Part 2

"There were so," Kinnison contradicted, "but I didn't see them then. That's where my brain went sour; I should have seen them. Little things, mostly, but significant. Not so much positive as negative indices. Above all, there was nothing whatever to indicate that Boskone actually was the top. That idea was the product of my own wishful and very low-grade thinking, with no basis or foundation in fact or in theory. And now," he concluded bitterly, "because my skull is so thick that it takes an idea a hundred years to filter through it--because a sheer, bare fact has to be driven into my brain with a Valerian maul before I can grasp it--we're sunk without a trace."

"Wait a minute, Kim, we aren't sunk yet," the girl advised, shrewdly. "The fact that, for the first time in history, an Arisian has taken the initiative in communicating with a human being, means something big--_really_ big. Mentor does not indulge in what he calls 'loose and muddy' thinking. Every part of every thought he sent carries meaning--plenty of meaning."

"What do you mean?" As one, the three men asked substantially the same question; the Lensman, by virtue of his faster reactions, being perhaps half a syllable in the lead.

* * * * *

"I don't know, exactly," Clarrissa admitted. "I've got only an ordinary mind, and it's firing on half its jets or less right now. But I do know that his thought was 'almost' irreparable, and that he meant precisely that--nothing else. If it had been wholly irreparable he not only would have expressed his thought that way, but he would have stopped you before you destroyed Jarnevon. I know that. Apparently it would have become wholly irreparable if we had got--" she faltered, blushing, then went on, "--if we had kept on about our own personal affairs. That's why he stopped us. We can win out, he meant, if you keep on working. It's your oyster, Kim--it's up to you to open it. You can do it, too--I just know that you can."

"But why didn't he stop you before you fellows smashed Boskone?" Lacy demanded, exasperated.

"I hope you're right, Chris--it sounds reasonable," Kinnison said, thoughtfully. Then, to Lacy:

"That's an easy one to answer, doctor. Because knowledge that comes the hard way is knowledge that really sticks with you. If he had drawn me a diagram before, it wouldn't have helped, the next time I get into a jam. This way it will. I've got to learn how to think, if it cracks my skull.

"_Really_ think," he went on, more to himself than to the other three. "To think so that it counts."

"Well, what are we going to do about it?" Haynes was--he had to be, to get where he was and to stay where he was--quick on the uptake. "Or, more specifically, what are you going to do and what am I going to do?"

"What I am going to do will take a bit of mulling over," Kinnison replied, slowly. "Find some more leads and trace them up, is the best that occurs to me right now. Your job and procedure are rather clearer. You remarked out in space that Boskone knew that Tellus was very strongly held. That statement, of course, is no longer true."

"Huh?" Haynes half pulled himself up from the davenport, then sank back. "Why?" he demanded.

"Because we used the negasphere--a negative-matter bomb of planetary antimass--to wipe out Jalte's planet, and because we smashed Jarnevon between two colliding planets," the Lensman explained, concisely. "Can the present defenses of Tellus cope with either one of those offensives?"

"I'm afraid not--no," the port admiral admitted. "But--"

"We can admit no 'buts,' admiral," Kinnison declared, with grim finality. "Having used those weapons, we must assume that the Boskonian scientists--we'll have to keep on calling them 'Boskonians,' I suppose, until we find a truer name--had recorders on them and have now duplicated them. Tellus must be made safe against anything that we have ever used; against, as well, everything that, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, we can conceive of the enemy using."

"You're right--I can see that," Haynes nodded.

"We have been underestimating them right along," Kinnison went on. "At first we thought that they were merely organized outlaws and pirates. Then, when it was forced upon us that they could match us--overmatch us in some things--we still would not admit that they must be as large and as widespread as we are--galactic in scope. We know now that they were wider-spread than we are. Intergalactic. They penetrated into our Galaxy, riddled it, before we knew even that theirs was inhabited or inhabitable. Right?"

"To a hair, although I never thought of it in exactly that way before."

