“Good Lord, what was that?” exclaimed Kinnison.
“The flat? That was a representative of Trenco’s highest life-form. It may develop a civilization in time—it is quite intelligent now.”
“But the difficulties!” protested the Tellurian. “Building cities, even homes…”
“Neither cities nor homes are necessary here, nor even desirable. Why build? Nothing is or can be fixed on this planet, and since one place is exactly like every other place, why wish to remain in any one particular spot? They do very well, in their own mobile way. Here, you will notice, comes the rain.”
The rain came—forty-four inches per hour of rain—and the incessant lightning. The dirt became first mud, then muddy water being driven in fiercely flying gouts and masses. Now, in the lee of the space-port, the outlandish denizens of Trenco were burrowing down into the mud—still eating each other and anything else that came within reach.
The water grew deeper and deeper, its upper surface now whipped into frantic sheets of spray. The structure was now afloat, and Kinnison saw with astonishment that, small as was the exposed surface and flatly curved, yet it was pulling through the water at frightful speed the wide-spreading steel sea-anchors which were holding its head to the gale.
“With no reference points how do you know where you’re going?” he demanded.
“We neither know nor care,” responded Tregonsee, with a mental shrug. “We are like the natives in that. Since one spot is like every other spot, why choose between them?”
“What a world—what a world! However, I am beginning to understand why thionite is so expensive,” and, overwhelmed by the ever-increasing fury raging outside, Kinnison sought his bunk.
Morning came, a reversal of the previous evening. The liquid evaporated, the mud dried, the flat-growing vegetation sprang up with shocking speed, the animals emerged and again ate and were eaten.
And eventually came Tregonsee’s announcement that it was almost noon, and that now, for half an hour or so, it would be calm enough for the space-ship to leave the port.
“You are sure that I would be of no help to you?” asked the Rigellian, half-pleadingly.
“Sorry, Tregonsee, but I’m afraid you wouldn’t fit into my matrix any better than I would into yours. But here’s the spool I told you about. If you will take it to your base on your next relief you will do civilization and the Patrol more good than you could by coming with us. Thanks for the Bergenholm, which is covered by credits, and thanks a lot for your help and courtesy, which can’t be covered. Goodbye,” and the now entirely space-worthy craft shot out through the port, through Trenco’s noxiously peculiar atmosphere, and into the vacuum of space.
CHAPTER
11
Grand Base
T SOME LITTLE DISTANCE FROM the galaxy, yet shackled to it by the flexible yet powerful bonds of gravitation, the small but comfortable planet upon which was Helmuth’s base circled about its parent sun. This planet had been chosen with the utmost care, and its location was a secret guarded jealously indeed. Scarcely one in a million of Boskone’s teeming myriads knew even that such a planet existed; and of the chosen few who had ever been asked to visit it, fewer still by far had been allowed to leave it.
Grand Base covered hundreds of square miles of that planet’s surface. It was equipped with all the arms and armament known to the military genius of the age; and in the exact center of that immense citadel there arose a glittering metallic dome.
The inside surface of that dome was lined with visiplates and communicators, hundreds of thousands of them. Miles of catwalks clung precariously to the inward-curving wall. Control panels and instrument boards covered the floor in banks and tiers, with only narrow runways between them. And what a personnel! There were Solarians, Crevenians, Sirians. There were Antareans, Vandemarians, Arcturians. There were representatives of scores, yes, hundreds of other solar systems of the galaxy.
But whatever their external form they were all breathers of oxygen and they were all nourished by warm, red blood. Also, they were all alike mentally. Each had won his present high place by trampling down those beneath him and by pulling down those above him in the branch to which he had first belonged of the “pirate” organization. Each was characterized by a total lack of scruple; by a coldly ruthless passion for power and place.
Kinnison had been eminently correct in his belief that Boskone’s was not a “pirate outfit” in any ordinary sense of the word, but even his ideas of its true nature fell far short indeed of the truth. It was a culture already inter-galactic in scope, but one built upon ideals diametrically opposed to those of the civilization represented by the Galactic Patrol.
