Part 10
"That is well; you have ample time. Place your ship between Trenco and the sun. Enter the atmosphere exactly fifteen G-P minutes from ... check ... at twenty degrees after meridian, as nearly as possible on the ecliptic, which is also our equator. Go inert as you enter atmosphere; for a free landing upon this planet is impossible. Synchronize with our rotation, which is twenty-six point two G-P hours. Descend vertically until the atmospheric pressure is seven hundred millimeters of mercury, which will be at an altitude of approximately one thousand meters. Since you rely largely upon that sense called sight, allow me to caution you now not to trust it. When your external pressure is seven hundred millimeters of mercury your altitude will be one thousand meters, whether you believe it or not. Stop at that pressure and inform me of the fact, meanwhile holding yourself as nearly stationary as you can. Check so far?"
"QX. But do you mean to tell me that we can't locate each other at a _thousand meters_?" Kinnison's amazed thought escaped him. "What kind of----"
"I can locate you, but you cannot locate me," came the dry reply. "Every one knows that Trenco is peculiar, but no one who has never been here can realize even dimly how peculiar it really is. Detectors and spy rays are useless, electromagnetics are practically paralyzed, and optical apparatus is distinctly unreliable. You cannot trust your vision here. Do not believe all that you see. It used to require days to land a ship at this port. But with our Lenses and my "sense of perception," as you call it, it will be a matter of minutes."
Kinnison had flashed his ship to the designated position.
"Cut the Berg, Thorndyke, we're all done with it. I've got to build up an inert velocity to match the rotation, and land inert."
"Thanks be to all the gods of space for that." The engineer heaved a sigh of relief. "I've been expecting it to blow its top for the last hour, and I don't know whether we'd ever have got it meshed in again or not."
"QX on location and orbit," Kinnison reported to the as yet invisible space port a few minutes later. "Now, what about that Lensman? What happened?"
"The usual thing," came the emotionless response. "It happens to altogether too many Lensmen who can see, in spite of everything we can tell them. He insisted upon going out after his zwilniks in a ground car, and, of course, we had to let him go. He became confused, lost control, let something--possibly a zwilnik's bomb--get under his leading edge, and the wind and the Trencos did the rest. He was Lageston of Mercator V--a good man, too. What is the pressure now?"
"Five hundred millimeters."
"Slow down. Now, if you cannot conquer the tendency to believe your eyes, you had better shut off your visiplates and watch only the pressure gauge."
"Being warned, I can disbelieve my eyes, I think." For a minute or so communication ceased.
* * * * *
At a startled oath from VanBuskirk, Kinnison glanced into the plate. It needed all his self-control to keep from wrenching savagely at the controls. For the whole planet was tipping, lurching, spinning, gyrating madly in a frenzy of impossible motions.
"Sheer off, Kim!" yelled the Valerian.
"Hold it, Bus," cautioned the Lensman, "That's what we've got to expect, you know. I passed all the stuff along as I got it. Everything, that is, except that a zwilnik is anything or anybody that comes after thionite, and that a Trenco is anything, animal or vegetable, that lives on the planet. QX, Tregonsee--seven hundred, and I'm holding steady--I hope!"
"Steady enough, but you are too far away for our landing bars. Direct a thought, rotating the prime axis of your Lens while inclining it somewhat downward.... Stop! Mark that line on your circles. Now think of the alignment of your ship in relation to that line. Swing your prow away from that line, clear around, to approach it from the other side ... slow ... hold it! Apply normal acceleration...."
In a few minutes the crew felt a gentle, snubbing shock, and Kinnison again translated to his companions the stranger's thoughts: "We have grasped you with our landing bars. Cut off all your power and set all controls in neutral. Do nothing more until I instruct you to come out."