"None of us have--mental cowardice. And they have the advantage," Kinnison continued, inexorably, "in knowing that our Prime Base is upon Tellus; whereas, if Jarnevon was not in fact theirs, we have no idea whatever where it is. And another point. Does that fleet of theirs, as you look back on it, strike you as having been a planetary outfit?"

"Well, Jarnevon was a big planet, and the Eich were a mighty warlike race."

"Quibbling a bit, aren't you, chief?"

"Uh-huh," Haynes admitted, somewhat sheepishly. "The probability is very great that no one planet either built or maintained that fleet."

"And that leads us to expect what?"

"Counterattack. In force. Everything they can shove this way. However, they've got to rebuild their fleet, besides designing and building the new stuff. We'll have time enough, probably, if we get started right now."

"But, after all, Jarnevon _may_ have been their vital spot," Lacy submitted.

"Even if that were true, which it probably isn't," the now thoroughly convinced port admiral sided in with Kinnison, "it doesn't mean a thing, Sawbones. If they should blow Tellus out of space, it wouldn't kill the Galactic Patrol. It would hurt it, of course, but it wouldn't cripple it seriously. The other planets of Civilization could, and certainly would, go ahead with it."

"My thought exactly," from Kinnison. "I check you to the proverbial nineteen decimals."

"Well, there's a lot to do and I'd better be getting at it," and Haynes and Lacy got up to go. Gone now was all thought of demerits or of infractions of rules--each knew what a wrenching the young couple had undergone. "See you in my office when convenient?"

"I'll be there directly, chief--as soon as I tell Chris, here, good-by."

* * * * *

At about the same time that Haynes and Lacy went to Nurse MacDougall's room, Worsel the Velantian arrowed downward through the atmosphere toward a certain flat roof. Leather wings shot out with a snap and in a blast of wind--Velantians can stand eleven Tellurian gravities--he came in to his customary appalling landing and dived unconcernedly down a nearby shaft. Into a corridor, along which he wriggled blithely to the office of his old friend, Master Technician LaVerne Thorndyke.

"Verne, I have been thinking," he announced, as he coiled all but about six feet of his sinuous length into a tight spiral upon the rug and thrust out half a dozen weirdly stalked eyes.

"That's nothing new," Thorndyke countered. No human mind can sympathize with or even remotely understand the Velantian passion for solid weeks of intense, uninterrupted concentration upon a single thought. "What about this time? The which-ness of the why?"

"That is the trouble with you Tellurians," Worsel grumbled. "Not only do you not know how to think, but you--"

"Hold on!" Thorndyke interrupted, unimpressed. "If you've got anything to say, old snake, why not say it? Why circumnavigate all the stars in space before you get to the point?"

"I have been thinking about thought--"

"So what?" The technician derided. "That's even worse. That's a dizzy spiral if there ever was one."

"Thought--and Kinnison," Worsel declared, with finality.

"Kinnison? Oh--that's different. I'm interested--very much so. Go ahead."

"And his weapons. His DeLameters, you know."

"No, I don't know, and you know that I don't know. What about them?"

"They are so ... so ... so _obvious_." The Velantian finally found the exact thought he wanted. "So big, and so clumsy, and so obtrusive. So inefficient, so wasteful of power. No subtlety--no finesse."

"But that's far and away the best hand weapon that has ever been developed!" Thorndyke protested.

"True. Nevertheless, a millionth of that power, properly applied, could be at least a million times as deadly."

"How?" The Tellurian, although shocked, was dubious.

"I have reasoned it out that thought, in any organic being, is and must be connected with one definite organic compound--this one," the Velantian explained didactically, the while there appeared within the technician's mind the space formula of an incredibly complex molecule; a formula which seemed to fill not only his mind, but the entire room as well. "You will note that it is a large molecule, and one of high molecular weight. Thus it is comparatively unstable. A vibration at the resonant frequency of any one of its component groups would break it down, and thought would therefore cease."

It took perhaps a minute for the full import of the ghastly thing to sink into Thorndyke's mind. Then, every fiber of him flinching from the idea, he began to protest.

