Part 19

Kit breathed deeply in relief and rested. This didn't prove much, of course. Nadreck had done practically the same thing in getting Kandron--except that the Palainian would never be able to analyze or to synthesize such screens as these. The real test would come later; but this had been mighty good practice.

* * * * *

The real test came with the fifth, the innermost screen. The others, while of ever-increasing sensitivity, complexity, and power, were all generated mechanically, and hence posed problems differing only in degree, and not in kind, from that of the first. The fifth problem, however, involving a living and highly capable brain, differed in both degree and kind from all the others. The Eddorian would be sensitive to form and to shape, as well as to interference. Bulges were out, unless he could do something about the Eddorian--and the speedster couldn't go through a screen without making a bulge.

Furthermore, this zone had visual and electromagnetic detectors, so spaced as not to let a microbe through. There were fortresses, maulers, battleships, and their attendant lesser craft. There were projectors, and mines, and automatic torpedoes with atomic warheads, and other such things. Were these things completely dependent upon the Eddorian guardian, or not?

They were not. The officers--Kalonians for the most part--would go into action at the guardian's signal, of course; but they would at need act without instructions. A nice setup--a mighty hard nut to crack! He would have to use zones of compulsion. Nothing else would do.

Picking out the biggest fortress in the neighborhood, with its correspondingly large field of coverage, he insinuated his mind into that of one observing officer after another. When he left, a few minutes later, he knew that none of those officers would initiate any action in response to the alarms which he would so soon set off. They were alive, fully conscious, alert, and would have resented bitterly any suggestion that they were not completely normal in every respect. Nevertheless, whatever colors the lights flashed, whatever pictures the plates revealed, whatever noises blared from the speakers, in their consciousnesses would be only blankness and silence. Nor would recorder tapes reveal later what had occurred. An instrument cannot register fluctuations when its movable member is controlled by a couple of steady fingers.

Then the Eddorian. To take over his whole mind was, Kit knew, beyond his present power. A partial zone, though, could be set up--and young Kinnison's mind had been developed specifically to perform the theretofore impossible. Thus the guardian, without suspecting it, suffered an attack of partial blindness which lasted for the fraction of a second necessary for the speedster to flash through the screen. And there was no recorder to worry about. Eddorians, never sleeping and never relaxing their vigilance, had no doubt whatever of their own capabilities and needed no checks upon their own performances.

Christopher Kinnison, Child of the Lens, was inside Eddore's innermost defensive sphere. For countless cycles of time the Arisians had been working toward and looking forward to the chain of events of which this was the first link. Nor would he have much time here: he would have known that even if Mentor had not so stressed the point. As long as he did nothing he was safe; but as soon as he started sniffing around he would be open to detection and some Eddorian would climb his frame in mighty short order. Then blast and lock on--he might get something, or a lot, or nothing at all. Then--win, lose, or draw--he had to get away. Strictly under his own power, against an unknown number of the most powerful and the most ruthless entities ever to live. The Arisian couldn't get in here to help him, and neither could the kids. Nobody could. It was strictly and solely up to him.

For more than a moment his spirit failed. The odds against him were far too long. The load was too heavy; he didn't have half enough jets to swing it. Just how did a guy as smart as Mentor figure it that he, a dumb, green kid, stood a chance against all Eddore?

He was scared; scared to the core of his being; scared as he had never been before and never would be again. His mouth felt dry, his tongue cottony. His fingers shook, even as he doubled them into fists to steady them. To the very end of his long life he remembered the fabric and the texture of that fear; remembered how it made him decide to turn back, before it was too late to retrace his way as unobserved as he had come.

Well, why not? Who would care, and what matter? The Arisians? Nuts! It was all their fault, sending him in half-ready. His parents? They wouldn't know what the score was and wouldn't care. They would be on his side, anyway, no matter what happened. The kids? The _kids_! Klono's Holy Claws!

