Second Stage Lensmen Read online

  Kinnison intercepted a message from Helmuth, who “spoke for Boskone”, and traced his communicator beam, thus getting his first line on Boskone’s Grand Base. The pirates attacked Velantia, and six of their warships were captured. In these six ships, manned by Velantian crews, the Patrolmen again set out for Earth and Prime Base.

  Then Kinnison’s Bergenholm, the generator of the force which makes inertialess flight possible, broke down, so that he had to land upon Trenco for repairs. Trenco, the tempestuous, billiard-ball-smooth planet where it rains forty seven feet and five inches every night and where the wind blows at over eight hundred miles per hour—Trenco, the source of thionite, the deadliest of all deadly drugs—Trenco, whose weirdly-charged ether and atmosphere so distort beams and vision that it can be policed only by such beings as the Rigellians, who possess the sense of perception instead of those of sight and hearing!

  Lensman Tregonsee, of Rigel Four, then in command of the Patrol’s wandering base on Trenco, supplied Kinnison with a new Bergenholm and he again set out for Tellus.

  Meanwhile Helmuth had decided that some one particular Lensman must be the cause of all his set-backs; and that the Lens, a complete enigma to all Boskonians, was in some way connected with Arisia. That planet had always been dreaded and shunned by all spacemen. No Boskonian who had even approached that planet could be compelled, even by the certainty of death, to go near it again.

  Thinking himself secure by virtue of thought-screens given him by a being from a higher-echelon planet named Ploor, Helmuth went alone to Arisia, determined to learn all about the Lens. There he was punished to the verge of insanity, but was permitted to return to his Grand Base alive and sane: “Not for your own good, but for the good of that struggling young Civilization which you oppose.”

  Kinnison reached Prime Base with the all-important data. By building super-powerful battleships, called “maulers”, the Patrol gained a temporary advantage over Boskonia, but a stalemate soon ensued. Kinnison developed a plan of action whereby he hoped to locate Helmuth’s Grand Base, and asked Port Admiral Haynes for permission to follow it. In lieu of that, however, Haynes told him that he had been given his Release; that he was an Unattached Lensman—a “Gray” Lensman, popularly so-called, from the color of the plain leather uniforms they wear. Thus he earned the highest honor possible for the Galactic Patrol to give, for the Gray Lensman works under no supervision or direction whatever. He is responsible to no one; to nothing save his own conscience. He is no longer a cog in the immense machine of the Galactic Patrol: wherever he may go he is the Patrol!

  In quest of a second line to Grand Base, Kinnison scouted a pirate stronghold on Aldebaran I. Its personnel, however, were not even near-human, but were Wheelmen, possessed of the sense of perception; hence Kinnison was discovered before he could accomplish anything and was very seriously wounded. He managed to get back to his speedster and to send a thought to Port Admiral Haynes, who rushed ships to his aid. In Base Hospital Surgeon-Marshal Lacy put him back together; and, during a long and quarrelsome convalescence, Nurse Clarrissa MacDougall held him together. And Lacy and Haynes connived to promote a romance between nurse and Lensman.

  As soon as he could leave the hospital he went to Arisia in the hope that he might he given advanced training; something which had never before been attempted. Much to his surprise he learned that he had been expected to return for exactly such training. Getting it almost killed him, but he emerged from the ordeal vastly stronger of mind than any human being had ever been before; and possessed of a new sense as well—the sense of perception, a sense somewhat analogous to sight, but of much greater power, depth, and scope, and not dependent on light.

  After trying out his new mental equipment by solving a murder mystery on Radelix, he went to Boyssia II, where he succeeded in entering an enemy base. He took over the mind of a communications officer and waited for a chance to get his second, all-important line to Grand Base. An enemy ship captured a hospital ship of the Patrol and brought it in to Boyssia. Nurse MacDougall, head nurse of the ship, working under Kinnison’s instructions, stirred up trouble which soon became mutiny. Helmuth took a hand from Grand Base, thus enabling the Lensman to get his second line.

