They could not even impede it. A force of Lensmen could stop it—but that would not get
the Patrol anywhere unless they could capture or kill the beings really responsible for
what was done. To alarm them would not do.
Whether or not he could do much of anything before the grand climax depended
on a lot of factors. On what that climax was; who was threatened with what; whether or
not the threatened one was actually a Boskonian. A great deal of investigation was
indicated.
If the enemy were going to repeat, as seemed probable, the president would be
the victim. If he, Kinnison, could not get the big shots lined up before the plot came to a
head, he would have to let it develop right up to the point of disappearance; and for
Whyte to appear at that time would be to attract undesirable attention. No—by that time
he must already have been kicking around underfoot long enough to have become an
unnoticeable fixture.
Wherefore he moved into quarters as close to the executive offices as he could
possibly get; and in those quarters he worked openly and wordily at the bringing of the
affair of Qadgop and the beautiful-but-dumb Cynthia to a satisfactory conclusion.
CHAPTER 4: NADRECK OF PALAIN VII AT WORK
In order to understand these and subsequent events it is necessary to cut back
briefly some twenty-odd years, to the momentous interview upon chill, dark Onlo
between monstrous Kandron and his superior in affairs Boskonian, the unspeakable
Alcon, the Tyrant of Thrale. At almost the end of that interview, when Kandron had
suggested the possibility that his own base had perhaps been vulnerable to Star A
Star’s insidious manipulations:
“Do you mean to admit that you may have been invaded and
searched—tracelessly?” Alcon fairly shrieked the thought.
“Certainly,” Kandron replied, coldly. “While I do not believe that it has been done,
the possibility must be conceded. What science can devise science can circumvent. It is
not Onlo and I who are their prime objectives, you must realize, but Thrale and you.
Especially you.”
“You may be right. With no data whatever upon who or what Star A Star really is,
with no tenable theory as to how he could have done what actually has been done,
speculation is idle.” Thus Alcon ended the conversation and, almost immediately, went
back to Thrale.
After the Tyrant’s departure Kandron continued to think, and the more he thought
the more uneasy he became. It was undoubtedly true that Alcon and Thrale were the
Patrol’s prime objectives. But, those objectives attained, was it reasonable to suppose
that he and Onlo would be spared? It was not. Should he warn Alcon further? He should
not. If the Tyrant, after all that had been said, could not see the danger he was in, he
wasn’t worth saving. If he preferred to stay and fight it out, that was his lookout.
Kandron would take no chances with his own extremely valuable life.
Should he warn his own men? How could he? They were able and hardened
fighters all; no possible warning could make them defend their fortresses and their lives
any more efficiently than they were already prepared to do; nothing he could say would
be of any use in preparing them for a threat whose basic nature, even, was completely
unknown. Furthermore, this hypothetical invasion probably had not happened and very
well might not happen at all, and to flee from an imaginary foe would not redound to his
credit. . No. As a personage of large affairs, not limited to Onlo, he would be called
elsewhere. He would stay elsewhere until after whatever was going to happen had
happened. If nothing happened during the ensuing few weeks he would return from his
official trip and all would be well.
He inspected Onlo thoroughly, he cautioned his officers repeatedly and
insistently to keep alert against every conceivable emergency while he was so
unavoidably absent. Then he departed, with a fleet of vessels manned by hand-picked
crews, to a long-prepared and hitherto secret retreat.
From that safe place he watched, through the eyes and the instruments of his
skilled observers, everything that occurred. Thrale fell, and Onlo. The Patrol triumphed.
Then, knowing the full measure of the disaster and accepting it with the grim passivity
so characteristic of his breed, Kandron broadcast certain signals and one of his—and
Alcon’s—superiors got in touch with him. He reported concisely. They conferred. He
was given orders which were to keep him busy for over twenty Tellurian years.
He knew now that Onlo had been invaded, tracelessly, by some feat of mentality
beyond comprehension and almost beyond belief. Onlo had fallen without any of its
defenders having energized a single one of their gigantic engines of war. The fall of
Thrale, and the manner of that fall’s accomplishment, were plain enough. Human stuff.
The work, undoubtedly, of human Lensmen; perhaps the work of the human Lensman
who was so frequently associated with Star A Star.
But Onlo! Kandron himself had set those snares along those intricately zig-
zagged communications lines; he knew their capabilities. Kandron himself had installed
Onlo’s blocking and shielding screens; he knew their might. He knew, since no other
path existed leading to Thrale, that those lines had been followed and those screens
had been penetrated, and all without setting off a single alarm. Those things had
actually happened. Hence Kandron set his stupendous mind to the task of envisaging
what the being must be, mentally, who could do them; what the mind of this Star A
Star—it could have been no one else—must in actuality be.
He succeeded. He deduced Nadreck of Palain VII, practically in toto; and for the
Star A Star thus envisaged he set traps throughout both galaxies. They might or might
not kill him. Killing him immediately, however, was not really of the essence; that matter
could wait until he could give it his personal attention. The important thing was to see to
it that Star A Star could never, by any possible chance, discover a true lead to any high
Boskonian.
Sneeringly, gloatingly, Kandron issued orders; then flung himself with all his zeal
and ability into the task of reorganizing the shattered fragments of the Boskonian
Empire into a force capable of wrecking Civilization.
Thus it is not strange that for more than twenty years Nadreck of Palain VII made
very little progress indeed. Time after time he grazed the hot edge of death. Indeed, it
was only by the exertion of his every iota of skill, power, and callous efficiency that he
managed to survive. He struck a few telling blows for Civilization, but most of the time
he was strictly on the defensive. Every clue he followed, it seemed, led subtly into a
trap; every course he pursued ended, always figuratively and all too often literally, in a
cul-de-sac filled with semi-portable projectors all agog to blast him out of the ether.
Year by year he became more conscious of some imperceptible, indetectable,
but potent foe, an individual enemy obstructing his every move and determined to make
an end of him. And year by year, as material accumulated, it became more and more
certain that the inimical entity was in fact Kandron, once of Onlo.
When Kit went into space, then, and Kinnison called Nadreck into consultation,
the usually reticent and unloquacious Palainian was ready to talk. He told the Gray
Lensman everything he knew and everything he deduced or suspected about the ex-
Onlonian chieftain.
“Kandron of Onlo!” Kinnison exploded, so violently as to sear the sub-ether
through which the thought passed. “Holy Klono’s gadolinium guts! And you can sit there
on your spiny tokus and tell me Kandron got away from you back there? You knew it,
and not only didn’t do a damn thing about it yourself, but didn’t even tell me or anybody
else about it so we could do it? What a brain!”
“Certainly. Why do anything before action becomes necessary?” Nadreck was
entirely unmoved by the Tellurian’s passion. “My powers are admittedly small, my
intellect feeble. However, even to me it was clear then and it is clear now that Kandron
was then of no importance. My assignment was to reduce Onlo. I reduced it. Whether or
not Kandron was there at the time did not then have and cannot now have anything to
do with that task. Kandron, personally, is another, an entirely distinct problem.”
Kinnison swore a blistering deep-space oath; then, by main strength, shut himself
up. Nadreck wasn’t human; there was no use even trying to judge him by human or
near-human standards. He was fundamentally, incomprehensibly, and radically
different. And it was just as well for humanity that he was. For if his hellishly able race
had possessed the characteristically human abilities, in addition to their own, Civilization
would of necessity have been basically Palainian instead of basically human, as it now
is. “QX, ace,” he growled, finally. “Skip it.”