Children of the Lens

by Edward E Smith

  “No, Cam—NO! You know as well as I do that we can’t all be spared at once, either now or at any time in the near-enough future. Kay’s full of pickles, and you all know it. Right now is the best time I’ll ever have…”

  “Seal it, Kat—you can’t be that dumb! Taking the Unit in would blow things wide open. There isn’t a chance that I can get in, even alone, without touching something off. I, alone, won’t be giving too much away, but the Unit would be a flare-lit tip-off and all hell would be out for noon. Or are you actually nit-witted enough to think, all Arisia to the contrary, that we’re ready for the grand show-down?…”

  “Hold it, all of you! Pipe down!” he snorted, finally. “Have I got to bash in your skulls to make you understand that I can’t coordinate an attack against something without even the foggiest idea of what it is? Use your brains, kids—please use your brains!”

  He finally won them over, even Karen; and while his speedster covered the last leg of the flight he completed his analysis.

  He had all the information he could get—in fact, all that was available—and it was pitifully meager and confusingly contradictory in detail. He knew the Arisians, each of them, personally; and had studied, jointly and severally, the Arisian visualizations of the ultimate foe. He knew the Lyranian impression of the Plooran version of the story of Eddore… Ploor! Merely a name. A symbol which Mentor had always kept rigorously apart from any Boskonian actuality… Ploor must be the missing link between Kalonia and Eddore…and he knew practically everything about it except the two really important facts—whether or not it really was that link, and where, within eleven thousand million parsecs, it was in space!

  He and his sisters had done their best. So had many librarians; who had found, not at all to his surprise, that no scrap of information or conjecture concerning Eddore or the Eddorians was to be found in any library, however comprehensive or exclusive.

  Thus he had guesses, hypotheses, theories, and visualizations galore; but none of them agreed and not one of them was convincing. He had no real facts whatever. Mentor had informed him, equably enough, that such a state of affairs was inevitable because of the known power of the Eddorian mind. That state, however, did not make Kit Kinnison any too happy as he approached dread and dreaded Eddore. He was in altogether too much of a dither as to what, actually, to expect.

  As he neared the boundary of the star-cluster within which Eddore lay, he cut his velocity to a crawl. An outer screen, he knew, surrounded the whole cluster. How many intermediate protective layers existed, where they were, or what they were like, nobody knew. That information was only a small part of what he had to have.

  His far-flung detector web, at practically zero power, touched the barrier without giving alarm and stopped. His speedster stopped. Everything stopped.

  Christopher Kinnison, the matrix and the key element of the Unit, had tools and equipment about which even Mentor of Arisia knew nothing in detail; about which, it was hoped and believed, the Eddorians were completely in ignorance. He reached deep into the storehouse-toolbox of his mind, arranged his selections in order, and went to work.

  He built up his detector web, one infinitesimal increment at a time, until he could just perceive the structure of the barrier. He made no attempt to analyze it, knowing that any fabric or structure solid enough to perform such an operation would certainly touch off an alarm. Analysis could come later, after he had found out whether the generator of this outer screen was a machine or a living brain.

  He felt his way along the barrier; slowly—carefully. He completely outlined one section, studying the fashion in which the joints were made and how it must be supported and operated. With the utmost nicety of which he was capable he synchronized a probe with the almost impossibly complex structure of the thing and slid it along a feeder-beam into the generator station. A mechanism—they didn’t waste live Eddorians, then, any more than the Arisians did, on outer defenses. QX.

  A precisely-tuned blanket surrounded his speedster—a blanket which merged imperceptibly into, and in effect became an integral part of, the barrier itself. The blanket thinned over half of the speedster. The speedster crept forward. The barrier—unchanged, unaffected—was behind the speedster. Man and vessel were through!

  Kit breathed deeply in relief and rested. This didn’t prove much, of course. Nadreck had done practically the same thing in getting Kandron—except that the Palainian would never be able to analyze or to synthesize such screens as these. The real test would come later; but this had been mighty good practice.

