anyone coming through it can be shot as soon as he can be seen. What you need is a
couple of Rigellian Lensmen, or Ordoviks. I’ll see to it that you get them. I don’t think,
with them here, they’ll even try to repeat.” He did not add what he knew somberly to be
a fact, that the enemy would go elsewhere, to some other planet not protected by a
Lensman able to perceive the intangible structure of a sphere of force.
Frustrated, the Lensman again took to space. It was terrible, this thing of having
everything happening where he wasn’t and when he got there having nothing left to
work on. Hit-and-run—stab-in-the-back—how could a man fight something he couldn’t
see or sense or feel or find? But this chewing his fingernails to the elbow wasn’t getting
him anywhere, either; he’d have to find something that he could stick a tooth into. What?
All former avenues of approach were blocked; he was sure of that. The
Boskonians who were now in charge of things could really think. No underling would
know anything about any one of them except at such times and places as the directors
chose, and those conferences would be as nearly detection-proof as they could be
made. What to do?
Easy. Catch a big operator in the act. He grinned wryly to himself. Easy to say,
but not . . . however, it wasn’t impossible. The Boskonians were not super-men—they
didn’t have any more jets than he did. Put himself in the other fellow’s place—what
would he do if he were a Boskonian big shot? He had had quite a lot of experience in
the role. Were there any specific groups of crimes which revealed techniques similar to
those which he himself would use in like case?
He, personally, preferred to work direct and to attack in force. At need, however,
he had done a smooth job of boring from within. In the face of the Patrol’s overwhelming
superiority of armament, especially in the First Galaxy, they would have to bore from
within. How? By what means? He was a Lensman; they weren’t. Jet back! Or were they,
perhaps? How did he know they weren’t, by this time? Fossten the renegade Arisian. . .
. No use kidding himself; Fossten might have known as much about the Lens as Mentor
himself, and might have developed an organization that even Mentor didn’t know
anything about. Or Mentor might be figuring that it would be good for what ailed a
certain fat-headed Gray Lensman to have to dope this out for himself. QX.
He shot a call to Vice-Coordinator Maitland, who was now in complete charge of
the office which Kinnison had temporarily abandoned.
“Cliff? Kim. Just gave birth to an idea.” He explained rapidly what the idea was.
“Maybe nothing to it, but we’d better get up on our toes and find out. You might suggest
to the boys that they check up here and there, particularly around the rough spots. If
any of them find any trace anywhere of off-color, sour, or even slightly rancid
Lensmanship, with or without a Lens appearing in the picture, burn a hole in space
getting it to me. QX? . . . Thanks.”
Viewed in this new perspective, Renwood of Antigan IV might have been neither
a patriot nor a victim, but a saboteur. The tube could have been a prop, used
deliberately to cap the mysterious climax. The four honest and devoted guards were the
real casualties. Renwood—or whoever he was—having accomplished his object of
undermining and destroying the whole planet’s morale, might simply have gone
elsewhere to continue his nefarious activities. It was fiendishly clever. That
spectacularly theatrical finale was certainly one for the book. The whole thing, though,
was very much of a piece in quality of workmanship with what he had done in becoming
the Tyrant of Thrale. Far-fetched? No. He had already denied in his thoughts that the
Boskonian operators were super-men. Conversely, he wasn’t, either. He would have to
admit that they might very well be as good as he was; to deny them the ability to do
anything he himself could do would be sheer stupidity.
Where did that put him? On Radelix, by Klono’s golden gills! A good-sized planet.
Important enough, but not too much so. People human. Comparatively little hell being
raised there—yet. Very few Lensmen, and Gerrond the top. Hm . . . m. Gerrond. Not too
bright, as Lensmen went, and inclined to be a bit brass-hattish. To Radelix, by all
means, next.
He went to Radelix, but not in the Dauntless and not in gray. He was a
passenger aboard a luxury liner, a writer in search of local color for another saga of the
space-ways. Sybly Whyte—one of the Patrol’s most carefully-established figments—had
a bullet-proof past. His omnivorous interest and his uninhibited nosiness were the
natural attributes of his profession—everything is grist which comes to an author’s mill.
Sybly Whyte, then, prowled about Radelix. Industriously and, to some observers,
pointlessly. He and his red-leather notebook were apt to be seen anywhere at any time,
day or night. He visited space-ports, he climbed through freighters, he lost small sums
in playing various games of so-called chance in spacemen’s dives. On the other hand,
he truckled assiduously to the social elite and attended all functions into which he could
wangle or could force his way. He made a pest of himself in the offices of politicians,
bankers, merchant princes, tycoons of business and manufacture, and all other sorts of
greats.
He was stopped one day in the outer office of an industrial potentate. “Get out
and stay out,” a peg-legged guard told him. “The boss hasn’t read any of your stuff, but I
have, and neither of us wants to talk to you. Data, huh? What the hell do you need of
data on atomic cats and bulldozers to write them damn space-operas of yours? Why
don’t you get a roustabout job on a freighter and learn something first-handed? Get
yourself a space-tan instead of that imitation you got under a lamp: work some of that
lard off your carcass!” Whyte was definitely fatter than Kinnison had been; and,
somehow, softer; he peered owlishly through heavy lenses which, fortunately, did not
interfere with his sense of perception. “Then maybe some of your tripe will be half-fit to
read —beat it!”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir; very much, sir.” Kinnison bobbed obsequiously and
scurried out, writing industriously in his notebook the while. He had, however, found out
what he wanted to know. The boss was nobody he wanted.
Nor was an eminent statesman whom he button-holed at a reception. “I fail to
see, sir, entirely, any point in your interviewing me,” that worthy informed him, frigidly. “I
am not, I am—uh—sure, suitable material for any opus upon which you may be at
work.”
“Oh, you can’t ever tell, sir,” Kinnison said. “You see, I never know who or what is
going to get into any of my stories until after I start to write it, and sometimes not even
then.” The statesman glared and Kinnison retreated in disorder.
To stay in character Kinnison actually wrote a novel; it was later acclaimed as
one of Sybly Whyte’s best.
“Qadgop the Mercotan slithered flatly around the after-bulge of the tranship. One
claw dug into the meters-thick armor of pure neutronium, then another. Its terrible xmex-
like snout locked on. Its zymolosely polydactile tongue crunched out, crashed down,
rasped across. Slurp! Slurp! At each abrasive stroke the groove in the tranship’s plating
deepened and Qadgop leered more fiercely. Fools! Did they think that the airlessness of
absolute space, the heatlessness of absolute zero, the yieldlessness of absolute
neutronium, could stop QADGOP THE MERCOTAN? And the stowaway, that human
wench Cynthia, cowering in helpless terror just beyond this thin and fragile wall . . .”
Kinnison was taping verbosely along when his first real clue developed.
A yellow “attention” light gleamed upon his visiphone panel, a subdued chime
gave notice that a message of importance was about to be broadcast to the world.
Kinnison-Whyte flipped his switch and the stern face of the provost-marshal appeared
upon the screen.
“Attention, please,” the image spoke. “Every citizen of Radelix is urged to be on
the lookout for the source of certain inflammatory and subversive literature which is
beginning to appear in various cities of this planet. Our officers cannot be everywhere at
once; you citizens are. It is hoped that by the aid of your vigilance this threat to our
planetary peace and security can be removed before it becomes really serious; that we
can avoid the imposition of martial law.”
This message, while not of extreme or urgent import to most Radeligians, held
for Kinnison a profound and unique meaning. He was right. He had deduced the thing
one hundred percent. He knew what was going to happen next, and how; he knew that
neither the law-enforcement officers of Radelix nor its massed citizenry could stop it.