They had tried to talk him out of coming in alone. They had fought like wildcats to make him take them along. He had refused. Now, if he sneaked back with his tail between his legs, how would they take it? What would they do? What would they _think_? Then, later, after he had loused up the big job and let the Arisians and the Patrol and all Civilization get knocked out--then what? The kids would know exactly how and why it had happened. He couldn't defend himself, even if he tried, and he wouldn't try. Did he have any idea how much sheer, vitriolic, corrosive contempt those four red-headed hellions could generate? Or, even if they didn't--or as a follow-up--their condescending, sisterly pity would be a thousand million times worse. And what would he think of himself? No soap. It was out. Definitely. The Eddorians could kill him only once. QX.

* * * * *

He drove straight downward, noting as he did so that his senses were clear, his hands steady, his tongue normally moist. He was still scared, but he was no longer paralyzed.

Low enough, he let his every perceptive sense roam abroad--and became instantly too busy to worry about anything. There was an immense amount of new stuff here--if he only could be granted time enough to get it all!

He wasn't. In a second or so, it seemed, his interference was detected and an Eddorian came in to investigate. Kit threw everything he had, and in the brief moment before the completely surprised denizen died, the young Klovian learned more of the real truth of Eddore and of the whole Boskonian Empire than all the Arisians had ever found out. In that one flash of ultimately intimate fusion, he _knew_ Eddorian history, practically _in toto_. He knew the enemies' culture; he knew how they behaved, and why. He knew their ideals and their ideologies. He knew a great deal about their organization; their systems of offense and of defense. He knew their strengths and, more important, their weaknesses. He knew exactly how, if Civilization were to triumph at all, its victory must be achieved.

This seems--or rather, it is--incredible. It is, however, simple truth. Under such stresses as those, an Eddorian mind can yield, and the mind of such a one as Christopher Kinnison can absorb, an incredible amount of knowledge in an incredibly brief interval of time.

Kit, already seated at his controls, cut in his every course of thought-screen. They would help a little in what was coming, but not much--no mechanical screen then known to Civilization could block third-level thought. He kicked in full drive toward the one small area in which he and his speedster would not encounter either beams or bombs--the fortress whose observers would not perceive that anything was amiss. He did not fear physical pursuit, since his speedster was the fastest thing in space.

For a second or so it was not so bad. Another Eddorian came in, suspicious and on guard. Kit blasted him down--learning still more in the process--but he could not prevent him from radiating a frantic and highly revealing call for help. And although the other Eddorians could scarcely realize that such an astonishing thing as a physical invasion had actually happened, that fact neither slowed them down nor made their anger less violent.

When Kit flashed past his friendly fortress he was taking about all that he could handle, and more and more Eddorians were piling on. At the fourth screen it was worse; at the third he reached what he was sure was his absolute ceiling. Nevertheless, from some hitherto unsuspected profundity of his being, he managed to draw enough reserve force to endure that hellish punishment for a little while longer.

Hang on, Kit, hang on! Only two more screens to go. Maybe only one. Maybe less. Living Eddorian brains, and not mechanical generators, are now handling all the screens, of course; but if Mentor's visualization is worth a tinker's damn, he must have that first screen knocked down by this time and must be working on the second. Hang on, Kit, and keep on slugging!

And grimly--doggedly--toward the end sheerly desperately--Christopher Kinnison, eldest Child of the Lens, hung on and slugged.

XXIII.

If the historian has succeeded in his attempt to describe the characters and abilities concerned, it is not necessary to enlarge upon what Kit went through in escaping Eddore. If he has not succeeded, enlargement would be useless. Therefore, it is enough to say that the young Lensman, by dint of calling up and putting out everything he had, hung on long enough and slugged his way through.

