Children of the lens by E.E Doc Smith

enough out to be comfortable, and sent out course after course of delicate, extremely

sensitive screen. Precision of pattern-analysis was of course needless. The probability

was that all legitimate movement of personnel to and from the planet would be

composed of warm-blooded oxygen-breathers; that any visitor not so classified would

be Kandron. Any frigid-blooded visitor had at least to be investigated, hence his

analytical screens had to be capable only of differentiation between two types of beings

as far apart as the galactic poles in practically every respect. Nadreck knew that no

supervision would be necessary to perform such an open-and-shut separation as that;

he would have nothing more to do until his electronic announcers should warn him of

Kandron’s approach—or until the passage of time should inform him that the Onlonian

was not coming to this particular planet.

Being a mathematician, Nadreck knew that any datum secured by extrapolation

is of doubtful value. He thus knew that the actual probability of Kandron’s coming was

less, by some indeterminable amount, than the mathematical one.

Nevertheless, having done all that he could do, he waited with the monstrous,

unhuman patience known only to such races as his.

Day by day, week by week, the speedster circled the planet and its big, hot sun;

and as it circled, the lone voyager studied. He analyzed more data more precisely; he

drew deeper and deeper upon his store of knowledge to determine what steps next to

take in the event that this attempt should end, as so many previous ones had ended, in

failure.

CHAPTER 5: THE ABDUCTION OF A PRESIDENT

Kinnison the author toiled manfully at his epic of space whenever he was under

any sort of observation, and enough at other times to avert any suspicion. Indeed, he

worked as much as Sybly Whyte, an advertisedly temperamental writer, had ever

worked. Besides interviewing the high and the low, and taking notes everywhere, he

attended authors’ teas, at which he cursed his characters fluently and bitterly for their

failure to co-operate with him. With short-haired women and long-haired men he

bemoaned the perversity of a public which compelled them to prostitute the real genius

of which each was the unique possessor. He sympathized particularly with a fat woman

writer of whodunits, whose extremely unrealistic yet amazingly popular Gray Lensman

hero had lived through ten full-length novels and twenty million copies.

Even though her real field was the drama, she wasn’t writing the kind of detective

tripe that most of these crank-turners ground out, she confided to Kinnison. She had

known lots of Gray Lensmen very intimately, and her stories were drawn from real life in

every particular!

Thus Kinnison remained in character; and thus he was enabled to work

completely unnoticed at his real job of finding out what was going on, how the

Boskonians were operating to ruin Radelix as they had ruined Antigan IV.

His first care was to investigate the planet’s president. That took doing, but he did

it. He examined that mind line by line and channel by channel, with no results whatever.

No scars, no sign of tampering. Calling in assistance, he searched the president’s past.

Still no soap. Everything checked. Boring from within, then, was out. His first hypothesis

was wrong; this invasion and this sabotage were being done from without. How?

Those first leaflets were followed by others, each batch more vitriolic in tone than

the preceding one. Apparently they came from empty stratosphere; at least, no ships

were to be detected in the neighborhood after any shower of the handbills had

appeared. But that was not surprising. With its inertialess drive any space-ship could

have been parsecs away before the papers touched atmosphere. Or they could have

been bombed in from almost any distance. Or, as Kinnison thought most reasonable,

they could have been simply dumped out of the mouth of a hyper-spatial tube. In any

event the method was immaterial. The results only were important; and those results,

the Lensman discovered, were entirely disproportionate to the ostensible causes. The

subversive literature had some effect, of course, but essentially it must be a blind. No

possible tonnage of anonymous printing could cause that much sheer demoralization.

Crack-pot societies of all kinds sprang up everywhere, advocating everything

from absolutism to anarchy. Queer cults arose, preaching free love, the imminent end of

the world, and many other departures from the norm of thought. The Author’s League,

of course, was affected more than any other organization of its size, because of its

relatively large content of strong and intensely opinionated minds. Instead of becoming

one radical group it split into a dozen.

Kinnison joined one of those “Down with Everything!” groups, not as a leader, but

as a follower. Not too sheep-like a follower, but just inconspicuous enough to retain his

invisibly average status; and from his place of concealment in the middle of the front

row he studied the minds of each of his fellow anarchists. He watched those minds

change, he found out who was doing the changing. When Kinnison’s turn came he was

all set for trouble. He expected to battle a powerful mentality. He would not have been

overly surprised to encounter another mad Arisian, hiding behind a zone of hypnotic

compulsion. He expected anything, in fact, except what he found—which was a very

ordinary Radeligian therapist. The guy was a clever enough operator, of course, but he

could not work against even the feeblest opposition. Hence the Gray Lensman had no

trouble at all, either in learning everything the fellow knew, or, upon leaving him, in

implanting within his mind the knowledge that Sybly Whyte was now exactly the type of

worker desired.

The trouble was that the therapist didn’t know a thing. This not entirely

unexpected development posed Kinnison three questions. Did the high-ups ever

communicate with such small fry, or did they just give them one set of orders and cut

them loose? Should he stay in this Radeligian’s mind until he found out? If he was in

control of the therapist when a big shot took over, did he have jets enough to keep from

being found out? Risky business; better scout around first, anyway. He’d do a flit.

He drove his black speedster a million miles. He covered Radelix like a blanket,

around the equator and from pole to pole. Everywhere he found the same state of

things. The planet was literally riddled with the agitators; he found so many that he was

forced to a black conclusion. There could be no connection or communication between

such numbers of saboteurs and any real authority. They must have been given one set

of do-or-die instructions—whether they did or died was immaterial. Experimentally,

Kinnison had a few of the leaders taken into custody. Nothing happened.

Martial law was finally declared, but this measure succeeded only in driving the

movement underground. What the subversive societies lost in numbers they more than

made up in desperation and violence. Crime raged unchecked and uncheckable,

murder became an every-day commonplace, insanity waxed rife. And Kinnison,

knowing now that no channel to important prey would be opened until the climax,

watched grimly while the rape of the planet went on.

President Thompson and Lensman Gerrond sent message after message to

Prime Base and to Klovia, imploring help. The replies to these pleas were all alike. The

matter had been referred to the galactic council and to the coordinator. Everything that

could be done was being done. Neither office could say anything else, except that, with

the galaxy in such a disturbed condition, each planet must do its best to solve its own

problems.

The thing built up toward its atrocious finale. Gerrond invited the president to a

conference in a down-town hotel room, and there, eyes glancing from moment to

moment at the dials of a complete little test-kit held open upon his lap:

“I have just had some startling news, Mr. Thompson,” Gerrond said, abruptly.

“Kinnison has been here on Radelix for weeks.”

“What? Kinnison? Where is he? Why didn’t he . . . ?”

“Yes, Kinnison. Kinnison of Klovia. The coordinator himself. I don’t know where

he is, or was. I didn’t ask him.” The Lensman smiled fleetingly. “One doesn’t, you know.

He discussed the situation with me at length. I’m still amazed . . .”

“Why doesn’t he stop it, then?” the president demanded. “Or can’t he stop it?”

“That’s what I’ve got to explain to you. He won’t be able to do a thing, he says,

until the last minute . . .”

“Why not? I tell you, if this thing can be stopped it’s got to be stopped, and no

matter what has to be done—”

“Just a minute!” Gerrond snapped. “I know you’re out of control—I don’t like to

see Radelix torn apart any better than you do—but you ought to know by this time that

Galactic Coordinator Kimball Kinnison is in a better position to know what to do than any

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