Second Stage Lensmen

by Edward E Smith

  He did so, and as mind met mind there ensued a conversation whose barest essentials Kinnison could not even dimly grasp. For Cardynge, as has been said, could think in the universal language of mathematics: in the esoteric symbology which very few minds have ever been able even partially to master. The Lensman did not get it, nor any part of it; he knew only that in that to him completely meaningless gibberish the Arisian was describing to the physicist, exactly and fully, the distinguishing characteristics of a vast number of parallel and simultaneously co-existent spaces.

  If that was “rather” technical stuff, the awed Lensman wondered, what would really deep stuff be like? Not that he wanted to find out! No wonder these mathematical wizards were nuts—went off the beam—he’d be pure squirrel-food if he had half that stuff in his skull!

  But Sir Austin took to it like a cat lapping up cream or doing away with the canary. He brightened visibly; he swelled: and, when the Arisian had withdrawn from his mind, he preened himself and swaggered as he made meticulous adjustments of the delicate meters and controls which the technicians had already built.

  Preparations complete, Cardynge threw in the switches and everything belonging to the Dauntless was rushed aboard—everything, that is, that was demonstrably uncontaminated by any particle of Nth-space matter. The spacesuits that had been worn on the planet and everything else, no matter what it was, that could not show an unquestionable bill of health were dumped. The neutralizers, worn so long and cherished so assiduously, were taken off with profound sighs of relief. The vessel was briefly, tentatively inerted. QX—no faster-than-light meteorites tore volatizingly through her mass. So far, so good.

  Then the ship’s generators were energized and smoothly, effortlessly the big battle-wagon took the inter-dimensional plunge. There came the expected, but nevertheless almost unendurable acceleration; the imperceptible, unloggable flight through the drably featureless grayness; the horrible deceleration. Stars flashed beautifully upon the plates.

  “We made it!” Kinnison shouted in relief when he had assured himself that they had emerged into “real” space inside the Second Galaxy, only a few parsecs away from their point of departure. “By Klono’s golden grin, Sir Austin, you figured it to a red whisker! And when the Society meets, Tuesday week, won’t you just blast that ape Weingarde to a cinder? Hot dog!”

  “Having the basic data, the solution and the application followed of necessity—automatically—uniquely,” the scientist said, austerely. He was highly pleased with himself, he was tremendously flattered by the Lensman’s ebullient praise; but not for anything conceivable would he have so admitted.

  “Well, the first thing we’d better do is to find out what time of what day it is,” Kinnison went on, as he directed a beam to the Patrol headquarters upon Klovia.

  “Better ask ’em the year, too,” Henderson put in, pessimistically—he had missed Illona poignantly—but it wasn’t that bad.

  In fact, it was not bad at all; they had been gone only a little over a week of Thralian time. This finding pleased Kinnison immensely, as he had been more than half afraid that it had been a month. He could explain a week easily enough, but anything over two weeks would have been tough to handle.

  The supplies of the Thralian speedster were adjusted to fit the actual elapsed time, and Worsel and Kinnison engraved upon the minds of the five unconscious Guardsmen completely detailed—even though equally completely fictitious—memories of what they and Major Gannel had done since leaving Thrale. Their memories were not exactly alike, of course—each man had had different duties and experiences, and no two observers see precisely the same things even while watching the same event—but they were very convincing. Also, and fortunately, not even the slightest scars were left by the operations, for in these cases no memory chain had to be broken at any point.

  The Dauntless blasted off for Klovia; the speedster started for Thrale. Kinnison’s crew woke up—without having any inkling that they had ever been unconscious or that their knowledge of recent events did not jibe exactly with the actual occurrences—and resumed work.

