Part 6

Nhal probably had the advantage in numbers and in firepower then upon Lune—Darjeeb would not have made his bid unless he had found a way to violate the treaty of strict equality. Dhil was, however, much the nearer of the two worlds. Hence, if this initial advantage could be overcome, Dhil’s reenforcements could be brought up much sooner than the enemy’s. If, in addition, the vortex could be extinguished before it had done irreparable damage, neither side would have any real advantage and the conflict would subside instead of flaring into another tri-world holocaust.

Cloud pondered. He would have to do something, but what? That vortex had to be snuffed; but, with the whole Nhalian army to cope with, how could he make the approach? His vortex-bombing flitter was screened against radiation, not war-beams. His cruiser was clothed to stop anything short of G-P primaries, but it would take a month at a Patrol base to adapt her for vortex work . . . and he’d have to analyze it, anyway, preferably from the ground. He had no beams, no ordinary bombs, no nega-bombs. How could he use what he had to clear a station?

“Draw me a map, will you, Luda?” he asked.

She did so. The cratered vortex, where an immense building had been. The ring of fortresses: two of which were unusually far apart, separated by a parkway and a shallow lagoon.

“Shallow? How deep?” Cloud interrupted. She indicated a depth of a couple of feet.

“That’s enough map, then. Thanks.” Cloud thought for minutes. “You seem to be quite an engineer. Can you give me exact details on your defensive screen? Power, radius, weave-form, generator type, phasing, interlocking, blow-off, and so on?”

She could. Complex mathematical equations and electrical formulae flashed through his mind, each leaving a residue of fact.

“Maybe we can do something,” the Blaster said finally, turning to the Chickladorian. “Depends pretty much on our friend here. Are you a pilot, or just an emergency assignment?”

“Master pilot, Rating unlimited, tonnage or space.”

“Good! Think you’re in shape to take three thousand centimeters of acceleration?”

“Pretty sure of it. If I was right I could take three thousand standing on my head. I’m feeling better all the time. Let’s hot ’er up and find out.”

“Not until after we’ve unloaded these passengers somewhere,” and Cloud went on to explain what he had in mind.

“Afraid it can’t be done.” The pilot shook his head glumly. “Your timing has got to be too ungodly fine. I can do the piloting, meter the blast, and so on. I can balance her down on her tail, steady to a hair, but piloting’s only half what you got to have. Pilots never land on a constant blast, and your leeway here is damn near zero. To hit it as close as you want, your timing has got to be accurate to a tenth of a second. You don’t know it, mister, but it’d take a master computer half a day to. . . .”

“I know all about that. I’m a master computer and I’ll have everything figured. I’ll give you a zero exact to plus-or-minus a hundredth.”

“QX, then. Let’s dump the non-combatants and flit.”

“Luda, where shall we land them? And maybe you’d better call out your army and navy—we can’t blow out that vortex until we control both air and ground.”

“Land them there.” Luda swung the plate and pointed. “The call was sent long since. They come.”

They landed; but four of the women would not leave the vessel. The Manarkan _had_ to stay aboard, she declared, or be disgraced for life. What would happen if the pilot passed out again, with only laymen around? She was right, Cloud conceded, and she could take it. She was a Manarkan, built of whalebone and rubber. She’d bend under 3 + G’s, but she wouldn’t break.

The squatty insisted upon staying. Since when had a woman of Tominga hidden from danger or run away from a fight? She could hold the pilot’s head up through an acceleration that would put any damn-fragile Tellurian into a pack—or give her that funny axe and she’d show him how it _ought_ to be swung!

The Chickladorian girl, too, stayed on. Her eyes—not pink, but a deep, cool green, brimming with unshed tears—flashed at the idea of leaving her man to die alone. She just knew they were all going to die. Even if she couldn’t be of any use, what of it? If her Thlaskin died she was going to die too, right then, and that was all there was to it. If they made her go ashore she’d cut her own throat that very minute, so there! So that was that.

So did the Vegian. Tail-tip twitching slightly, eyes sparkling, she swore by three deities to claw the eyes out of, and then to strangle with her tail, anyone who tried to put her off ship. She had come on this trip to _see_ things, and did Cloud think she was going to miss seeing _this_? Hardly!