It was a tyranny, an absolute monarchy, a despotism not even remotely approximated by the dictatorships of earlier ages. It had only one creed—“The end justifies the means.” Anything—literally anything at all—that produced the desired result was commendable; to fail was the only crime. The successful named their own rewards, those who failed were disciplined with an impersonal, rigid severity exactly proportional to the magnitude of their failures.
Therefore no weaklings dwelt within that fortress; and of all its cold, hard, ruthless crew far and away the coldest, hardest, and most ruthless was Helmuth, the “speaker for Boskone,” who sat at the great desk in the dome’s geometrical center. This individual was almost human in form and build, springing as he did from a planet closely approximating Earth in mass, atmosphere, and climate. Indeed, only his general, all-pervasive aura of blueness bore witness to the fact that he was not a native of Tellus.
His eyes were blue, his hair was blue, and even his skin was faintly blue beneath its coat of ultra-violet tan. His intensely dynamic personality fairly radiated blueness—not the gentle blue of an Earthly sky, not the sweetly innocuous blue of an Earthly flower, but the keenly merciless blue of a delta-ray, the cold and bitter blue of a Polar iceberg, the unyielding, inflexible blue of quenched and drawn tungsten-chromium steel.
Now a frown sat heavily upon his arrogantly patrician face as his eyes bored into the plate before him, from the base of which were issuing the words being spoken by the assistant pictured in its deep surface:
“…the fifth dove into the deepest ocean of Corvina II, in the depths of which all rays are useless. The ships which followed have not as yet reported, but they will do so as soon as they have completed their mission. No trace of the sixth has been found, and it is therefore assumed that it was destroyed…”
“Who assumes so?” demanded Helmuth, coldly. “There is no justification whatever for such an assumption. Go on!”
“The Lensman, if there is one and if he is alive, must therefore be in the fifth ship, which is about to be taken.”
“Your report is neither complete nor conclusive, and I do not at all approve of your intimation that the Lensman is simply a figment of my imagination. That it was a Lensman is the only possible logical conclusion—none other of the Patrol forces could have done what has been done. Postulating his reality, it seems to me that instead of being a bare possibility, it is highly probable that he has again escaped us, and again in one of our own vessels—this time in the one you have so conveniently assumed to have been destroyed. Have you searched the line of flight?”
“Yes, sir. Everything in space and every planet within reach of that line has been examined with care; except, of course, Velantia and Trenco.”
“Velantia is, for the time being, unimportant. The sixth ship left Velantia and did not go back there. Why Trenco?” and Helmuth pressed a series of buttons. “Ah, I see”… “To recapitulate, one ship, the one which in all probability is now carrying the Lensman, is still unaccounted for. Where is it? We know that it has not landed upon or near any Solarian planet, and measures are being taken to see to it that it does not land upon or near any planet of ‘Civilization.’ Now, I think, it has become necessary to comb that planet Trenco, inch by inch.”
“But sir, how…” began the anxious-eyed underling.
“When did it become necessary to draw diagrams and make blue-prints for you?” demanded Helmuth, harshly. “We have ships manned by Ordoviks and other races having the sense of perception. Find out where they are and get them there at full blast!” and he punched a button, to replace the image upon his plate by another.
“It has now become of paramount importance that we complete our knowledge of the Lens of the Patrol,” he began, without salutation or preamble. “Have you traced its origin yet?”
“I believe so, but I do not certainly know. It has proved to be a task of such difficulty…”
“If it had been an easy one I would not have made a special assignment of it to you. Go on!”
“Everything seems to point to the planet Arisia, of which I can learn nothing definite whatever except…”
“Just a moment!” Helmuth punched more buttons and listened. “Unexplored…unknown…shunned by all spacemen…
“Superstition, eh?” he snapped. “Another of those haunted planets?”