Mentor's visualization had been sound. The Eddorian guardians had scarcely taken over the first screen when it was overwhelmed by a tremendous wave of Arisian thought. It is to be remembered, however, that this was the second time that the massed might of Arisia had been thrown against Eddore's defenses, and the Boskonians had learned much, during the intervening years, from their exhaustive analyses of the offensive and defensive techniques of that earlier conflict. Thus the Arisian drive was practically stopped at the second zone of defense as Kit approached it. The screen was wavering, shifting; yielding stubbornly wherever it must and springing back into place whenever it could.

Under a tremendous concentration of Arisian force the screen weakened in a limited area directly ahead of the hurtling speedster. A few beams lashed out aimlessly, uselessly--if the Eddorians could not hold their main screens proof against the power of the Arisian attack, how could they protect such minor things as gunners' minds? The little ship flashed through the weakened barrier and into the center of a sphere of impenetrable, impermeable Arisian thought.

At the shock of the sudden ending of his terrific battle--the instantaneous transition from supreme to zero effort--Kit fainted in his control chair. He lay slumped, inert, in a stupor which changed gradually into a deep and natural sleep. And as the sleeping man in his inertialess speedster traversed space at full touring blast, that peculiar sphere of force still enveloped and still protected him.

Kit finally began to come to. His first foggy thought was that he was hungry--then, wide awake and remembering, he grabbed his levers.

"Rest quietly and eat your fill," a grave resonant pseudovoice assured him. "Everything is exactly as it should be."

"Hi, Ment ... well, well, if it isn't my old chum Eukonidor! Hi, young fellow! What's the good word? And what's the big idea of letting--or making--me sleep for a week when there's work to do?"

"Your part of the work, at least for the immediate present, is done; and, let me say, very well done."

"Thanks ... but--" Kit broke off, flushing darkly.

"Do not reproach yourself, nor us. Consider, please, and recite, the manufacture of a fine tool of ultimate quality."

"The correct alloy. Hot working--perhaps cold, too. Forging--heating--quenching--drawing--"

"Enough. Think you that the steel, if sentient, would enjoy those treatments? While you did not enjoy them, you are able to appreciate their necessity. You are now a finished tool, forged and tempered."

"Oh, you may have something there, at that. But as to ultimate quality, don't make me laugh." There was no nuance of merriment in Kit's thought. "You can't square that with cowardice."

"Nor is there need. The term ultimate was used advisedly, and still stands. It does not mean or imply, however, a state of perfection, since that condition is unattainable. I am not advising you to try to forget; nor am I attempting to force forgetfulness upon you, since your mind cannot now be coerced by any force presently existing. Be assured that nothing that occurred should irk you; for the simple truth is, that although stressed as no other mind has ever before been stressed, you did not yield. Instead, you secured and retained information which we of Arisia have never been able to obtain; information which will in fact be the means of preserving your Civilization."

"I can't believe ... that is, it doesn't seem--" Kit, knowing that he was thinking muddily and foolishly, paused and pulled himself together. Overwhelming, almost paralyzing as that information was, it must be true. It _was_ true!

"Yes, it is the truth. While we of Arisia have at various times made ambiguous statements, to lead certain Lensmen and others to arrive at erroneous conclusions, you know that we do not lie."

"Yes, I know that." Kit plumbed the Arisian's mind. "It sort of knocks me out of my orbit--that's an awfully big bite to swallow at one gulp, you know."

"It is. That is one reason I am here, to convince you of the truth, which you would not otherwise believe fully. Also to see to it that your rest, without which you might have been hurt, was not disturbed, as well as to make sure that you were not permanently damaged by the Eddorians."

"I wasn't ... at least, I don't think so ... was I?"

"You were not."

"Good. I was wondering--Mentor will be tied up for quite a while, of course, so I'll ask you--they must have got a sort of pattern of me, in spite of all I could do, and they'll be camping on my trail from now on, so I suppose I'll have to keep a solid block up all the time?"

"They will not, Christopher, and you need not. Guided by those whom you knew as Mentor, I myself, as a Guardian, am to see to that. But time presses--I must rejoin my fellows."

