“I’ll do that.” The Port Admiral touched a button and in a few minutes a trimly attractive blonde entered the room. “Miss Hostetter, this is Lensman Kinnison, Unattached. Please turn over your regular duties to an assistant and work with him until he releases you. Whatever he says, goes; the sky’s the limit”
In the Library of Science Kinnison outlined his problem briefly to his new aide, concluding: “I want only about fifty, as a larger group could not cooperate efficiently. Are your lists arranged so that you can skim off the top fifty?”
“Such a group can be selected, I think.” The girl stood for a moment, lower lip held lightly between white teeth. “That is not a standard index, but each scientist has a rating. I can set the acceptor . . . no, the rejector would be better—to throw out all the cards above any given rating. If we take out all ratings over seven hundred we will have only the highest of the geniuses.”
“How many, do you suppose?”
“I have only a vague idea—a couple of hundred, perhaps. If too many, we can run them again at a higher level, say seven ten. But there won’t be very many, since there are only two galactic ratings higher than seven fifty. There will be duplications, too—such people as Sir Austin Cardynge will have two or three cards in the final rejects.”
“QX—we’ll want to hand-pick the fifty, anyway. Let’s go!”
Then for hours bale after bale of cards went through the machine; thousands of records per minute. Occasionally one card would flip out into a rack, rejected. Finally: “That’s all, I think. Mathematicians, physicists,” the librarian ticked off upon pink fingers, “Astronomers, philosophers, and this new classification, which hasn’t been named yet.”
“The H.T.T.’s.” Kinnison glanced at the label, lightly lettered in pencil, fronting the slim packet of cards. “Aren’t you going to run them through, too?”
“No. These are the two I mentioned a minute ago—the only ones higher than seven hundred fifty.”
“A choice pair, eh? Sort of a creme de la creme? Let’s look ‘em over,” and he extended his hand. “What do the initials stand for?”
“I’m awfully sorry, sir, really,” the girl flushed in embarrassment as she relinquished the cards in high reluctance. “If I’d had any idea we wouldn’t have dared—we call you, among ourselves, the ‘High-Tension Thinkers.’”
“Us!” It was the Lensman’s turn to flush. Nevertheless, he took the packet and read sketchily the facer: “Class XIX—Unclassifiable at present . . . lack of adequate methods . . . minds of range and scope far beyond any available indices . . . Ratings above high genius (750) .
. . yet no instability . . . power beyond any heretofore known . . . assigned ratings tentative and definitely minimum.”
He then read the cards.
“Worsel, Velantia, eight hundred.”
And: “Kimball Kinnison, Tellus, eight hundred seventy-five.”
CHAPTER 9 – EICH AND ARISIAN
The port admiral was eminently correct in supposing that Boskone, whoever or whatever he or it might be, was already taking action upon what the Tellurian Lensman had done. For, even as Kinnison was at work in the Library of Science, a meeting which was indirectly to affect him no little was being called to order.
In the immensely distant Second Galaxy was that meeting being held; upon the then planet Jarnevon of the Eich; within that sullen fortress already mentioned briefly. Presiding over it was the indescribable entity known to history as Eichlan; or, more properly, Lan of the Eich.
“Boskone is now in session,” that entity announced to the eight other similar monstrosities who in some fashion indescribable to man were stationed at the long, low, wide bench of stone-like material which served as a table of state. “Nine days ago each of us began to search for whatever new facts might bear upon the activities of the as yet entirely hypothetical Lensman who, Helmuth believed, was the real force back of our recent intolerable reverses in the Tellurian Galaxy.