"But he doesn't need it, Worsel. He's got a mind already that can--"

"It takes much mental force to kill," Worsel broke in, equably. "By that method one can slay only a few at a time, and it is exhausting work. My proposed method would require only a minute fraction of a watt of power and scarcely any mental force at all."

"And it would _kill_--it would have to. That reaction could not be made reversible."

"Certainly," Worsel concurred. "I never could understand why you soft-headed, soft-hearted, soft-bodied human beings are so reluctant to kill your enemies. What good does it do merely to stun them?"

"QX--skip it." Thorndyke knew that it was hopeless to attempt to convince the utterly unhuman Worsel of the fundamental rightness of human ethics. "But nothing has ever been designed small enough to project such a wave."

"I realize that. Its design and construction will challenge your inventive ability. Its smallness is its great advantage. He could wear it in a ring, in the bracelet of his Lens; or, since it will be actuated, controlled, and directed by thought, even imbedded surgically beneath his skin."

"How about backfires?" Thorndyke actually shuddered. "Projection--shielding--"

"Details--mere details," Worsel assured him, with an airy flip of his scimitared tail.

"That's nothing to be running around loose," the man argued. "Nobody could tell what killed them, could they?"

"Probably not." Worsel pondered briefly. "No. Certainly not. The substance must decompose in the instant of death, from any cause. And it would not be 'loose,' as you think; it should not become known, even. You would make only the one, of course."

"Oh. You don't want one, then?"

"Certainly not. What do I need of such a thing? Kinnison only--and only for his protection."

"Kim can handle it--but he's the only being this side of Arisia that I'd trust with one. QX, give me the dope on the frequency, wave form, and so on, and I'll see what I can do."

II.

Port Admiral Haynes, newly chosen President of the Galactic Council and by virtue of his double office probably the most powerful being in the First Galaxy, set instantly into motion the vast machinery which would make Tellus safe against any possible attack. He first called together his Board of Strategy; the same keen-minded tacticians who had helped him plan the invasion of the Second Galaxy and the eminently successful attack upon Jarnevon. Should Grand Fleet, many of whose component fleets had not yet reached their home planets, be recalled? Not yet--lots of time for that. Let them go home for a while first. The enemy would have to rebuild before they could attack, and there were many more pressing matters.

Scouting was most important. The planets near the galactic rim could take care of that. In fact, they should concentrate upon it, to the exclusion of everything else of warfare's activities. Every approach to the Galaxy--yes, the space between the two galaxies and as far into the Second Galaxy as it was safe to penetrate--should be covered as with a blanket. That way, they could not be surprised.

Kinnison, when he heard that, became vaguely uneasy. He did not really have a thought; it was as though he should have had one, but didn't. Deep down, far off, just barely above the threshold of perception an indefinite, formless something obtruded itself upon his consciousness. Tug and haul at it as he would, he could not get the drift. There was _something_ he ought to be thinking of, but what in all the iridescent hells from Vandemar to Alsakan was it? So, instead of flitting about upon his declared business, he stuck around; helping the General Staff--and thinking.

And Defense Plan GBT went from the idea men to the draftsmen, then to the engineers. This was to be, primarily, a war of planets. Ships could battle ships, fleets fleets; but, postulating good tactics upon the other side, no fleet, however armed and powered, could stop a planet. That had been proved. A planet had a mass of the order of magnitude of one times ten to the twenty-fifth kilogram, and an intrinsic velocity of somewhere around forty kilometers per second. A hundred probably, relative to Tellus, if the planet came from the Second Galaxy. Kinetic energy, roughly, about five times ten to the forty-first ergs. No, that was nothing for any possible fleet to cope with.

Also, the attacking planets would of course be inertialess until the last strategic instant. Very well, they must be made inert prematurely, when the Patrol wanted them that way, not the enemy. How? The Bergenholms upon those planets would be guarded with everything the Boskonians had.

