Part 24
"No. He knows that Tellus is very strongly held, and that this is no ordinary fleet. He will have to concentrate everything he has upon either one or the other--it is almost inconceivable that he would divide his forces."
"QX. I said that you're the brains of the outfit, and you are!"
"Thanks, lad. At the first sign of detection, we stop. They may be able to detect us, but I doubt it, since we are looking for them with special instruments. But that's immaterial. What I want to know is, can you and your crew split the fleet, making two big, hollow hemispheres of it? Let this group of ambers represent the enemy. Since they know that we will have to carry the battle to them, they will probably be in fairly close formation. Set your two hemispheres--the reds--there and there. Close in, making a sphere, like this--englobing their whole fleet. Can you do it?"
Kinnison whistled through his teeth; a long, low, unmelodious whistle. "Yes--but Klono's brazen claws, chief, suppose they catch you at it?"
"How can they? If you were using detectors, instead of double-ended, tight-beam binders, how many of our own vessels could you locate?"
"That's right, too--less than one percent of them. They couldn't tell that they were being englobed until long after it was done. They could, however, globe up inside us--"
"Yes--and that would give them the tactical advantage of position," the admiral admitted. "We probably have, however, enough superiority in firing power, if not in actual tonnage, to make up the difference. Also, we have speed enough, I think, so that we could retire in good order. But you are assuming that they can maneuver as rapidly and as surely as we can, a condition which I do not consider at all probable. If, as I believe much more likely, they have no better Grand Fleet Operations than we had in Helmuth's star cluster--if they haven't the equivalent of you and Worsel and this supertank here--then what?"
"In that case it'd be just too bad. Just like pushing baby chicks into a pond." Kinnison saw the possibilities clearly enough after they had been explained to him.
"How long will it take you?"
"With Worsel and both full crews of Rigellians I would guess it at about ten hours--eight to compute and assign positions and two to get there."
"Fast enough--faster than I would have thought possible. Oil up your calculating machines and Simplexes and get ready."
* * * * *
In due time the enemy fleet was detected and detection was confirmed. The "Cease Blasting" signal was sent out. Civilization's prodigious fleet stopped dead, hanging motionless in space with its nearest units at the tantalizing limit of detectability from the warships awaiting them. For eight hours two hundred Rigellians stood at whirring calculators, each solving course-and-distance problems at the rate of ten per minute. Two hours or less of free flight, and Haynes rejoiced audibly in the perfection of the two red hemispheres shown in his reducer. The two immense bowls flashed together, rim to rim. The sphere began inexorably to contract. Each ship put out a red K6T screen as a combined battle flag and identification, and the greatest naval engagement of the age was on.
It soon became evident that the Boskonians could not maneuver their forces efficiently. Their fleet was too huge, too unwieldy for their operations officers to handle. Against an equally uncontrollable mob of battle craft it would have made a showing, but against the carefully planned, chronometer-timed attack of the Patrol individual action, however courageous or however desperate, was useless.
Each red-sheathed destroyer hurtled along a definite course at a definite force of drive for a definite length of time. Orders were strict; no ship was to be lured from course, pace, or time. They could, however, fight en passant with their every weapon if occasion arose; and occasion did arise, some thousands of times. The units of Grand Fleet flashed inward, lashing out with their terrible primaries at everything in space not wearing the crimson robe of civilization. And whatever those beams struck did not need striking again.
The warships of Boskone fought back. Many of the Patrol's defensive screens blazed hot enough almost to mask the scarlet beacons; some of them went down. A few Patrol ships were englobed by the concerted action of two or three subfleet commanders more co-operative or more farsighted than the rest, and were blasted out of existence by an overwhelming concentration of power. But even those vessels took toll with their primaries as they went out; few, indeed, were the Boskonians who escaped through holes thus made.
At a predetermined instant each dreadnought stopped, to find herself one nut of an immense, red-flaming hollow sphere of ships packed almost screen to screen. And upon signal every primary projector that could be brought to bear hurled bolt after bolt, as fast as the burned-out shells could be replaced, into the ragingly incandescent inferno which that sphere's interior instantly became. For two hundred million discharges such as those will convert even a very large volume of space into something utterly impossible to describe.