“Something more than ordinary spacemen’s superstition, sir, but just what I have not been able to discover. By combing my department I managed to make up a crew of those who either were not afraid of it or had never heard of it. That crew is now en route there.”
“Whom have we in that sector of space? I find it desirable to check your findings.”
The department head reeled off a list of names and numbers, which Helmuth considered at length.
“Gildersleeve. the Valerian,” he decided. “He is a good man, coming along fast. Aside from a firm belief in his own peculiar gods, he has shown no signs of weakness. You considered him?”
“Certainly.” The henchman, as cold as his icy chief, knew that explanations would not satisfy Helmuth, therefore be offered none. “He is raiding at the moment, but I will put you on him if you like.”
“Do so,” and upon Helmuth’s plate there appeared a deep-space scene of rapine and pillage.
The convoying Patrol cruiser had already been blasted out of existence; only a few idly drifting masses of debris remained to show that it had ever been. Needle-beams were at work, and soon the merchantman hung inert and helpless. The pirates, scorning to use the emergency inlet port, simply blasted away the entire entrance panel. Then they boarded, an armored swarm; flaming DeLameters spreading death and destruction before them.
The sailors, outnumbered as they were and over-armed, fought heroically—but uselessly. In groups and singly they fell; those who were not already dead being callously tossed out into space in slitted space-suits and with smashed drivers. Only the younger women—the stewardesses, the nurses, the one or two such among the few passengers—were taken as booty; all others shared the fate of the crew.
Then, the ship plundered from nose to after-jets and every article or thing of value trans-shipped, the raider drew off, bathed in the blue-white glare of the bombs that were destroying every trace of the merchant-ship’s existence. Then and only then did Helmuth reveal himself to Gildersleeve.
“A good, clean job of work, Captain,” he commended. “Now, how would you like to visit Arisia for me—for me, direct?”
A pallor overspread the normally ruddy face of the Valerian and an uncontrollable tremor shook his giant frame. But as he considered the implications resident in Helmuth’s concluding phrase he licked his lips and spoke.
“I hate to say no, sir, if you order me to and if there was any way of making my crew do it. But we were near there once, sir, and we… I…they…it…well, sir, I saw things, sir, and I was…was warned, sir!”
“Saw what? And was warned of what?”
“I can’t describe what I saw, sir. I can’t even think of it in thoughts that mean anything. As for the warning, though, it was very definite, sir. I was told very plainly that if I ever go near that planet again I will die a worse death than any I have dealt out to any other living being.”
“But you will go there again?”
“I tell you, sir, that the crew will not do it,” Gildersleeve replied, doggedly. “Even if I were anxious to go, every man aboard will mutiny if I try it.”
“Call them in right now and tell them that you have been ordered to Arisia.”
The captain did so, but he had scarcely started to talk when he was stopped in no uncertain fashion by his first officer—also of course a Valerian—who pulled his DeLameter and spoke savagely:
“Cut it, Gill We are not going to Arisia. I was with you before, you know. Set course within five points of that accursed planet and I blast you where you sit!”
“Helmuth, speaking for Boskone!” ripped from the headquarters speaker. “This is rankest mutiny. You know the penalty, do you not?”
“Certainly I do—what of it?” The first officer snapped back.
“Suppose that I tell you to go to Arisia?” Helmuth’s voice was now soft and silky, but instinct with deadly menace.
“In that case I tell you to go to the ninth hell—or to Arisia, a million times worse!”
“What? You dare speak thus to me?” demanded the arch-pirate, sheer amazement at the fellow’s audacity blanketing his rising anger.
“I so dare,” declared the rebel, brazen defiance and unalterable resolve in every line of his hard body and in every lineament of his hard face. “All you can do is kill us. You can order out enough ships to blast us out of the ether, but that’s all you can do. That would be only death and we’d have the fun of taking a lot of the boys along with us. If we go to Arisia, though, it would be different—very, very different. No, Helmuth, and I throw this in your teeth: if I ever go near Arisia again it will be in a ship in which you, Helmuth, in person, are sitting at the controls. If you think this is an empty dare and don’t like it, don’t take it. Send on your dogs!”