  Immediately upon landing, Kinnison turned in a full official report of the mission, giving himself neither too much nor too little credit for what had been accomplished. They had found a Patrol sneak-boat near Line Eleven. They had chased it so many parsecs, upon such-and-such a course, before forcing it to engage. They had crippled it and boarded, bringing away material, described as follows, which had been turned over to Space Intelligence. And so on. It would hold, Kinnison knew; and it would be corroborated fully by the ultra-private reports which his men would make to their real bosses.

  The colonel made good; hence with due pomp and ceremony Major Traska Gannel was inducted into the Household. He was given one of the spy-ray-screened cigarette boxes in which Alcon’s most trusted officers were allowed to carry their private, secret insignia. Kinnison was glad to get that—he could carry his Lens with him now, if the thing was really ray-proof, instead of leaving it buried in a can outside the city limits.

  The Lensman went to his first meeting of the Advisory Cabinet with his mind set on a hair-trigger. He hadn’t been around Alcon very much, but he knew that the Tyrant had a stronger mind-shield than any untreated human being had any right to have. He’d have to play this mighty close to his chest—he didn’t want any zwilnik reading his mind, yet he didn’t want to create suspicion by revealing the fact that he, too, had an impenetrable block.

  As he approached the cabinet chamber he walked into a zone of compulsion, and practically bounced. He threw up his head; it was all he could do to keep his barriers down. It was general, he knew, not aimed specifically at him—to fight the hypnotist would be to call attention to himself as the only man able either to detect his work or to resist him; would give the whole show away. Therefore he let the thing take hold—with reservations—of his mind. He studied it. He analyzed it. Sight only, eh? QX—he’d let Alcon have superficial control, and he wouldn’t put too much faith in anything he saw.

  He entered the room; and, during the preliminaries, he reached out delicately, to touch imperceptibly mind after mind. All the ordinary officers were on the level; now he’d see about the prime minister. He’d heard a lot about this Fossten, but had never met him before—he’d see what the guy really had on the ball.

  He did not find out, however. He did not even touch his mind, for that worthy also had an automatic block; a block as effective as Alcon’s or as Kinnison’s own.

  Sight was unreliable; how about the sense of perception? He tried it, very daintily and gingerly, upon Alcon’s feet, legs, arms, and torso. Alcon was real, and present in the flesh. Then the premier—and he yanked his sense back, cancelled it, appalled. Perception was blocked, at exactly what his eyes told him was the fellow’s skin!

  That tore it—that busted it wide open. What in all nine prime iridescent hells did that mean? He didn’t know of anything except a thought-screen that could stop a sense of perception. He thought intensely. Alcon’s mind was bad enough. It had been treated, certainly; mind-shields like that didn’t grow naturally on human or near-human beings. Maybe the Eich, or the race of super-Eich to which Kandron belonged, could give mental treatments of that kind. Fossten, though, was worse.

  Alcon’s boss! Probably not a man at all. It was he, it was clear, and not Alcon, who was putting out the zone of compulsion. An Eich, maybe? No, he was a warm-blooded oxygen-breather; a frigid-blooded super-big-shot would make Alcon come to him. A monster, almost certainly, though; possibly of a type Kinnison had never seen before. Working by remote control? Possibly; but not necessarily. He could be—probably was—right here, inside the dummy or figment or whatever it was that everybody thought was the prime minister—that was it, for all the tea in China…

  “And what do you think, Major Gannel?” the prime minister asked, smoothly, insinuating his mind into Kinnison’s as he spoke.

  Kinnison, who knew that they had been discussing an invasion of the First Galaxy, h
esitated as though in thought. He was thinking, too, and ultra-carefully. If that ape was out to do a job of digging he’d never dig again—QX, he was just checking Gannel’s real thoughts against what he was going to say.

  “Since I am such a newcomer to this Council I do not feel as though my opinions should be given too much weight,” Kinnison said—and thought—slowly, with the exactly correct amount of obsequiousness. “However, I have a very decided opinion upon the matter. I believe very firmly that it would be better tactics to consolidate our position here in our own galaxy first.”