The raving torrents of energy subsided and keen-eyed observers swept the scene of action. Nothing was there except jumbled and tumbling white-hot wreckage. A few vessels had escaped during the closing in of the sphere, but none inside it had survived this climactic action--not one in five thousand of Boskone's massed fleet made its way back to dark Jarnevon.
"Maneuver fifty-eight--hipe!" and Grand Fleet shot away. There was no waiting, no hesitation. Every course and time had been calculated and assigned.
Into the Second Galaxy the scarcely diminished armada of the Patrol hurtled--to Jarnevon's solar system--around it. Once again the crimson sheathing of civilization's messengers almost disappeared in blinding coruscance as the outlying fortresses unleashed their mighty weapons; once again a few ships, subjected to such concentrations of force as to overload their equipment, were lost; but this conflict, although savage in its intensity, was brief. Nothing mobile _could_ endure for long the utterly hellish energies of the primaries, and soon the armored planetoids, too, ceased to be.
"Maneuver fifty-nine--hipe!" and Grand Fleet closed in upon somber Jarnevon itself.
"Sixty!" It rolled in space, forming an immense cylinder; the doomed planet the midpoint of its axis.
"Sixty-one!" Tractors and pressors leaped out, from ship to ship and from ship to shore. The Patrol did not know whether or not the scientists of the Eich could render their planet inertialess, but now it made no difference. Planet and fleet were for the time being one rigid system.
"Sixty-two--blast!" And against the world-girdling battlements of Jarnevon there flamed out in all their appalling might the dreadful beams against which the defensive webs of battleships and of mobile citadels alike had been so pitifully inadequate.
But these which they were attacking now were not the limited installations of a mobile structure. The Eich had at their command all the resources of a galaxy. Their generators and conductors could be of any desired number and size. Hence Eichmil, in view of prior happenings, had strengthened the defenses of his planet to a point which certain of his fellows derided as being beyond the bounds of sanity or reason.
* * * * *
Now those unthinkably powerful screens were being tested to the utmost. Bolt after bolt of quasi-solid lightning struck against them, spitting mile-long sparks in baffled fury as they raged to ground. Plain and incased in Q-type helices they came; biting, tearing, gouging. Often and often, under the thrust of half a dozen at once, local failures appeared; but these were only momentary, and not even the newly devised shells of the projectors could stand the load long enough to penetrate effectively Boskone's indescribably capable defenses. Nor were the enemies' offensive weapons less capable.
Rods, cones, planes, and shears of pure force bored, cut, stabbed, and slashed. Bombs and dirigible torpedoes charged to the skin with duodec sought out the red-cloaked ships. Beams, sheathed against atmosphere in Q-type helices, crashed against and through their armor--beams of an intensity almost to rival that of the Patrol's primary weapons and of a hundred times their effective aperture. And not singly did those beams come. Eight, ten, twelve at once they clung to and demolished dreadnought after dreadnought of the Expeditionary Force.
Eichmil was well content. "We can hold them and we are burning them down!" he gloated. "Let them loose their negative-matter bombs! Get the analysis of those beams--build them! They are burning out projectors, which means that they cannot keep this up indefinitely. They will have to retire, what there are left of them, for more munitions; and when they come back we will blast them out of space!"
He was wrong. Grand Fleet did not stay there long enough so that even the projectors of the Eich could destroy more than a few thousands of ships. For even while the cylinder was forming, Kinnison was in rapid but careful consultation with Thorndyke, checking intrinsic velocities, directions, and speeds.
"QX, Verne--_cut_!" he yelled.
Two planets, one well within each end of the combat cylinder, went inert at the word; resuming instantaneously their diametrically opposed intrinsic velocities, each of some thirty miles per second. And it was these two very ordinary, but utterly irresistible planets, instead of the negative-matter bombs with which the Eich were prepared to cope, which hurtled then along the axis of the immense tube of warships toward Jarnevon. Whether or not the Eich could make their planet inertialess has never been found out. Free or inert, the end would have been the same.
