Children of the Lens

by Edward E Smith

  She broke off, every nerve taut. Was that, or was it not, Helen’s thought; cut off, wiped out by a guardian block before it could take shape?

  “Who are you stranger, and what do you want?” the thought came, almost instantly, from a person seated at the desk which had been Helen’s.

  Clarrissa glanced at the sender and thought that she recognized the face. Her new channels functioned instantaneously; she remembered every detail.

  “Lensman Clarrissa, formerly of Sol III. Unattached. I remember you, Ladora, although you were only a child when I was here. Do you remember me?”

  “Yes, I repeat, what do you want?” The memory did not decrease Ladora’s hostility.

  “I would like to speak to the former Elder Person, if I may.”

  “You may not. It is no longer with us. Leave at once, or we will shoot you down.”

  “Think again, Ladora.” Clarrissa held her tone even and calm. “Surely your memory is not so short that you have forgotten the Dauntless and its capabilities.”

  “I remember. You may take up with me whatever it is that you wish to discuss with my predecessor.”

  “You are familiar with the Boskonian invasion of years ago. It is suspected that they are planning new and galaxy-wide outrages, and that this planet is in some way involved. I have come here to investigate the situation.”

  “We will conduct our own investigations,” Ladora declared, curtly. “We insist that you and all other foreigners stay away from this planet.”

  “You investigate a galactic condition?” In spite of herself, Clarrissa almost let the connotations of that question become perceptible. “If you give me permission I will land alone. If you do not, I shall call the Dauntless and we will land in force. Take your choice.”

  “Land alone, then, if you must land.” Ladora yielded seemingly. “Land at City Airport”

  “Under those guns? No, thanks; I am neither invulnerable nor immortal. I land where I please.”

  She landed. During her previous visit she had had a hard enough time getting any help from these pig-headed matriarchs, but this time she encountered a non-cooperation so utterly fanatical that it put her completely at a loss. None of them tried to harm her in any way; but not one of them would have anything to do with her. Every thought, even the friendliest, was stopped by a full-coverage block; no acknowledgment, even, was ever made.

  “I can crack those blocks easily enough, if I want to,” she declared, one bad evening, to her mirror, “and if they keep this up very much longer, by Klono’s emerald-filled gizzard, I will!”

  CHAPTER

  14

  Kinnison-Thyron, Drug Runner

  HEN KIMBALL KINNISON received his son’s call he was in Ultra Prime, the Patrol’s stupendous Klovian base, about to enter his ship. He stopped for a moment; practically in mid-stride. While nothing was to be read in his expression or in his eyes, the lieutenant to whom he had been talking had been an interested, if completely uninformed, witness to many such Lensed conferences and knew that they were usually important. He was therefore not surprised when the Lensman turned around and headed for an exit.

  “Put her back, please. I won’t be going out for a while, after all,” Kinnison explained, briefly. “Don’t know exactly how long.”

  A fast flitter took him to the hundred-story pile of stainless steel and glass which was the coordinator’s office. He strode along a corridor, through an unmarked door.

  “Hi, Phyllis—the boss in?”

  “Why, Coordinator Kinnison! Yes, sir…no, I mean…” His startled secretary touched a button and a door opened; the door of his private office.

  “Hi, Kim—back so soon?” Vice-Coordinator Maitland also showed surprise as he got up from the massive desk and shook hands cordially. “Good! Taking over?”

  “Emphatically no. Hardly started yet. Just dropped in to use your plate, if you’ve got a free high-power wave. QX?”

  “Certainly. If not, you can free one fast enough.”

  “Communications.” Kinnison touched a stud. “Will you please get me Thrale? Library One; Principal Librarian Nadine Ernley. Plate to plate.”

  This request was surprising enough to the informed. Since the coordinator practically never dealt personally with anyone except Lensmen, and usually Unattached Lensmen at that, it was a rare event indeed for him to use any ordinary channels of communication. And as the linkage was completed, subdued murmurs and sundry squeals gave evidence of the intense excitement at the other end of the line.

  “Mrs. Ernley will be on in one moment, sir.” The operator’s business was done. Her crisp, clear-cut voice ceased, but the background noise increased markedly.