Cloud studied her briefly. The short, thick, incredibly soft fur—like the fur on the upper lip of a week-old kitten, except more so—did not conceal the determined set of her lovely jaw; the tight shorts and the even tighter, purely conventional breastband did not conceal the tigerish strength and agility of her lovely body. It’d be better, the Blaster decided, not to argue the point.

A dozen armed Dhilians came aboard, as pre-arranged, and the cruiser blasted off. Then, while Thlaskin was maneuvering inert, to familiarize himself with the controls and to calibrate the blast, Cloud brought out the four semi-portable projectors. They were frightful weapons, designed for tripod mounting; so heavy that it took a very strong man to lift one on Earth. They carried no batteries or accumulators, but were powered by tight beams from the mother ship.

Luda was right; such weapons were unknown in that solar system. They had no beam transmission of power. The Dhilians radiated glee as they studied the things. They had stronger stuff, but it was fixed-mount and far too heavy to move. This was wonderful—these were magnificent weapons indeed!

High above the stratosphere, inert, the pilot found his spot and flipped the cruiser around, cross-hairs centering the objective. Then, using his forward, braking jets as drivers, he blasted her straight downward.

She struck atmosphere almost with a thud. Only her fiercely-driven meteorite-screens and wall-shields held her together.

“I hope to Klono you know what you’re doing, chum,” the Chickladorian remarked conversationally as the fortress below leaped upward with appalling speed. “I’ve made hot landings before, but I always had a hair or two of leeway. If you don’t hit this to a couple of hundredths we’ll splash when we strike. We won’t bounce, brother.”

“I can compute it to a thousandth and I can set the clicker to within five, but it’s _you_ that’ll have to do the real hitting.” Cloud grinned back at the iron-nerved pilot. “Sure a four-second call is enough to get your rhythm, allow for reaction time and lag, and blast right on the click?”

“Absolutely. If I can’t get it in four I can’t get it at all. Got your stuff ready?”

“Uh-huh.” Cloud, staring into the radarscope, began to sway his shoulders. He knew the exact point in space and the exact instant of time at which the calculated deceleration must begin; by the aid of his millisecond timer—two full revolutions of the dial every second—he was about to set the clicker to announce that instant. His hand swayed back and forth—a finger snapped down—the sharp-toned instrument began to give out its crisp, precisely-spaced clicks.

“Got it!” Cloud snapped. “Right on the middle of the click! Get ready, Thlaskin—seconds! Four! Three! Two! One! Click!”

Exactly with the click the vessel’s brakes cut off and her terrific driving blasts smashed on. There was a cruelly wrenching shock as everything aboard acquired suddenly a more-than-three-times-Earthly weight.

Luda and her fellows merely twitched. The Tomingan, standing behind the pilot, supporting and steadying his wounded head in its rest, settled almost imperceptibly, but her firmly gentle hands did not yield a millimeter. The Manarkan sank deeply into the cushioned bench upon which she was lying; her quick, bright eyes remaining fixed upon her patient.

The Chickladorian girl, in her hammock, fainted quietly.

The Vegian, who had flashed one hand up to an overhead bar at the pilot’s first move, stood up—although she seemed to shorten a good two inches and her tight upper garment parted with a snap as back- and shoulder-muscles swelled to take the strain. _That_ wouldn’t worry her. Cloud knew—what _was_ she stewing about? Oh—her tail! It was too heavy for its own strength, great as it was, to lift! Her left hand came down, around, and back; with its help the tail came up. To the bar above her head, around it, tip pointing stiffly straight upward. Then, smiling gleefully at both Thlaskin and the Blaster, she shouted something that neither could understand, but which was the war-cry of her race:

“Tails high, brothers!”

Downward the big ship hurtled, toward the now glowing screens of the fortress. Driving jets are not orthodox weapons, but properly applied, they can be deadly ones indeed: and these were being applied with micromatric exactitude.

Down! DOWN!! The threatened fortress and its neighbors hurled their every beam; Nhalian ships dived frantically at the invader and did their useless best to blast her down.

Down she drove, the fortress’ screens flaming ever brighter under the terrific blast.

Closer! Hotter! Still closer! Hotter still! Nor did the furious flame waver—the Chickladorian was indeed a master pilot.

“Set up a plus ten, Thlaskin,” Cloud directed. “Air density and temperature are changing. Their beams, too, you know.”

“Check. Plus ten, sir—set up.”

“Give it to her on the fourth click from . . . this.”

