Children of the Lens

by Edward E Smith

  “I haven’t seen or heard anything of Cleonie lately.” Helen paused in thought. “If, though, as I am now almost certain, it was one of the prime movers behind this brainless brat Ladora, it wouldn’t dare leave the planet for very long at a time. As to how to find it, I don’t quite know… Anybody would be apt to shoot me on sight…would you dare fly this funny plane of yours down close to a few of our cities?”

  “Certainly. I don’t know of anything around here that my screens and fields can’t stop. Why?”

  “Because I know of several places where Cleonie might be, and if I can get fairly close to them, I can find it in spite of anything it can do to hide itself from me. But I don’t want to get you into too much trouble, and I don’t want to get killed myself, either, now that you have rescued me—at least, until after I have killed Cleonie and Ladora.”

  “QX. What are you waiting for? Which way, Helen?”

  “Back to the city first, for several reasons. Cleonie probably is not there, but we must make sure. Also, I want my guns…”

  “Guns? No. DeLameters are better. I have several spares.” In one fleeting mental contact Clarrissa taught the Lyranian all there was to know about DeLameters. And that feat impressed Helen even more than did the nature and power of the weapon.

  “What a mind!” she exclaimed. “You didn’t have any such equipment as that, the last time I saw you. Or were you—no, you weren’t hiding it.”

  “You’re right; I have developed considerably since then. But about guns—what do you want of one?”

  “To kill that nitwit Ladora on sight, and that snake Cleonie, too, as soon as you get done with it.”

  “But why guns? Why not the mental force you always used?”

  “Except by surprise, I couldn’t,” Helen admitted, frankly. “All adult persons are of practically equal mental strength. But speaking of strength, I marvel that a craft as small as this should be able to ward off the attack of one of those tremendous Boskonian ships of space…”

  “But she can’t! What made you think she could?”

  “Your own statement—or were you thinking of purely Lyranian dangers, not realizing that Ladora of course called Cleonie as soon as you showed your teeth, and that Cleonie as surely called the Lensman or some other Boskonian? And that they must have ships of war not too far away?”

  “Heavens, no! It never occurred to me!”

  Clarrissa thought briefly. It wouldn’t do any good to call Kim. Both the Dauntless and the Velan were coming as fast as they could, but it would be a day or so yet before they arrived. Besides, he would tell her to lay off, which was exactly what she was not going to do. She turned her thought back to the matriarch.

  “Two of our best ships are coming, and I hope they get here first. In the meantime, we’ll just have to work fast and keep our detectors full out. Anyway, Cleonie won’t know that I’m looking for her—I haven’t even mentioned her to anyone except you.”

  “No?” pessimistically. “Cleonie knows that I am looking for it, and since it knows by now that I am with you, it would think that both of us were hunting it even if we weren’t. But we are nearly close enough now; I must concentrate. Fly around quite low over the city, please.”

  “QX I’ll tune in with you too. ‘Two heads’, you know.” Clarrissa learned Cleonie’s pattern, tuned to it, and combed the city while Helen was getting ready.

  “She isn’t here, unless she’s behind one of those thought-screens,” the Red Lensman remarked. “Can you tell?”

  “Thought-screens! The Boskonians had a few of them, but none of us ever did. How can you find them? Where are they?”

  “One there—two over there. They stick out like big black spots on a white screen. Can’t you see them? I supposed your scanners were the same as mine, but apparently they aren’t. Take a quick peek at them with the spy—you work it like so. If they’ve got spy-ray blocks up, too, we’ll have to go down there and blast.”

  “Politicians only,” Helen reported, after a moment’s manipulation of the suddenly familiar instrument. “They need killing, of course, on general principles, but perhaps we shouldn’t take time for that now. The next place to look is a few degrees east of north of here.”

  Cleonie was not, however, in that city. Nor in the next, nor the next. But the speedster’s detector screens remained blank and the two allies, so much alike physically, so different mentally, continued their hunt. There was opposition, of course—all that the planet afforded—but Clarrissa’s second-stage mind took care of the few items of offense which her speedster’s defenses could not handle.