  “Sh…sh…sh! It’s the Gray Lensman, himself!” Everywhere upon Klovia, Tellus, and Thrale, and in many localities of many other planets, the words “Gray Lensman”, without surname, had only one meaning.

  “Not the Gray Lensman.”

  “It can’t be!”

  “It is, really—I know him—I actually met him once!”

  “Let me look—just a peek!”

  “Sh…sh! He’ll hear you!”

  “Switch on the vision. If we’ve got a moment, let’s get acquainted,” Kinnison suggested, and upon his plate there burst into view a bevy of excitedly embarrassed blondes, brunettes, and redheads. “Hi, Madge! Sorry I don’t know the rest of you, but I’ll make it a point to meet you all—before long, I think. Don’t go away.” The head of the library was coming on the run. “You’re all in on this. Hi, Nadine! Long time no see. Remember that bunch of squirrel food you rounded up for me?”

  “I remember, sir.” What a question! As though Nadine Ernley, nee Hostetter, could ever forget her share in that famous meeting of the fifty-three greatest scientific minds of all Civilization! “I’m sorry that I was out in the stacks when you called.”

  “QX—we all have to work sometime, I suppose. What I’m calling about is that I’ve got a mighty big job for you and those smart girls of yours. Something like that other one, only a lot more so. I want all the information you can dig up about a planet named Kalonia, just as fast as you can possibly get it. What makes it extra tough is that I have never even heard of the planet itself and don’t know of anyone who has. There may be a million other names for it, on a million other planets, but we don’t know any of them. Here’s all I know.” He summarized; concluding: “If you can get it for me in less than four point nine five G-P days from now I’ll bring you, Nadine, a Manarkan star-drop; and you can have each of your girls go down to Brenleer’s and pick out a wrist-watch, or whatever else she likes, and I’ll have it engraved to her ‘In appreciation, Kimball Kinnison’. This job is important—my son Kit bet me ten millos that we can’t do it that fast.”

  “Ten millos!” Four or five of the girls gasped as one.

  “Fact,” he assured them, gravely. “So whenever you get the dope, tell Communications—no, you listen while I tell them myself. Communications, all along the line, come in!” They came. “I expect one of these librarians to call me, plate to plate, within the next few days. When she does, no matter what time of day or night it is, and no matter what I or anyone else happen to be doing, that call will have the right-of-way over any other business in the Universe. Cut!” The plates went dead, and in Library One:

  “But he was joking, surely!”

  “Ten millos—and a star-drop—why, there aren’t more than a dozen of them on all Thrale!”

  “Wrist-watches—or something—from the Gray Lensman!”

  “Be quiet, everybody!” Madge exclaimed, “I see now. That’s the way Nadine got her watch, that she always brags about so insufferably and that makes everybody’s eyes turn green. But I don’t understand that silly ten-millo bet…do you, Nadine?”

  “I think so. He does the nicest things—things that nobody else would think of. You’ve all seen Red Lensman’s Chit, in Brenleer’s.” This was a statement, not a question. They all had, with what emotions they all knew. “How would you like to
have that one-cento piece, in a thousand-credit frame, here in our main hall, with the legend ‘won from Christopher Kinnison for Kimball Kinnison by…’ and our names? He’s got something like that in mind, I’m sure.”

  The ensuing clamor indicated that they liked the idea.

  “He knew we would; and he knew that doing it this way would make us dig like we never dug before. He’ll give us the watches and things anyway, of course, but we won’t get that one-cento piece unless we win it. So let’s get to work. Take everything out of the machines, finished or not. Madge, you might start by interviewing Lanion and the other—no, I’d better do that myself, since you are more familiar with the encyclopedia than I am. Run the whole English block, starting with K, and follow up any leads, however slight, that you can find. Betty, you can analyze for synonyms, starting with the Thralian equivalent of Kalonia and spreading out to the other Boskonian planets. Put half a dozen techs on it, with transformers. Frances, you can study Prellin and Bronseca. Joan, Leona, Edna—Jalte, Helmuth, and Crowninshield. Beth, as our best linguist, you can do us the most good by sensitizing a tech to the sound of Kalonia in each of all the languages you know or that the rest of us can find, and running and re-running all the transcripts we have of Boskonian meetings. How many of us are left? Not enough…we’ll have to spread ourselves thin on this list of Boskonian planets…”

  Thus Principal Librarian Ernley organized a search beside which the proverbial one of finding a needle in a haystack would have been as simple as locating a football in a bushel basket. And she and her girls worked. How they worked! And thus, in four days and three hours, Kinnison’s crash-priority person-to-person call came through. Kalonia was no longer a planet of mystery.

