“It is the Lensman!” he burst out. “It’s got to be, Lens or no Lens. Who else would have the cold nerve to go back there when he knows he’s let the cat completely out of the bag!”
“Well, get him, then,” advised his companion. “All set, ain’t you?”
“But it can’t be!” the chief went on, reversing himself in mid-flight. “A Lensman has got to have a Lens, and a Lens can’t be invisible! And this fellow has not now, and never has had, a mind-ray machine. He hasn’t got anything! And besides, the Lensman we’re after wouldn’t be sticking around—he disappears.”
“Well, drop him and chase somebody else, then,” the lieutenant advised, unfeelingly.
“But there’s nobody nearly enough like him!” snarled the chief, in desperation. He was torn by doubt and indecision. This whole situation was a mess—it didn’t add up right, from any possible angle. “It’s got to be him—it can’t be anybody else. I’ve checked and rechecked him. It is him, and not a double. He thinks he’s safe enough; he can’t know about us—can’t even suspect.
Besides, his only good double, Fordyce—and he’s not good enough to stand the inspection I just gave him—hasn’t appeared anywhere.”
“Probably inside base yet. Maybe this is a better double. Perhaps this is the real Lensman pretending he isn’t, or maybe the real Lensman is slipping out while you’re watching the man in4he cab,” the junior suggested, helpfully.
“Shut up!” the superior yelled. He started to reach for a switch, but paused, hand in air.
“Go ahead. That’s it, call District and toss it into their laps, if it’s too hot for you to handle. I think myself whoever did this job is a warm number—plenty warm.”
“And get my ears burned off with that ‘your report is neither complete nor conclusive’ of his?” the chief sneered. “And get reduced for incompetence besides? No, we’ve got to do it ourselves, and do it right . . . but that man there isn’t the Lensman—he can’t be!”
“Well, you’d better make up your mind—you haven’t got all day. And nix on that ‘we’ stuff. It’s you that’s got to do it—you’re the boss, not me,” the underling countered, callously.
For once, he was really glad that he was not the one in command. “And you’d better get busy and do it, too.” ‘Til do it,” the chief declared, grimly. “There’s a way.” There was a way.
One only. He must be brought in alive and compelled to divulge the truth. There was no other way. The Boskonian touched a stud and spoke. “Don’t kill him—bring him in alive. If you kill him even accidentally I’ll kill both of you, myself.”
The Gray Lensman made his carefree way down the alley-like thoroughfare, whistling inharmoniously and very evidently at peace with the Universe.
It takes something, friends, to walk knowingly into a trap; without betraying emotion or stress even while a blackjack, wielded by a strong arm, is descending toward the back of your head. Something of quality, something of fiber, something of je ne sais quoi. But whatever it took Kinnison in ample measure had.
He did not wink, flinch, or turn an eye as the billy came down. Only as it touched his hair did he act, exerting all his marvelous muscular control to jerk forward and downward, with the weapon and ahead of it, to spare himself as much as possible of the terrific blow.
The black-jack crunched against the base of the Lensman’s skull in a shower of coruscating constellations. He fell. He lay there, twitching feebly.
CHAPTER 8 – CATEAGLES
As has been said, Kinnison rode the blow of the blackjack forward and downward, thus robbing it of some of its power. It struck him hard enough so that the thug did not suspect the truth; he thought that he had all but taken the Lensman’s life. And, for all the speed with which the Tellurian had yielded before the blow, he was hurt; but he was not stunned. Therefore, although he made no resistance when the two bullies rolled him over, lashed his feet together, tied his hands behind him, and lifted him into a car, he was fully conscious throughout the proceedings.
When the cab was perhaps half an hour upon its way the Lensman struggled back, quite realistically, to consciousness.
“Take it easy, pal,” the larger of his thought-screened captors advised, dandling the black-jack suggestively before his eyes. “One yelp out of you, or a signal, if you’ve got one of them Lenses, and I bop you another one.”
“What the blinding blue hell’s coming off here?” demanded the dock-walloper, furiously.