"Every Y14M officer of every ship of the Patrol, attention!" Haynes ordered. "Don't get all tensed up. Take it easy; there's lots of time. Any time within a second after I give the word will be p-l-e-n-t-y o-f t-i-m-e--_cut_!"
The two worlds rushed together, doomed Jarnevon squarely between them. Haynes snapped out his order as the three were within two seconds of contact, and as he spoke all the tractors and all the pressors were released. The ships of the Patrol were already free--none had been inert since leaving Jalte's ex-planet--and thus could not be harmed by flying débris.
The planets touched. They coalesced, squishingly at first, the encircling warships drifting lightly away before a cosmically violent blast of superheated atmosphere; Jarnevon burst open, all the way around, and spattered; billions upon billions of tons of hot core-magma being hurled afar in gouts and streamers. The two planets, crashing through what had been a world, met, crunched, crushed together in all the unimaginable momentum of their masses and velocities. They subsided, crashingly. Not merely mountains, but entire halves of worlds disrupted and fell, in such Gargantuan paroxysms as the eye of man had never elsewhere beheld. And every motion generated heat. The kinetic energy of translation of two worlds became heat. Heat added to heat, piling up ragingly, frantically, unable to escape!
The masses, still falling upon and through and past themselves and each other, melted--boiled--vaporized incandescently. The entire mass, the mass of three fused worlds, began to equilibrate; growing hotter and hotter as more and more of its terrific motion was converted into pure heat. Hotter! _Hotter!_ HOTTER!
And as the Grand Fleet of the Galactic Patrol blasted through intergalactic space toward the First Galaxy and home, there glowed behind it a new, small, comparatively cool, and probably short-lived companion to an old and long-established star.
XXV.
The uproar of the landing of the Tellurian contingent was over; the celebration of victory had not yet begun. Haynes had, peculiarly enough, set a definite time for a conference with Kinnison and the two of them were in the admiral's private office, splitting a bottle of fayalin and discussing--apparently--nothing at all.
"Narcotics has been yelling for you." Haynes finally got around to business. "But they don't need you to help them clean up the zwilnik mess; they just want to have the honor of having you work with them--so I told Ellington, as diplomatically as possible, to take a swan dive off of an asteroid. Hicks wants you, too; and Spencer and Frelinghuysen and thousands of others. See that basketful of stuff? All requests for you, to be submitted to you for your consideration. I submit 'em, thus--into the wastebasket. You see, there's something really important--"
"Nix, chief, nix--jet back a minute, please!" Kinnison implored. "Unless it's something that's got to be done right away, gimme a break, can't you? I've got a couple of things to do first--stuff to attend to. Maybe a little flit somewhere, too, I don't know yet."
"More important than Patrol business?"--dryly.
"Until it's cleaned up, yes." Kinnison's face burned scarlet and his eyes revealed the mental effort necessary for him to make that statement. "The most important thing in the Universe," he finished, quietly but doggedly.
"Well, of course I can't give you orders--" Haynes' frown was distinct with disappointment.
"Don't, chief--that hurts. I'll be back, honest, as soon as I possibly can, and I'll do anything you want me to--"
"That's enough, son." Haynes stood up and grasped Kinnison's hands--hard--in both his own. "I know. Forgive me for taking you for this little ride, but you and Mac suffer so! You're so young, so intense, so insistent upon carrying the entire Cosmos upon your shoulders--I couldn't help it. You won't have to do much of a flit." He glanced at his chronometer. "You'll find all your unfinished business in Room 7295, Base Hospital."
"Huh? You know, then?" shouted the overjoyed young giant.
"Who doesn't?" was the admiral's quizzical rejoinder. "There may be a few members of some backward race somewhere who do not know all about you and your red-headed sector riot, but I don't happen to know--" He was addressing empty air.
Kinnison shot out of the building and, exerting his Gray Lensman's authority, he did a thing which he had always longed boyishly to do but which he had never before really considered doing. He whistled, shrill and piercingly, and waved a Lensed arm, even while he was directing a Lensed thought at the driver of the fast ground car always in readiness in front of GHQ.
