"Impossible! He dies, here!"
"You misunderstand me. Not alive as he is now—but not entirely dead. Bones broken, yes, and eyes removed; but those minor matters are but a beginning. If I were doing it, I should then apply several of these devices here, successively; but none of them to the point of complete incompatibility with life. I should inoculate the extremities of his four limbs with an organism which grows—shall we say unpleasantly? Finally, I should extract his life force and consume it—as you know, that material is a rarely satisfying delicacy with us—taking care to leave just enough to maintain a bare existence. I should then put what is left of him aboard his ship, start it toward the Tellurian Galaxy, and send notice to the Patrol as to its exact course and velocity."
"But they would find him alive!" Eichmil stormed.
"Exactly. For the fullest vengeance they must, as I have said. Which is worse, think you?
To find a corpse, however dismembered, and to dispose of it with full military honors, or to find and to have to take care of for a full lifetime a something that has not enough intelligence even to swallow food placed in its mouth? Remember also that the organism will be such that they themselves will be obliged to amputate all four of the creature's limbs to save its life."
While thinking thus the Delgonian shot out a slender tentacle which, slithering across the floor, flipped over the tiny switch of a small mechanism in the center of the room. This entirely unexpected action almost stunned Worsel. He had been debating for moments whether or not to release the Gray Lensman's inhibitions. He would have done so instantly if he had had any warning of what the Delgonian was about to do. Now it was too late.
"I have set up a thought-screen about the room. I do not wish to share this tid-bit with any of my fellows, as there is not enough to divide," the monster explained, parenthetically. "Have you any suggestion as to how my plan may be improved?"
"No. You have shown that you understand torture better than we do."
"I should, since we Overlords have practiced it as a fine art since our beginnings as a race. Do you wish .the pleasure of breaking his bones now?"
"I do not break bones for pleasure. Since you do, you may carry out the procedure as outlined. All I want is the assurance that he will be an object-lesson and a warning to Star A Star of the Patrol."
"I can assure you definitely that it will be both. More, I will show you the results when I have finished my work. Or, if you like, I would be glad to have you stay and look on—you will find the spectacle interesting, entertaining, and highly instructive."
"No, thanks." Eichmil left the room and the Delgonian turned his attention to the bound and helpless Lensman.
It is best, perhaps, to draw a kindly veil over the events of the next two hours. Kinnison himself refuses positively to discuss it, except to say:
"I knew how to set up a nerve-block then, so I cant say that any of it really hurt me. I wouldn't let myself feel it. But all the time I knew what he was doing to me and it made me sick.
Did you ever watch a surgeon while he was taking out your appendix? Like that, only worse. It wasn't funny. I didn't like it a bit. Your readers wouldn't like it, either, so you'd better lay off that stuff entirely."
The mere fact that the Overlord had established coverage was of course sufficient to set up in the Lensman's mind a compulsion to knock it down. He had to break that screen! But there were no birds here; no spiders. Was there any life at all? There was. That torture room had been used fully and often; the muck in its drains was rich pasture for the Jarnevonian equivalent of worms.
Selecting a big one, long and thick, Kinnison tuned down to its mental level and probed.
This took time—much, much too much time. The creature did not have nearly the intelligence of a spider, but it did have a dim consciousness of being, and therefore an ego of a sort. Also, when Kinnison finally got in touch with that ego, it reacted very favorably to his suggestion of food.
"Hurry, worm! Snap it up!" and the little thing really did hurry. Scrambling, squirming, almost leaping along the floor it hurried, in a very grotesquerie of haste.
The Delgonian's leisurely preliminary work was done. The feast was ready. The worm reached the generator while the Overlord was warming up the tubes of the apparatus which was to rive away that which made the man Kinnison everything that he was.
Curling one end of its sinuous shape around a convenient anchorage, Kinnison's small proxy reached up and looped the other about the handle of the switch. Then, visions of choice viands suffusing its barely existent consciousness, it contracted convulsively. There was a snap and the mental barrier went out of existence.
