But utterly unhuman Nadreck was not lonely. In fact, there was no word in the
vocabulary of his race even remotely resembling the term in definition, connotation, or
implication. From his galaxy-wide study he had a dim, imperfect idea of what such an
emotion or feeling might be, but he could not begin to understand it. Nor was he in the
least disturbed by the fact that Kandron did not appear. Instead, he held his orbit until
the minute arrived at which the mathematical probability became point nine nine nine
that his proposed quarry was not going to appear. Then, as matter-of-factly as though
he had merely taken half an hour out for lunch, he -abandoned his position and set out
upon the course so carefully planned for exactly this event.
The search for further clues was long and uneventful; but monstrously,
unhumanly patient Nadreck stuck to it until he found one. True, it was so slight as to be
practically non-existent—a mere fragment of a whisper of zwilnik instruction—but it bore
Kandron’s unmistakable imprint. The Palainian had expected no more. Kandron would
not slip. Momentary leakages from faulty machines would have to occur from time to
time, but Kandron’s machines would not be at fault either often or long at a time.
Nadreck, however, had been ready. Course after course of the most delicate
spotting screen ever devised had been out for weeks. So had tracers, radiation
absorbers, and every other insidious locating device known to the science of the age.
The standard detectors remained blank, of course—no more so than his own
conveyance would that of the Onlonian be detectable by any ordinary instruments. And
as the Palainian speedster shot away along the most probable course, some fifty
delicate instruments in its bow began stabbing that entire region of space with a pattern
of needles of force through which a Terrestrial barrel could not have floated untouched.
Thus the Boskonian craft—an inherently indetectable speedster—was located;
and in that instant was speared by three modified CRX tracers. Nadreck then went inert
and began to plot the other speedster’s course. He soon learned that that course was
unpredictable; that the vessel was being operated statistically, completely at random.
This too, then, was a trap.
This knowledge disturbed Nadreck no more than had any more-or-less similar
event of the previous twenty-odd years. He had realized fully that the leakage could as
well have been deliberate as accidental. He had at no time underestimated Kandron’s
ability; the future alone would reveal whether or not Kandron would at any time
underestimate his. He would follow through—there might be a way in which this
particular trap could be used against its setter.
Leg after leg of meaningless course Nadreck followed, until there came about
that which the Palainian knew would happen in time—the speedster held a straight
course for more parsecs than six-sigma limits of probability could ascribe to pure
randomness. Nadreck knew what that meant. The speedster was returning to its base
for servicing, which was precisely the event for which he had been awaiting. It was the
base he wanted, not the speedster; and that base would never, under any conceivable
conditions, emit any detectable quantity of traceable radiation. To its base, then,
Nadreck followed the little space-ship, and to say that he was on the alert as he
approached that base is a gross understatement indeed. He expected to set off at least
one, and probably many blasts of force. That would almost certainly be necessary in
order to secure sufficient information concerning the enemy’s defensive screens. It was
necessary— but when those blasts arrived Nadreck was elsewhere, calmly analyzing
the data secured by his instruments during the brief contact which had triggered the
Boskonian projectors into action.
So light, so fleeting, and so unorthodox had been Nad-reek’s touch that the
personnel of the now doomed base could not have known with any certainty that any
visitor had actually been there. If there had been, the logical supposition would have
been that he and his vessel had been resolved into their component atoms.
Nevertheless Nadreck waited—as has been shown, he was good at waiting—until the
burst of extra vigilance set up by the occurrence would have subsided into ordinary
watchfulness. Then he began to act.
At first this action was in ultra-slow motion. One millimeter per hour his drill
advanced. Drill was synchronized precisely with screen, and so guarded as to give an
alarm at a level of interference far below that necessary to energize any probable
detector at the generators of the screen being attacked.
Through defense after defense Nadreck. made his cautious, indetectable way
into the dome. It was a small base, as such things go; manned, as expected, by
escapees from Onlo. Scum, too, for the most part; creatures of even baser and more
violent passions than those upon whom he had worked in Kandron’s Onlonian
stronghold. To keep those intractable entities in line during their brutally long tours of
duty, a psychological therapist had been given authority second only to that of the base
commander. That knowledge, and the fact that there was only one populated dome,
made the Palainian come as close to grinning as one of his unsmiling race can.
The psychologist wore a multiplex thought-screen, of course, as did everyone
else; but that did not bother Nadreck. Kinnison had opened such screens many times;
not only by means of his own hands, but also at various times by the use of a dog’s
jaws, a spider’s legs and mandibles, and even a worm’s sinuous body. Wherefore,
through the agency of a quasi-fourth-dimensional life form literally indescribable to
three-dimensional man, Nadreck’s ego was soon comfortably ensconced in the mind of
the Onlonian.
That entity knew in detail every weakness of each of his personnel. It was his
duty to watch those weaknesses, to keep them down, to condition each of his wards in
such fashion that friction and strife would be minimized. Now, however, he proceeded to
do exactly the opposite. One hated another. That hate became a searing obsession,
requiring the concentration of every effort upon ways and means of destroying its
objects. One feared another. That fear ate in, searing as it went, destroying every
normality of outlook and of reason. Many were jealous of their superiors. This emotion,
requiring as it does nothing except its own substance upon which to feed, became a
fantastically spreading, caustically corrosive blight.
To name each ugly, noisome passion or trait resident in that dome is to call the
complete roster of the vile; and calmly, mercilessly, unmovedly, ultra-efficiently, Nadreck
manipulated them all. As though he were playing a Satanic organ he touched a nerve
here, a synapse there, a channel somewhere else, bringing the whole group, with the
lone exception of the commander, simultaneously to the point of explosion. Nor was any
sign of this perfect work evident externally; for everyone there, having lived so long
under the iron code of Boskonia, knew exactly the consequences of any infraction of
that code.
The moment came when passion overmastered sense. One of the monsters
stumbled, jostling another. That nudge became, in its recipient’s seething mind, a lethal
attack by his bitterest enemy. A forbidden projector flamed viciously: the offended one
was sating his lust so insensately that he scarcely noticed the boh that in turn rived
away his own life. Detonated by this incident, the personnel of the base exploded as
one. Blasters raved briefly; knives and swords bit and slashed; improvised bludgeons
crashed against preselected targets; hard-taloned appendages gouged and tore. And
Nadreck, who had long since withdrawn from the mind of the psychologist, timed with a
stop-watch the duration of the whole grisly affair, from the instant of the first stumble to
the death of the last Onlonian outside the commander’s locked and armored sanctum.
Ninety-eight and three-tenths seconds. Good—a nice job.
The commander, as soon as it was safe to do so, rushed out of his guarded room
to investigate. Amazed, disgruntled, dismayed by the to him completely inexplicable
phenomenon he had just witnessed, he fell an easy prey to the Palainian Lensman.
Nadreck invaded his mind and explored it, channel by channel; finding—not entirely
unexpectedly—that this Number One knew nothing whatever of interest.
Nadreck did not destroy the base. Instead, after setting up a small instrument in
the commander’s private office, he took that unfortunate wight aboard his speedster and
drove off into space. He immobilized his captive, not by loading him with manacles, but
by deftly severing a few essential nerve trunks. Then he really studied the Onlonian’s
mind—line by line, this time; almost cell by cell. A master—almost certainly Kandron
himself—had operated here. There was not the slightest trace of tampering; no leads to
or indications of what the activating stimulus would have to be; all that the fellow now
knew was that it was his job to hold his base inviolate against any and every form of
intrusion and to keep that speedster flitting around all over space on a director-by-