Kinnison obeyed; and, released from all duty, the three visitors stared in fascinated incredulity into the visiplate. For that at which they stared was and must forever remain impossible of duplication upon Earth, and only in imagination can it be even faintly pictured. Imagine all the fantastic and monstrous creatures of a delirium-tremens vision incarnate and actual. Imagine them being hurled through the air, borne by a dust-laden gale more severe than any the great American "dust bowl" or Africa's Sahara Desert ever endured. Imagine this scene as being viewed, not in an ordinary, solid, distorting mirror, but in one whose falsely reflecting contours were changing constantly, with no logical or intelligible rhythm, into new and ever more grotesque warps. If imagination has been equal to the task, the resultant is what the three patrolmen tried to see.
At first they could make nothing whatever of it. Upon nearer approach, however, the ghastly distortion grew less and the flatly level expanse of sun-baked mud took on a semblance of rigidity. Directly beneath them they made out something that looked like an immense, flat blister upon the otherwise featureless terrain. Their ship was drawn toward this blister.
* * * * *
A port opened, dwarfed in apparent size to a mere window by the immensity of the structure. Through this port the vast bulk of the space ship was wafted upon the landing bars, and behind it the mighty bronze-and-steel gates clanged shut. The lock was pumped to a vacuum; there was a hiss of entering air; a spray of vaporous liquid bathed every inch of the vessel's surface, and Kinnison felt again the calm voice of Tregonsee, the Rigellian Lensman.
"You may now open your air lock and emerge. If I have read aright, our atmosphere is sufficiently like your own in oxygen content so that you will suffer no ill effects from it. It may be well, however, to wear your armor until you have become accustomed to its considerably greater density."
"That'll be a relief!" growled VanBuskirk's deep base, when his chief had transmitted the thought. "I've been breathing this thin stuff so long I'm getting light-headed."
"That's gratitude!" Thorndyke retorted. "We've been running our air so heavy that all the rest of us are thick-headed now. If the air in this space port is any heavier than what we've been having, I'm going to wear armor as long as we stay here!"
Kinnison had opened the air lock, found the atmosphere of the space port satisfactory, and now stepped out, to be greeted cordially by Tregonsee, the Lensman.
This--this apparition was at least erect, which was something. His body was the size and shape of an oil drum. Beneath this massive cylinder of a body were four short, blocky legs upon which he waddled about with surprising speed. Midway up the body, above each leg, there sprouted out a ten-foot-long, writhing, boneless, tentacular arm, which toward the extremity branched out into dozens of lesser tentacles, ranging in size from hairlike tendrils up to mighty fingers two inches or more in diameter. Tregonsee's head was merely a neckless, immobile, bulging dome in the center of the flat, upper surface of his body--a dome bearing neither eyes nor ears, but only four equally spaced toothless mouths and four single, flaring nostrils.
But Kinnison felt no qualm of repugnance at Tregonsee's monstrous appearance, for embedded in the leathery flesh of one arm was the Lens. Here, the Lensman knew, was in every essential a _man_--and probably a superman.
"Welcome to Trenco, Kinnison of Tellus," Tregonsee was saying. "While we are near neighbors in space, I have never happened to visit your planet. I have encountered Tellurians here, of course, but they were not of a type to be received as guests."
"No, a zwilnik is not a high type of Tellurian," Kinnison agreed. "I have often wished that I could have your sense of perception, if only for a day. It must be wonderful indeed to be able to perceive a thing as a whole, inside and out, instead of having vision stopped at its surface, as is ours. And to be independent of light or darkness, never to be lost or in need of instruments, to know definitely where you are in relation to every other object or thing around you--that, I think, is the most marvelous sense in the universe."
"Just as I have wished for sight and hearing, those two remarkable and to us entirely unexplainable senses. I have dreamed; I have studied volumes, on color and sound: color in art and in nature; sound in music and in the voices of loved ones. But they remain meaningless symbols upon a printed page. However, such thoughts are vain. In all probability neither of us would enjoy the other's equipment if he had it, and this interchange is of no material assistance to you."
* * * * *
In flashing thoughts Kinnison then communicated to the other Lensman everything that had transpired since he left Prime Base.
