The enemy base was located well outside the galaxy. Not, as Kinnison had feared, in the Second Galaxy, but in a star cluster not too far removed from the First. Hence the flight to Prime Base” did not take long.
Sir Austin Cardynge was more like a self-satisfied tomcat than ever as he gathered up his records, gave a corps of aides minute instructions regarding the packing of his equipment, and set out, figuratively but very evidently licking his chops, rehearsing the scene in which he would confound his allegedly learned fellows, especially that insufferable puppy, that upstart Weingarde . . .
“And that’s that,” Kinnison concluded his informal report to Haynes. “They’re all washed up, there, at least. Before they can rebuild, you can wipe out the whole nest. If there Should happen to be one or two more such bases, the boys know now how to handle them. I think I’d better be getting back onto my own job, don’t you?”
“Probably so,” Haynes thought for moments, then continued: “Can you use help, or can you work better alone?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. The higher the tougher, and it might not be a bad idea at all to have Worsel standing by in my speedster: close by and ready all the time. He’s pretty much of an army himself, mental and physical. QX?”
“Can do,” and thus it came about that the good ship Dauntless flew again, this time out Borova way; her sole freight a sleek black speedster and a rusty, battered meteor-tug, her passengers a sinuous Velantian and a husky Tellurian.
“Sort of a thin time for you, old man, I’m afraid.” Kinnison leaned unconcernedly against the towering pillar of his friend’s tail, whereupon four or five grotesquely stalked eyes curled out at him speculatively. To these two, each other’s appearance and shape were neither repulsive nor strange. They were friends, in the deepest, truest sense. “He’s so hideous that he’s positively distinguished-looking,” each had boasted more than once of the other to friends of his own race.
“Nothing like that.” The Velantian flashed out a leather wing and flipped his tail aside in a playfully unsuccessful attempt to catch the Earthman off balance. “Some day, if you ever learn really to think, you will discover that a few weeks’ solitary, undisturbed and concentrated thought is a rare treat. To have such an opportunity in the line of duty makes it a pleasure unalloyed.”
“I always did think that you were slightly screwy at times, and now I know it,” Kinnison retorted, unconvinced. “Thought is—or should be—a means to an end, not an end in itself; but if that’s your idea of a wonderful time I’m glad to be able to give it to you.”
They disembarked carefully in far space, the complete absence of spectators assured by the warship’s fullest reach of detectors, and Kinnison again went down to Miners Rest Not, this time, to carouse. Miners were not carousing there. Instead, the whole asteroid was buzzing with news of the fabulously rich finds which were being made in the distant solar system of Tressilia.
Kinnison had known that the news would be there, for it was at his instructions that those rich meteors had been placed there to be found. Tressilia III was the home of the regional director with whom the Gray Lensman had important business to transact; he had to have a solid reason, not a mere excuse, for Bill Williams to leave Borova for Tressilia.
The lure of wealth, then as ever, was stronger even than that of drink or of drug. Miners came to revel, but instead they outfitted in haste and hied themselves to the new Klondike. Nor was this anything out of the ordinary. Such stampedes occurred every once in a while, and Strong-heart and his minions were not unduly concerned. They’d be back, and in the meantime there was the profit on a lot of metal and an excess profit due to the skyrocketing prices of supplies.
“You too, Bill?” Strongheart asked without surprise.
“I’ll tell the Universe!” came ready answer. “If they’s metal there I’ll find it, pal.” In making this declaration he was not boasting, he was merely voicing a simple truth. By this time the meteor belts of a hundred solar systems knew for a fact that Wild Bill Williams of Aldebaran II could find metal if metal was there to be found.
“If it’s a bloomer, Bill, come back,” the dive-keeper urged. “Come back anyway when you’ve worked it a couple of drunks, and we never refer to any man’s past. As an Aldebaranian gentleman we would welcome you. And, in the extremely remote contingency to which you refer, I assure you that you would not have to act, Any guest so boorish would be expelled.”
“In that case I would really enjoy spending a little time with you. It has been a long time since I associated with persons of breeding,” he explained, with engaging candor.
“Ill have a boy see to the transfer of your things,” and thus the Gray Lensman allowed the zwilnik to persuade him to visit the one place in the Universe where he most ardently wished to be.
For days in the new environment everything went on with the utmost decorum and circumspection, but Kinnison was not deceived. They would feel him out some way, just as effectively if not as crassly as did the zwilniks of Miners’ Rest. They would have to—this was Regional Headquarters. At first he had been suspicious of thionite, but since the high-ups were not wearing anti-thionite plugs in their nostrils, he wouldn’t have to either.
Then one evening a girl—young, pretty, vivacious— approached him, a pinch of purple powder between her fingers. As the Gray Lensman he knew that the stuff was not thionite, but as William Williams he did not “Do have a tiny smell of thionite, Mr. Williams!” she urged, coguettishly, and made as though to blow it into his face.
Williams reacted strangely, but instantaneously. He ducked with startling speed and the fiat of his palm smacked ringingly against the girl’s cheek. He did not slap her hard—it looked and sounded much worse than it really was—the only actual force was in the follow-up push that sent her flying across the room.
“Wha’ja mean, you? You can’t slap girls around like that here!” and the chief bouncer came at him with a rush.
This time the Lensman did not pull his punch. He struck with everything he had, from heels to finger-tips. Such was the sheer brute power of the blow that the bouncer literally somersaulted half the length of the room, bringing up with a crash against the wall; so accurate was its placement that the victim, while not killed outright, would be unconscious for hours to come.
Others turned then, and paused; for Williams was not running away; he was not even giving ground. Instead, he stood lightly poised upon the balls of his feet, knees bent the veriest trifle, arms hanging at ready, eyes as hard and as cold as the iron meteorites of the space he knew so well.
“Any others of you damn zwilniks want to make a pass at me?” he demanded, and a concerted gasp arose: the word “zwilnik” was in those circles far worse than a mere fighting word. It was absolutely tabu: it was never, under any circumstance, uttered.
Nevertheless, no action was taken. At first the cold arrogance, the sheer effrontery of the man’s pose held them in check; then they noticed one thing and remembered another, the combination of which gave them most emphatically to pause.
No garment, even by the most deliberate intent, could possibly have been designed as a better hiding-place for DeLameters than the barrel-topped full-dress jacket of Aldebaran II; and— Mr. William Williams, poised there in steel-spring readiness for action; so coldly self- confident; so inexplicably, so scornfully derisive of that whole roomful of men not a few of whom he knew must be armed; was also the Wild Bill Williams, meteor miner, who was widely known as the fastest and deadliest performer with twin DeLameters who had ever infested space!
CHAPTER 18 – CROWN ON SHIELD
Edmund Crowninshield sat in his office and seethed quietly, the all-pervasive blueness of the Kalonian brought out even more prominently than usual by his mood. His plan to find out whether or not the ex-miner was a spy had back-fired, badly. He had had reports from Euphrosyne that the fellow was not—could not be—a spy, and now his test had confirmed that conclusion, too thoroughly by far. He Would have to do some mighty quick thinking and perhaps some salve-spreading or lose him. He certainly didn’t want to lose a client who had over a quarter of a million credits to throw away, and who could not possibly resist his cravings for alcohol and bentlam very much longer! But curse him, what had the fellow meant by having a kit-bag built of indurite, with a lock on it that not even his cleverest artists could pick?