“On, sir.” The vessel seemed to pause momentarily, to stumble; but the added weight was almost imperceptible.

A bare hundred yards now, and the ship of space was still plunging downward at terrific speed. The screens were furiously incandescent, but were still holding.

A hundred feet, velocity appallingly high, the enemy’s screens still up. Something _had_ to give now! If that screen stood up the ship would vanish as she struck it, but Thlaskin the Chickladorian made no move and spoke no word. If the skipper was willing to bet his own life on his computations, who was he to squawk? But . . . he must have miscalculated!

No! While the vessel’s driving projectors were still a few yards away the defending screens exploded into blackness; the awful streams of energy raved directly into the structures beneath. Metal and stone glared white, then flowed—sluggishly at first, but ever faster and more mobile—then boiled coruscantly into vapor.

The cruiser slowed—stopped—seemed to hang for an instant poised. Then she darted upward, her dreadful exhausts continuing and completing the utter devastation.

“That’s computin’, mister,” the pilot breathed as he cut the fierce acceleration to a heavenly one thousand. “To figure a dive like that to three decimals and have the guts to hold to it cold—skipper, that’s com-pu-_tation_!”

“All yours, pilot,” Cloud demurred. “All I did was give you the dope. You’re the guy that made it good. Hurt, anybody?”

Nobody was. “QX. We’ll repeat, then, on the other side of the lagoon.”

As the ship began to descend on the new course the vengeful Dhilian fleet arrived. Looping, diving, beaming, oftentimes crashing in suicidal collision, the two factions went maniacally to war. There were no attacks, however, against the plunging Tellurian ship. The Nhalians had learned that they could do nothing about that vessel.

The second fortress fell exactly as the first had fallen. The pilot landed the cruiser in the middle of the shallow lakelet. Cloud saw that the Dhilians, overwhelmingly superior in numbers now, had cleared the air of Nhalian craft.

“Can you fellows and your ships keep them off of my flitter while I take my readings?”

“We can,” the natives radiated happily.

Four of the armored boneheads were _wearing_ the semi-portable. They had them perched lightly atop their feeding heads, held immovably in place by two arms apiece. One hand sufficed to operate the controls, leaving two hands free to do whatever else might prove in order.

“Let us out!”

The lock opened, the Dhilian warriors sprang out and splashed away to meet the enemy, who were already dashing into the lagoon.

Cloud watched pure carnage. He hoped—yes, there they were! The loyalists, seeing that their cause was not lost, after all, had armed themselves and were smashing into the fray.

The Blaster broke out his flitter then, set it down near the vortex, and made his observations. Everything was normal. He selected three bombs from his vast stock, loaded them into the tubes, and lofted. He set his screens, adjusted his goggles, and waited; while far above him and wide around him his guardian Dhilian war-vessels toured watchfully, their drumming blasts a reassuring thunder.

He waited, eyeing the sigma curve as it flowed backward from the recording pen, until he got a ten-second prediction. He shot the flitter forward, solving instantaneously the problems of velocity and trajectory. At exactly the correct instant he released a bomb. He cut his drive and went free.

The bomb sped truly, striking the vortex dead center. It penetrated deeply enough. The carefully-weighed charge of duodec exploded; its energy and that of the vortex combining in a detonation whose like no inhabitant of that solar system had ever even dimly imagined.

The noxious gases and the pall of smoke and pulverized debris blew aside; the frightful waves of lava quieted down. The vortex was out and would remain out. The Blaster drove back to the cruiser and put his flitter away.

“Oh—you did it! Thanks! I didn’t believe that you—that anybody—really could!” Luda was almost hysterical in her joyous relief.

“Nothing to it,” Cloud deprecated. “How are you doing on the mopping up?”

“Practically clean,” Luda answered, grimly. “We now know who is who. Those who fought against us or who did not fight for us are, or very soon will be, dead. But the Nhalian fleet comes. Does yours? Ours takes off in moments.”

“Wait a minute!” Cloud sat down at his plate, made observations and measurements, calculated mentally. He turned on his communicator and conferred briefly.

“The Nhalian fleet will be here in seven hours and eighteen minutes. If your people go out to meet them it will mean a war that not even the Patrol can stop without destroying most of the ships and men both of you have in space. The Patrol task force will arrive in seven hours and thirty one minutes. Therefore, I suggest that you hold your fleet here, in formation but quiescent, under instructions not to move until you order them to, while you and I go out and see if we can’t stop the Nhalians.”

