Part 15

"Thanks. And the same to you, Bus, and many of 'em. Well, if you won't let me stow away, I'll tag along behind, I guess. Clear ether--or rather, I hope it's full of pirates by to-morrow morning. Won't be, though, probably; don't imagine they'll move until we're almost there."

* * * * *

And tag along Kinnison did, through thousands and thousands of parsecs of uneventful voyage.

Part of the time he spent in the speedster, dashing hither and yon. Most of it, however, he spent in the vastly more comfortable mauler; to the armored side of which his tiny vessel clung with its magnetic clamps while he slept and ate, gossiped and read, exercised and played with the mauler's officers and crew, in deep-space comradery. It so happened, however, that when the long-waited attack developed he was out in his speedster, and thus saw and heard everything from the beginning.

Space was filled with the old, familiar interference. The raider flashed up, locked on with magnets, and began to beam. Not heavily--scarcely enough to warm up the defensive screens--and Kinnison probed into the pirate with his spy ray.

"Terrestrials--and Americans!" he exclaimed, half aloud, startled for an instant. "But naturally they would be, since this is a put-up job and over half the crew were New York gangsters."

"The blighter's got his spy-ray screens up," the pilot was grumbling to his captain. The fact that he spoke in English was immaterial to the Lensman; he would have understood equally well any other possible form of communication or of thought exchange. "That wasn't part of the plan, was it?"

If Helmuth, or one of the able minds at his base, had been directing that attack it would have stopped right there. The pilot had shown a flash of feeling that, with a little encouragement, might have grown into a suspicion.

But the captain was not an imaginative man. Therefore: "Nothing was said about it, either way," he replied. "Probably the mate's on duty. He is not one of us, you know. All the better if he is. The captain will open up. If he doesn't do it pretty quick, I'll open her up myself. There, the port's opening. Slide a little forward.... Hold it! Go get 'em, men!"

Then men, hundreds of them, armed and armored, swarmed through the freighter's locks. But as the last man of the boarding party passed the portal something happened that was most decidedly not on the program: the outer port slammed shut and its toggles drove home!

"Blast those screens! Knock them down! Get in there with a spy ray!" barked the pirate captain. He was not one of those hardy and valiant souls who, like Gildersleeve, led, in person, the attacks of his cutthroats. He emulated, instead, the higher Boskonian officials and directed his raids from the safety of his control room; but, as has been intimated, he was unlike those officials in that he lacked directorial ability. Thus it was only after it was too late that he became suspicious. "I wonder if somebody could have double-crossed us? Hi-jackers?"

"We'll soon know," the pilot growled, and even as he spoke the spy ray got through, revealing a very shambles.

For VanBuskirk and his Valerians had not been caught napping, nor were they a crew--unarmored, partially armed, and rendered even more impotent by internal mutiny, strife, and slaughter--such as the pirates had expected to find.

* * * * *

Instead of such a crew the boarders met a force that was overwhelmingly superior to their own--not only in point of numbers, but even more markedly in the strength and agility of its units. Also, the defenders were more capably armed than were the attackers, since, in addition to the efficient armor of the patrol and its ultra-deadly portable weapons, at least one of those terrific semiportable projectors commanded every corridor of the freighter. In the blasts of those projectors most of the pirates died instantly, not knowing what struck them, not even knowing that they died.

They were the fortunate ones. The others knew what was coming and saw it as it came, for the Valerians did not even draw their DeLameters. They knew that the pirates' armor could withstand for many minutes any hand weapon's beams, and they disdained to remount the heavy semiportables. They came in with their space axes, and at the sight the pirates broke and ran screaming in panic fear. But they could not escape. The toggles of the exit port were not only in their sockets, but they were also locked in them.

Therefore, the storming party died to the last man; and, as VanBuskirk had foretold, it was scarcely even a struggle. For any ordinary space armor is just so much tin against a Valerian swinging a space ax.

The spy ray of the pirate captain got through just in time to see the ghastly finale of the massacre, and his face turned first purple, then white.

"The patrol!" he gasped. "Valerians--a whole company of them! I'll say we've been double-crossed!"

"Right-o--we've jolly well been," the pilot agreed. "You don't know the half of it yet, either. Somebody's coming, and it isn't a boy scout. If a mauler should suck us in, we'd be very much a spent force, what?"

"Cut out the conversation!" snapped the captain. "Is it a mauler, or not?"

"A bit too far away yet to say, but it probably is. They wouldn't have sent those jaspers out without cover, old bean. They knew that we can burn that freighter's screens down in an hour. Better cut the beams and get ready to run, what?"