The answer to that question, as worked out by the engineers, was something they called a "super-mauler." It was gigantic, cumbersome and slow; but little faster, indeed, than a free planet. It was like Helmuth's fortresses of space, only larger. It was like the special defense cruisers of the Patrol, except that its screens were vastly heavier. It was like a regular mauler, except that it had only one weapon. All of its incomprehensible mass was devoted to one thing--_power_! It could defend itself; and, if it could get close enough to its objective, it could do plenty of damage--its dreadful primary was the first weapon ever developed capable of cutting a Q-type helix squarely in two.

And in various solar systems, uninhabitable and worthless planets were converted into projectiles. Dozens of them, possessing widely varying masses and intrinsic velocities. One by one they flitted away from their parent suns and took up positions--not too far away from our Solar System, but not too near.

And finally Kinnison, worrying at his tantalizing thought as a dog worries a bone, crystallized it. Prosaically enough, it was an extremely short and flamboyantly waggling pink shirt which catalyzed the reaction; which acted as the seed of the crystallization. Pink--a Chickladorian--Xylpic the Navigator--Overlords of Delgon. Thus flashed the train of thought, culminating in:

"Oh, so _that's_ it!" he exclaimed, aloud. "That's IT, as sure as hell's a man trap!" He whistled raucously at a taxi, took the wheel himself, and broke--or at least bent--most of the city's traffic ordinances in getting to Haynes' office.

* * * * *

The port admiral was always busy, but he was never too busy to see Gray Lensman Kinnison; especially when the latter demanded the right of way in such terms as he used then.

"The whole defense set-up is screwy," Kinnison stated, baldly and at once. "I thought from the first that I was overlooking a bet, but I couldn't locate it. Why should they fight their way through intergalactic space and through sixty thousand parsecs of planet-infested galaxy when they don't have to?" he demanded. "Think of the length of the supply line, with our bases placed to cut it in a hundred places, no matter how they route it. It doesn't make sense. They'd have to outweigh us in an almost impossibly high ratio, unless they have an improbably superior armament."

"Check." The old warrior was entirely unperturbed. "Surprised that you didn't see that long ago. We did. We do not believe that they are going to attack at all."

"But you're going ahead with all this just as though--"

"Certainly. Something _may_ happen, and we can't be caught off guard. Besides, it's good training for the boys. Helps morale, no end." Haynes' nonchalant air disappeared and he studied the younger man keenly for moments. "But Mentor's warning certainly meant something, and you said 'when they don't have to.' But even if they go clear around the Galaxy to the other side--an impossibly long haul--we're covered. Tellus is near enough to the center of this galaxy so that they can't possibly take us by surprise. So--spill it!"

"How about a hyperspatial tube? They know exactly where we are, you know."

"Hm-m-m!" Haynes was taken aback. "Never thought of it--possible, distinctly a possibility. A duodec bomb, say, just far enough underground--"

"Nobody else thought of it, either, until just now," Kinnison broke in. "However, I'm not afraid of duodec--don't see how they could control it accurately enough at this three-dimensional distance. Too deep, it wouldn't explode at all. What I don't like to think of, though, is a negasphere. Or a planet, perhaps."

"Ideas? Suggestions?" the admiral snapped.

"No--I don't know anything about the stuff. How about putting our Lenses on Cardynge?"

"That's a thought!" and in seconds they were in communication with Sir Austin Cardynge, Earth's mightiest mathematical brain.

"Kinnison, how many times must I tell you that I am not to be interrupted?" the aged scientist's thought was a crackle of fury. "How can I concentrate upon vital problems if every young whippersnapper in the System is to perpetrate such abominable, such outrageous intrusions--"

"Hold it, Sir Austin--hold everything!" Kinnison soothed. "I'm sorry. I wouldn't have intruded if it hadn't been a matter of life or death. But it would be a worse intrusion, wouldn't it, if the Boskonians sent a planet about the size of Jupiter--or a negasphere--through one of their extradimensional vortices into your study? That's exactly what they're figuring on doing."