“_Stop_ them!” Luda’s thought was not at all ladylike. “What with, pray?”

“I don’t know,” Cloud confessed, “but it wouldn’t do any harm to try, would it?”

“Probably not. We’ll try.”

All the way out Cloud pondered ways and means. As they neared the onrushing fleet he thought at Luda:

“Darjeeb is undoubtedly with that fleet. He knows that this is the only inertialess ship in this part of space. He wants it more than anything else in the universe. Now if we could only make him listen to reason . . . if we could make him see. . . .”

He broke off. No soap. You couldn’t explain “green” to a man born blind. These folks didn’t know and wouldn’t believe what real firepower was. The weakest vessel in this oncoming task force could blast both of these boneheads’ fleets into a radiant gas in fifteen seconds flat—and the superdreadnoughts’ primaries would be starkly incredible to both Luda and Darjeeb. They simply _had_ to be seen in action to be believed; and then it would be too late.

These people didn’t stand the chance of a bug under a sledgehammer, but they’d have to be killed before they’d believe it. A damned shame, too. The joy, the satisfaction, the real advancement possible only through cooperation with each other and with the millions of races of Galactic Civilization—if there were only some means of _making_ them believe. . . .

“We—and they—_do_ believe.” Luda broke into his somber musings.

“Huh? What? You do? You were listening?”

“Certainly. At your first thought I put myself en rapport with Darjeeb, and he and our peoples listened to your thoughts.”

“But . . . you really believe me?”

“We all believe. Some will cooperate, however, only as far as it will serve their own ends to do so. Your Lensmen will undoubtedly have to kill that insect Darjeeb and others of his kind in the interest of lasting peace.”

The insulted Nhalian drove in a protesting thought, but Luda ignored it and went on:

“You think, then, Tellurian, that your Lensmen can cope with even such as Darjeeb of Nhal?”

“I’ll say they can!”

“It is well, then. Come aboard, Darjeeb—unarmed and unarmored, as I am—and we will together go to confer with these visiting Lensmen of Galactic Civilization. It is understood that there will be no warfare until our return.”

“Holy Klono!” Cloud gasped. “He wouldn’t do _that_, would he?”

“Certainly.” Luda was surprised at the question. “Although he is an insect, and morally and ethically beneath contempt, he is, after all, a reasoning being.”

“QX.” Cloud was dumbfounded, but tried manfully not to show it.

Darjeeb came aboard. He was heavily bandaged and most of his hands were useless, but he seemed to bear no ill-will. Cloud gave orders; the ship flashed away to meet the Patrolmen.

The conference was held. The boneheads, after being taken through a superdreadnought and through a library by Lensmen as telepathic as themselves, capitulated to Civilization immediately and whole-heartedly.

“You won’t need me any more, will you, admiral?” Cloud asked then.

“I don’t think so—no. Nice job, Cloud.”

“Thanks. I’ll be on my way, then; the people I picked up must be off my ship by this time. Clear ether.”

_Chapter 7_ ▂▂▂▂▂▂THE BLASTER ACQUIRES A CREW

CLOUD, RETURNING to his cruiser, found that most of his shipwrecked passengers had departed. Five of them, however—the two Chickladorians, the Manarkan, the squatty, and the Vegian—were still on board. Thlaskin, now back to normal, came to attention and saluted crisply; the women bowed or nodded and looked at him with varying degrees of interrogation.

“How come, Thlaskin? I thought all the passengers were going back with the task force.”

“They are, boss. They’ve gone. We followed your orders, boss—chivied ’em off. I checked with the flagship about more crew besides us, and he says QX. Just tell me how many you want of what, and I’ll get ’em.”

“I don’t want anybody!” Cloud snapped. “Not even you. Not _any_ of you.”

“Jet back, boss!” Spaceal was a simple language, and inherently slangy and profane, but there was no doubt as to the intensity of the pilot’s feelings. “I don’t know why you were running this heap alone, or how long, but I got a couple questions to ask. Do you know just how many million ways these goddam automatics can go haywire in? Do you know what to do about half of ’em when they do? Or are you just simply completely nuts?”