  The hospital ship, undetectable by virtue of Kinnison’s nullifier, escaped from Boyssia II and headed for Earth at full blast. Kinnison, convinced that Helmuth was really Boskone himself, found that the intersection of the two lines, and therefore the pirates’ Grand Base, lay in Star Cluster AC 257-4736, well outside the galaxy. Pausing only long enough to destroy the Wheelmen of Aldebaran I, he set out to investigate Helmuth’s headquarters. He found a stronghold impregnable to any attack the Patrol could throw against it; manned by thought-screened personnel. His sense of perception was suddenly cut off—the pirates had erected a thought-screen around their whole planet. He then returned to Prime Base, deciding en route that boring from within was the only possible way to take that stupendous fortress.

  In consultation with the Port Admiral the zero hour was set, at which time the massed Grand Fleet of the Patrol was to attack Grand Base with every projector it could bring to bear.

  Pursuant to his plan, Kinnison again visited Trenco, where the Patrol forces extracted for him some fifty kilograms of thionite; the noxious drug which, in microgram inhalations, makes the addict experience all the sensations of doing whatever it is that he wishes most ardently to do. The larger the dose, the more intense and exquisite the sensations—resulting, sooner or later, in a super-ecstatic death.

  Thence to Helmuth’s planet; where, working through the unshielded brain of a dog, he let himself into the central dome. Here, just before the zero minute, he released his thionite into the air-stream, thus wiping out all the pirates except Helmuth himself, who, in his ultra-shielded inner bomb-proof, could not be affected.

  The Patrol attacked precisely on schedule, but Helmuth would not leave his retreat, even to try to save his base. Therefore Kinnison had to go in after him. Poised in the air of the inner dome there was an enigmatic, sparkling ball of force which the Lensman could not understand, and of which he was therefore very suspicious.

  But the storming of that quadruply-defended inner stronghold was exactly the task for which Kinnison’s new and ultra-cumbersome armor had been designed; so in he went. He killed Helmuth in armor-to-armor combat.3

  Kinnison was pretty sure that that force-ball was keyed to some particular pattern, and suspected—correctly—that it was in part an inter-galactic communicator. Hence he did not think into it until he was in the flagship with Port Admiral Haynes; until all kinds of recorders and analyzers had been set up. Then he did so—and Grand Base was blasted out of existence by duodec bombs placed by the pirates themselves and triggered by the force-ball. The detectors showed a hard, tight communications line running straight out toward the Second Galaxy. Helmuth was not Boskone.

  Scouting the Second Galaxy in his super-powerful battleship Dauntless, Kinnison met and defeated a squadron of Boskonian war-vessels. He landed upon the planet Medon, whose people had been fighting a losing war against Boskone. The Medonians, electrical wizards who had already installed inertia-neutralizers and a space-drive, moved their world across inter-galactic space to our First Galaxy.

  With the cessation of military activity, however, the illicit traffic in habit-forming drugs had increased tremendously, and Kinnison, deducing that Boskone was back of the drug syndicate, decided that the best way to find the real leader of the enemy was to work upward through the drug ring.

  Disguised as a dock walloper, he frequented the saloon of a drug baron, and helped to raid it; but, although he secured much information, his disguise was penetrated.

  He called a Conference of Scientists to devise means of building a gigantic bomb of negative matter. Then, impersonating a Tellurian secret-service agent who lent himself to the deception, he tried to investigate the stronghold of Prellin of Bronseca, one of Boskone’s regional directors. This disguise also failed and he barely man
aged to escape.

  Ordinary disguises having proved useless, Kinnison became Wild Bill Williams; once a gentleman of Aldebaran II, now a space-rat meteor miner. He made of himself an almost bottomless drinker of the hardest beverages known to space. He became a drug fiend—a bentlam eater—discovering that his Arisian-trained mind could function at full efficiency even while his physical body was completely stupefied. He became widely known as the fastest, deadliest performer with twin DeLameters ever to strike the asteroid belts.

  Through solar system after solar system he built up an unimpeachable identity as a hard-drinking, wildly-carousing, bentlam-eating, fast-shooting space-hellion; a lucky or a very skillful meteor miner; a derelict who had been an Aldebaranian gentleman once and who would be again if he should ever strike it rich.