"What ... what ... what?" Cardynge snapped, like a string of firecrackers. He quieted down, then, and thought. And Sir Austin Cardynge _could_ think, upon occasion and when he felt so inclined; could think in the abstruse symbology of pure mathematics with a cogency equaled by few minds in the Universe. Both Lensmen perceived those thoughts, but neither could understand or follow them. No mind not a member of the Conference of Scientists could have done so.

"They can't!" of a sudden the mathematician cackled, gleefully disdainful. "Impossible--quite definitely impossible. There are laws governing such things, Kinnison, my impetuous and ignorant young friend. The terminus of the necessary hypertube could not be established within such proximity to the mass of the Sun. This is shown by--"

"Never mind the proof--the fact is enough," Kinnison interposed, hastily. "How close to the Sun could it be established?"

"I couldn't say, offhand," came the cautiously scientific reply. "More than two astronomical units, certainly, but the computation of the exact distance would require some little time. It would, however, be an interesting, if minor, problem. I will solve it for you, if you like, and advise you of the exact minimum distance."

"Please do so--thanks a million," and the Lensmen disconnected.

* * * * *

"The conceited old goat!" Haynes snorted. "I'd like to smack him down!"

"I've felt like it more than once, but it wouldn't do any good. You've got to handle him with gloves--besides, you can afford to make concessions to a man with a brain like that."

"I suppose so. But how about that infernal tube? Knowing that it cannot be set up within or very near Tellus helps some, but not enough. We've got to know where it is--_if_ it is. Can you detect it?"

"Yes. That is, I can't, but the specialists can, I think. Wise of Medon would know more about that than anyone else. Why wouldn't it be a thought to call him over here?"

"It would that;" and it was done.

Wise of Medon and his staff came, conferred and departed.

Sir Austin Cardynge solved his minor problem, reporting that the minimum distance from the Sun's center to the postulated center of the terminus of the vortex--actually, the geometrical origin of the three-dimensional figure which was the hyperplane of intersection--was three point two six four seven, approximately, astronomical units; the last figure being tentative and somewhat uncertain because of the rapidly moving masses of Jupiter--

"Cover everything beyond three units out in every direction," Haynes directed, when he got that far along the tape. He had no time to listen to an hour of mathematical dissertation. What he wanted was _facts_.

Shortly thereafter, five-man speedsters, plentifully equipped with new instruments, flashed at full drive along courses carefully calculated to give the greatest possible coverage in the shortest possible time.

Unobtrusively the loose planets closed in upon the Solar System. Not close enough to affect appreciably the orbits of Sol's own children, but close enough so that at least three or four of them could reach any designated point in one minute or less. And the outlying units of Grand Fleet, too, were pulled in. That fleet was not actually mobilized--yet--but every vessel in it was kept in readiness for instant action.

"No trace," came the report from the Medonian surveyors, and Haynes looked at Kinnison, quizzically.

"QX, chief--glad of it," the Gray Lensman answered the unspoken query. "If it was up, that would mean that they were on the way. Hope they don't get a trace for two months yet. But I'm next to positive that that's the way they're coming and the longer they put it off the better--there's a possible new projector that will take a bit of doping out. I've got to do a flit--can I have the _Dauntless_?"

"Sure--anything you want. She's yours, anyway."

* * * * *

Kinnison went. And, wonder of wonders, he took Sir Austin Cardynge with him. From solar system to solar system, from planet to planet, the mighty _Dauntless_ hurtled at the incomprehensible velocity of her full maximum blast; and every planet so visited was the home world of one of the most co-operative--or, more accurately, one of the least non-co-operative--members of the Conference of Scientists. For days brilliant but more or less unstable minds struggled with new and obdurate problems; struggled heatedly and with friction, as was their wont. Few, if any, of those mighty intellects would have really enjoyed a quietly studious session, even had such a thing been possible.

Then Kinnison returned his guests to their respective homes and shot his flying warship-laboratory back to Prime Base. And, even before the _Dauntless_ landed, the first few hundreds of a fleet which was soon to be numbered in the millions of meteor miners' boats began working like beavers to build a new and exactly designed system of asteroid belts of iron meteors.