“As First of Boskone I will report as to the military situation. As you know, our positions there became untenable with the fall of our Grand Base and all our mobile forces were withdrawn. In order to facilitate reorganization, coordinating ships were sent out. Some of these ships went to planets held in toto by us. Not one of these vessels has been able to report any pertinent facts whatever. Ships approaching bases of the Patrol, or encountering Patrol ships of war in space, simply ceased communicating. Even their automatic recorders ceased to function without transmitting any intelligible data, indicating complete destruction of those ships. A cascade system, in which one ship followed another at long range and with analytical instruments set to determine the nature of any beam or weapon employed, was attempted. The enemy, however, threw out blanketing zones of tremendous power; and we lost six more vessels without obtaining the desired data. These are the facts, all negative. Theorizing, deduction, summation, and integration will as usual come later. Eichmil, Second of Boskone, will now report.”
“My facts are also entirely negative,” the Second began. “Soon after our operations upon the planet Radelix became productive of results a contingent of Tellurian narcotic agents arrived; which may or may not have included the Lensman . . .”
“Stick to facts for the time being.” Eichlan ordered, curtly.
“Shortly thereafter a minor agent, a female instructed to wear a thought-screen at all times, lost her usefulness by suffering a mental disorder which incapacitated her quite seriously.
Then another agent, also a female, this time one of the third order and who had been very useful up to that time, ceased reporting. A few days later Bominger, the Planetary Director, failed to report, as did the Planetary Observer; who, as you know, was entirely unknown to, and had no connection with, the operating staff. Reports from other sources, such as importers and shippers—these, I believe, are here admissable as facts—indicate that all our personnel upon Radelix have been liquidated. No unusual developments have occurred upon any other planet, nor has any significant fact, however small, been discovered.”
“Eichnor, Third of Boskone.”
“Also negative. Our every source of information from within the bases of the Patrol has been shut off. Every one of our representatives, some of whom have been reporting regularly for many years, has been silent, and every effort to reach any of them has failed.”
“Eichsnap, Fourth of Boskone.”
“Utterly negative. We have been able to find no trace whatever of the planet Medon, or of any one of the twenty one warships investing it at the time of its disappearance.”
And so on, through nine reports, while the tentacles of the mighty First of Boskone played intermittently over the keys of a complex instrument or machine before him.
“We will now reason, theorize, and draw conclusions,” the First announced, and each of the organisms fed his ideas and deductions into the machine. It whirred briefly, then ejected a tape, which Eichlan took up and scanned narrowly.
“Rejecting all conclusions having a probability of less than ninety five percent,” He announced, “we have: First, a set of three probabilities of a value of ninety nine and ninety nine one-hundredths—virtual certainties—that some one Tellurian Lensman is the prime mover behind what has happened; that he has acquired a mental power heretofore unknown to his race; and that he has been in large part responsible for the development of the Patrol’s new and formidable weapons. Second, a probability of ninety-nine percent that he and his organization are no longer on the defensive, but have assumed the offensive. Third, one of ninety-seven percent that it is not primarily Tellus which is an obstacle, even though the Galactic Patrol and Civilization did originate upon that planet, but Arisia; that Helmuth’s report was at least partially true. Fourth, one of ninety-five and one half percent that the Lens is also concerned in the disappearance of the planet Medon. There is a lesser probability, but still of some ninety-four percent, that that same Lensman is involved here.
“I will not interpolate here that the vanishment of that planet is a much more serious matter than it might appear, on the surface, to be. In situ, it was a thing of no concern—gone, it becomes an affair of almost vital import. To issue orders impossible of fulfillment, as Helmuth did when he said ‘Comb Trenco, inch by inch,’ is easy. To comb this galaxy star by star for Medon would be an even more difficult and longer task; but what can be done is being done.
“To return to the conclusions, they point out a state of things which I do not have to tell you is really grave. This is the first major set-back which the culture of the Boskone has encountered since it began its rise. You are familiar with that rise; how we of the Eich took over in turn a city, a race, a planet, a solar system, a region, a galaxy. How we extended our sway into the Tellurian Galaxy, as a preliminary to the extension of our authority throughout all the populated galaxies of the macro-cosmic Universe.