Part 14
And Kinnison and Tregonsee, realizing the common sense of the Palainian's statement and very glad indeed to have an excuse for leaving the outrageous scene, left it forthwith.
* * * * *
There is no need to go into detail as to what actually transpired within that cavern's dark and noisome depths. It took a long time, nor was any of it gentle. The battle itself, before the Overlords were downed, was bad enough in any Tellurian's eyes. Clad in armor of proof although they were, more than one of the Valerians died. Worsel's armor was shattered and rent, his almost steel-hard flesh was slashed, burned and mangled before the last of the monstrous forms was pinned down and helpless. Nadreck alone escaped unscathed--he did so, he explained quite truthfully, because he did not go in there to fight, but only to learn.
What followed the battle, however, was infinitely worse. The Delgonians, as has been said, were hard, cold, merciless, even among themselves; they were pitiless and unyielding and refractory in the extreme. It need scarcely be emphasized then, that they did not yield to persuasion either easily or graciously; that their own apparatus and equipment had to be put to its fullest grisly use before those stubborn minds gave up the secrets so grimly and so implacably sought. Worsel, the raging Velantian, used those torture tools with a vengeful savagery and a snarling ferocity which are at least partially understandable; but Nadreck employed them with a calm capability, a coldly, emotionlessly efficient callousness the mere contemplation of which made icy shivers chase each other up and down Kinnison's spine.
At long last the job was done. The battered Patrol forces returned to the _Dauntless_, bringing with them their spoils and their dead. The cavern and its every molecule of contents were bombed out of existence. The two ships took off; Cartiff's heavily armed "merchantman" to do the long flit back to Tellus, the _Dauntless_ to drop Helen and her plane off at her airport and then to join her sister superdreadnoughts which were already beginning to assemble in Rift 94.
"Come down here, will you please, Kim?" came Clarrissa's thought. "I've been keeping her pretty well blocked out, but she wants to talk to you--in fact, she insists upon it--before she leaves the ship."
"Hm-m-m--now that _is_ something!" the Lensman exclaimed, and hurried to the nurse's cabin.
There stood the Lyranian queen; a full five inches taller than Mac's five feet six, a good thirty-five pounds heavier than Mac's not inconsiderable one hundred and forty-five. Hard, fine, supple; erectly poised she stood there, an exquisitely beautiful statue of pale bronze, her flaming hair a gorgeous riot. Head held proudly high, she stared only slightly upward into the Earthman's quiet, understanding eyes.
"Thanks, Kinnison, for everything that you and yours have done for me and mine," she said simply, and held out her right hand in what she knew was the correct Tellurian gesture.
"Uh-uh, Helen," Kinnison denied, gently, making no motion to grasp the proffered hand--which was promptly and enthusiastically withdrawn. "Nice, and it's really big of you, but don't strain yourself." This was neither slang nor sarcasm; he meant precisely and only what he said. "Don't overdrive in trying to force yourself to like us men too much or too soon; you must get used to us gradually. We like you a lot, and we respect you even more, but we have been around and you haven't. You can't be feeling friendly enough yet to enjoy shaking hands with me--you certainly haven't got jets enough to swing _that_ load--so this time we'll take the thought for the deed. Keep trying, though, Toots old girl, and you'll make it yet. In the meantime we're all pulling for you, and if you ever need any help, shoot us a beam on the communicator Chris is giving you. Clear ether, ace!"
"Clear ether, MacDougall and Kinnison!" Helen's eyes were softer than either of the Tellurians had ever seen them before. "There is, I think, something of wisdom, of efficiency, in what you have said. It may be ... that is, there is a possibility ... you of Civilization are, perhaps, persons--of a sort that is--after all. Thanks--_really_ thanks, I mean, this time. Good-by."
Helen's plane had already been unloaded. She disembarked and stood beside it; watching, with a peculiarly untranslatable expression, the huge cruiser until it was out of sight.
"It was just like pulling teeth for her to be civil to me," Kinnison grinned at his fiancée, "but she finally made the lift. She's a grand girl, that Helen, in her peculiar, poisonous way."