The commander did so, wild thoughts racing through his mind. If a mauler got close enough to him to use magnets, he was done. Cutting arcs would burn through his armor like cheese, and he had no fighting men left. And even if he had--even a full crew of the most savage fighters known would have to be inescapably cornered before they would mix it with what that mauler had aboard. He would have to go back to base, anyway----

"Tally ho, old fruit!" The pilot slammed his levers over to maximum blast. "It's a mauler and we've been bloody well jobbed. Back to base?"

"Yes." And the discomfited captain energized his communicator, to report to his immediate superior the humiliating outcome of the supposedly carefully planned coup.

XVI.

As the pirate fled into space Kinnison followed, matching his quarry in course and speed. He then cut in the automatic controller on his drive, the automatic recorder on his plate, and began to tune in his beam tracer; only to be brought up short by the realization that the spy ray's point would not stay in the pirate's control room without constant attention and manual adjustment. He had known that, too. Even the most precise of automatic controllers, driven by the most carefully stabilized electronic currents, are prone to slip twenty feet or so at even such close range as ten million miles, especially in the bumpy ether near solar systems, and there was nothing to correct the slip. He had not thought of that before; the pilot always made those minor corrections as a matter of course.

But now he was torn between two desires. He wanted to listen to the conversation that would ensue as soon as the pirate captain got into communication with his superior officers; and, especially should Helmuth put in his beam, he very much wanted to trace it and thus secure another line on the headquarters he was so anxious to locate. He now feared that he could not do both--a fear that soon was to prove well-grounded--and wished fervently that for a few minutes he could be two men--or at least a Velantian; they had eyes and hands and separate brain compartments enough so that they could do half a dozen things at once and do each one well. He could not; but he could try. Maybe he should have brought one of the boys along, at that. No, that would wreck everything, later on; he would have to do the best he could.

Communication was established and the pirate captain began to make his report. By using one hand on the ray and the other on the tracer, Kinnison managed to get a partial line and to record scraps of the conversation. He missed, however, the essential part of the entire episode, that part in which the base commander turned the unsuccessful captain over to Helmuth himself. Therefore, Kinnison was surprised indeed at the disappearance of the beam he was so laboriously tracing, and to hear Helmuth conclude his castigation of the unlucky captain with:

"--not entirely your fault. We will not punish you at all severely this time. Report to our base on Aldebaran I. Turn your vessel over to base commander there and do anything he tells you to do for thirty of the days of that planet."

Frantically, Kinnison drew back his tracer and searched for Helmuth's beam; but before he could synchronize with it the message of the pirates' high chief was finished and his beam was gone. The Lensman sat back in thought.

Aldebaran! Practically next door to his own solarian system, from which he had come so far. How had they possibly managed to keep concealed, or to re-establish, a base so close to Sol, through all the intensive searching that had been done? But they _had_. That was the important thing. Anyway, he knew where he was going, and that helped.

One other thing he hadn't thought of--and one that might have spoiled everything--was the fact that he couldn't stay awake indefinitely to follow that ship! He had to sleep sometime, and while he was asleep his quarry was bound to escape. He, of course, had a CRX tracer, which would hold a ship without attention as long as it was anywhere within even extreme range; and it would have been a simple enough matter to have had a photo-cell relay put in between the plate of the CRX and the automatic controls of the spacer and driver--but he had not asked for it. Well, luckily, he now knew where he was going, and the trip to Aldebaran would be long enough for him to build a dozen such controls. He had all the necessary parts and plenty of tools. It would give him something to do to break the monotony of the voyage.

* * * * *

Therefore, following the pirate ship easily as it tore through space, Kinnison built his automatic "chaser," as he called it. During each of the first four or five "nights" he lost the vessel he was pursuing, but found it without any great difficulty upon awakening. Thereafter he held it continuously, improving day by day the performance of his apparatus until it could do almost anything except talk.

After that he devoted his time to an intensive study of the general problem before him. His results were highly unsatisfactory; for in order to solve any problem one must have enough data to set it up, either in actual equations or in logical sequences, and Kinnison found that he did not have enough data. He had altogether too many unknowns and not enough knowns.

The first specific problem was that of getting into the pirate base. Since the searchers of the patrol had not found it, that base must be very well hidden indeed. And hiding anything as large as a base on Aldebaran I, as he remembered it, would be quite a feat in itself. He had been in that system only once, but----

Alone in his ship, and in deep space although he was, he blushed painfully as he remembered what had happened to him during that visit. He had chased a couple of dope runners to Aldebaran II, and there he had encountered the most vividly, the most flawlessly, the most remarkably and intriguingly beautiful girl he had ever seen. He had seen beautiful girls and women, of course, before and in plenty. He had seen beauties amateur and professional--social butterflies, dancers, actresses, models, and posturers, both in the flesh and in Telenews plates--but he had never supposed that such an utterly ravishing creature as she was could exist outside of a thionite dream. As a timidly innocent damsel in distress she had been perfect, and if she had held that pose a little longer Kinnison shuddered to think of what might have happened.

