Second Stage Lensmen

by Edward E Smith

  Thereupon the Dauntless faced about and retraced her path toward the now highly important system of Lyrane. In their previous approaches the Patrolmen had observed the usual precautions to avoid revealing themselves to any zwilnik vessel which might have been on the prowl. Those precautions were now intensified to the limit, since they knew that Lyrane VIII was the site of a base manned by the Eich themselves.

  As the big cruiser crept toward her goal, nullifiers full out and every instrument of detection and reception as attentively out-stretched as the whiskers of a tomcat slinking along a black alley at midnight, the Lensmen again pooled their brains in conference.

  The Eich. This was going to be NO pushover. Even the approach would have to be figured to a hair; because, since the Boskonians had decided that it would be poor strategy to screen in their whole solar system, it was a cold certainty that they would have their own planets guarded and protected by every device which their inhuman ingenuity could devise. The Dauntless would have to stop just outside the range of electro-magnetic detection, for the Boskonians would certainly have a five hundred percent overlap. Their nullifiers would hash up the electros somewhat, but there was no use in taking too many chances. Previously, on right-line courses to and from Lyrane II, that had not mattered, for two reasons—not only was the distance extreme for accurate electro work, but also it would have been assumed that their ship was a zwilnik. Laying a course for Eight, though, would be something else entirely. A zwilnik would take the tube, and they would not, even if they had known where it was.

  That left the visuals. The cruiser was a mighty small target at interplanetary distances; but there were such things as electronic telescopes, and the occultation of even a single star might prove disastrous. Kinnison called the chief pilot.

  “Stars must be thin in certain regions of the sky out here, Hen. Suppose you can pick us out a line of approach along which we will occult no stars and no bright nebulae?”

  “I should think so, Kim—just a sec; I’ll see… Yes, easily. There’s a lot of black background, especially to the nadir,” and the conference was resumed.

  They’d have to go through the screens of electros in Kinnison’s inherently undetectable black speedster. QX, but she was nobody’s fighter—she didn’t have a beam hot enough to light a match. And besides, there were the thought-screens and the highly-probable other stuff about which the Lensmen could know nothing.

  Kinnison quite definitely did not relish the prospect. He remembered all too vividly what had happened when he had scouted the Eich’s base on Jarnevon; when it was only through Worsel’s aid that he had barely—just barely—escaped with his life. And Jarnevon’s defenders had probably been exerting only routine precautions, whereas these fellows were undoubtedly cocked and primed for THE Lensman. He would go in, of course, but he’d probably come out feet first—he didn’t know any more about their defenses than he had known before, and that was nothing, flat…

  “Excuse the interruption, please,” Nadreck’s thought apologized, “but it would seem to appear more desirable, would it not, to induce the one of them possessing the most information to come out to us?”

  “Huh?” Kinnison demanded. “It would, of course—but how in all your purple hells do you figure on swinging that load?”

  “I am, as you know, a person of small ability,” Nadreck replied in his usual circuitous fashion. “Also, I am of almost negligible mass and strength. Of what is known as bravery I have no trace—in fact, I have pondered long over that to me incomprehensible quality and have decided that it has no place in my scheme of existence. I have found it much more efficient to perform the necessary tasks in the easiest and safest possible manner, which is usually by means of stealth, deceit, indirection, and other cowardly artifices.”

  “Any of those, or all of them, would be QX with me,” Kinnison assured him. “Anything goes, with gusto and glee, as far as the Eich are concerned. What I don’t see is how we can put it across.”

  “Thought-screens interfered so seriously with my methods of procedure,” the Palainian explained, “that I was forced to develop a means of puncturing them without upsetting their generators. The device is not generally known, you understand.” Kinnison understood. So did the other Lensmen.

  “Might I suggest that the four of you put on heated armor and come with me to my vessel in the hold? It will take some little time to transfer my apparatus and equipment to your speedster.”

  “Is it non-ferrous—undetectable?” Kinnison asked.