"Why, Kim!" Mac protested. "She's nice, really, when you get to know her. And she's so stunningly, so ravishingly beautiful!"
"Uh-huh," Kinnison agreed, without a trace of enthusiasm. "Cast her in chilled stainless steel--she'd just about do as she is, without any casting--and she'd make a mighty fine statue."
"Kim! Shame on you!" the girl exclaimed. "Why, she's the most perfectly _beautiful_ thing I ever saw in my whole life!" Her voice softened. "I wish that I looked like that," she added wistfully.
"She's beautiful enough--in her way--of course," the man admitted, entirely unimpressed. "But, then, so is a Radeligian cateagle, so is a spire of frozen helium, and so is a six-foot-long, armor-piercing punch. As for you wanting to look like her--I'm terrifically glad that you don't. That's sheer tripe, Chris, and you know it. If you want to look at something _really_ beautiful, get a mirror--beside you, all the Helens that ever lived, with Cleopatra, Dessa Desplaines and Illona Potter thrown in, wouldn't make a baffled flare--"
That was, of course, what she wanted him to say; and what followed is of no particular importance here.
* * * * *
Shortly after the _Dauntless_ cleared the stratosphere, Nadreck reported that he had finished assembling and arranging the data, and Kinnison called the Lensmen together in his con room for an ultraprivate conference. Worsel, it appeared, was still in the surgery.
"'Smatter, doc?" Kinnison asked, casually. He knew that there was nothing really serious the matter--Worsel had come out of the cavern under his own power, and a Velantian recovers with startling rapidity from any wound which does not kill him outright. "Having trouble with your stitching?"
"I'll say we are!" the surgeon grunted. "Have to bore holes with an electric drill and use linemen's pliers. Just about done now, though--he'll be with you in a couple of minutes," and in a very little more than the stipulated time the Velantian joined the other Lensmen.
He was bandaged and taped, and did not move at his customary headlong pace, but he fairly radiated self-satisfaction, bliss and contentment. He felt better, he declared, than he had at any time since he cleaned out the last cavern upon Delgon.
Kinnison stopped the interplay of thoughts by starting up his Lensman's projector. This mechanism was something like the ordinary three-dimensional color-and-sound machine, except instead of emitting sounds it radiated thoughts. Sometimes the thoughts of one or more Overlords, at other times the thoughts of the Eich or other beings as registered upon the minds of the Overlords, at still others the thoughts of Nadreck or of Worsel explaining or amplifying a preceding thought passage or some detail which was being shown at the moment. The spool of tape now being run, with others, formed the Lensmen's record of what they had done. This record would go to Prime Base under Lensman's Seal; that is, only a Lensman could handle it or see it. Later, after the emergency had passed, copies of it would go to various Central Libraries and thus become available to properly accredited students. Indeed, it is only from such records, made upon the scene and at the time by keen-thinking, logical, truth-seeking Lensmen, that such a factual, minutely detailed history as this can be compiled; and your historian is supremely proud that he was the first person other than a Lensman to be allowed to study a great deal of this priceless data.
Worsel knew the gist of the report, Nadreck the compiler knew it all; but to Kinnison, Mac and Tregonsee the unreeling of the tape brought shocking news. For, as a matter of fact, the Overlords had known more, and there was more in the Lyranian solar system to know than Kinnison's wildest imaginings had dared to suppose. That system was one of the main focal points for the zwilnik business of an immense volume of space; Lyrane II was the meeting place, the dispatcher's office, the nerve center from which thousands of invisible, immaterial lines reached out to thousands of planets peopled by warm-blooded oxygen breathers. Menjo Bleeko had sent to Lyrane II not one expedition, but hundreds of them; the affair of Illona and her escorts had been the veriest, the most trifling incident.