  Finally two things happened almost at once. Clarrissa found Cleonie, and Helen saw a dim and fuzzy white spot upon the lower left-hand corner of the detector plate.

  “Can’t be ours,” the Red Lensman decided instantly. “Almost exactly the wrong direction. Boskonians. Ten minutes—twelve at most—before we have to flit. Time enough—I hope—if we work fast.”

  She shot downward, going inert and matching intrinsics at a lack of altitude which would have been suicidal for any ordinary pilot. She rammed her beryllium-bronze torpedo through the first-floor wall of a forbidding, almost windowless building—its many stories of massive construction, she knew, would help no end against the heavy stuff so sure to come. Then, while every hitherto-hidden offensive arm of the Boskone-coached Lyranians converged, screaming through the air and crashing and clanking along the city’s streets, Clarrissa probed and probed and probed. Cleonie had locked herself into a veritable dungeon cell in the deepest sub-basement of the structure. She was wearing a thought-screen, too, but she had been releasing it, for an instant at a time, to see what was going on. One of those instants was enough—that screen would never work again. She had been prepared to kill herself at need; but her full-charged weapons emptied themselves futilely against a massive lock and she threw her vial of poison across the corridor and into an empty cell.

  So far, so good; but how to get her out of there? Physical approach was out of the question. There must be somebody around, somewhere, with keys, or hack-saws, or sledge-hammers, or something. Ha—oxyacetylene torches! Very much against their wills, two Lyranian mechanics trundled a dolly along a corridor, into an elevator. The elevator went down four levels; the artisans began to burn away a barrier of thick steel bars.

  By this time the whole building was rocking to the detonation of high explosive. Much more of that kind of stuff and she would be trapped by the sheer mass of the rubble. She was handling six jackass-stubborn people already and that Boskonian warship was coming fast; she did not quite know whether she was going to get away with this or not.

  But somehow, from the unplumbed and unplumbable depths which made her what she so uniquely was, the Red Lensman drew more and ever more power. Kinnison, who had once made heavy going of handling two-and-a-fraction Lensmen, guessed, but never did learn from her, what his beloved wife really did that day.

  Even Helen, only a few feet away, could not understand what was happening. Left parsecs behind long since, the Lyranian could not help in any particular, but could only stand and wonder. She knew that this queerly powerful Lens-bearing Earth-person—white-faced, sweating, strung to the very snapping-point as she sat motionless at her board—was exerting some terrible, some tremendous force. She knew that the heaviest of the circling bombers sheered away and crashed. She knew that certain mobile projectors, a few blocks away, did not come any closer. She knew that Cleonie, against every iota of her mulish Lyranian will, was coming toward the speedster. She knew that many persons, who wished intensely to bar Cleonie’s progress or to shoot her down, were physically unable to act. She had no faint idea, however, of how such work could possibly be done.

  Cleonie came aboard and Clarrissa snapped out of her trance. The speedster nudged and blasted its way out of the wrecked stronghold, then tore a hole through protesting air into open space. Clarrissa shook her head, wiped her face, studied a tiny dot in the corner of the plate opposite the one now show
ing clearly the Boskonian warship, and set her controls.

  “We’ll make it—I think,” she announced. “Even though we’re indetectable, they of course know our line, and they’re so much faster that they’ll be able to find us on their visuals before long. On the other hand, they must be detecting our ships now, and my guess is that they won’t dare follow us long enough to do us any harm. Keep an eye on things, Helen, while I find out what Cleonie really knows. And while I think of it, what’s your real name? It isn’t polite to keep on calling you by a name that you never even heard of until you met us.”

  “Helen,” the Lyranian made surprising answer. “I liked it, so I adopted it—officially.”

  “Oh… That’s a compliment, really, to both Kim and me. Thanks.”