"One more question first. You've been trying to sell me a bill of goods that I would like to buy. But, Eukonidor, the kids will know that I showed a streak of yellow a meter wide. What will _they think_?"

"Is _that_ all?" Eukonidor's thought was almost a laugh. "They will make that eminently plain in a moment."

* * * * *

The Arisian's presence vanished, as did his sphere of force, and four clamoring thoughts came jamming in.

"Oh, Kit, we're _so_ glad!" "We _tried_ to help, but they wouldn't let us!" "They smacked us down!" "_Honestly_, Kit!" "_Oh_, if we had only been in there, too!"

"Hold it, everybody! Jet back!" This was Con, Kit knew, but an entirely new Con. "Scan him, Cam, as you never scanned anything before. If they burned out even one cell of his mind, I'm going over there right now and kick every one of Mentor's teeth out!"

"And listen, Kit!" This was an equally strange Kathryn blazing with fury and yet suffusing his mind with a more than sisterly tenderness, a surpassing richness. "If we had had the faintest idea of what they were doing to you, all the Arisians and all the Eddorians and all the devils in all the hells of the macrocosmic Universe couldn't have kept us away. You must believe that, Kit--or can you, quite?"

"Of course, Sis--you don't have to prove an axiom. Seal it, all of you. You're swell people--absolute tops. But I ... you ... that is--" He broke off and marshaled his thoughts.

He knew that they knew, in every minute particular, everything that had occurred. Yet to a girl they thought that he was wonderful. Their common thought was that they should have been in there, too--taking what he took--giving what he gave!

"What I don't get is that you are trying to blame yourselves for what happened to me, when you were on the dead center of the beam all the time. You _couldn't_ have been in there, kids; it would have blown the whole works higher than up. You knew that then, and you know it even better now. You also know that I flew the yellow flag. Didn't that even _register_?"

"Oh, _that_!" Practically identical thoughts of complete dismissal came in unison, and Karen followed through:

"The only thing about that is that, since you knew what to expect, we marvel that you ever managed to go in at all--no one else could have, possibly. Or, once in, and seeing what was really there, that you didn't flit right out again. Believe me, brother of mine, you qualify!"

Kit choked. This was too much: but it made him feel good all over. These kids ... the Universe's best--

As he thought, a partial block came unconsciously into being. For not one of those gorgeous, those utterly splendid creatures suspected, even now, that which he so surely knew--that each one of them was very shortly to be wrought and tempered as he himself had been. And, worse, he would have to stand aside and watch them, one by one, walk into it. Was there anything he could do to ward off, or even to soften, what was coming to them? There was not. With his present power, he could step in, of course--at what awful cost to Civilization only he, Christopher Kinnison, of all Civilization, really knew. No. That was out. Definitely. He could come in afterwards to ease their hurts, as each had come to him, but that was all--and there was a difference. They hadn't known about it in advance. It was tough.

Could he do _anything_?

He could not.

* * * * *

And on clammy, noisome Eddore, the Arisian attackers having been beaten off and normality restored, a meeting of the Highest Command was held. No two of those entities were alike in form; some were changing from one horrible shape into another; all were starkly, indescribably monstrous. All were concentrating upon the problem which had been so suddenly thrust upon them; each of them thought at and with each of the others. To do justice to the complexity or the cogency of that maze of intertwined thoughts is impossible; the best that can be done is to pick out a high point here and there.

"This explains the Star A Star whom the Ploorans and the Kalonians so fear."

"And the failure of our operator on Thrale, and its fall."

"Also our recent quite serious reverses."

"Those stupid--those utterly brainless underlings!"

"We should have been called in at the start!"

"Could you analyze, or even perceive, its pattern save in small part?"

"No."

"Nor could I--an astounding and highly revealing circumstance."

