do it physically, and you haven’t got jets enough to swing the load. You might as well cut
your zone, because this kind of stuff has been pulled on me by experts, and it hasn’t
worked yet.”
He was apparently failing, feet downward, toward an open, grassy mountain
meadow, surrounded by forests, through which meandered a small stream. He was so
close now that he could perceive the individual blades of grass in the meadow and the
small fishes in the stream; and he was still apparently at terminal velocity.
Without his years of spacehound’s training in inertialess maneuvering, he might •
have died even before he landed, but speed as speed did not affect him at all. He was
used to instantaneous stops from light-speeds. The only thing that worried him was the
matter of inertia. Was he inert or free?
He declared to himself that he was free. Or, rather, that he had been, was, and
would continue to be motionless. It was physically, mathematically, intrinsically
impossible that any of this stuff had actually occurred. It was all compulsion, pure and
simple, and he—Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman—would not let it get him down. He
clenched his mental teeth upon that belief and held it doggedly. One bare foot struck the
tip of a blade of grass and his entire body came to a shockless halt. He grinned in
relief—this was what he had wanted, but had not quite dared wholly to expect. There
followed immediately, however, other events which he had not expected at all.
His halt was less than momentary; in the instant of its accomplishment he began
to fall normally the remaining eight or ten inches to the ground. Automatically he sprung
his space-trained knees, to take the otherwise disconcerting jar; automatically his left
hand snapped up to the place where his controls should have been. Legs and arms
worked.’
He could see with his eyes. He could feel with his skin. He was drawing a breath,
the first time he had breathed since leaving normal space. Nor was it an unduly deep
breath—he felt no lack of oxygen. His heart was beating as normally as though it had
never missed a beat. He was not unusually hungry or thirsty. But all that stuff could
wait—where was that damned Plooran?
Kinnison had landed in complete readiness for strife. There were no rocks or
clubs handy, but he had his fists, feet, and teeth; and they would do until he could find
or make something better. But there was nothing to fight. Drive his sense of perception
as he would, he could find nothing larger or more intelligent than a deer.
The farther this thing went along the less sense it made. A compulsion, to be any
good at all, ought to be logical and coherent. It should fit into every corner and cranny of
the subject’s experience and knowledge. This one didn’t fit anything or anywhere. It
didn’t even come close. Yet technically, it was a marvelous job. He couldn’t detect a
trace of it. This grass looked and felt real. The pebbles hurt his tender feet enough to
make him wince as he walked to the water’s edge. He drank deeply. The water, real or
not, was cold, clear, and eminently satisfying.
“Listen, you misguided ape!” he thought probingly. “You might as well open up
now as later whatever you’ve got in mind. If this performance is supposed to be non-
fiction, it’s a flat bust. If it’s supposed to be science-fiction, it isn’t much better. If it’s
space-opera, even, you’re violating all the fundamentals. I’ve written better
stuff—Qadgop and Cynthia were a lot more convincing.” He waited a moment, then
went on:
“Who ever heard of the intrepid hero of a space-opera as big as this one started
out to be getting stranded on a completely Earth-like planet and then have nothing
happen? No action at ‘all? How about a couple of indescribable monsters of
superhuman strength and agility, for me to tear apart with my steel-thewed fingers?”
He glanced around expectantly. No monsters appeared.
“Well, then, how about a damsel for me to rescue from a fate worse than death?
Better make it two of them—safety in numbers, you know—a blonde and a brunette. No
redheads.”
He waited again.
“QX, sport, no women. Suits me perfectly. But I hope you haven’t forgotten about
the tasty viands. I can eat fish if I have to, but if you want to keep your hero happy let’s
see you lay down here, on a platter, a one-kilogram steak, three centimeters thick,
medium rare, fried in Tellurian butter and smothered in Venerian superla mushrooms.”
No steak appeared, and the Gray Lensman recalled and studied intensively
every detail of what had apparently happened. It still could not have occurred. He could
not have imagined it. It could not have been compulsion or hypnosis. None of it made
any kind of sense.
As a matter of plain fact, however, Kinnison’s first and most positive conclusion
was wrong. His memories were factual records of actual events and things. He would
eat well during his stay upon that nameless planet, but he “would have to procure his
own food. Nothing would attack him, or even annoy him. For the Eddorian’s
binding—this is perhaps as good a word for it as any, since “geas” implies a curse—was
such that the Gray Lensman could return to space and time only under such conditions
and to such an environment as would not do him any iota of physical harm. He must
continue alive and in good health for at least fifty more of his years.
* * * *
And Clarrissa Kinnison, tense and strained, waited in her room for the instant of
her husband’s death. They two were one, with a oneness no other man and woman had
ever known. If one died, from any cause whatever, the other would feel it.
She waited. Five minutes—ten—fifteen—half an hour—an hour. She began to
relax. Her fists unclenched, her shallow breathing grew deeper.
Two hours. Kim was still alive! A wave of happy, buoyant relief swept through
her; her eyes flashed and sparkled. If they hadn’t been able to kill him in two hours they
never could. Her Kim had plenty of jets.
Even the top minds of Boskonia could not kill her Kim!
CHAPTER 28: THE BATTLE OF EDDORE
the Arisians and the Children of the Lens had known that Eddore must be
attacked as soon as possible after the fall of Floor. They were fairly certain that the
interspatial use of planets as projectiles was new; but they were completely certain that
the Eddorians would be able to deduce in a short time the principles and the concepts,
the fundamental equations, and the essential operators involved in the process. They
would find Nth space or one like it in one day; certainly not more than two. Their slaves
would duplicate the weapon in approximately three weeks. Shortly thereafter both Ultra
Prime and Prime Base, both Klovia and Tellus, would be blown out of the ether. So
would Arisia—perhaps Arisia would go first. The Eddorians would probably not be able
to ami such planets as accurately as the Arisians had, but they would keep on trying
and they would learn fast.
This weapon was the sheer ultimate in destructiveness. No defense against it
was possible. There was no theory which applied to it or which could be stretched to
cover it. Even the Arisian Masters of Mathematics had not as yet been able to invent
symbologies and techniques to handle the quantities and magnitudes involved when
those interloping masses of foreign matter struck normal space.
Thus Kit did not have to follow up his announced intention of making the Arisians
hurry. They did not hurry, of course, but they did not lose or waste a minute. Each
Arisian, from the youngest watchman up to the oldest philosopher, tuned a part of his
mind to Mentor, another part to some one of the millions of Lensmen upon his list, and
flashed a message.
“Lensmen, attend—keep your mind sensitized to this, the pattern of Mentor of
Arisia, who will speak to you as soon as all have been alerted.”
That message went throughout the First Galaxy, throughout intergalactic space,
and throughout what part of the Second Galaxy had felt the touch of Civilization. It went
to Alsakan and Vandemar and Klovia, to Thrale and Tellus and Rigel IV, to Mars and
Velantia and Palain VII, to Medon and Venus and Centralia. It went to flitters,
battleships, and loose planets. It went to asteroids and moonlets, to planets large and
small. It went to newly graduated Lensmen and to Lensmen long since retired; to
Lensmen at work and at play. It went to every First-Stage Lensman of the Galactic
Patrol.
Wherever the message went, turmoil followed. Lensmen everywhere flashed
questions at other Lensmen.
“What do you make of it, Fred?”
“Did you get the same thing I did?”