But, having known too many dope runners and too few patrolmen, she misjudged entirely, not only the cadet's sentiments, but also his reactions. For, even as she came amorously into his arms, he had known that there was something screwy. Women like that did not play that kind of game for nothing. She must be mixed up with the two he had been chasing. He got away from her, with only a couple of scratches, just in time to capture her confederates as they were making their escape. He had been afraid of beautiful women ever since. He'd like to see that Aldebaranian hell-cat again--just once. He'd been just a kid then, but now----

* * * * *

But that line of thought was getting him nowhere, fast. It was Aldebaran I that he had better be thinking of: barren, lifeless, desolate, airless, waterless; bare as his hand, covered with extinct volcanoes, cratered, jagged, and torn. To hide a base on that planet would take plenty of doing, and, conversely, it would be correspondingly difficult of approach. If on the surface at all, which he doubted very strongly, it would be covered.

In any event, all its approaches would be thoroughly screened and equipped with lookouts on the ultra-violet and on the infra-red, as well as on the visible. His detector nullifier wouldn't help him much there. Those screens and lookouts were bad--very, very bad. Question: could _anything_ get into that base without setting off an alarm?

His speedster could not even get close; that was certain. Could he, alone? He would have to wear armor, of course, to hold his air, and it would radiate. Not necessarily--he could land out of range and walk, without power; but there were still the screens and the lookouts. If the pirates were on their toes it simply wasn't in the cards; and he had to assume that they would be alert.

What, then, could pass those barriers? Prolonged consideration of every facet of the situation gave definite answer and marked out clearly the course he must take. Something admitted by the pirates themselves was the only thing that could get in. The vessel ahead of his was going in. Therefore, he must and would enter that base within the pirate vessel itself. With that point decided there remained only the working out of a method, which proved to be almost ridiculously simple.

Once inside the base, what should he--or rather, what _could_ he--do? For days he made and discarded plans, but finally he tossed them all out of his mind. So much depended upon the location of the base, its personnel, its arrangement, and its routine, that he could develop not even the rough draft of a working plan. He knew what he wanted to do, but he had not even the remotest idea as to how he could go about doing it. Of the opening that appeared, he would have to choose the most feasible and fit his actions to whatever situation then and there obtained.

So deciding, he shot his spy ray toward the planet and studied it with care. It was, indeed, as he had remembered it--or worse. Bleakly, hotly arid, it had no soil whatever, its entire surface being composed of igneous rock, lava, and pumice. Stupendous ranges of mountains crisscrossed and intersected each other at random, each range a succession of dead volcanic peaks and blown-off craters. Mountainside and rocky plain, crater wall and valley floor, alike and innumerably were pock-marked with subcraters and with immensely yawning shell holes, as though the whole planet had been, throughout geologic ages, the target of an incessant cosmic bombardment.

* * * * *

Over its surface and through and through its volume he drove his spy ray, finding nothing. He bored into its substance with his detectors and his tracers, with results completely negative. Of course, closer up, his electromagnetics would report iron--plenty of it--but that information would also be meaningless. Practically all planets had iron cores.

As far as his instruments could tell--and he had given Aldebaran I a more thorough going over, by far, than any ordinary surveying ship would have given it--there was no base of any kind upon or within the planet. Yet he _knew_ that a base was there. So what? So--maybe--Helmuth's base might be inside the galaxy after all, protected from detection in the same way, probably by solid miles of iron or of iron ore. A second line upon that base had now become imperative. But they were approaching the system fast; he had better get ready.

He belted on his personal equipment, including a nullifier, then inspected his armor, checking its supplies and apparatus carefully before he hooked it ready to his hand. Glancing into the plate, he noted with approval that his chaser was functioning perfectly. Pursued and pursuer were now both well inside the solar system of Aldebaran; and, as slowed the pirate, so slowed the speedster.

Finally, the leader went inert in preparation for his spiral. But Kinnison was no longer following. Before he went inert he flashed down to within fifty thousand miles of the planet's forbidding surface. He then cut his Bergenholm, threw the speedster into an almost circular orbit, well away from the landing orbit selected by the pirate, cut off all his power, and drifted. He stayed in the speedster, observing and computing, until he had so exactly defined its path that he could find it unerringly at any future instant. Then he went into the air lock, stepped out into space, and, waiting only to be sure that the portal had snapped shut behind him, set his course toward the pirate's spiral.