  Physically helpless in a bentlam stupor, he listened in on a zwilnik conference and learned that Edmund Crowninshield, of Tressilia III, was also a regional director of the enemy.

  Boskone formed an alliance with the Overlords of Delgon, and through a hyper-spatial tube the combined forces again attacked humanity. Not simple slaughter this time, for the Overlords tortured their captives and consumed their life forces in sadistic orgies. The Conference of Scientists solved the mystery of the tube and the Dauntless counter-attacked through it, returning victorious.

  Wild Bill Williams struck it rich at last. Abandoning the low dives in which he had been wont to carouse, he made an obvious effort to become again an Aldebaranian gentleman. He secured an invitation to visit Crowninshield’s resort—the Boskonian, believing that Williams was basically a booze- and drug-soaked bum, wanted to get his quarter-million credits.

  In a characteristically wild debauch, Kinnison-Williams did squander a large part of his new fortune; but he learned from Crowninshield’s mind that one Jalte, a Kalonian by birth, was Boskone’s galactic director; and that Jalte had his headquarters in a star cluster just outside the First Galaxy. Pretending bitter humiliation and declaring that he would change his name and disappear, the Gray Lensman left the planet—to investigate Jalte’s base.

  He learned that Boskone was not a single entity, but a council. Jalte did not know very much about it, but his superior, one Eichmil, who lived on the planet Jarnevon, in the Second Galaxy, would know who and what Boskone really was.

  Therefore Kinnison and Worsel went to Jarnevon. Kinnison was captured and tortured—there was at least one Overlord there—but Worsel rescued him before his mind was damaged and brought him back with his knowledge intact. Jarnevon was peopled by the Eich, a race almost as monstrous as the Overlords. The Council of Nine which ruled the planet was in fact the long-sought Boskone.

  The greatest surgeons of the age—Phillips of Posenia and Wise of Medon—demonstrated that they could grow new nervous tissue; even new limbs and organs if necessary. Again Clarrissa MacDougall nursed Kinnison back to health, and this time the love between them could not be concealed.

  The Grand Fleet of the Patrol was assembled, and with Kinnison in charge of Operations, swept outward from the First Galaxy. Jalte’s planet was destroyed by means of the negasphere—the negative-matter bomb—then on to the Second Galaxy.

  Jarnevon, the planet of the Eich, was destroyed by smashing it between two barren planets which had been driven there in the “free” (inertialess) condition. These planets, having exactly opposite intrinsic velocities, were inerted, one upon each side of the doomed world; and when that frightful collision was over a minor star had come into being.

  Grand Fleet returned to our galaxy. Galactic Civilization rejoiced. Prime Base was a center of celebration. Kinnison, supposing that the war was over and that his problem was solved, threw off Lensman’s Load. Marrying his Cris, he declared, was the most important thing in the universe.

  But how wrong he was! For even as Lensman and nurse were walking down a corridor of Base Hospital after a conference with Haynes and Lacy regarding that marriage—4

  CHAPTER

  1

  Recalled

  TOP, YOUTH!” THE VOICE OF Mentor the Arisian thundered silently, deep within the Lensman’s brain.

  He stopped convulsively, almost in mid-stride, and at the rigid, absent awareness in his eyes Nurse MacDougall’s face went white.

  “This is not merely the loose and muddy thinking of which you have all too frequently been guilty in the past,” the deeply resonant, soundless voice went on, “it is simply not thinking at all. At times, Kinnison of Tellus, we almost despair of you. Think, youth, think! For know, Lensman, that upon the clarity of your thought and upon the trueness of your perception depends the whole future of your Patrol and of your Civilization; more so now by far than at any time in the past.”

  “What’dy’mean, ‘think’?” Kinnison snapped back thoughtlessly. His mind was a seething turmoil, his emotions an indescribable blend of surprise, puzzlement, and incredulity.

  For moments, as Mentor did not reply, the Gray Lensman’s mind raced. Incredulity…becoming tinged with apprehension…turning rapidly into rebellion.