"I perceive that your Bergenholm is of Standard 14 Rating," Tregonsee said, as the Tellurian finished his story. "We have several spares here; and, while they all have regulation patrol mountings, it would take much less time to change mounts than to overhaul your machine."
"That's so, too. I never thought of the possibility of your having spare machines--and we've lost a lot of time already. How long will it take?"
"One night of labor to change mounts--at least eight to rebuild yours enough to be sure that it will get you home."
"We'll change mounts, then, by all means. I'll call the boys----"
"There is no need of that. We are amply equipped, and neither of you humans nor the Velantians could handle our tools." Tregonsee made no visible motion nor could Kinnison perceive a break in his thought, but while he was conversing with the Tellurian half a dozen of his blocky Rigellians had dropped whatever they had been doing and were scuttling toward the visiting ship. "Now I must leave you for a time, as I have one more trip to make this afternoon."
"Is there anything I can do to help you?" asked Kinnison.
"No," came the definite negative. "I will return in three hours, as well before sunset the wind makes it impossible to get even a ground car into the port. I will then show you why you can be of little assistance to us."
Kinnison spent those three hours watching the Rigellians work upon the Bergenholm; there was no need for direction or advice. They knew what to do and they did it. Those tiny, hairlike fingers, literally hundreds of them at once, performed delicate tasks with surpassing nicety and dispatch; when it came to heavy tasks the larger digits or even whole arms wrapped themselves around the work and, with the solid bracing of the four blocklike legs, exerted forces that even VanBuskirk's giant frame could not have approached.
As the end of the third hour neared, Kinnison watched with a spy ray--there were no windows in the Trenco space port--the leeward groundway of the structure. In spite of the weird antics of Trenco's sun--gyrating, jumping, appearing and disappearing--he knew that it was going down. Soon he saw the ground car coming in, scuttling crab-wise, nose into the wind but actually moving backward and sidewise. Although the "seeing" was very poor, at this close range the distortion was minimized and he could see that, like its parent craft, the ground car was in the shape of a blister. Its edges actually touched the ground all around, sloping upward and over the top in such a smooth reverse curve that the harder the wind blew the more firmly was the vehicle pressed downward.
The ground flap came up just enough to clear the car's top and the tiny craft crept up. But before the landing bars could seize her the ground car struck an eddy from the flap--an eddy in a medium which, although gaseous, was at that velocity practically solid. Earth blasted away in torrents from the leading edge; the car leaped bodily into the air and was flung away, end over end. But Tregonsee, with consummate craftsmanship, forced her flat again, and again she crawled up toward the flap. This time the landing bars took hold and, although the little vessel fluttered like a leaf in a gale, she was drawn inside the port and the flap went down behind her. She was then sprayed, and Tregonsee came out.
"Why the spray?" thought Kinnison, as the Rigellian entered his control room.
"Trencos. Much of the life of this planet starts from almost imperceptible spores. It develops rapidly, attains considerable size, and consumes anything organic it touches. This port was depopulated time after time before the lethal spray was developed. Now turn your spy ray again to the lee of the port."
* * * * *
During the few minutes that had elapsed the wind had increased in fury to such an extent that the very ground was boiling away from the trailing edge in the tumultuous eddy formed there, ultra-streamlined though the space port was. And that eddy, far surpassing in violence any storm known to Earth, was to the denizens of Trenco a miraculously appearing quiet spot in which they could stop and rest, eat and be eaten.
A globular monstrosity had thrust pseudopodia deep into the boiling dirt. Other limbs now shot out, grasping a tumbleweedlike growth. The latter fought back viciously, but could make no impression upon the rubbery integument of the former. Then a smaller creature, slipping down the polished curve of the shield, was enmeshed by the tumbleweed. There ensued the amazing spectacle of one half of the tumbleweed devouring the newcomer, even while its other half was being devoured by the globe!
"Now look out farther--still farther," directed Tregonsee.
"I can't. Things take on impossible motions and become so distorted as to be unrecognizable."