  “Of course,” Nadreck replied in surprise. “I work, as I told you, by stealth. My vessel is, except for certain differences necessitated by racial considerations, a duplicate of your own.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Kinnison wanted to know. “Why bother to move the gadget? Why not use your speedster?”

  “Because I was not asked. We should not bother. The only reason for using your vessel is so that you will not suffer the discomfort of wearing armor,” Nadreck replied, categorically.

  “Cancel it, then,” Kinnison directed. “You’ve been wearing armor all the time you were with us—turn about for a while will be QX. Better that way, anyway, as this is very definitely your party, not ours. Not?”

  “As you say, and with your permission,” Nadreck agreed. “Also it may very well be that you will be able to suggest improvements in my device whereby its efficiency may be increased.”

  “I doubt it” The Tellurian’s already great respect for this retiring, soft-spoken, “cowardly” Lensman was increasing constantly. “But we would like to study it, and perhaps copy it, if you so allow.”

  “Gladly,” and so it was arranged.

  The Dauntless crept along a black-background pathway and stopped. Nadreck, Worsel, and Kinnison—three were enough and neither Clarrissa nor Tregonsee insisted upon going—boarded the Palainian speedster.

  Away from the mother-ship it sped upon muffled jets, and through the far-flung, heavily overlapped electro-magnetic detector zones. Through the outer thought-screens. Then, ultra-slowly, as space-speeds go, the speedster moved forward, feeling for whatever other blocking screens there might be.

  All three of those Lensmen were in fact detectors themselves—their Arisian-imparted special senses made ethereal, even sub-ethereal, vibrations actually visible or tangible—but they did not depend only upon their bodily senses. That speedster carried instruments unknown to space-pilotry, and the Lensmen used them unremittingly. When they came to a screen they opened it, so insidiously that its generating mechanisms gave no alarms. Even a meteorite screen, which was supposed to forbid the passage of any material object, yielded without protest to Nadreck’s subtle manipulation.

  Slowly, furtively, a perfectly absorptive black body sinking through blackness so intense as to be almost palpable, the Palainian speedster settled downward toward the Boskonian fortress of Lyrane VIII.

  CHAPTER

  14

  Nadreck at Work

  HIS IS PERHAPS AS GOOD A place as any to glance in passing at the fashion in which the planet Lonabar was brought under the aegis of Civilization. No attempt will or can be made to describe it in any detail, since any adequate treatment of it would fill a volume—indeed, many volumes have already been written concerning various phases of the matter—and since it is not strictly germane to the subject in hand. However, some knowledge of the modus operandi in such cases is highly desirable for the full understanding of this history, in view of the vast number of planets which Coordinator Kinnison and his associates did have to civilize before the Second Galaxy was made secure.

  Scarcely had Cartiff-Kinnison moved out than the Patrol moved in. If Lonabar had been heavily fortified, a fleet of appropriate size and power would have cleared the way. As it was, the fleet which landed was one of transports, not of battleships, and all the fighting from then on was purely defensive.

  Propagandists took the lead; psychologists; Lensmen skilled not only in languages but also in every art of human relation
ships. The case of Civilization was stated plainly and repeatedly, the errors and the fallacies of autocracy were pointed out. A nucleus of government was formed; not of Civilization’s imports, but of solid Lonabarian citizens who had passed the Lensmen’s tests of ability and trustworthiness.

  Under this local government a pseudo-democracy began haltingly to function. At first its progress was painfully slow; but as more and more of the citizens perceived what the Patrol actually was doing, it grew apace. Not only did the invaders allow—yes, foster—free speech and statutory liberty; they suppressed ruthlessly any person or any faction seeking to build a new dictatorship, whatever its nature, upon the ruins of the old. That news traveled fast; and laboring always and mightily upon Civilization’s side were the always-present, however deeply-buried, urges of all intelligent entities toward self-expression.

