The Overlords had, however, learned. This cavern, as well as being hidden, was
defended by physical, as well as mental, means. There were inner barriers of metal and
of force, there were armed and armored defenders who, dominated completely by the
monsters, fought with the callous fury of the robots which in effect they were.
Nevertheless, against all opposition, the attackers bored relentlessly in. Heavy semi-
portables blazed, hand-to-hand combat raged in the narrow confines of that noisome
tunnel. In the wavering, glaring light of the contending beams and screens, through the
hot and rankly stinking steam billowing away from the reeking walls, the invaders fought
their way. One by one and group by group the defenders died where they stood and the
Velantians drove onward over their burned and dismembered bodies.
Into the cavern at last. To the Overlords. Overlords! They who for ages had
preyed upon generation after generation of helpless Velantians, torturing their bodies to
the point of death and then devouring ghoulishly the life-forces which their mangled
bodies could no longer retain!
Worsel and his crew threw away their DeLameters. Only when it is absolutely
necessary does any Velantian use any artificial weapon against any Overlord of Delgon.
He is too furious, too berserk, to do so. He is scared to the core of his being; the cold
grue of a thousand fiendishly eaten ancestors has bred that fear into the innermost
atoms of his chemistry. But against that fear, negating and surmounting it, is a hatred of
such depth and violence as no human being has ever known; a starkly savage hatred
which can be even partially assuaged only by the ultimate of violences—by rending his
foe apart member by member; by actually feeling the Delgonian’s life depart under
gripping hands and tearing talons and constricting body and shearing tail.
It is best, then, not to go into too fine detail as to this conflict. Since there were
almost a hundred of the Delgonians, since they were insensately vicious fighters when
cornered, and since their physical make-up was very similar to the Velantians’ own,
many of Worsel’s troopers died. But since the Velan carried over fifteen hundred and
since less than half of her personnel could even get into the cavern, there were plenty of
them left to operate and to fight the space-ship.
Worsel took great care that the opposing commander was not killed with his
minions. The fighting over, the Velantians chained this Sole survivor into one of his own
racks and stretched him out into immobility. Then, restraining by main strength the
terrific urge to put the machine then and there to its fullest ghastly use, Worsel cut his
screen, threw a couple of turns of tail around a convenient anchorage, and faced the
Boskonian almost nose to nose. Eight weirdly stalked eyes curled out as he drove a
probing thought-beam against the monster’s shield.
“I could use this—or this—or this,” Worsel gloated. As he touched various wheels
and levers the chains hummed slightly, sparks flashed, the rigid body twitched. “I am not
going to, however—yet. While you are still sane I shall take your total knowledge.”
Face to face, eye to eye, brain to brain, that silently and motionlessly cataclysmic
battle was joined.
As has been said, Worsel had hunted down and had destroyed many Overlords.
He had hunted them, however, like vermin. He had killed them with bombs and beams,
with talons, teeth, and tail. He had not engaged an Overlord mind to mind for over
twenty Tellurian years; not since he and Nadreck of Palain Seven had captured alive
the leaders of those who had been preying upon Helen’s matriarchs and warring upon
Civilization from their cavern on Lyrane II. Nor had he ever dueled one mentally to the
death without powerful support; Kinnison or some other Lensman had always been near
by.
But Worsel would need no help. He was not shivering in eagerness now. His
body was as still as the solid rock upon which most of it lay; every chamber and every
faculty of his mind was concentrated upon battering down or blasting vengeful, the
implacably ferocious Velantian any more mercy, any more compunction, than were
actually there. He knew through the Overlord’s stubbornly-held shields.
Brighter and brighter flamed Worsel’s Lens, flooding the gloomy cave with
pulsating polychromatic light. Alert for any possible trickery, guarding intently against
any possibility of counterthrust, Worsel slammed in bolt after bolt of mental force. He
surrounded the monster’s mind with a searing, constricting field. He squeezed;
relentlessly and with appalling power.
The Overlord was beaten. He, who had never before encountered a foreign mind
or a vital force stronger than his own, knew that he was beaten. He knew that at long
last he had met that half-fabulous Velantian Lensman with whom not one of his
monstrous race could cope. He knew starkly, with the chilling, numbing terror possible
only to such a being in such a position, that he was doomed to die the same hideous
and long-drawn-out death he had dealt out to so many others. He did not read into the
mind of the bitterly perfectly that there was no slightest trace of either. Knowing these
things with the black certainty that was his, he quailed.
There is an old saying that the brave man dies only once, the coward a thousand
times. The Overlord, during that lethal combat, died more times than it is pleasant to
contemplate. Nevertheless, he fought. His mind was keen and powerful; he brought to
the defense of his beleagured ego every resource of skill and of trickery and of sheer
power at his command. In vain. Deeper and deeper, in spite of everything he could do,
the relentless Lensman squeezed and smashed and cut and pried and bored; little by
little the Overlord gave mental ground.
“This station is here . . . this staff is here . . . I am here, then . . . to wreak
damage . . . all possible damage . . . to the commerce . . . and to the personnel of . . .
the Galactic Patrol . . . and Civilization in every aspect . . .” the Overlord admitted
haltingly as Worsel’s pressure became intolerable; but such admissions, however
unwillingly made or however revealing in substance, were not enough.
Worsel wanted, and would be satisfied with nothing less than, his enemy’s total
knowledge. Hence he maintained his assault until, unable longer to withstand the
frightful battering, the Overlord’s barriers went completely down; until every convolution
of his brain and every track of his mind lay open, helplessly exposed to Worsel’s
poignant scrutiny. Then, scarcely taking time to gloat over his victim, Worsel did
scrutinize.
Period.
Hurtling through space, toward a definite objective now, Worsel studied and
analyzed some oft the things he had just learned. He was not surprised that this
Overlord had not known any of his superior officers in things or enterprises Boskonian;
that he did not consciously know that he had been obeying orders or that he had
superiors. That technique, by this time, was familiar enough. The Boskonian
psychologists were able operators; to attempt to unravel the unknowable complexities of
their subconscious compulsions would be a sheer waste of time.
What the Overlords had been doing, however, was clear enough. That outpost
had indeed been wreaking havoc with Civilization’s commerce. Ship after ship had been
lured from its course; had been compelled to land upon this barren planet. Some of
those vessels had been destroyed; some of them had been stripped and rifled as
though by pirates of old: some of them had been set upon new courses with hulls,
mechanical equipment, and cargoes almost untouched. No crewman or passenger,
however, escaped unscathed; even though only ten percent of them died in the
Overlordish fashion Worsel knew so well.
The Overlord himself had wondered why they had not been able to kill them all.
They wanted intensely enough to do so; their lust for life-force simply could not be
sated. He knew only that something had limited their killing to ten percent of the bag.
Worsel grinned wolfishly at that thought, even while he was admiring the quality
of the psychology able to impress such a compulsion upon such intractable minds as
those. That was the work of the Boskonian higher-ups; to spread confusion wider and
wider.
The other ninety percent had merely been “played with” —a procedure which,
although less satisfying to the Overlords than the ultimate treatment, was not very
different as far as the victims’ egos were concerned. For none of them emerged from
the ordeal with any memory of what had happened, or of who or what he had ever
been. They were not all completely mad; some were only partially so. All had, however,
been . . . altered. Changed; shockingly transformed. No two were alike. Each Overlord,
it appeared, had tried with all his ultra-hellish might to excel his fellows in the