  “You advise, then, against any immediate action against Tellus?” the prime minister asked. “Why?”

  “I do, definitely. It seems to me that short-sighted, half-prepared measures, based upon careless haste, were the underlying causes of our recent reverses. Time is not an important factor—the Great Plan was worked out, not in terms of days or of years, but of centuries and millenia—and it seems to me self-evident that we should make ourselves impregnably secure, then expand slowly; seeing to it that we can hold, against everything that the Patrol can bring to bear, every planet that we take.”

  “Do you realize that you are criticizing the chiefs of staff who are in complete charge of military operations?” Alcon asked, venomously.

  “Fully,” the Lensman replied, coldly. “I ventured this opinion because I was asked specifically for it. The chiefs of staff failed, did they not? If they had succeeded, criticism would have been neither appropriate nor forthcoming. As it is, I do not believe that mere criticism of their conduct, abilities, and tactics is sufficient. They should be disciplined and demoted. New chiefs should be chosen; persons abler and more efficient than the present incumbents.”

  This was a bomb-shell. Dissentions waxed rife and raucous, but amidst the turmoil the Lensman received from the prime minister a flash of coldly congratulatory approval.

  And as Major Traska Gannel made his way back to his quarters two things were starkly plain:

  First, he would have to cut Alcon down and himself become the Tyrant of Thrale. It was unthinkable to attack or to destroy this planet. It had too many too promising leads—there were too many things that didn’t make sense—above all, there were the stupendous files of information which no one mind could scan in a lifetime.

  Second, if he wanted to keep on living he would have to keep his detectors shoved out to maximum—this prime minister was just about as touchy and just about as safe to play with as a hundred kilograms of dry nitrogen iodide!

  CHAPTER

  19

  Gannel, Tyrant of Thrale

  ADRECK, THE PALAINIAN Lensman, had not exaggerated in saying that he could not leave his job, that his work would come undone if he did.

  As has been intimated, Nadreck was cowardly and lazy and characterized otherwise by traits not usually regarded by humankind as being noble. He was, however, efficient; and he was now engaged in one of the most colossal tasks ever attempted by any one Lensman. Characteristically, he had told no one, not even Haynes or Kinnison, what it was that he was trying to do—he never talked about a job until after it was done, and his talking then was usually limited to a taped, Lensman’s-sealed, tersely factual report. He was “investigating” Onlo; that was all that anybody knew.

  Onlo was at that time perhaps the most heavily fortified planet in the universe. Compared to its massed might Jarnevon was weak; Tellus, except for its sunbeams and its other open-space safeguards, a joke. Onlo’s defenses were all, or nearly all, planetary; Kandron’s strategy, unlike Haynes’, was to let any attacking force get almost down to the ground and then blast it out of existence.

  Thus Onlo was in effect one tremendously armed, titanically powered fortress; not one cubic foot of its poisonous atmosphere was out of range of projectors theoretically capable of puncturing any defensive screen possible of mounting upon a mobile base.

  And Nadreck, the cowardly, the self-effacing, the apologetic, had tackled Onlo—alone!

  Using the technique which has already been described in connection with his highly successful raid upon the Eich stronghold of Lyrane VIII, he made his way through the Onlonian defensive screens and settled down comfortably near one of the gigantic domes. Then, as though time were of no consequence whatever, he proceeded to get acquainted with the personnel. He learned the identifying pattern of each entity and analyzed every one psychologically, mentally, intellectually, and emotionally. He tabulated his results upon the Palainian equivalent of index cards, then very carefully arranged the cards into groups.

  In the same fashion he visited and took the census of dome after dome. No one knew that he had been near, apparently he had done nothing; but in each dome as he left it there had been sown seeds of discord and of strife which, at a carefully calculated future time, would yield bitter fruit indeed.

  For every mind has some weakness, each intellect some trait of which it does not care to boast, each Achilles his heel. That is true even of Gray Lensmen—and the Onlonians, with their heredity and environment of Boskonianism, were in no sense material from which Lensmen could be made.