  The real test came with the fifth, the innermost screen. The others, while of ever-increasing sensitivity, complexity, and power, were all generated mechanically, and hence posed problems differing only in degree, and not in kind, from that of the first. The fifth problem, however, involving a living and highly capable brain, differed in both degree and kind from the others. The Eddorian would be sensitive to form and to shape, as well as to interference. Bulges were out, unless he could do something about the Eddorian—and the speedster couldn’t go through a screen without making a bulge.

  Furthermore, this zone had visual and electromagnetic detectors, so spaced as not to let a microbe through. There were fortresses, maulers, battleships, and their attendant lesser craft. There were projectors, and mines, and automatic torpedoes with super-atomic warheads, and other such things. Were these things completely dependent upon the Eddorian guardian, or not?

  They were not. The officers—Kalonians for the most part—would go into action at the guardian’s signal, of course; but they could at need act without instructions. A nice set-up—a mighty hard nut to crack! He would have to use zones of compulsion. Nothing else would do.

  Picking out the biggest fortress in the neighborhood, with its correspondingly large field of coverage, he insinuated his mind into that of one observing officer after another. When he left, a few minutes later, he knew that none of those officers would initiate any action in response to the alarms which he would so soon set off. They were alive, fully conscious, alert; and would have resented bitterly any suggestion that they were not completely normal in every respect. Nevertheless, whatever colors the lights flashed, whatever pictures the plates revealed, whatever noises blared from the speakers, in their consciousnesses would be only blankness and silence. Nor would recorder tapes reveal later what had occurred. An instrument cannot register fluctuations when its movable member is controlled by a couple of steady fingers.

  Then the Eddorian. To take over his whole mind was, Kit knew, beyond his present power. A partial zone, though, could be set up—and young Kinnison’s mind had been developed specifically to perform the theretofore impossible. Thus the guardian, without suspecting it, suffered an attack of partial blindness which lasted for the fraction of a second necessary for the speedster to flash through the screen. And there was no recorder to worry about. Eddorians, never sleeping and never relaxing their vigilance, had no doubt whatever of their own capabilities and needed no checks upon their own performances.

  Christopher Kinnison, Child of the Lens, was inside Eddore’s innermost defensive sphere. For countless cycles of time the Arisians had been working toward and looking forward to the chain of events of which this was the first link. Nor would he have much time here: he would have known that even if Mentor had not so stressed the point. As long as he did nothing he was safe; but as soon as he started sniffing around he would be open to detection and some Eddorian would climb his frame in mighty short order. Then blast and lock on—he might get something, or a lot, or nothing at all. Then—win, lose, or draw—he had to get away. Strictly under his own power, against an unknown number of the most powerful and the most ruthless entities ever to live. The Arisian couldn’t get in here to help him, and neither could the kids. Nobody could. It was strictly and solely up to him.

  For more than a moment his spirit failed. The odds against him were far too long. The load was too heavy; he didn’t have half enough jets to swing it. Just how did
a guy as smart as Mentor figure it that he, a dumb, green kid, stood a Zabriskan fontema’s chance against all Eddore?

  He was scared; scared to the core of his being; scared as he never had been before and never would be again. His mouth felt dry, his tongue cottony. His fingers shook, even as he doubled them into fists to steady them. To the very end of his long life he remembered the fabric and the texture of that fear; remembered how it made him decide to turn back, before it was too late to retrace his way as unobserved as he had come.

  Well, why not? Who would care, and what matter? The Arisians? Nuts! It was all their fault, sending him in half-ready. His parents? They wouldn’t know what the score was, and wouldn’t care. They’d be on his side, no matter what happened. The kids?… The kids!… Oh-oh—THE KIDS!