  “Fine work, girls! Put it on a tape and I’ll pick it up.”

  He then left Klovia—precipitately. Since Kit was not within rendezvous distance, he instructed his son—after giving him the high points of what he had learned—to forward one one-cento piece to Brenleer of Thrale, personal delivery. He told Brenleer what to do with it upon arrival. He landed. He bestowed the star-drop; one of Cartiff’s collection of fine gems. He met the girls, and gave each one her self-chosen reward. He departed.

  Out in open space, he ran the tape, and sat still, scowling blackly. It was no wonder that Kalonia had remained unknown to Civilization for over twenty years. There was a lot of information on that tape—and all of it stunk—but it had been assembled, one unimportant bit at a time, from the more than eight hundred million cards of Thrale’s Boskonian Archives; and all the really significant items had been found on vocal transcriptions which had never before been played.

  Civilization in general had assumed that Thrale had housed the top echelons of the Boskonian Empire, and that the continuing inimical activity had been due solely to momentum. Kinnison and his friends had had their doubts, but they had not been able to find any iota of evidence that any higher authority had ever issued any orders to Thrale. The Gray Lensman now knew, however, that Thrale had never been the top. Nor was Kalonia. The information on this tape, by its paucity, its brevity, its incidental and casual nature, made that fact startlingly clear. Thrale and Kalonia were not in the same ladder. Neither gave the other any orders—in fact, they had surprisingly little to do with each other. While Thrale formerly directed the activities of a half-million or so planets—and Kalonia apparently still did much the same—their fields of action had not overlapped at any point.

  His conquest of Thrale, hailed so widely as such a triumph, had got him precisely nowhere in the solution of the real problem. It might be possible for him to conquer Kalonia in a similar fashion, but what would it get him? Nothing. There would be no more leads upward from Kalonia than there had been from Thrale. How in all of Noshabkeming’s variegated and iridescent hells was he going to work this out?

  A complete analysis revealed only one possible method of procedure. In one of the transcriptions—made twenty-one years ago and unsealed for the first time by Beth, the librarian-linguist—one of the speakers had mentioned casually that the new Kalonian Lensmen seemed to be doing a good job, and a couple of the others had agreed with him. That was all. It might, however, be enough; since it made it highly probable that Eddie’s Lensman was in fact a Kalonian, and since even a Black Lensman would certainly know where he got his Lens. At the thought of trying to visit the Boskonian equivalent of Arisia he flinched, but only momentarily. Invasion, or even physical approach, would of course be impossible; but any planet, even Arisia itself, could be destroyed. If it could be found, that planet would be destroyed. He had to find it—that was probably what Mentor had been wanting him to do all the time! But how?

  In his various previous enterprises against Boskonia he had been a gentleman of leisure, a dock-walloper, a meteor-miner, and many other things. None of his already established aliases would fit on Kalonia; and besides, it was very poor technique to repeat himself, especially at this high level of opposition. To warrant appearance on Kalonia at all, he would have to be an operator of some kind—not too small, but not big enough so that an adequate background could not be synthesized in not too long a time. A zwilnik—an actual drug-runner with a really worth-while cargo—would be the best bet.

  His course of action decided, the Gray Lensman started making calls. He first called Kit, with whom he held a long conversation. He called the captain of his battleship-yacht, the Dauntless, and gave him many and explicit orders. He called Vice-Coordinator Maitland, and various other Unattached Lensmen who had plenty of weight in Narcotics, Public Relations, Criminal Investigation, Navigation, Homicide, and many other apparently totally unrelated establishments of the Galactic Patrol. Finally, after ten solid hours of mind-racking labor, he ate a tremendous meal and told Clarrissa—he called her last of all—that he was going to go to bed and sleep for one whole G-P week.