The Overlords, however, did not know of any Boskonian in the Second Galaxy. They had no superiors, anywhere. The idea of anyone or anything anywhere being superior to an Overlord was unthinkable. They did, however, co-operate with--here came the really stunning fact--certain of the Eich who lived upon eternally dark Lyrane VIII, and who managed things for the frigid-blooded, poison-breathing Boskonians of the region in much the same fashion as the Overlords did for the warm-blooded, light-loving races. To make the co-operation easier and more efficient, the two planets were connected by a hyperspatial tube.
"Just a sec!" Kinnison interrupted, as he stopped the machine for a moment. "The Overlords were kidding themselves a bit there, I think--they must have been. If they didn't report to or get orders from the Second Galaxy or some other higher-up office, the Eich must have; and since the records and plunder and stuff were not in the cavern, they must be upon Eight. Therefore, whether they realized it or not, the Overlords must have been inferior to the Eich and under their orders. Check?"
"Check," Nadreck agreed. "Worsel and I concluded that they knew the facts, but were covering up even in their own minds, to save face. Our conclusions, and the data from which they were derived, are in the introduction--another spool. Shall I get it?"
"By no means--just glad to have the point cleared up, is all. Thanks--" and the showing went on.
The principal reason why the Lyranian system had been chosen for that important headquarters was that it was one of the very few outlying solar systems, completely unknown to the scientists of the Patrol, in which both the Eich and the Overlords could live in their natural environments. Lyrane VIII was, of course, intensely, bitterly cold. This quality is not rare, since all No. 8 planets are; its uniqueness lay in the fact that its atmosphere was almost exactly like that of Jarnevon.
And Lyrane II suited the Overlords perfectly. Not only did it have the correct temperature, gravity and atmosphere, but also it offered that much rarer thing without which no cavern of Overlords would have been content for long--a native life form possessing strong and highly vital minds upon which they could prey.
There was more, much more; but the rest of it was not directly pertinent to the immediate question. The tape ran out, Kinnison snapped off the projector, and the Lensmen went into a five-way.
Why was not Lyrane II defended? Worsel and Kinnison had already answered that one. Secretiveness and power of mind, not armament, had always been the natural defenses of all Overlords. Why hadn't the Eich interfered? That was easy, too. The Eich looked after themselves--if the Overlords couldn't, that was just too bad. The two ships that had come to aid and had remained to revenge had certainly not come from Eight--their crews had been oxygen breathers. Probably a rendezvous--immaterial, anyway. Why wasn't the whole solar system ringed with outposts and screens? Too obvious. Why hadn't the _Dauntless_ been detected? Because of her nullifiers; and if she had been spotted by any short-range stuff she had been mistaken for another zwilnik ship. They hadn't detected anything out of the way upon Eight because it had not occurred to anybody to swing an analyzer upon that particular planet. They would find that Eight was defended plenty. Had the Eich had time to build defenses? They must have had, or they wouldn't be there--they certainly were not taking that kind of chances. And, by the way, hadn't they better do a bit of snooping near Lyrane VIII before they went back to join the _Z9M9Z_ and the Fleet? They had.
Thereupon the _Dauntless_ faced about and retraced her path toward the now highly important system of Lyrane. In their previous approaches the Patrolmen had observed the usual precautions to avoid revealing themselves to any zwilnik vessel which might have been on the prowl. Those precautions were now intensified to the limit, since they knew that Lyrane VIII was the site of a base manned by the Eich themselves.
As the big cruiser crept toward her goal, nullifiers full out and every instrument of detection and reception as attentively outstretched as the whiskers of a tomcat slinking along a black alley at midnight, the Lensmen again pooled their brains in conference.
* * * * *
The Eich. This was going to be _no_ push-over. Even the approach would have to be figured to a hair; because, since the Boskonians had decided that it would be poor strategy to screen in their whole solar system, it was a cold certainty that they would have their own planet guarded and protected by every device which their inhuman ingenuity could devise. The _Dauntless_ would have to stop just outside the range of the electromagnetic detection, for the Boskonians would certainly have a five-hundred-percent overlap. Their nullifiers would hash up the electros somewhat, but there was no use in taking too many chances. Previously, on right-line courses to and from Lyrane II, that had not mattered, for two reasons--not only was the distance extreme for accurate electro work, but also it would have been assumed that their ship was a zwilnik. Laying a course for Eight, though, would be something else entirely. A zwilnik would take the tube, and they would not, even if they had known where it was.