Inert now, his progress was so slow as to seem imperceptible, but he had plenty of time. And it was only relatively that his speed was low. He was actually hurtling through space at the rate of well over two thousand miles an hour, and his powerful little driver was increasing that speed constantly by an acceleration of two Earth gravities.

Soon the vessel crept up, beneath him now, and Kinnison, increasing his drive to five gravities, shot toward it in a long, slanting dive. This was the most ticklish minute of the trip, but the Lensman had assumed correctly that the officers of the badly undermanned ship would be looking ahead of them and down, not backward and up. They were, and he made his approach unseen. The approach itself, the boarding of an inert space ship at its frightful landing-spiral velocity, was elementary to any competent space man--simplicity itself. There was not even a flare to bother him or to reveal him to sight, as the braking jets were now doing all the work. Matching course and velocity ever more closely, he crept up--flung his magnet--pulled up, hand over hand--opened the emergency inlet lock--and there he was.

* * * * *

Unconcernedly, he made his way along the sternway and into the now deserted quarters of the fighters. There he lay down in a hammock, snapped the acceleration straps, and shot his spy ray into the control room. And there, in the pirate captain's own visiplate, he observed the rugged and torn topography of the terrain below, as the pilot fought his ship down, mile by mile.

Tough going, this, Kinnison reflected, and the bird was doing a nice job, even if he was taking it the hard way, bringing her down straight on her nose instead of taking one more spiral around the planet and then sliding in on her under jets, which were designed and placed specifically for such work. But taking it the hard way he was, and his vessel was bucking, kicking, bouncing, and spinning on the terrific blast from her braking jets. Down she came, fast; and it was only after she was actually inside one of those stupendous craters, well below the level of its rim, that the pilot flattened her out and assumed normal landing position.

They were still going too fast, Kinnison thought. But the pirate pilot knew what he was doing. Five miles the vessel dropped, straight down that Titanic shaft, before the bottom was reached. The shaft's wall was studded with windows; in front of the craft loomed the outer gate of a gigantic air lock. It opened; the ship was trundled inside, landing cradle and all, and the massive gate closed behind it. This was the pirates' base, and Kinnison was inside it!

"Men, attention!" The pirate commander snapped then. "This air is deadly poison, so put on your armor and be sure your tanks are full. They have rooms for us, having good air, but don't open your suits a crack until I tell you to. Assemble! All of you that are not here in this control room in five minutes will stay on board and take your own chances!"

Kinnison decided instantly to assemble with the crew. He could do nothing in the ship, and it would be inspected, of course. He had plenty of air, but space armor all looked alike, and his Lens would warn him in time of any unfriendly or suspicious thought. He had better go. If they called a roll----But he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

No roll was called; in fact, the captain paid no attention at all to his men. They could come along or not, just as they pleased. But since to stay in the ship meant death, every man was prompt. At the expiration of the five minutes the captain strode away, followed by the crowd. Through a doorway, left turn, and the captain was met by a creature whose shape Kinnison could not make out. A pause, a straggling forward, then a right turn.

Kinnison decided that he would not take that turn. He would stay here, close to the shaft--where he could blast his way out if necessary--until he had studied the whole base thoroughly enough to map out a plan of campaign. He soon found an empty and apparently unused room, and assured himself that through its heavy, crystal-clear window he could indeed look out into the vastly cylindrical emptiness of the volcanic shaft.

* * * * *

Then, with his spy ray, he watched the pirates as they were escorted to the quarters prepared for them. Those might have been rooms of state, but it looked to Kinnison very much as though his former shipmates were being jailed ignominiously, and he was glad that he had taken leave of them. Shooting his ray here and there throughout the structure, he finally found what he was looking for: the communicator room. That room was fairly well lighted, and at what he saw there his jaw dropped in sheerest amazement.

He had expected to see men, since Aldebaran II, the only inhabited planet in the system, had been colonized from Tellus and its people were as truly human and Caucasian as those of Chicago or of Paris. But these--these _things_----He had been around quite a bit, but he had never seen nor heard of their like. They were wheels, really. When they went anywhere they rolled. Heads where hubs ought to be--eyes--arms, dozens of them, and very capable-looking hands----

"Vogenar!" a crisp thought flashed from one of the peculiar entities to another, impinging also upon Kinnison's Lens. "Some one--some outsider--is looking at me. Relieve me while I abate this intolerable nuisance."

"One of those creatures from Tellus? We will teach them very shortly that such intrusion is not to be borne for an instant."

"No, it is not one of them. The touch is similar, but the tone is entirely different. Nor could it be one of them, for not one of them is equipped with the instrument which is such a clumsy substitute for the sense of perception with which all really intelligent races are endowed in their minds. There, I will now begin to----"

Kinnison snapped on his thought-screen, but the damage had already been done.