  Thus it was that the name of Bradlow Thyron began to obtrude itself above the threshold of Galactic consciousness. For seven or eight years that name had been below the middle of the Patrol’s long, black list of the wanted; now it was well up toward the top. That notorious zwilnik and his villainous crew had been chased from one side of the First Galaxy to the other. For a few months it had been supposed that they had been blown out of the ether. Now, however, it was known definitely that he was operating in the Second Galaxy, and he and every one of his cutthroat gang—fiends who had blasted thousands of lives with noxious wares—were wanted for piracy, drug-mongering, and first-degree murder. From the Patrol’s standpoint, the hunting was very poor. G-P planetographers have charted only a small percentage of the planets of the Second Galaxy; and only a few of those are peopled by the adherents of Civilization.

  Therefore it required some time, but finally there came the message for which Kinnison was so impatiently waiting. A Boskonian pretty-big-shot and drug-master named Harkleroy, on the planet Phlestyn II, city, Nelto, coordinates so-and-so, fitted his specifications to a “T”; a middle-sized operator neither too close to nor too far away from Kalonia. And Kinnison, having long since learned the lingua franca of the region from a local meteor-miner, was ready to act. First, he made sure that the mighty Dauntless would be where he wanted her when he needed her. Then, seated at his speedster’s communicator, he put through regular channels to call to the Boskonian.

  “Harkleroy? I’ve got a proposition you’ll be interested in. Where and when do you want to see me?”

  “What makes you think I want to see you at all?” a voice snarled, and the plate showed a gross, vicious face. “Who are you, scum?”

  “Who I am is nobody’s business—and if you don’t clamp a baffle on that damn mouth of yours I’ll come down there and shove a glop-skinner’s glove so far down your throat you can sit on it.”

  At the first defiant word the zwilnik began visibly to swell; but in a matter of seconds he recognized Bradlow Thyron, and Kinnison knew that he did. That pirate could, and would be expected to, talk back to anybody.

  “I didn’t recognize
you at first.” Harkleroy almost apologized. “We might do some business, at that. What have you got?”

  “Cocaine, heroin, bentlam, hashish, nitrolabe—most anything a warm-blooded oxygen-breather would want. The prize, though, is two kilograms of clear-quill thionite.”

  “Thionite—two kilograms!” The Phlestan’s eyes gleamed. “Where and how did you get it?”

  “I asked the Lensman on Trenco to make it for me, special, and he did.”

  “So you won’t talk, huh?” Kinnison could see Harkleroy’s brain work. Thyron could be made to talk, later. “We can maybe do business at that. Come down here right away.”

  “I’ll do that, but listen!” and the Lensman’s eyes burned into the zwilnik’s. “I know what you’re figuring on, and I’m telling you right now not to try it if you want to keep on living. You know this ain’t the first planet I ever landed on, and if you’ve got a brain you know that a lot of smarter guys than you are have tried monkey business on me—and I’m still here. So watch your step!”

  The Lensman landed, and made his way to Harkleroy’s inner office in what seemed to be an ordinary enough, if somewhat over-size, suit of light space-armor. But it was no more ordinary than it was light. It was a power-house, built of dureum a quarter of an inch thick. Kinnison was not walking in it; he was merely the engineer of a battery of two-thousand-horsepower motors. Unaided, he could not have lifted one leg of that armor off the ground.

  As he had expected, everyone he encountered wore a thought-screen; nor was he surprised at being halted by a blaring loud-speaker in the hall, since the zwilnik’s search-beams were being stopped four feet away from his armor.

  “Halt! Cut your screens or we’ll blast you where you stand!”

  “Yeah? Act your age, Harkleroy. I told you I had something up my sleeve besides my arm, and I meant it. Either I come as I am or I flit somewhere else, to do business with somebody who wants this stuff bad enough to act like half a man. ’Smatter—afraid you ain’t got blasters enough in there to handle me?”