Part 20

"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.

"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.