“No. Not too much. I don’t think so.” As he answered the three questions in order Cloud’s mind flashed back to what Phil Strong and several other men had tried so heatedly to impress upon him—the stupidity, the lunacy, the sheer, stark idiocy of a man of _his_ training trying to go it solo in deep space. How did one say “You have a point there, but before I make such a momentous decision we should explore the various possibilities of what is a completely unexpected development” in spaceal? One didn’t! Instead:

“Maybe QX, maybe not. We’ll talk it over. Tell the Manarkan to try to work me direct—maybe I can receive her now, after working the boneheads.”

She could. Communication was not, perhaps, as clear as between two Manarkans or two Lensmen, but it was clear enough.

“You wish to know why I have included myself in your crew,” the white-swathed girl began, as soon as communication was established. “It is the law. This vessel, the _Vortex Blaster I_, of Earth registry, belonging to the Galactic Patrol, is of a tonnage which obligates it to carry a medical doctor; or, in and for the duration of an emergency only, a registered graduate nurse. I am both R.N. and M.D. If you prefer to employ some other nursing doctor or doctor and nurse that is of course your right; but I can not and will not leave this ship until I am replaced by competent personnel. If I did such a thing I would be disgraced for life.”

“But I haven’t got a payroll—I never have had one!” Cloud protested.

“Don’t quibble, please. It is also the law that any master or acting master of any ship of this tonnage is authorized to employ for his owner—in this case the Galactic Patrol—whatever personnel is necessary, whenever necessary, at his discretion. With or without pay, however, I stay on until replaced.”

“But I don’t _need_ a doctor—or a nurse, either!”

“Personally, now, no,” she conceded, equably enough. “I checked into that. As the chief of your great laboratory quoted to you, ‘This too, shall pass.’ It is passing. But you _must_ have a crew; and any member of it, or you yourself, may require medical or surgical attention at any time. The only question, then, is whether or not you wish to replace me. Would you like to examine my credentials?”

“No. Having been en rapport with your mind, it is not necessary. But are you, after your position aboard the ship which was lost, interested in such a small job as this?”

“I would like it very much, I’m sure.”

“Very well. If any of them stay, you can—at the same pay you were getting.”

“Now, Thlaskin, the Vegian. No, hold it! We’ve got to have something better than spaceal, and a lot of Vegians go in for languages in a big way. She may know English or Spanish, since Vegia is one of Tellus’ next-door neighbors. I’ll try her myself.”

Then, to the girl, “Do you speak English, miss?”

“No, eggzept in glimzzez only,” came the startling reply. “Two Galactic Zdandard yearzz be pazz—come? Go?—’ere I mazzter zhe, zo perverze mood and tenze. Zhe izz zo difficult and abzdruze.”

Switching to Galactic Spanish, which language was threatening to become the common tongue of Galactic Civilization, she went on:

“But I heard you say ‘Zbanidge.’ I know Galactic Spanish very well. I speak it well, too, except for the sounds of ‘ezz’ and ‘zeta,’ which all we Vegians must make much too hard—z-z-z-, zo. One hears that nearly all educated Tellurians have the Spanish, and you are educated, of a certainty. You speak it, no?”

“Practically as well as I do English,” Cloud made relieved reply. “You have very little accent, and that little is charming. My name is Neal Cloud. May I ask yours?”

“Neelcloud? I greet you. Mine is Vezzptkn . . . but no, you couldn’t pronounce it. ‘Vezzta,’ it would have to be in your tongue.”

“QX. We have a name very close to that—Vesta.”

“That’s exactly what I said—Vezz-ta.”

“Oh—excuse me, please. You were talking to this lady—Tomingan, she said? What language were you using?”

“Fourth-continent Tomingan, Middle Plateau dialect. Hers. She was an engineer in a big power plant on Manarka, is how she came to learn their sign language. Tomingans don’t go in for linguistics much.”

“And you very evidently do. How many languages do you know, young lady?”

“Only fifty so far—plus their dialects, of course. I’m only half-way to my Master of Languages degree. Fifty more to learn yet, including your cursed _Englidge_. P-f-zt-k!” Vesta wrinkled her nose, bared her teeth, and emitted a noise very similar to that made by an alley cat upon meeting a strange dog. “I don’t know whether spaceal will count for credit or not, but I’m going to learn it anyway.”

“Nice going, Vesta. Now, why did _you_ appoint yourself a member of this party?”

“I wanted to go, and since I can’t pay fare. . . .”