That left the visuals. The cruiser was a mighty small target at interplanetary distances; but there were such things as electronic telescopes, and the occultation of even a single star might prove disastrous. Kinnison called the chief pilot.
"Stars must be thin in certain regions of the sky out here, Hen. Suppose you can pick us out a line of approach along which we will occult no stars and no bright nebulae?"
"I should think so, chief--just a sec; I'll see--Yes, easily. There is a lot of black background, especially to the nadir"--and the conference continued.
They would have to go through the screens of electros in Kinnison's inherently indetectable black speedster. QX, but she was nobody's fighter--she didn't have a beam hot enough to light a match. And besides, there were the thought-screens and the highly probable other stuff about which the Lensmen could know nothing.
Kinnison quite definitely did not relish the prospect. He remembered all too vividly what had happened when he had scouted the Eich's base upon Jarnevon; when it was only through Worsel's aid that he had barely--_just_ barely--escaped with his life. And Jarnevon's defenders had probably been exerting only routine precautions, whereas these fellows were undoubtedly cocked and primed for _the_ Lensman. He would go in, of course, but he'd probably come out feet first--he didn't know any more about their defenses than he had known before, and that was nothing, flat.
"Excuse the interruption, please," Nadreck's thought apologized, "but it would seem to appear more desirable, would it not, to induce the one of them possessing the most information to come out to us?"
"Huh?" Kinnison demanded. "It would, of course--but how in all your purple hells do you figure on swinging _that_ load?"
"I am, as you know, a person of small ability," Nadreck replied in his usual circuitous fashion. "Also, I am of almost negligible mass and strength. Of what is known as bravery I have no trace--in fact, I have pondered long over that, to me, incomprehensible quality and have decided that it has no place in my scheme of existence. I have found it much more efficient to perform the necessary tasks in the easiest possible manner, which is usually by means of stealth, deceit, indirection and other cowardly artifices."
"Any of those, or all of them, would be QX with me," Kinnison assured him. "Anything goes, with gusto and glee, as far as the Eich are concerned. What I don't see is how we can put it across."
* * * * *
"Thought-screens interfered so seriously with my methods of procedure," the Palainian explained, "that I was forced to develop a means of puncturing them without upsetting their generators. The device is not generally known, as it is still in a very crude, experimental form; but it does function, in a meager, unsatisfactory way. Might I suggest that the four of you put on heated armor and come with me to my vessel in the hold? It will take some little time to transfer my apparatus and equipment to your speedster."
"Is it nonferrous--undetectable?" Kinnison asked.
"Of course," Nadreck replied in surprise. "I work, as I told you, by stealth. My vessel is, except for certain differences necessitated by racial considerations, a duplicate of your own."
"Why didn't you say so?" Kinnison wanted to know. "Why bother to move the gadget? Why not use your speedster?"
"Because I was not asked. We should not bother. The only reason for using your vessel is so that you will not suffer the discomfort of wearing armor," Nadreck replied, categorically.
"Cancel it, then," Kinnison directed. "You've been wearing armor all the time you were with us--turn about for a while will be QX. Better that way, anyway, as this is very definitely your party, not ours. Not?"
"As you say; and with your permission," Nadreck agreed. "Also it may very well be that you will be able to suggest improvements in my device whereby its efficiency may be increased."
"I doubt it." The Tellurian's already great respect for this retiring, soft-spoken, "cowardly" Lensman was increasing constantly. "But we would like to study it, and perhaps copy it, if you so allow."
"Gladly."
And so it was arranged.
The _Dauntless_ crept among a black backgrounded pathway and stopped. Nadreck, Worsel and Kinnison--three were enough and neither Mac nor Tregonsee insisted upon going--boarded the Palainian speedster.