At the tiny sound the Delgonian whirled—and stopped. Worsel's gigantic mentality had been beating ceaselessly against that screen ever since its erection, and in the instant of its fall Kinnison again became the Gray Lensman of old. And in the next instant both those prodigious minds—the two most powerful then known to Civilization—had hurled themselves against that of the Delgonian. Bitter though the ensuing struggle was, it was brief. Nothing short of an Arisian mind could have withstood the venomous fury, the Berserk power, of that concerted and synchronized attack.
Brain half burned out, the Overlord wilted; and, docility itself, he energized the communicator.
"Eichmil? The work is done. Thoroughly done and well. Do you wish to inspect it before I put what is left of the Lensman into his ship?"
"No." Eichmil, as a high executive, was accustomed to delegating far more important matters than that to competent underlings. "If you are satisfied, I am."
Weirdly enough to any casual observer, the Overlord's first act was to deposit the worm, carefully and tenderly, in a spot in which the muck was particularly rich and toothsome. Then, picking up the hideously mangled thing that was Kinnison's body, he encased it in its armor and, donning his own, wriggled boldly away with his burden.
"Clear the way for me, please," he requested of Eichmil. "I go to place this residuum within its ship and to return it to Star A Star."
"You will be able to find the speedster?"
"Certainly. He was to find it. Whatever he could have done I, working through the cells of his brain, can likewise do."
"Can you handle him alone, Kinnison?" Worsel asked presently. "Can you hold out to the speedster?"
"Yes to both. I can handle him—we whittled him down to a nub. I'll last—I’ll make myself last long enough."
"I go, then, lest they be observing with spy-rays."
To the black flyer, then, the completely subservient Delgonian carried his physically disabled master, and carefully he put him aboard. Worsel helped openly there, for he had screened the speedster against all forms of intrusion. The vessel took off and the Overlord wriggled blithely back toward the dome. He was full of the consciousness of a good job well done. He even felt the sensation of repletion concomitant with having consumed practically all of Kinnison's life force! "I hate to let him go!" Worsel's thought was a growl of baffled hatred.
"It gripes me to let him think that he did everything he set out to do, even though I know it had to be that way. I wanted—I still want—to tear him apart for what he has done to you, my friend."
"Thanks, old snake." Kinnison's thought came faintly. "Just temporary. He's living on borrowed time. He'll get his. You've got everything under control, haven't you?"
"On the green. Why?"
"Because I can't hold this nerve-block any longer . . . It hurts . . . I'm sick. I think I'm going to . . ."
He fainted. More, he plunged parsecs deep into the blackest depths of oblivion as outraged Nature took the toll she had been so long denied.
Worsel hurled a call to Earth, then turned to his maimed and horribly broken companion.
He-applied splints to the shattered limbs, he dressed and bandaged the hideous wounds and the raw sockets which had once held eyes, he ministered to the raging, burning thirst. Whenever Kinnison's mind wearied he held for him the nerve-block; the pricel
ess anodyne without which the Gray Lensman must have died from sheerest agony.
"Why not allow me, friend, to relieve you of all consciousness until help arrives?" the Velantian asked, pityingly.
"Can you do it without killing me?"
"If you so allow, yes. If you offer any resistance, I do not believe that any mind in the universe could."
"I won't resist. Come in," and Kinnison's suffering ended.
But kindly Worsel could do nothing about the fantastically atrocious growth which were transforming the Earthman's legs and arms into monstrosities out of nightmare.
He could only wait—wait for the skilled assistance which he knew must be so long in coming.
CHAPTER 21
AMPUTATION
When worsel's hard-driven call impinged upon the Port Admiral's Lens he dropped everything to take the report himself. Characteristically Worsel sent first and Haynes first recorded a complete statement of the successful mission to Jarnevon. Last came personalities, the tale of Kinnison's ordeal and his present plight
"Are they following you in force, or cant you tell?"
"Nothing detectable, and at the time of our departure there had been no suggestion of any such action," Worsel replied, carefully.