"An Arisian; or, rather, an Arisian development, certainly. No other entity of Civilization could possibly do what was done here. Nor could any Arisian as we know or deduce them."

"They have developed something very recently which we had not visualized."

"Kinnison's son? Bah! Think they to deceive us by the old device of energizing a form of ordinary flesh?"

"Kinnison--his son--Nadreck--Worsel--Tregonsee--what matters it?"

"Or, as we now know, the completely imaginary Star A Star."

"We must revise our thinking," an authoritatively composite mind decided. "We must revise our theory and our plan. It may be possible that this new development will necessitate immediate, instead of later, action. If we had had a competent race of proxies, none of this would have happened, as we would have been kept informed. To correct a situation which may become grave, as well as to acquire fullest and latest information, we must attend the conference which is now being held on Ploor."

* * * * *

They did so. With no perceptible lapse of time or mode of transit, the Eddorian mind was in an assembly room upon that now flooded world. Resembling Nevians as much as any other race with which man is familiar, the now amphibious Ploorans lolled upon padded benches and argued heatedly. They were discussing, upon a lower level, much of the same material which the Eddorians had been considering so shortly before.

Star A Star. Kinnison had been captured easily enough, but had, almost immediately, escaped from an escape-proof trap. Another trap was set, but would it take him? Would it hold him if it did? Kinnison was--_must_ be--Star A Star. No, he could not be, there had been too many unrelated and simultaneous occurrences. Kinnison, Nadreck, Clarrissa, Worsel, Tregonsee, even Kinnison's young son, had all shown intermittent flashes of inexplicable power. Kinnison most of all. It was a fact worthy of note that the beginning of the long series of Boskonian setbacks coincided with Kinnison's appearance among the Lensmen.

The situation was bad. Not irreparable, by any means, but grave. The fault lay with the Eich, and perhaps with Kandron of Onlo. Such stupidity! Such incompetence! Those lower-echelon operators should have had brains enough to have reported the matter to Ploor before the situation got completely out of hand. But they didn't; hence this mess. None of them, however, expressed a thought that the present situation was already one with which they themselves could not cope; nor suggested that it be referred to Eddore before it should become too hot for even the Masters to handle.

"Fools! Imbeciles! We, the Masters, although through no foresight or design of yours, are already here. Know now that you have been and still are yourselves guilty of the same conduct which you are so violently condemning in others." Neither Eddorians nor Ploorans realized that that deficiency was inherent in the Boskonian scheme of things, or that it stemmed from the organization's very top. "Sheer stupidity! Gross overconfidence! Those are the reasons for our recent reverses!"

"But, Masters," a Plooran argued, "now that we have taken over, we are winning steadily. Civilization is rapidly going to pieces. In a few more years we will have smashed it flat."

"That is precisely what they wish you to think. They have been and are playing for time. Your bungling and mismanagement have already given them sufficient time to develop an object or an entity able to penetrate our screens, so that Eddore suffered the disgrace of an actual physical invasion. It was brief, to be sure, and unsuccessful, but it was an invasion, none the less--the first in our long history."

"But, Masters--"

"Silence! We are not here to indulge in recriminations, but to determine facts. Since you do not know Eddore's location in space, it is a certainty that you did not, either wittingly or otherwise, furnish that information. That in turn makes it clear who, basically, the invader was."

"Star A Star?" A wave of questions swept the group.

"One name serves as well as another for what is almost certainly an Arisian entity or device. It is enough for you to know that it is something with which your massed minds would be completely unable to deal. To the best of your knowledge, have you been invaded, either physically or mentally?"

"We have not, Masters; and it is unbelievable that--"

"Is it so?" The Masters sneered. "Neither our screens nor our Eddorian guardsmen gave any alarm. We learned of the Arisian's presence only when he attempted to probe our very minds, at Eddore's very surface. Are your screens and minds, then, so much better than ours?"

"We erred, Masters. We abase ourselves. What do you wish us to do?"

* * * * *