Away from the mother ship it sped upon muffled jets, and through the far-flung, heavily overlapped electromagnetic detector zones. Through the outer thought-screens. Then, ultra-slowly, as space speeds go, the speedster moved forward, feeling for whatever other blocking screens there might be.
All three of those Lensmen were in fact detectors themselves--their Arisian-imparted special senses made ethereal, even sub-ethereal, vibrations actually visible or tangible--but they did not depend only upon their bodily senses. That speedster carried instruments unknown to space pilotry, and the Lensmen used them unremittingly. When they came to a screen they opened it, so insidiously that its generating mechanisms gave no alarms. Even a meteorite screen, which was supposed to forbid the passage of any material object, yielded without protest to Nadreck's subtle manipulation.
Slowly, furtively, a perfectly absorptive black body sinking through blackness so intense as to be almost palpable, the Palainian speedster settled downward toward the Boskonian fortress of Lyrane VIII.
XIV.
This is perhaps as good a place as any to glance in passing at the fashion in which the planet Lonabar was brought under the aegis of Civilization. No attempt will or can be made to describe it in any detail, since any adequate treatment of it would fill a volume--indeed, many volumes have already been written concerning various phases of the matter--and since it is not strictly germane to the subject in hand. However, some knowledge of the modus operandi in such cases is highly desirable for the full understanding of this history, in view of the vast number of planets which Co-ordinator Kinnison and his associates did have to civilize before the Second Galaxy was made secure.
Scarcely had Cartiff-Kinnison moved out than the Patrol moved in. If Lonabar had been heavily fortified, a fleet of appropriate size and power would have cleared the way. As it was, the fleet which landed was one of transports, not of battleships, and all the fighting from then on was purely defensive.
Propagandists took the lead; psychologists; Lensmen skilled not only in languages but also in every art of human relationships. The case of Civilization was stated plainly and repeatedly, the errors and the fallacies of autocracy were pointed out. A nucleus of government was formed; not of Civilization's imports, but of solid Lonabarian citizens who had passed the Lensmen's tests of ability and trustworthiness.
Under this local government a pseudodemocracy began haltingly to function. At first its progress was painfully slow; but as more and more of the citizens perceived what the Patrol actually was doing, it grew apace. Not only did the invaders allow--yes, foster--free speech and statutory liberty; they suppressed ruthlessly any person or any faction seeking to build a new dictatorship, whatever its nature, upon the ruins of the old. _That_ news traveled fast; and laboring always and mightily upon Civilization's side were the always-present, however deeply buried, urges of all intelligent entities toward self-expression.
There was opposition, of course. Practically all of those who had waxed fat upon the old order were very strongly in favor of its continuance. There were the hordes of the down-trodden who had so long and so dumbly endured oppression that they could not understand anything else; in whom the above-mentioned urges had been beaten and tortured almost out of existence. They themselves were not opposed to Civilization--for them it meant at worst only a change of masters--but those who sought by the same old wiles to re-enslave them were foes indeed.
Menjo Bleeko's sycophants and retainers were told to work or starve. The fat hogs could support the new order--or else. The thugs had to choose between honest co-operation with their fellow men and flitting to some zwilnik planet. Those who tried to prey upon and exploit the dumb masses were extirpated, one and all.
Little could be done, however, about the dumb themselves, for in them the spark was feeble indeed. The new government nursed that spark along, the while ruling them as definitely, although not as harshly, as had the old; the Lensmen backing the struggling young Civilization knowing full well that in the children or in the children's children of these unfortunates the spark would flame up into a great, white light.
It is seen that this government was not, and could not for many years become, a true democracy. It was in fact a benevolent semiautocracy; autonomous in a sense, yet controlled by the Galactic Council through its representatives, the Lensmen. It was, however, so infinitely more liberal than anything theretofore known by the Lonabarians as to be a political revelation, and since corruption, that cosmos-wide curse of democracy, was not allowed a first finger-hold, the principles of real democracy and of Civilization took deeper root year by year.
* * * * *