  They’d tried to talk him out of coming in alone. They’d fought like wildcats to make him take them along. He’d smacked ’em down. Now, if he sneaked back with his tail between his legs, how’d they take it? What’d they do? What would they think? Then, later, after he had loused everything up and let the Arisians and the Patrol and all Civilization get knocked out—then what? The kids would know exactly how and why it had happened. He couldn’t defend himself, even if he tried, and he wouldn’t try. Did he have any idea how much sheer, vitriolic, corrosive contempt those four red-headed sisters of his could generate? Or, even if they didn’t—or as a follow-up—their condescending, sisterly pity would be a thousand million times worse. And what would he think of himself? No soap. It was out. Definitely. The Eddorians could kill him only once. QX.

  He drove straight downward, noting as he did so that his senses were clear, his hands steady, his tongue normally moist. He was still scared, but he was no longer paralyzed.

  Low enough, he let his every perceptive sense roam abroad—and became instantly too busy to worry about anything. There was an immense amount of new stuff here—if he could only be granted time enough to get it all!

  He wasn’t. In a second or so, it seemed, his interference was detected and an Eddorian came in to investigate. Kit threw everything he had, and in the brief moment before the completely surprised denizen died, the young Klovian learned more of the real truth of Eddore and of the whole Boskonian Empire than all the Arisians had ever found out. In that one flash of ultimately intimate fusion, he knew Eddorian history, practically in toto. He knew the enemies’ culture; he knew how they behaved, and why. He knew their ideals and their ideologies. He knew a great deal about their organization; their systems of offense and of defense. He knew their strengths and, more important, their weaknesses. He knew exactly how, if Civilization were to triumph at all, its victory must be achieved.

  This seems—or rather, it is—incredible. It is, however, simple truth. Under such stresses as those, an Eddorian mind can yield, and the mind of such a one as Christopher Kinnison can absorb, an incredible amount of knowledge in an incredibly brief interval of time.

  Kit, already seated at his controls, cut in his every course of thought-screen. They would help a little in what was coming, but not much—no mechanical screen then known to Civilization could block third-level thought. He kicked in full drive toward the one small area in which he and his speedster would not encounter either beams or bombs—the fortress whose observers would not perceive that anything was amiss. He did not fear physical pursuit, since his speedster was the fastest thing in space.

  For a second or so it was not so bad. Another Eddorian came in, suspicious and on guard. Kit blasted him down—learning still more in the process—but he could not prevent him from radiating a frantic and highly revealing call for help. And although the Eddorians could scarcely realize that such an astonishing thing as physical invasion had actually happened, that fact neither slowed them down nor made their anger less violent.

  When Kit flashed past his friendly fortress he was taking about all he could handle, and more and more Eddorians were piling on. At the fourth screen it was worse; at the third he reached what he was sure was his absolute ceiling. Nevertheless, from some hitherto unsuspected profundity of his being, he managed to draw enough reserve force to endure that hellish punishment for a little while longer.

  Hang on, Kit, hang on! Only two more screens to go. Maybe only one. Maybe less. Living Eddorian brains, and not mechanical generators, are now handling all the screens, of course; but if the Arisians’ visualization is worth a tinker’s damn, they must have that first screen knocked down by this time and must be working on the second. Hang on, Kit, and keep on slugging!

  And grimly; doggedly; toward the end sheerly desperately: Christopher Kinnison, eldest Child of the Lens, hung on and slugged.

  CHAPTER

  23

  —Escapes with His Life

  F THE HISTORIAN HAS succeeded in his attempt to describe the characters and abilities concerned, it is not necessary to enlarge upon what Kit went through in escaping Eddore. If he has not succeeded, enlargement would be useless. Therefore it is enough to say that the young Lensman, by dint of calling up and putting out everything he had, hung on long enough and slugged his way through.

  Arisia had acted precisely on time. The Eddorian guardians had scarcely taken over the first screen when it was overwhelmed by a tremendous wave of Arisian thought. It is to be remembered, however, that this was not the first time that the massed might of Arisia had been thrown against Eddore’s defenses, and the Eddorians had learned much, during the intervening years, from their exhaustive analyses of the offensive and defensive techniques of the Arisians. Thus the Arisian drive was practically stopped at the second zone of defense as Kit approached it. The screen was wavering, shifting; yielding stubbornly wherever it must and springing back into place whenever it could.