  There was opposition, of course. Practically all of those who had waxed fat upon the old order were very strongly in favor of its continuance. There were the hordes of the down-trodden who had so long and so dumbly endured oppression that they could not understand anything else; in whom the above-mentioned urges had been beaten and tortured almost out of existence. They themselves were not opposed to Civilization—for them it meant at worst only a change of masters—but those who sought by the same old wiles to re-enslave them were foes indeed.

  Menjo Bleeko’s sycophants and retainers were told to work or starve. The fat hogs could support the new order—or else. The thugs and those who tried to prey upon and exploit the dumb masses were arrested and examined. Some were cured, some were banished, some were shot.

  Little could be done, however, about the dumb themselves, for in them the spark was feeble indeed. The new government nursed that spark along, the while ruling them as definitely, although not as harshly, as had the old; the Lensmen backing the struggling young Civilization knowing full well that in the children or in the children’s children of these unfortunates the spark would flame up into a great white light.

  It is seen that this government was not, and could not for many years become, a true democracy. It was in fact a benevolent semi-autocracy; autonomous in a sense, yet controlled by the Galactic Council through its representatives, the Lensmen. It was, however, so infinitely more liberal than anything theretofore known by the Lonabarians as to be a political revelation, and since corruption, that cosmos-wide curse of democracy, was not allowed a first finger-hold, the principles of real democracy and of Civilization took deeper root year by year.

  * * * * *

  To get back into the beam of narrative, Nadreck’s blackly undetectable speedster settled to ground far from the Boskonians’ central dome; well beyond the far-flung screens. The Lensmen knew that no life existed outside that dome and they knew that no possible sense of perception could pierce those defenses. They did not know, however, what other resources of detection, of offense, or of defense the foe might possess; hence the greatest possible distance at which they could work efficiently was the best distance.

  “I realize that it is useless to caution any active mind not to think at all,” Nadreck remarked as he began to manipulate various and sundry controls, “but you already know from the nature of our problem that any extraneous thought will wreak untold harm. For that reason I beg of you to keep your thought-screens up at all times, no matter what happens. It is, however, imperative that you be kept informed, since I may require aid or advice at any moment. To that end I ask you to hold these electrodes, which are connected to a receptor. Do not hesitate to speak freely to each other or to me; but please use only a spoken language, as I am averse to Lensed thoughts at this juncture. Are we agreed? Are we ready?”

  They were agreed and ready. Nadreck actuated his peculiar drill—a tube of force somewhat analogous to a Q-type helix except in that it operated within the frequency-range of thought—and began to increase, by almost infinitesimal increments, its power. Nothing, apparently, happened; but finally the Palainian’s instruments registered the fact that it was through.

  “This is none too safe, friends,” the Palainian announced from one part of his multi-compartmented brain, without distracting any part of his attention from the incredibly delicate operation he was performing. “May I suggest, Kinnison, in my cowardly way, that you place yourself at the controls and be ready to take us away from this planet at speed and without notice?”

  “I’ll say you may!” and the Tellurian complied, with alacrity. “Right now, cowardice is indicated—copiously!”

  But through course after course of screen the hollow drill gnawed its cautious way without giving alarm; until at length there began to come through the interloping tunnel a vague impression of foreign thought. Nadreck stopped the helix, then advanced it by tiny steps until the thoughts came in coldly clear—the thoughts of the Eich going about their routine businesses. In the safety of their impregnably shielded dome the proudly self-confident monsters did not wear their personal thought-screens; which, for Civilization’s sake, was just as well.

  It had been decided previously that the mind they wanted would be that of a psychologist; hence the thought sent out by the Palainian was one which would appeal only to such a mind; in fact, one practically imperceptible to any other. It was extremely faint; wavering uncertainly upon the very threshold of perception. It was so vague, so formless, so inchoate that it required Kinnison’s intensest concentration even to recognize it as a thought. Indeed, so starkly unhuman was Nadreck’s mind and that of his proposed quarry that it was all the Tellurian Lensman could do to so recognize it. It dealt, fragmentarily and in the merest glimmerings, with the nature and the mechanisms of the First Cause; with the fundamental ego, its raison d’etre, its causation, its motivation, its differentiation; with the stupendously awful concepts of the Prime Origin of all things ever to be.

