“You are, then, alone?” In spite of her control, Helen’s thought showed relief.
“Yes. My bus . . . Kimball Kinnison is very busy elsewhere.” Clarrissa understood
perfectly. Helen, after twenty years of thinking things over, really liked her; but she still
simply couldn’t stand a male, not even Kim; any more than Clarrissa could ever adapt
herself to the Lyranian habit of using the neuter pronoun “it” when referring to one of
themselves. She couldn’t. Anybody who ever got one glimpse of Helen would simply
have to think of her as she! But enough of this wool-gathering—which had taken
perhaps one millisecond of time.
“There’s nothing to keep us from working together perfectly,” Clarrissa’s thought
flashed on. “Ladora didn’t know much, and you do. So tell me all about things, so we
can decide where to begin!”
CHAPTER 17: NADRECK VS. KANDRON
When Kandron called his minion in that small and nameless base to learn
whether or not he had succeeded in trapping the Palainian Lensman, Nadreck’s relay
station functioned so perfectly, and Nadreck was so completely in charge of his
captive’s mind, that the caller could feel nothing out of the ordinary. Ultra-suspicious
though Kandron was, there was nothing whatever to indicate that anything had changed
at that base since he had last called its commander. That individual’s subconscious
mind reacted properly to the key stimulus. The conscious mind took over, remembered,
and answered properly a series of trick questions.
These things occurred because the minion was still alive. His ego, the pattern
and matrix of his personality, was still in existence and had not been changed. What
Kandron did not and could not suspect was that that ego was no longer in control of
mind, brain, or body; that it was utterly unable, of its own volition, either to think any iota
of independent thought or to stimulate any single physical cell. The Onlonian’s ego was
present—just barely present—but that was all. It was Nadreck who, using that ego as a
guide and, in a sense, as a helplessly impotent transformer, received the call. Nadreck
made those exactly correct replies. Nadreck was now ready to render a detailed and
fully documented—and completely mendacious—report upon his own destruction!
Nadreck’s special tracers were already out, determining line and intensity.
Strippers and analyzers were busily at work on the fringes of the beam, dissecting out,
isolating, and identifying each of the many scraps of extraneous thought accompanying
the main beam. These side-thoughts, in fact, were Nadreck’s prime concern. The
Second-Stage Lensman had learned that no being—except possibly an Arisian—could
narrow a beam of thought down to one single, pure sequence. Of the four, however,
only Nadreck recognized in those side-bands a rich field; only he had designed and
developed mechanisms with which to work that field.
The stronger and clearer the mind, the fewer and less complete were the
extraneous fragments of thought; but Nadreck knew that even Kandron’s brain would
carry quite a few such nongermane accompaniments, and from each of those bits he
could reconstruct an entire sequence as accurately as a competent paleontologist
reconstructs a prehistoric animal from one fossilized piece of bone.
Thus Nadreck was completely ready when the harshly domineering Kandron
asked his first real question.
“I do not suppose that you have succeeded in killing the Lensman?”
“Yes, Your Supremacy, I have.” Nadreck could feel Kandron’s start of surprise;
could perceive without his instruments Kandron’s fleeting thoughts of the hundreds of
unsuccessful previous attempts upon his life. It was clear that the Onlonian was not at
all credulous.
“Report in detail!” Kandron ordered.
Nadreck did so, adhering rigidly to the truth up to the moment in which his probes
of force had touched off the Boskonian alarms. Then:
“Spy-ray photographs taken at the instant of alarm show an indetectable
speedster, with one, and only one occupant, as Your Supremacy anticipated. A careful
study of all the pictures taken of that occupant shows: first, that he was definitely alive at
that time, and was neither a projection nor an artificial mechanism; and second, that his
physical measurements agree in every particular with the specifications furnished by
Your Supremacy as being those of Nadreck of Palain VII.
“Since Your Supremacy personally computed and supervised the placement of
those projectors,” Nadreck went smoothly on, “you know that the possibility is
vanishingly small that any material thing, free or inert, could have escaped destruction.