  The Red Lensman then turned her attention to her captive, and as mind fitted itself precisely to mind her eyes began to gleam in gratified delight. Cleonie was a real find; this seemingly unimportant Lyranian knew a lot—an immense lot—about things that no adherent of the Patrol had ever heard before. And she, Clarrissa Kinnison, would be the first of all the Gray Lensmen to learn of them! Therefore, taking her time now, she allowed every detail of the queer but fascinating picture-story-history to imprint itself upon her mind.

  * * * *

  And Karen and Camilla, together in Tregonsee’s ship, glanced at each other and exchanged flashing thoughts. Should they interfere? They hadn’t had to so far, but it began to look as though they might have to, now—it would wreck their mother’s mind, if she could understand. She probably could not understand it, any more than Cleonie could—but even if she could, she had so much more inherent stability, even than dad, that she might be able to take it, at that. Nor would she ever leak, even to dad—and he, bless his tremendous boots, was not the type to pry. Maybe, though, just to be on the safe side, it would be better to screen the stuff, and to edit it a little if necessary. The two girls synchronized their minds all imperceptibly with their mother’s and Cleonie’s, and “listened.”

  * * * *

  The time was in the unthinkably distant past; the location was unthinkably remote in space. A huge planet circled slowly about a cooling sun. Its atmosphere was not air; its liquid was not water. Both were noxious; composed in large part of compounds known to man only in his chemical laboratories.

  Yet life was there; a race which was even then ancient. Not sexual, this race. Not androgynous, nor hermaphroditic, but absolutely sexless. Except for the many who died by physical or mental violence, its members lived endlessly: after hundreds of thousands of years each being, having reached his capacity to live and to learn, divided into two individuals; each of which, although possessing in toto the parent’s memories, knowledges, skills, and powers, had also a renewed and increased capacity.

  And, since life was, there had been competition. Competition for power. Knowledge was desirable only insofar as it contributed to power. Power for the individual—the group—the city. Wars raged—what wars!—and internecine strifes which lasted while planets came into being, grew old, and died. And finally, to the survivors, there came peace. Since they could not kill each other, they combined their powers and hurled them outward—together they would dominate and rule solar systems—regions—the Galaxy itself—the entire macrocosmic universe!

  More and more they used their minds, to bring across gulfs of space and to enslave other races, to labor under their direction. By nature and by choice they were bound to their own planet; few indeed were the planets upon which their race could possibly live. Thus, then, they lived and ruled by proxy, through echelon after echelon of underlings, an ever-increasing number of worlds.

  Although they had long since learned that their asexuality was practically unique, that sexual life dominated the universe, this knowledge served only to stiffen their determination not only to rule the universe, but also to change its way of life to conform with their own. They were still seeking a better proxy race; the more nearly asexual a race, the better. The Kalonians, whose women had only one function in life—the production of men—approached that ideal.

  Now these creatures had learned of the matriarchs of Lyrane. That they were physically females meant nothing; to the Eddorians one sex was just as good—or as bad—as any other. The Lyranians were strong; not tainted by the weaknesses which seemed to characterize all races believing in even near-equality of the sexes. Lyranian science had been trying for centuries to do away with the necessity for males; in a few more generations, with some help, that goal could be achieved and the perfect proxy race would have been developed.

  This story was not obtained in any such straightforward fashion as it is presented here. It was dim, murky, confused. Cleonie never had understood it. Clarrissa understood it somewhat better: that unnamed and as yet unknown race was the highest of Boskone, and the place of the Kalonians in the Boskonian scheme was at long last clear.

  “I am giving you this story,” the Kalonian Lensman told Cleonie coldly, “not of my own free will but because I must. I hate you as much as you hate me. What I would like to do to you, you may imagine. Nevertheless, so that your race may have its chance, I am to take you on a trip and, if possible, make a Lensman out of you. Come with me.” And, urged by her jealousy of Helen, her seething ambition, and probably, if the truth were to be known, by an Eddorian mind, Cleonie went.

  There is no need to dwell at length upon the horrors, the atrocities, of that trip; of which the matter of Eddie the meteor-miner was only a very minor episode. It will suffice to say that Cleonie was very good Boskonian material; that she learned fast and passed all tests successfully.

