. Against an equally uncontrollable mob of battle craft it would have made a showing, but against the carefully planned, chronometer-timed attack of the Patrol individual action, however courageous or however desperate, was useless.

Each red-sheathed destroyer hurtled along a definite course at a definite force of drive for a definite length of time. Orders were strict; no ship was to be lured from course, pace, or time. They could, however, fight en passant with their every weapon if occasion arose; and occasion did arise, some thousands of times. The units of Grand Fleet flashed inward, lashing out with their terrible primaries at everything in space not wearing the crimson robe of civilization. And whatever those beams struck did not need striking again.

The warships of Boskone fought back. Many of the Patrol's defensive screens blazed hot enough almost to mask the scarlet beacons; some of them went down. A few Patrol ships were englobed by the concerted action of two or three subfleet commanders more co-operative or more farsighted than the rest, and were blasted out of existence by an overwhelming concentration of power. But even those vessels took toll with their primaries as they went out; few, indeed, were the Boskonians who escaped through holes thus made.

At a predetermined instant each dreadnought stopped, to find herself one nut of an immense, red-flaming hollow sphere of ships packed almost screen to screen. And upon signal every primary projector that could be brought to bear hurled bolt after bolt, as fast as the burned-out shells could be replaced, into the ragingly incandescent inferno which that sphere's interior instantly became. For two hundred million discharges such as those will convert even a very large volume of space into something utterly impossible to describe.

The raving torrents of energy subsided and keen-eyed observers swept the scene of action. Nothing was there except jumbled and tumbling white-hot wreckage. A few vessels had escaped during the closing in of the sphere, but none inside it had survived this climactic action—not one in five thousand of Boskone's massed fleet made its way back to dark Jarnevon.

"Maneuver fifty-eight—hipe!" and Grand Fleet shot away. There was no waiting, no hesitation. Every course and time had been calculated and assigned.

Into the Second Galaxy the scarcely diminished armada of the Patrol hurtled—to Jarnevon's solar system—around it. Once again the crimson sheathing of civilization's messengers almost disappeared in blinding coruscance as the outlying fortresses unleashed their mighty weapons; once again a few ships, subjected to such concentrations of force as to overload their equipment, were lost; but this conflict, although savage in its intensity, was brief. Nothing mobile could endure for long the utterly hellish energies of the primaries, and soon the armored planetoids, too, ceased to be.