As a check, I took seven hundred twenty nine samples of the circumambient space,
statistically at random, for analysis. After appropriate allowances for the exactly-
observed elapsed times of sampling, diffusion of droplets and molecular and atomic
aggregates, temperatures, pressures, and all other factors known or assumed to be
operating, I determined that there had been present in the center of action of our beams
a mass of approximately four thousand six hundred seventy eight point zero one metric
tons. This value, Your Supremacy will note, is in close agreement with the most efficient
mass of an indetectable speedster designed for long distance work.”
That figure was in fact closer than close. It was an almost exact statement of the
actual mass of Nadreck’s ship.
“Exact composition?” Kandron demanded.
Nadreck recited a rapid-fire string of elements and figures. They, too, were
correct within the experimental error of a very good analyst. The base commander had
not known them, but it was well within the bounds of possibility that the insidious
Kandron would. He did. He was now practically certain that his ablest and bitterest
enemy had been destroyed at last, but there were still a few lingering shreds of doubt.
“Let me look over your work,” Kandron directed.
“Yes, Your Supremacy.” Nadreck the Thorough was ready for even that extreme
test. Through the eves of the ultimately enslaved monstrosity Kandron checked and
rechecked Nadreck’s pictures, Nadreck’s charts and diagrams, Nadreck’s more than
four hundred pages of mathematical, physical, and chemical notes and determinations;
all without finding a single flaw.
In the end Kandron was ready to believe that Nadreck had in fact ceased to exist.
However, he himself had not done the work. There was no corpse. If he himself had
killed the Palainian, if he himself had actually felt the Lensman’s life depart in the grasp
of his own tentacles; then, and only then, would he have known that Nadreck was dead.
As it was, even though the work had been done in exact accordance with his own
instructions, there remained an infinitesimal uncertainty. Wherefore:
“Shift your field of operations to cover X-174, Y-240, Z-16. Do not relax your
vigilance in the slightest because of what has happened.” He considered briefly the idea
of allowing the underling to call him, in case anything happened, but decided against it.
“Are the men standing up?”
“Yes, Your Supremacy, they are in very good shape indeed.”
And so on. “Yes, Your Supremacy, the psychologist is doing a very fine job. Yes,
Your Supremacy . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes . . .”
Very shortly after the characteristically Kandronesque ending of that interview,
Nadreck had learned everything he needed to know. He knew where Kandron was and
what he was doing. He knew much of what Kandron had done during the preceding
twenty years; and, since be himself figured prominently in many of those sequences,
they constituted invaluable checks upon the validity of his other reconstructions. He
knew the construction, the armament, and the various ingenious mechanisms, including
the locks, of Kandron’s vessel; he knew more than any other outsider had ever known of
Kandron’s private life. He knew where Kandron was going next, and what he was going
to do there. He knew in broad what Kandron intended to do during the coming century.
Thus well informed, Nadreck set his speedster into a course toward the planet of
Civilization which was Kandron’s next objective. He did not hurry; it was no part of his
plan to interfere in any way in the horrible program of planet-wide madness and
slaughter which Kandron had in mind. It simply did not occur to him to try to save the
planet as well as to kill the Onlonian; Nadreck, being Nadreck, took without doubt or
question the safest and surest course.
Nadreck knew that Kandron would set his vessel into an orbit around the planet,
and that he would take a small boat —a flitter—for the one personal visit necessary to
establish his lines of communication and control. Vessel and flitter would be alike
indetectable, of course; but Nadreck found the one easily enough and knew when the
other left its mother-ship. Then, using his lightest, stealthiest spy-rays, the Palainian set
about the exceedingly delicate business of boarding the Boskonian craft.
That undertaking could be made a story in its own right, for Kandron did not
leave his ship unguarded. However, merely by thinking about his own safety, Kandron
had all unwittingly given away the keys to his supposedly impregnable fortress. While
Kandron was wondering whether or not the Lensman was really dead, and especially