  “That’s all,” the Black Lensman informed her then, “and I’m glad to see the last of you. You’ll get a message when to hop over to Nine and pick up your Lens. Flit—and I hope the first Gray Lensman you meet rams his Lens down your throat and turns you inside out.”

  “The same to you, brother, and soon,” Cleonie sneered. “Or, better, when my race supplants yours as Proxies of Power, I shall give myself the pleasure of doing just that to you.”

  “Clarrissa! Clarrissa! Pay attention, please!” The Red Lensman came to herself with a start—Helen had been thinking at her, with increasing power, for seconds. The Velan’s image filled half the plate.

  In minutes, then, Clarrissa and her party were in Kinnison’s private quarters in the Dauntless. There had been warm mental greetings; physical demonstrations would come later. Worsel broke in.

  “Excuse it, Kim, but seconds count. Better we split, don’t you think? You find out what the score around here is, from Clarrissa, and take steps, and I’ll chase that damn Boskonian. He’s flitting—fast.”

  “QX, Slim,” and the Velan disappeared.

  “You remember Helen, of course, Kim.” Kinnison bent his head, flipping a quick grin at his wife, who had spoken aloud. The Lyranian, trying to unbend, half-offered her hand, but when he did not take it she withdrew it as enthusiastically as she had twenty years before. “And this is Cleonie, the…the wench I’ve been telling you about. You knew her before.”

  “Yeah. She hasn’t changed much, either—still as unbarbered a mess as ever. If you’ve got what you want, Cris, we’d better…”

  “Kimball Kinnison, I demand Cleonie’s life!” came Helen’s vibrant thought. She had snatched one of Clarrissa’s DeLameters and was swinging it into line when she was caught and held as though in a vise.

  “Sorry, Toots,” The Gray Lensman’s thought was more than a little grim. “Nice little girls don’t play so rough. ’Scuse me, Cris, for dipping into your dish. Take over.”

  “Do you really mean that, Kim?”

  “Yes. It’s your meat—slice it as thick or as thin as you please.”

  “Even to letting her go?”

  “Check. What else could you do? In a lifeboat—I’ll even show the jade how to run it.”

  “Oh… Kim…”

  “Quartermaster! Kinnison. Please check Number Twelve lifeboat and break it out. I am
loaning it to Cleonie of Lyrane II.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  Kit Invades Eddore; and—

  IT HAD DECIDED LONG SINCE that it was his job to scout the planet Eddore. His alone. He had told several people that he was en route there, and in a sense he had been, but he was not hurrying. Once he started that job, he would have to see it through with absolutely undisturbed attention, and there had been altogether too many other things popping up. Now, however, his visualization showed a couple of weeks of free time, and that would be enough. He wasn’t sure whether he was grown-up enough yet to do a man’s job of work or not, and Mentor wouldn’t tell him. This was the best way to find out. If so, QX. If not, he would back off, wait and try again later.

  The kids had wanted to go along, of course.

  “Come on, Kit, don’t be a pig!” Constance started what developed into the last violent argument of their long lives. “Let’s gang up on it—think what a grand work-out that would be for the Unit!”

  “Uh-uh, Con. Sorry, but it isn’t in the cards, any more than it was the last time we discussed it,” he began, reasonably enough.

  “We didn’t agree to it then,” Kay cut in, stormily, “and I for one am not going to agree to it now. You don’t have to do it today. In fact, later on would be better. Anyway, Kit, I’m telling you right now that if you go in, we all go, as individuals if not as the Unit.”

  “Act your age, Kay,” he advised. “Get conscious. This is one of the two places in the universe that can’t be worked from a distance, and by the time you could get here I’ll have the job done. So what difference does it make whether you agree or not? I’m going in now and I’m going in alone. Pick that one out of your pearly teeth!”

  That stopped Karen, cold—they all knew that even she would not endanger the enterprise by staging a useless demonstration against Eddore’s defensive screens—but there were other arguments. Later, he was to come to see that his sisters had some right upon their side, but he could not see it then. None of their ideas would hold air, he declared, and his temper wore thinner and thinner.