The load was too heavy; he didn’t have half enough jets to swing it Just how did a guy
as smart as Mentor figure it that he, a dumb, green kid, stood a Zabriskan fontema’s
chance against all Eddore?
He was scared; scared to the core of his being; scared as he never had been
before and never would be again. His mouth felt dry, his tongue cottony. His fingers
shook, even as he doubled them into fists to steady them. To the very end of his long
life he remembered the fabric and the texture of that fear; remembered how it made him
decide to turn back, before it was too late to retrace his way as unobserved as he had
come.
Well, why not? Who would care, and what matter? The Arisians? Nuts! It was all
their fault, sending him in half-ready. His parents? They wouldn’t know what the score
was, and wouldn’t care. They’d be on his side, no matter what happened. The kids? . . .
The kids!. . . Oh-oh—THE KIDS!
They’d tried to talk him out of coming in alone. They’d fought like wildcats to
make him take them along. He’d smacked ’em down. Now, if he sneaked back with his
tail between his legs, how’d they take it? What’d they do? What would they think? Then,
later, after he had loused everything up and let the Arisians and the Patrol and all
Civilization get knocked out—then what? The kids would know exactly how and why it
had happened. He couldn’t defend himself, even if he tried, and he wouldn’t try. Did he
have any idea how much sheer, vitriolic, corrosive contempt those four red-headed
sisters of his could generate? Or, even if they didn’t—or as a follow-up—their
condescending, sisterly pity would be a thousand million times worse. And what would
he think of himself? No soap. It was out. Definitely. The Eddorians could kill him only
once. QX.
He drove straight downward, noting as he did so that his senses were clear, his
hands steady, his tongue normally moist. He was still scared, but he was no longer
paralyzed.
Low enough, he let his every perceptive sense roam abroad —and became
instantly too busy to worry about anything. There was an immense amount of new stuff
here—if he could only be granted time enough to get it all!
He wasn’t. In a second or so, it seemed, his interference was detected and an
Eddorian came in to investigate. Kit threw everything he had, and in the brief moment
before the completely surprised denizen died, the young Klovian learned more of the
real truth of Eddore and of the whole Boskonian Empire than all the Arisians had ever
found out. In that one flash of ultimately intimate fusion, he knew Eddorian history,
practically in toto. He knew the enemies’ culture; he knew how they behaved, and why.
He knew their ideals and their ideologies. He knew a great deal about their organization;
their systems of offense and of defense. He knew their strengths and, more important,
their weaknesses. He knew exactly how, if Civilization were to triumph at all, its victory
must be Achieved.
This seems—or rather, it is—incredible. It is, however, simple truth. Under such
stresses as those, an Eddorian mind can yield, and the mind of such a one as
Christopher Kinnison can absorb, an incredible amount of knowledge in an incredibly
brief-interval of time.
Kit, already seated at his controls, cut in his every course of thought-screen.
They would help a little in what was coming, but not much—no mechanical screen then
known to Civilization could block third-level thought. He kicked in full drive toward the
one small area in which he and his speedster would not encounter either beams or
bombs—the fortress whose observers would not perceive that anything was amiss. He
did not fear physical pursuit, since his speedster was the fastest thing in space.
For a second or so it was not so bad. Another Eddorian came in, suspicious and
on guard. Kit blasted him down— learning still more in the process—but he could not
prevent him from radiating a frantic and highly revealing call for help. And although the
Eddorians could scarcely realize that such an astonishing thing as physical invasion had
actually happened, that fact neither slowed them down nor made their anger less
violent.
When Kit flashed past his friendly fortress he was taking •bout all he could
handle, and more and more Eddorians were piling on. At the fourth screen it was worse;
at the third he reached what he was sure was his absolute ceiling. Nevertheless, from
some hitherto unsuspected profundity of his being, he managed to draw enough reserve
force to endure that hellish punishment for a little while longer.
Hang on, Kit, hang on! Only two more screens to go. Maybe only one. Maybe
less. Living Eddorian brains, and not mechanical generators, are now handling all the
screens, of course; but if the Arisians’ visualization is worth a tinker’s damn, they must
have that first screen knocked down by this time and must be working on the second.
Hang on, Kit, and keep on slugging!
And grimly; doggedly; toward the end sheerly desperately: Christopher Kinnison,
eldest Child of the Lens, hung on and slugged.
CHAPTER 23: – ESCAPES WITH HIS LIFE
If the historian has succeeded in his attempt to describe the characters and
abilities concerned, it is not necessary to enlarge upon what Kit went through in
escaping Eddore. If he has not succeeded, enlargement would be useless. Therefore it
is enough to say that the young Lensman, by dint of calling up and putting out
everything he had, hung on long enough and slugged his way through.
Arisia had acted precisely on time. The Eddorian guardians had scarcely taken
over the first screen when it was overwhelmed by a tremendous wave of Arisian
thought. It is to be remembered, however, that this was not the first time that the
massed might of Arisia had been thrown against Eddore’s defenses, and the Eddorians
had learned much, during the intervening years, from their exhaustive analyses of the
offensive and defensive techniques of the Arisians. Thus the Arisian drive was
practically stopped at the second zone of defense as Kit approached it. The screen was
wavering, shifting; yielding stubbornly wherever it must and springing back into place
whenever it could.
Under a tremendous concentration of Arisian force the screen weakened in a
limited area directly ahead of the hurtling speedster. A few beams lashed out aimlessly,
uselessly —if the Eddorians could not hold their main screens proof against the power
of the Arisian attack, how could they protect such minor things as gunners’ minds? The
little ship flashed through the weakened barrier and into the center of a sphere of
impenetrable, impermeable Arisian thought.
At the shock of the sudden ending of his terrific battle— the instantaneous
transition from supreme to zero effort— Kit fainted in his control chair. He lay slumped,
inert, in a stupor which changed gradually into a deep and natural sleep. And as the
sleeping man in his inertialess speedster traversed space at full touring blast, that
peculiar sphere of force still enveloped and still protected him.
Kit finally began to come to. His first foggy thought was that he was
hungry—then, wide awake and remembering, he grabbed his levers.
“Rest quietly, youth, and eat your fill,” a grave, resonant pseudo-voice assured
him. “Everything is exactly as it should be.”
“Hi, Ment . . . well, well, if it isn’t my old chum Eukonidor! Hi, young fellow! What’s
the good word? And what’s the big idea of letting—or making—me sleep for a week
when there’s work to do?”
“Your part of the work, at least for the immediate present, is done; and, let me
say, very well done.”
“Thanks . . . but. . .” Kit broke off, flushing darkly.
“Do not reproach yourself, youth, nor us. Consider, please, and recite, the
manufacture of a fine tool of ultimate quality.”
“The correct alloy. Hot working—perhaps cold, too.
Forging—heating—quenching—drawing . . .”
“Enough, youth. Think you that the steel, if sentient, would enjoy those
treatments? While you did not enjoy them, you are able to appreciate their necessity.
You are now a finished tool, forged and tempered.”
“Oh . . . you may have something there, at that. But as to ultimate quality, don’t
make me laugh.” There was no nuance of merriment in Kit’s thought. “You can’t square
that with cowardice.”
“Nor is there need. The term ultimate was used advisedly, and still stands. It
does not mean or imply, however, a state of perfection, since that condition is
unattainable. I am not advising you to try to forget; nor am I attempting to force
forgetfulness upon you, since your mind cannot now be coerced by any force at my
command. Be assured that nothing that occurred should irk you; for the simple truth is,
that although stressed as no other mind has ever before been stressed, you did not