"Base Hospital--full emergency blast!" he ordered, and the Jehu obeyed. That chauffeur loved emergency stuff, and the long, low, wide racer took off with a deafening roar of unmuffled exhaust and a scream of tortured, burning rubber.
"Thanks, Jack--you needn't wait." At the hospital's door Kinnison rendered tribute to fast service and strode along a corridor. An express elevator whisked him up to the seventy-second floor, and there his haste departed completely. This was Nurses' Quarters, he realized suddenly. He had no more business there than--yes, he did, too. He found Room 7295 and rapped upon its door. Boldly, he intended, but the resultant sound was surprisingly small.
"Come in!" called a clear contralto. Then, after a moment, "_Come in!_" more sharply; but the Lensman did not, could not obey the summons. She might be--dammitall, he _didn't_ have any business on this floor! Why hadn't he called her up or sent her a thought or something? Why didn't he think at her now?
* * * * *
The door opened, revealing the mildly annoyed sector chief. At what she saw, her hands flew to her throat and her eyes widened in starkly unbelieving rapture.
"_Kim!_" she shrieked in ecstasy.
"Chris--my Chris!" Kinnison whispered unsteadily, and for minutes those two uniformed minions of the Galactic Patrol stood motionless upon the room's threshold, strong young arms straining, nurse's crisp and spotless white crushed unregarded against Lensman's pliant gray.
"Oh ... I've missed you so terribly, my darling!" Clarrissa crooned. Her voice, always sweetly rich, was pure music.
"You don't know the half of it, Chris. This isn't real, I don't think. It can't be--nothing _can_ feel this good!"
"You did come back to me--you really did!" she lilted. "I didn't dare to hope that you could come so soon."
"I had to." Kinnison drew a deep breath. "I simply couldn't stand it any longer. It'll be tough sometimes, but you were right--half a loaf _is_ better than no bread."
"Of course it is!" She released herself--partially--after the first transports of their first embrace and eyed him shrewdly. "Tell me, Kim, did Lacy have a hand in this surprise?"
"Uh-huh," he denied. "I haven't seen him for ages--but jet back! Haynes told me--say, what'll you bet that those two old hardheads haven't been giving us the works?"
"Who are old hardheads?" Haynes--in person--demanded. So deeply immersed had Kinnison been in his rapturous delirium that even his sense of perception was in abeyance; and there, not two yards from the entranced couple, stood the two old Lensmen!
The culprits sprang apart, flushing guiltily, but Haynes went on imperturbably, quite as though nothing out of the ordinary had been either said or done:
"We gave you fifteen minutes, then came up to be sure to catch you before you flited off to the celebration or somewhere. We have matters to discuss--important matters, but pleasant."
"QX. Come in, all of you." As she spoke, the nurse stood aside in invitation. "You know, don't you, that it's exceedingly much contraregs for nurses to entertain visitors of the opposite sex in their rooms? Fifty demerits. Most girls never get a chance at even one Gray Lensmen, and here I've got three!" She giggled infectiously. "Wouldn't it be one for the book for me to get a hundred and fifty black spots for this? And to have Surgeon General Lacy, Port Admiral Haynes, and Unattached Lensman Kimball Kinnison all heaved into the clink to boot? Boy, oh, boy, ain't we got fun?"
"Lacy's too old and I'm too moral to be affected by the wiles even of the likes of you, my dear," Haynes explained equably, as he seated himself upon the davenport--the most comfortable thing in the room.
"Old? Moral? Tommyrot!" Lacy glared an "I'll-see-you-later" look at the admiral, then turned to the nurse. "Don't worry about that, MacDougall. No penalties accrue--regulations apply only to nurses actually in the service--"
"And what--" she started to blaze, but checked herself and her tone changed instantly. "Go on--you interest me strangely, sir. I'm just going to love this!" Her eyes sparkled, her voice was vibrant with unconcealed eagerness.
"Told you she was quick on the uptake!" Lacy gloated. "Didn't fox her for a second!"
"But say--listen--what's this all about, anyway?" Kinnison demanded.