"Well come in force, anyway, and fast. Keep him alive until we meet you," Haynes urged, and disconnected.
It was an unheard-of occurrence for the Port Admiral to turn over his very busy and extremely important desk to a subordinate without notice and without giving him instructions, but Haynes did it now.
"Take charge of everything, Southworth!" he snapped. "I'm called away—emergency.
Kinnison found Boskone— got away—hurt—I'm going after him in the Dauntless. Taking the new flotilla with me. Indefinite time—probably a few weeks."
He strode toward the communicator desk. Hie Dauntless was, as. always, completely serviced and ready for any emergency. Where was that fleet of her sister-ships, on its shakedown cruise? He'd shake them down! They had with them the new hospital-ship, too—the only Red Cross ship in space that could leg it, parsec for parsec, with the Dauntless.
"Get me Navigations . . . Figure best point of rendezvous for Dauntless and Flotilla ZKD, both at full blast, en route to Lundmark's Nebula. Fifteen minutes departure. Figure approximate time of meeting with speedster, also at full blast, leaving that nebula hour nine fourteen today.
Correction! Cancel speedster meeting, we can compute that more accurately later. Advise adjutant Admiral Southworth will send order, through channels. Get me Base Hospital. . . Lacy, please . . . Kinnison's hurt, sawbones, bad. I'm going out after him. Coming along?"
"Yes. How about. . ."
"On the green. Flotilla ZKD, including your new two-hundred-million-credit hospital, is going along. Slip twelve, Dauntless, eleven and one-half minutes from now. Hipe!" and the Surgeon-Marshal "biped."
Two minutes before the scheduled take-off Base Navigations called the chief navigating officer of the Dauntless.
"Course to rendezvous with Flotilla ZKD latitude three fifty four dash thirty longitude nineteen dash forty two time approximately twelve dash seven dash twenty six place one dash three dash zero outside arbitrary galactic rim check and repeat" rattled from the speaker without pause or punctuation. Nevertheless the chief navigator got it, recorded it, checked and repeated it
"Figures only approximations because of lack of exact data on variations in density of medium and on distance necessarily lost in detouring stars" the speaker chattered on "suggest instructing your second navigator to communicate with navigating officers Flotilla ZKD at time twelve dash zero to correct courses to compensate unavoidably erroneous assumptions in computation Base Navigations off."
"Ill say he's off! 'Way off!" growled the Second. "What does he think I am—a complete nitwit? Pretty soon he'll be telling me two plus two equals four point zero."
The fifteen-second warning bell sounded. Every man came to the ready at his post, and precisely upon the designated second the superdreadnought blasted off. For four or five miles she rose inert upon her under-jets, sirens and flaring lights clearing her way. Then she went free, her needle prow slanted sharply upward, her full battery of main driving projectors burst into action, and to all intents and purposes she vanished.
The Earth fell away from her at an incredible rate, dwindling away into invisibility in less than a minute. In two minutes the sun itself was merely a bright star, in five it had merged indistinguishably into the sharply-defined, brilliantly white belt of the Milky Way.
Hour after hour, day after day the Dauntless hurtled through space, swinging almost imperceptibly this way and that to avoid the dense ether in the neighborhood of suns through which the designated course would have led; but never leaving far or for long the direct line, almost exactly in the equatorial plane of the galaxy, between Tellus and the place of meeting.
Behind her the Milky Way clotted, condensed, gathered itself together; before her and around her the stars began rapidly to thin out. Finally there were no more stars in front of her. She had reached the "arbitrary rim" of the galaxy, and the second navigator, then on duty, plugged into Communications.
"Please get me Flotilla ZKD, Flagship Navigations," he requested; and, as a clean-cut young face appeared upon his plate, "Hi, Harvey, old spacehound! Fancy meeting you out here!
It's a small Universe, ain't it? Say, did that crumb back there at Base tell you, too, to be sure and start checking course before you over-ran the rendezvous? If he was singling me out to make that pass at, I'm going to take steps, and not through channels, either."