  Unhurried, monstrously patient, Nadreck neither raised the power of the thought nor hastened its slow tempo. Stolidly, for minute after long minute he held it, spraying it throughout the vast dome as mist is sprayed from an atomizer nozzle. And finally he got a bite. A mind seized upon that wistful, homeless, incipient thought; took it for its own. It strengthened it, enlarged upon it, built it up. And Nadreck followed it.

  He did not force it; he did nothing whatever to cause any suspicion that the thought was or ever had been his. But as the mind of the Eich busied itself with that thought he all unknowingly let down the bars to Nadreck’s invasion.

  Then, perfectly in tune, the Palainian subtly insinuated into the mind of the Eich the mildly disturbing idea that he had forgotten something, or had neglected to do some trifling thing. This was the first really critical instant, for Nadreck had no idea whatever of what his victim’s duties were or what he could have left undone. It had to be something which would take him out of the dome and toward the Patrolman’s concealed speedster, but what it was, the Eich would have to develop for himself; Nadreck could not dare to attempt even a partial control at this stage and at this distance.

  Kinnison clenched his teeth and held his breath, his big hands clutching fiercely the pilot’s bars; Worsel unheedingly coiled his supple body into an ever smaller, ever harder and more compact bale.

  “Ah!” Kinnison exhaled explosively. “It worked!” The psychologist, at Nadreck’s impalpable suggestion, had finally thought of the thing. It was a thought-screen generator which had been giving a little trouble and which really should have been checked before this.

  Calmly, with the mild self-satisfaction which comes of having successfully recalled to mind a highly elusive thought, the Eich opened one of the dome’s unforceable doors and made his unconcerned way directly toward the waiting Lensmen; and as he approached Nadreck stepped up by logarithmic increments the power of his hold.

  “Get ready, please, to cut your screens and to synchronize with me in case anything slips and he tries to break away,” Nadreck cautioned; but nothing slipped.

  The Eich came up unseeing to the speedster’s side and stopped. The drill di
sappeared. A thought-screen encompassed the group narrowly. Kinnison and Worsel released their screens and also tuned in to the creature’s mind. And Kinnison swore briefly, for what they found was meager enough.

  He knew a great deal concerning the zwilnik doings of the First Galaxy; but so did the Lensmen; they were not interested in them. Neither were they interested, at the moment, in the files or in the records. Regarding the higher-ups, he knew of two, and only two, personalities. By means of an inter-galactic communicator he received orders from, and reported to, a clearly-defined, somewhat Eich-like entity known to him as Kandron; and vaguely, from occasional stray and unintentional thoughts of this Kandron, he had visualized as being somewhere in the background a human being named Alcon. He supposed that the planets upon which these persons lived were located in the Second Galaxy, but he was not certain, even of that. He had never seen either of them; he was pretty sure that none of his group ever would be allowed to see them. He had no means of tracing them and no desire whatsoever to do so. The only fact he really knew was that at irregular intervals Kandron got into communication with this base of the Eich.

  That was all. Kinnison and Worsel let go and Nadreck, with a minute attention to detail which would be wearisome here, jockeyed the unsuspecting monster back into the dome. The native knew full where he had been, and why. He had inspected the generator and found it in good order. Every second of elapsed time was accounted for exactly. He had not the slightest inkling that anything out of the ordinary had happened to him or anywhere around him.

  As carefully as the speedster had approached the planet, she departed from it. She rejoined the Dauntless, in whose control room Kinnison lined out a solid communicator beam to the Z9M9Z and to Port Admiral Haynes. He reported crisply, rapidly, everything that had transpired.