"Never mind; you'll learn soon enough," from Lacy, and:
"Kinnison, you are very urgently invited to attend a meeting of the Galactic Council tomorrow afternoon," from Haynes.
"Huh? What's up now?" Kinnison protested. His arm tightened about the girl's supple waist and she snuggled closer, a trace of foreboding beginning to dim the eagerness in her eyes.
"Promotion. We want to make you something--galactic co-ordinator, director, something like that--the job hasn't been named yet. In plain language, the big shot of the Second Galaxy, formerly known as Lundmark's Nebula."
"But, Klono's brazen claws! Chief, I can't swing it--I haven't got jets enough!"
"You always yelp about a deficiency of jets whenever a new job is mentioned, but we notice that you usually deliver the goods. Think it over for a minute. Who else could we wish such a job as that onto?"
"Worsel," Kinnison declared without hesitation. "He's--"
"Balloon juice!" snorted the older man.
"Well, then ... ah ... er--" He stopped. Clarrissa opened her mouth; then shut it, ridiculously, without having uttered a word.
"Go ahead, MacDougall--you are an interested party, you know."
"No." She shook her spectacular head. "I'm not saying a word or thinking a thought to sway his decision one way or the other. Besides, he'd have to flit around as much then as now."
"Some travel involved, of course," Haynes admitted. "All over that Galaxy, some in this one, and back and forth between the two. However, the _Dauntless_--or something newer, bigger, and faster--will be his private yacht, and I do not see why it is either necessary or desirable that his flits be solo."
"Say, I never thought of that!" Kinnison blurted, and, as thoughts began to race through his mind of what he could do, with Chris beside him all the time, to straighten out the mess in the Second Galaxy:
"Oh, Kim!" Clarrissa squealed in ecstasy, squeezing his arm even tighter against her side.
"Hooked!" the surgeon general chortled in triumph.
"But I'd have to retire!" That thought was the only thorn in Kinnison's whole wreath of roses. "I wouldn't like that."
* * * * *
"Certainly you wouldn't," Haynes agreed. "But remember that all such assignments are conditional, subject to approval, and with a very definite cancellation agreement in case of what the Lensman regards as an emergency. If a Gray Lensman had to give up his right to serve the Patrol in any way he considered himself most able, they'd have to shoot us all before they could make executives out of us. And finally, I don't see how the job we're talking about can be figured as any sort of a retirement. You will be as active as you are now--yes, more so, I think."
"QX. I'll be there--I'll try it," Kinnison promised.
"Now for some more news," Lacy announced. "Haynes didn't tell you, but he has been made president of the Galactic Council. You are his first appointment. I hate to say anything good about the old scoundrel, but he has one outstanding ability. He doesn't know much or do much himself, but he certainly can pick the men who have to do the work for him!"
"There's something vastly more important than that," Haynes steered the acclaim away from himself.
"Just a minute," Kinnison interposed. "I haven't got this all straight yet. What was that crack about active nurses a while ago?"
"Why, Dr. Lacy was just intimating that I had resigned, goose," Clarrissa chuckled. "I didn't know a thing about it myself, but I imagine that it must have been just before this conference started. Am I right, doctor?" she asked innocently.
"Or tomorrow, or even yesterday--any convenient time will do," Lacy blandly assented. "You see, young man, MacDougall has been a mighty busy girl, and wedding preparations take time, too. Therefore, we have very reluctantly accepted her resignation."
"Especially, preparations take time when it's going to be such a wedding as the Patrol is going to stage," Haynes volunteered. "That was what I was starting to talk about when I was so rudely interrupted."
"Nix--not in seven thousand years!" Kinnison exploded. "Cancel that, right now. I won't stand for it. I'll not--"
"Close the pan, young fellow," the admiral advised him, firmly. "Bridegrooms are to be seen--just barely visible--but not heard, ever. A wedding is where the girls really strut their stuff. How about it, you gorgeous young menace to civilization?"
"I'll say so!" she exclaimed in high animation. "I'd just _love_ it, admiral--" She broke off, aghast. Her face fell. "No, I didn't mean that, really. Kim's right. Thanks a million, just the same, but--"