"Exactly. If you saw a zwilnik out there, where would you shoot?"
"At him, I suppose. Why?"
"Because if you shot at where you think you see him, not only would you miss him, but the ray might very well swing around and enter your own back. Many men have been killed by their own weapons in precisely that fashion. Since we know, not only what the object is, but exactly where it is, we can correct our beams for the then existing values of distortion. This is, of course, the reason why we Rigellians and other races possessing the sense of perception are the only ones who can efficiently police this planet."
"Reason enough, I'd say, from what I've seen."
Silence fell. For minutes the two Lensmen watched, while creatures of a hundred kinds streamed into the lee of the space port and killed and ate each other. Finally, something came crawling upwind, against that unimaginable gale--a flatly streamlined creature somewhat resembling a turtle, but shaped as was the ground car.
Thrusting down long, hooked flippers into the dirt it inched along, paying no attention to the scores of lesser creatures who hurled themselves upon its armored back, until it was close beside the largest football-shaped creature in the eddy. Then, lightninglike, it drove a needle-sharp organ at least eight inches into the leathery mass of its victim. Struggling convulsively, the stricken thing lifted the turtle a fraction of an inch--and both were hurled instantly out of sight; the living ball still eating a luscious bit of soil.
"Good Lord, what was that?" exclaimed Kinnison.
"The flat? That was a representative of Trenco's highest life form. It may develop a civilization in time. It is quite intelligent now."
"But the difficulties!" protested the Tellurian. "Building cities, even homes and----"
"Neither cities nor homes are necessary, nor even desirable, here. Why build? Nothing is or can be fixed on this planet, and since one place is exactly like every other place, why wish to remain in any one particular spot? They do very well, in their own mobile way. Here, you will notice, comes the rain."
The rain came--forty-four inches per hour of rain--and the lightning. Such rain and such lightning must be seen to be even dimly appreciated; there is no use in attempting to describe the indescribable. The dirt first became mud, then muddy water being driven in fiercely flying gouts and masses.
The water grew deeper and deeper, its upper surface now whipped into frantic sheets of spray. The structure was now afloat, and Kinnison saw with astonishment that, small as was the exposed surface and flatly curved, yet it was pulling through the water at frightful speed the wide-spreading steel sea anchors which were holding its head to the gale.
"With no reference points how do you know where you're going?" he demanded.
"We know not, nor care," responded Tregonsee, with a mental shrug. "We are like the natives in that. Since one spot is like every other spot, why choose between them?"
"What a world--_what_ a world! However, I am beginning to understand why thionite is so expensive." And, overwhelmed by the ever-increasing fury raging outside, Kinnison sought his bunk.
* * * * *
Morning came, a reversal of the previous evening. The liquid evaporated; the mud dried; the flat-growing vegetation sprang up with shocking speed; the animals emerged and again ate and were eaten.
And eventually came Tregonsee's announcement that it was noon; and that now, for an hour or so, it would be calm enough for the space ship to leave the port.
"You are sure that I would be of no help to you?" asked the Rigellian, half pleadingly.
"Sorry, Tregonsee, but you would fit into my matrix just as I would into yours here. But here's the spool I told you about. If you will take it to your base on your next relief you will do civilization and the patrol more good than you could by coming with us. Thanks for the Bergenholm, which is covered by credits, and thanks a lot for your help and courtesy, which can't be covered. Good-by." The now entirely spaceworthy craft shot out through the port, through Trenco's noxiously peculiar atmosphere, into the vacuum of space.
XI.
_"Shapley holds that these (star) clusters, under the gravitative control of the larger system, vibrate back and forth through the galaxy." Fath, "Elements of Astronomy," p. 297._
At some distance from the galaxy, yet shackled to it by the flexible yet powerful bonds of gravitation, the small but comfortable planet upon which was Helmuth's base circled about its parent sun. This planet had been chosen with the utmost care, and its location was a secret guarded jealously indeed. Scarcely one in a million of Boskone's teeming millions knew even that such a planet existed; and of the chosen few who had ever been asked to visit it, fewer still by far had been allowed to leave it.