  Under a tremendous concentration of Arisian force the screen weakened in a limited area directly ahead of the hurtling speedster. A few beams lashed out aimlessly, uselessly—if the Eddorians could not hold their main screens proof against the power of the Arisian attack, how could they protect such minor things as gunners’ minds? The little ship flashed through the weakened barrier and into the center of a sphere of impenetrable, impermeable Arisian thought.

  At the shock of the sudden ending of his terrific battle—the instantaneous transition from supreme to zero effort—Kit fainted in his control chair. He lay slumped, inert, in a stupor which changed gradually into a deep and natural sleep. And as the sleeping man in his inertialess speedster traversed space at full touring blast, that peculiar sphere of force still enveloped and still protected him.

  Kit finally began to come to. His first foggy thought was that he was hungry—then, wide awake and remembering, he grabbed his levers.

  “Rest quietly, youth, and eat your fill,” a grave, resonant pseudo-voice assured him. “Everything is exactly as it should be.”

  “Hi, Ment…well, well, if it isn’t my old chum Eukonidor! Hi, young fellow! What’s the good word? And what’s the big idea of letting—or making—me sleep for a week when there’s work to do?”

  “Your part of the work, at least for the immediate present, is done; and, let me say, very well done.”

  “Thanks…but…” Kit broke off, flushing darkly.

  “Do not reproach yourself, youth, nor us. Consider, please, and recite, the manufacture of a fine tool of ultimate quality.”

  “The correct alloy. Hot working—perhaps cold, too. Forging—heating—quenching—drawing…”

  “Enough, youth. Think you that the steel, if sentient, would enjoy those treatments? While you did not enjoy them, you are able to appreciate their necessity. You are now a finished tool, forged and tempered.”

  “Oh…you may have something there, at that. But as to ultimate quality, don’t make me laugh.” There was no nuance of merriment in Kit’s thought. “You can’t square that with cowardice.”

  “Nor is there need. The term ultimate was used advisedly, and still stands. It does not mean or imply, however, a state of perfection, since that condition is unattainable. I
am not advising you to try to forget; nor am I attempting to force forgetfulness upon you, since your mind cannot now be coerced by any force at my command. Be assured that nothing that occurred should irk you; for the simple truth is, that although stressed as no other mind has ever before been stressed, you did not yield. Instead, you secured and retained information which we of Arisia have never been able to obtain; information which will in fact be the means of preserving your Civilization.”

  “I can’t believe…that is, it doesn’t seem…” Kit, knowing that he was thinking muddily and foolishly, paused and pulled himself together. Overwhelming, almost paralyzing as that information was, it must be true. It was true!

  “Yes, youth, it is the truth. While we of Arisia have at various times made ambiguous statements, to lead certain Lensmen and others to arrive at erroneous conclusions, you know that we do not lie.”

  “Yes, I know that.” Kit plumbed the Arisian’s mind. “It sort of knocks me out of my orbit—that’s an awfully big bite to swallow at one gulp, you know.”

  “It is. That is one reason I am here, to convince you of the truth, which you would not otherwise believe fully. Also to see to it that your rest, without which you might have taken hurt, was not disturbed; as well as to make sure that you were not permanently damaged by the Eddorians.”

  “I wasn’t…at least, I don’t think so…was I?”

  “You were not.”

  “Good. I was wondering… Mentor will be tied up for a while, of course, so I’ll ask you… They must have got a sort of pattern of me, in spite of all I could do, and they’ll be camping on my trail from now on. So I suppose I’ll have to keep a solid block up all the time?”

  “They will not, Christopher, and you need not. Guided by those whom you know as Mentor, I myself am to see to that. But time presses—I must rejoin my fellows.”