“Wha’d’ya think you’re doing, you lop-eared . . .” and he cursed the two, viciously and comprehensively.
“Shut up or hell knock you kicking,” the smaller thug advised from the driver’s seat, and Kinnison subsided. “Not that it bothers me any, but you’re making too damn much noise.”
“But what’s the matter?” Kinnison asked, more quietly. “What’d you slug me for and drag me off? I ain’t done nothing and I ain’t got nothing.”
“I don’t know nothing,” the big agent replied. “The boss will tell you all you need to know when we get to where we’re going. All I know is the boss says to bop you easy-like and bring you in alive if you don’t act up. He says to tell you not to yell and not to use no Lens. If you yell we burn you out. If you use any Lens, the boss he’s got his eyes on all the bases and spaceports and everything, and if any help starts to come this way hell tell us and we fry you and buzz off. We can kill you and flit before any help can get near you, he says.”
“Your boss ain’t got the brains of a fontema,” Kinnison growled. He knew that the boss, wherever he was, could hear every word. “Hell’s hinges, if I was a Lensman you think I’d be walloping junk on a dock? Use your head, cully, if you got one.”
“I wouldn’t know nothing about that,” the other returned, stolidly.
“But I ain’t got no Lens!” the dock-walloper stormed, in exasperation. “Look at me—frisk me! You’ll see I ain’t!”
“All that ain’t none of my dish.” The thug was entirely unmoved. “I don’t know nothing and I don’t do nothing except what the boss tells me, see? Now take it easy, all nice and quiet- like. If you don’t,” and he flicked the blackjack lightly against the Lensman’s knee, “I’ll put out your landing-lights. I’ll lay you like a mat, and I don’t mean maybe. See?”
Kinnison saw, and relapsed into silence. The automobile rolled along. And, flitting industriously about upon its delivery duties, but never much more or less than one measured mile distant, a panel job pursued its devious way. Oddly enough, its chauffeur was a Lensman.
Here and there, high in the heavens, were a few airplanes, gyros, and copters; but they were going peacefully and steadily about their business— even though most of them happened to have Lensmen as pilots.
And, not at the base at all, but high in the stratosphere and so throughly screened that a spy-ray observer could not even tell that his gaze was being blocked, a battle-cruiser, Lensman- commanded, rode poised upon flare-baffled, softly hissing under-jets. And, equally high and as adequately protected against observation, a keen-eyed Lensman sat at the controls of a speedster, jazzing her muffled jets and peering eagerly through a telescopic sight. As far as the Patrol was concerned, everything was on the trips.
The car approached the gates of a suburban estate and stopped. It waited. Kinnison knew that the Boskonian within was working his every beam, alert for any sign of Patrol activity; knew that if there were any such sign the car would be off in an instant. But there was no activity. Kinnison sent a thought to Gerrond, who relayed micrometric readings of the objective to various Lensmen. Still everyone waited. Then the gate opened of itself, the two thugs jerked their captive out of the car to the ground, and Kinnison sent out his signal.
Base remained quiet, but everything else erupted at once. The airplanes wheeled, cruiser and speedster plummeted downward at maximum blast. The panel job literally fell open, as did the cage within it, and four ravening ca-eagles, with the silent ferocity of their kind, rocketed toward their goal.
Although the oglons were not as fast as the flying ships they did not have nearly as far to go, wherefore they got there first. The thugs had no warning whatever. One instant everything was under control; if the next the noiselessly arrowing destroyers struck their prey with the mad fury that only a striking cateagle can exhibit. Barbed talons dug viciously into eyes, faces, mouths, tearing, rending, wrenching; fierce-driven fangs tore deeply, savagely into defenseless throats.
Once each die thugs screamed in mad, lethal terror, but no warning was given; for by that time every building upon that pretentious estate had disappeared in the pyrotechnic flare of detonating duodec. The pellets were small, of course—the gunners did not wish either to destroy the nearby residences or to injure Kinnison—but they were powerful enough for the purpose intended. Mansion and outbuildings disappeared, and not even the most thoroughgoing spy-ray search revealed the presence of anything animate or structural where those buildings had been.