Grand Base covered hundreds of square miles of that planet's surface. It was equipped with all the arms and armament known to the military genius of the age; and in the exact center of that immense citadel there arose a glittering metallic dome.
The inside surface of that dome was lined with visiplates and communicators, hundreds of thousands of them. Miles of catwalks clung precariously to the inward-curving wall. Control panels and instrument boards covered the floor in banks and tiers, with only narrow runways between them. And what a personnel! There were Solarians, Crevenians, Sirians. There were Antareans, Vandemarians, Arcturians. There were representatives of scores, yes, hundreds of other solar systems of the galaxy.
But whatever their external form they were all breathers of oxygen and they were all nourished by warm, red blood. Also, they were all alike mentally. Each had won his present high place by trampling down those beneath him and by pulling down those above him in the branch to which he had first belonged of the "pirate" organization.
Kinnison had been eminently correct in his belief that Boskone's was not a "pirate outfit" in any ordinary sense of the word, but even his ideas of its true nature fell far short indeed of the truth.
It was a tyranny, an absolute monarchy, a despotism not even remotely approximated by the dictatorships of earlier ages. It had only one creed: "The end justifies the means." Anything--literally _anything at all_--that produced the desired result was commendable; to fail was the only crime.
Therefore, no weaklings dwelt within that fortress; and of all its cold, hard, ruthless crew far and away the coldest, hardest, and most ruthless was Helmuth, the "speaker for Boskone," who sat at the great desk in the dome's geometrical center. This individual was almost human in form and build, springing as he did from a planet closely approximating Earth in mass, atmosphere, and climate. Indeed, only his general, all-pervasive aura of blueness bore witness to the fact that he was not a native of Tellus.
His eyes were blue; his hair was blue; and even his skin was faintly blue beneath its coat of ultra-violet tan. His intensely dynamic personality fairly radiated blueness--not the gentle blue of an Earthly sky, not the sweetly innocuous blue of an Earthly flower; but the keenly merciless blue of a delta ray, the cold and bitter blue of a Polar iceberg, the unyielding, inflexible blue of chilled and tempered steel.
* * * * *
Now a frown sat heavily upon his arrogantly patrician face, as his eyes bored into the plate before him, from the base of which were issuing the words being spoken by the assistant pictured in its deep surface:
"--the fifth dived into the deepest ocean of Corvina II, in the depths of which all rays are useless. The ships which followed have not as yet reconnected. No trace of the sixth has been found, and it is therefore assumed that she was destroyed upon Velantia----"
"Who assumes so?" demanded Helmuth, coldly. "There is no justification whatever for such an assumption. Go on!"
"The Lensman, if there is one, must therefore be in the fifth ship, since he was not in any of the four which we have retaken."
"Your report is neither complete nor conclusive. I do not at all approve of your intimation that the Lensman is simply a figment of my imagination. That there is a Lensman is the only possible logical conclusion. None other of the patrol forces could have done what has been done. Postulating his reality, it seems to me that instead of being a rare possibility, it is highly probable that he has again escaped us, and again in one of our own vessels--this time in the one you have so conveniently 'assumed' to have been destroyed. Have you searched the line of flight?"
"Yes, sir. Everything in space and every planet within reach of that line has been examined with care; except, of course, Velantia and Trenco."
"Velantia is, for the time being, unimportant. It will be reduced later. Why Trenco?" and Helmuth pressed a series of buttons. "Ah, I see. To recapitulate, one ship, the one which in all probability is now carrying the Lensman, is still unaccounted for. _Where is it?_ We assume that it left Velantia. We know that it has not landed upon or near any solarian planet. Incidentally, we must see to it that it does not so land. Now, I think, it has become necessary to have that planet Trenco combed, inch by inch."
"But sir, how----" began the anxious-eyed underling.