  Subtly, then, and coldly and callously, Nadreck worked upon the basest passions, the most ignoble traits of that far-from-noble race. Jealousy, suspicion, fear, greed, revenge—quality by quality he grouped them, and to each group he sent series after series of horridly stimulating thoughts.

  Jealousy, always rife, assumed fantastic proportions. Molehills became mountains overnight. A passing word became a studied insult. No one aired his grievances, however, for always and everywhere there was fear—fear of discipline, fear of reprisal, fear of betrayal, fear of the double cross. Each monster brooded, sullenly intense. Each became bitterly, gallingly, hatingly aware of an unwarranted and intolerable persecution. Not much of a spark would be necessary to touch off such explosive material as that!

  Nadreck left the headquarters dome until the last. In one sense it was the hardest of all; in another the easiest. It was hard in that the entities there had stronger minds than those of lower station; minds better disciplined, minds more accustomed to straight thinking and to logical reasoning. It was easy, however, in that those minds were practically all at war already—fighting either to tear down the one above or to resist the attacks of those below. Every mind in it already hated, or feared, or distrusted, or was suspicious of or jealous of some other.

  And while Nadreck labored thus deviously his wonders to perform, Kinnison went ahead in his much more conventional and straightforward fashion upon Thrale. His first care, of course, was to surround himself with the usual coterie of spies and courtiers.

  The selection of this group gave Kinnison many minutes of serious thought. It was natural enough that he had not been able to place any of his own men in the secret service of Alcon or the prime minister, since they both had minds of power. It would not be natural, however, for either of them not to be able to get an agent into his. For to be too good would be to invite a mental investigation which he simply could not as yet permit. He would have to play dumb enough so that his hitherto unsuspected powers of mind would remain unsuspected.

  He could, however, do much. Since he knew who the spies were, he was able quite frequently to have his more trusted henchmen discover evidence against them, branding them for what they were. Assassinations were then, of course, very much in order. And even a strong suspicion, even though it could not be documented, was reason enough for a duel.

  In this fashion, then, Kinnison built up his. entourage and kept it reasonably free from subversive elements; and, peculiarly enough, those elements never happened to learn anything which the Lensman did not want them to know.

  Building up a strong personal organization was now easy, for at last Kinnison was a real Boskonian big shot. As a major of the Household he was a power to be toadied to and fawned upon. As a personal adviser to Alcon the Tyrant he was one whose ill-will should be avoided at all costs. As a tactician who had so boldly and yet so altruistically put the skids under
the chiefs of staff, thereby becoming a favorite even of the dreaded prime minister, he was marked plainly as a climber to whose coat-tails it would be wise to cling. In short, Kinnison made good in a big—it might almost be said in a stupendous—way.

  With such powers at work the time of reckoning could not be delayed for long. Alcon knew that Gannel was working against him; learned very quickly, since he knew exactly the personnel of Kinnison’s “private” secret service and could read at will any of their minds, that Gannel held most of the trumps. The Tyrant had tried many times to read the major’s mind, but the latter, by some subterfuge or other, had always managed to elude his inquisitor without making an issue of the matter. Now, however, Alcon drove in a solid questing beam which, he was grimly determined, would produce results of one kind or another.

  It did: but, unfortunately for the Thralian, they were nothing he could use. For Kinnison, instead either of allowing the Tyrant to read his whole mind or of throwing up an all-too-revealing barricade, fell back upon the sheer native power of will which made him unique in his generation. He concentrated upon an all-inclusive negation; which in effect was a rather satisfactory block and which was entirely natural.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, Alcon,” he informed his superior, stiffly, “but whatever it is I do NOT like it. I think you’re trying to hypnotize me. If you are, know now that you can’t do it. No possible hypnotic force can overcome my definitely and positively opposed will.”