“That will do! Report yourselves to Base D under…” Then Helmuth’s flare of anger passed and his cold reason took charge. Here was something utterly unprecedented; an entire crew of the hardest-bitten marauders in space offering open and barefaced mutiny—no, not mutiny, but actual rebellion—to him, Helmuth, in his very person. And not a typical, skulking, carefully planned uprising, but the immovably brazen desperation of men making an ultimately last-ditch stand. Truly, it must be a powerful superstition indeed, to make that crew of hard-boiled hellions choose certain death rather than face again the imaginary—they must be imaginary—perils of a planet unknown to and unexplored by Boskone’s planetographers. But they were, after all, ordinary space-men, of little mental force and of small real ability. Even so, it was clearly indicated that in this case precipitate action was to be avoided. Therefore he went on calmly and almost without a break. “Cancel all this that has been spoken and that has taken place. Continue with your original orders pending further investigation,” and switched his plate back to the department head.
“I have checked your conclusions and have found them correct,” he announced, as though nothing at all out of the way had transpired. “You did well in sending a ship to investigate. No matter where I am or what I am doing, notify me instantly at the first sign of irregularity in the behavior of any member of that ship’s personnel.”
Nor was that call long in coming. The carefully-selected crew—selected for complete lack of knowledge of the dread planet which was their objective—sailed along in blissful ignorance, both of the real meaning of their mission and of what was to be its ghastly end. Soon after Helmuth’s unsatisfactory interview with Gildersleeve and his mate, the luckless exploring vessel reached the barrier which the Arisians had set around their system and through which no uninvited stranger was allowed to pass.
The free-flying ship struck that frail barrier and stopped. In the instant of contact a wave of mental force flooded the mind of the captain, who, gibbering with sheer, stark, panic terror, flashed his vessel away from that horror impregnated wall and hurled call after frantic call along his beam, back to headquarters. His first call, in the instant of reception, was relayed to Helmuth at his central desk.
“Steady, man; report intelligently!” that worthy snapped, and his eyes, large now upon the cowering captain’s plate, bored steadily, hypnotically into those of the expedition’s leader. “Pull yourself together and tell me exactly what happened. Everything!”
“Well, sir, when we stuck something—a screen of some sort—and stopped, something came aboard. It was…oh…ay-ay-a-e!” his voice rose to a shriek, but under Helmuth’s dominating glare he subsided quickly and went on. “A monster, sir, if there ever was one. A fire-breathing demon, sir, with teeth and claws and cruelly barbed tail. He spoke to me in my own Crevenian language. He said…”
“Never mind what he said. I did not hear it, but I can guess what it was. He threatened you with death in some horrible fashion, did he not?” and the coldly ironical tones did more to restore the shaking man’s equilibrium than reams of remonstrance could have done.
“Well, yes, that was about the size of it, sir,” he admitted.
“And does that sound reasonable to you, the commander of a first class battleship of Boskone’s Fleet?” sneered Helmuth.
“Well, sir, put on that way, it does seem a bit far-fetched,” the captain replied, sheepishly.
“It is far-fetched.” The director, in the safety of his dome, could afford to be positive. “We do not know exactly what caused that hallucination, apparition, or whatever it was—you were the only one who could see it, apparently, it certainly was not visible on our master-plates. It was probably some form of suggestion or hypnotism; and you know as well as we do that any suggestion can be thrown off by a definitely opposed will. But you did not oppose it, did you?”
“No, sir, I didn’t have time.”
“Nor did you have your screens out, nor automatic recorders on the trip. Not much of anything, in fact… I think that you had better report back here, at full blast.”
Galactic Patrol Page 13