  “Oh, Kim!” Clarrissa choked. A queer enough tableau they made, these two, had any been there to see; the two uniformed figures standing there so strainedly, the nurse’s two hands gripping those of the Lensman. She, completely en rapport with him, had understood his every fleeting thought. “Oh, Kim! They can’t do that to us…”

  “I’ll say they can’t!” Kinnison flared. “By Klono’s tungsten teeth, I won’t do it! We have a right to happiness, you and I, and we’ll…”

  “We’ll what?” she asked, quietly. She knew what they had to face; and, strong-souled woman that she was, she was quicker to face it squarely than was he. “You were just blasting off, Kim, and so was I.”

  “I suppose so,” glumly. “Why in all the nine hells of Valeria did I have to be a Lensman? Why couldn’t I have stayed a…?”

  “Because you are you,” the girl interrupted, gently. “Kimball Kinnison, the man I love. You couldn’t do anything else.” Chin up, she was fighting gamely. “And if I rate Lensman’s Mate I can’t be a sissy, either. It won’t last forever, Kim. Just a little longer to wait, that’s all.”

  Eyes, steel-gray now, stared down into eyes of tawny, gold-flecked bronze. “QX, Cris? Really QX?” What a world of meaning there was in that cryptic question!

  “Really, Kim.” She met his stare unfalteringly. If not entirely unafraid, at least with whole-hearted determination. “On the beam and on the green, Gray Lensman, all the way. Every long, last millimeter. There, wherever it is—to the very end of whatever road it has to be—and back again. Until it’s over. I’ll be here. Or somewhere, Kim. Waiting.”

  The man shook himself and breathed deep. Hands dropped apart—both knew consciously as well as subconsciously that the less of physical demonstration the better for two such natures as theirs—and Kimball Kinnison, Unattached Lensman, came to grips with his problem.

  He began really to think; to think with the full power of his prodigious mind; and as he did so he began to see what the Arisian could have—what he must have—meant. He, Kinnison, had gummed up the works. He had made a colossal blunder in the Boskonian campaign. He knew that Mentor, although silent, was still en rapport with him; and as he coldly, grimly, thought the thing through to its logical conclusion he knew, with a dull, sick certainty, what was coming next. It came:

  “Ah, you perceive at last some portion of the truth. You see that your confused, superficial thinking has brought about almost irreparable harm. I grant that, in specimens so young of such a youthful race, emotion has its place and its function; but I tell you now in all solemnity that for you the time of emotional relaxation has not yet come. Think, youth—THINK!” and the ancient Arisian snapped the telepathic line.

  As one, without a word, nurse and Lensman retraced their way to the room they had left so shortly before. Port Admiral Haynes and Surgeon-Marshal Lacy still sat upon the nurse’s davenport, scheming roseate schemes having to do with the wedding they had so subtly
engineered.

  “Back so soon? Forget something, MacDougall?” Lacy asked, amiably. Then, as both men noticed the couple’s utterly untranslatable expression:

  “What happened? Break it out, Kim!” Haynes commanded.

  “Plenty, chief,” Kinnison answered, quietly. “Mentor stopped us before we got to the elevator. Told me I’d put my foot in it up to my neck on that Boskonian thing. That instead of being all buttoned up, my fool blundering has put us farther back than we were when we started.”

  “Mentor!”

  “Told you!”

  “Put us back!”

  It was an entirely unpremeditated, unconscious duet. The two old officers were completely dumbfounded. Arisians never had come out of their shells, they never would. Infinitely less disturbing would have been the authentic tidings that a brick house had fallen upstairs. They had nursed this romance along so carefully, had timed it so exactly, and now it had gone p-f-f-f-t—it had been taken out of their hands entirely. That thought flashed through their minds first. Then, as catastrophe follows lightning’s flash, the real knowledge exploded within their consciousnesses that, in some unguessable fashion or other, the whole Boskonian campaign had gone p-f-f-f-t, too.

  Port Admiral Haynes, master tactician, reviewed in his keen strategist’s mind every phase of the recent struggle, without being able to find a flaw in it.

  “There wasn’t a loop-hole anywhere,” he said aloud. “Where do they figure we slipped up?”