"Yeah, he told me the same. I thought it was funny, too— an oiler's pimp would know enough to do that without being told. We figured maybe he was jittery on account of us meeting the admiral or something. What's burned out all the jets, Paul, to get the big brass hats 'way out here and all dithered up, and to pull us offa the cruise this way? Must be a hell of an important flit! You're computing the Old Man himself, you must know something. What's this speedster that we're going to escort, and why? Give us the dope!"
"I don't know anything, Harvey, honest, any more than you do. They didn't put out a thing. Well, we'd better be getting onto the course—'to compensate unavoidably erroneous assumptions in computation,'" he mimicked, caustically. "What do you read on my lambda?
Fourteen—three —point zero six—decrement. . ."
The conversation became a technical jargon; because of which, however, the courses of the flying spaceships changed subtly. The flottila swung around, through a small arc of a circle of prodigious radius, decreasing by a tenth its driving force. Up to it the Dauntless crept; through it and into the van. Then again in cone formation, but with fifty five units instead of fifty four, the flotilla screamed forward at maximum blast.
Well before the calculated time of meeting the speedster a Velantian Lensman who knew Worsel well put himself en rapport with him and sent a thought out far ahead of the flying squadron. It found its goal—Lensmen of that race, as has been brought out, have always been extraordinarily capable communicators—and once more the course was altered slightly. In due time Worsel reported that he could detect the fleet, and shortly thereafter:
"Worsel says to cut your drive to zero," the Velantian transmitted. "He's coming up . . .
He's close. . . He's going to go inert and start driving . . . We're to stay free until we see what his intrinsic velocity is . . . Watch for his flare."
It was a weird sensation, this of knowing that a speedster —quite a sizable chunk of boat, really—was almost in their midst, and yet having all their instruments, even the electros, register empty space . . .
There it was! The flare of the driving blast, a brilliant streamer of fierce white light, sprang into being and drifted rapidly away to one side of their course. When it had attained a safe distance:
"All ships of the flotilla except the Dauntless go inert," Haynes directed. Then, to his own pilot. "Back us off a bit, Henderson, and do th
e same," and the new flagship, too, went inert.
"How can I get onto the Pasteur the quickest, Haynes?" Lacy demanded.
"Take a gig," the Admiral grunted, "and tell the boys how much you want to take. Three G's is all we can use without warning and preparation."
There followed a curious and fascinating spectacle, for the hospital ship had an intrinsic velocity entirely different from that of either Kinnison's speedster or Lacy's powerful gig. The Pasteur, gravity pads cut to zero, was braking down by means of her under-jets at a conservative one point four gravities—hospital ships were not allowed to use the brutal accelerations employed as a matter of course by ships of war.
The gig was on her brakes at five gravities, all that Lacy wanted to take—but the speedster! Worsel had put his patient into a pressure-pack and had hung him on suspension, and was "balancing her down on her tail" at a full eleven gravities!
But even at that, the gig first matched the velocity of the hospital ship. The intrinsics of those two were at least of the same order of magnitude, since both had come from the same galaxy. Therefore Lacy boarded the Red Cross vessel and was escorted to the office of the chief nurse while Worsel was still blasting at eleven G's—fifty thousand miles distant then and getting farther away by the second—to kill the speedster's Lundmarkian intrinsic velocity. Nor could the tractors of the warships be of any assistance—the speedster's own vicious jets were fully capable of supplying more acceleration than even a pressure-packed human body could endure.
"How do you do, Doctor Lacy? Everything is ready." Clarrissa MacDougall met him, hand outstretched. Her saucy white cap was worn as perkily cocked as ever: perhaps even more so, now that it was emblazoned with the cross-surmounted wedge which is the insignia of sector chief nurse. Her flaming hair was as gorgeous, her smile as radiant, her bearing as confidently—Kinnison has said of her more than once that she is the only person he has ever known who can strut sitting down!—as calmly poised. "I'm very glad to see you, doctor. It's been quite a while . . ." Her voice died away, for the man was looking at her with an expression defying analysis.
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