VanBuskirk, completely under the influence of the frantic compulsion, leaped
toward the Velantian, only to ix checked bodily by Kinnison, who was foggily trying to
isolate and identify one thing about the situation that did not ring quite true.
“Just a minute, Bus — shut that door first!” he commanded.
`Never mind the door!” Worsel’s thought came in a roaring crescendo. “Release
me instantly l Hurry l Hurry, or it will be too late, for all of us I”
“All this terrific rush doesn’t make any kind of sense at all,” Kinnison declared,
closing his mind resolutely to the clamor of the Velantian’s thoughts. “I want to go just
as badly as you do, Bus, or maybe more so — but I can’t help feeling that there’s
something screwy somewhere. Anyway, remember the last thing Worse! said, and let’s
shut the door before we unsnap a single chain.”
Then something clicked in the Lensman’s mind.
“Hypnotism, through Worsel!” he barked, opposition now aflame. “So gradual
that it never occurred to me to build up a resistance. Holy Klono, what a fool I’ve been!
Fight ’em, Bus — fight ’em! Don’t let ’em kid you any more, and pay no attention to
anything Worse! sends at you I” Whirling around, he leaped toward the open door of
the tent.
But as he leaped his brain was invaded by such a concentration of force that he
fell flat upon the floor, physically out of control. He must not shut the door. He must
release the Velantian. They must go to the Delgonian cavern. Fully aware now,
however, of the source of the waves of compulsion, he threw the sum total of his mental
power into an intense negation and struggled, inch-wise, toward the opening.
Upon him now, in addition to the Delgonians’ compulsion, beat at point-blank
range the full power of Worsel’s mighty mind, demanding release and compliance. Also,
and worse, he perceived that some powerful mentality was being exerted to make
vanBuskirk kill him. One blow of the Valerian’s ponderous mace would shatter helmet
and skull, and all would be over — once more the Delgonians would have triumphed.
But the stubborn Dutchman, although at the very verge of surrender, was still fighting.
One step forward he would take, bludgeon poised aloft, only to throw it convulsively
backward. Then in spite of himself, he would go over and pick it up, again to _ step
toward his crawling chief.
Again and again vanBuskirk repeated his futile performance while the Lensman
struggled nearer and nearer the door. Finally he reached it and kicked it shut. Instantly
the mental turmoil ceased and the two white and shaking Patrolmen released the limp,
unconscious Velantian from his bonds.
“Wonder what we can do to help him revive?” gasped Kinnison, but his solicitude
was unnecessary — the Velantian recovered consciousness as he spoke.
“Thanks to your wonderful power of resistance, I am alive, unharmed, and know
more of our foes and their methods than any other of my race has ever learned,”
Worsel thought, feelingly. “But it is of no value whatever unless I can send it back to
Valentia. The thought-screen is carried only by the metal of these walls, and if I make
an opening in the wall to think through, however small, it will now mean death. Of
course the science of your Patrol has not perfected an apparatus to drive thought
through such a screen?”
“No. Anyway, it seems to me that we’d better be worrying about something
besides thought-screens,” Kinnison suggested. “Surely, now that they know where we
are, they’ll be coming out here after us, and we haven’t got much of any defense.”
“They don’t know where we are, or care . . . . .” began the Velantian.
“Why not?” broke in vanBuskirk. “Any spy-ray capable of such scanning as you
showed us — I never saw anything like it before — would certainly be as easy to trace as
an out-and-out atomic blast!”
“I sent out no spy-ray or anything of the kind,” Worsel thought, carefully. “Since
our science is so foreign to yours, I am not sure that I can explain satisfactorily, but I
shall try to do so. First, as to what you saw. When that door is open, no barrier to
thought exists. I merely broadcast a thought, placing myself en rapport with the
Delgonian Overlords in their retreat. This condition established, of course I heard and
saw exactly what they heard and saw — and so, equally of course, did you, since you
were also en rapport with me. That is all.”
“That’s all!” echoed vanBuskirk. “What a system! You can do a thing like that,
without apparatus of any kind, and yet say `that’s all’!”
“It is results that count,” Worsel reminded him gently. “While it is true that — we
have done much — this is the first time in history that any Velantian has encountered
the mind of a Delgonian Overlord and lived — it is equally true that it was the will-power
of you Patrolmen that made it possible, not my mentality. Also, it remains true that we
cannot leave this room and live.”
“Why won’t we need weapons?” asked Kinnison, returning to his previous line of
thought.
“Thought-screens are the only defense we will require,” Worsel stated positively,
“for they use no weapons except their minds. By mental power alone they make us
come to them, and, once there, their slaves do the rest. Of course, if my race is ever to
rid the planet of them, we must employ offensive weapons of power. We have such, but
we have never been able to use them. For, in order to locate the enemy, either by
telepathy or by spy-ray, we must open our metallic shields — and the instant we release
those screens we are lost. From those conditions there is no escape,” Worsel
concluded, hopelessly.
“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Kinnison commanded. “There’s a lot of things not
tried yet. For instance, from what I have seen of your generator equipment and the
pattern of that screen, you don’t need a metallic conductor any more than a snake
needs hips. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think we’re a bit ahead of you there. If a devil’s
projector can handle that screen — and I think it can, with special tuning — vanBuskirk
and I can fix things in an hour so that all three of us can walk out of here in perfect
safety — from mental interference, at least. While we’re trying it out, tell us all the new
stuff you got on them just now, and anything else that by any possibility may prove
useful. And remember you said this is the first time any of you had been able to cut
them off. That fact ought to make them sit up and take notice — probably they’ll stir
around more than they ever did before. Come on, Bus — let’s tear into all”
The deVilbiss projectors were rigged and tuned. Kinnison had been right-they
worked. Then plan after plan was made, only to be discarded as its weaknesses were
pointed out.
“Whichever way we look there are too many ‘Ifs’ and ‘buts’ to suit me,” Kinnison
summed up the situation finally. “If we can find them, and if we can get up close to them
without losing our minds to them, we could clean them out if we had some power in our
accumulators. So I’d say the first thing for us to do is to get our batteries charged. We
saw some cities from the air, and cities always have power. Lead us to power, Worsel-
almost any kind of power – and we’ll soon have it in our guns.”
“There are cities, yes,” Worsel was not at all enthusiastic, “dwelling-places of the
ordinary Delgonians, the people you saw being eaten in the cavern of the Overlords. As
you saw, they resemble us Velantians to a certain extent. Since they are of a lower
culture and are much weaker in life force than we are, however, the Overlords prefer us
to their own slave races.
“To visit any city of Delgon is out of the question. Every inhabitant of every city is
an abject slave and his brain is an open book. Whatever he sees, whatever he thinks, is
communicated instantly to his master. And I now perceive that I may have misinformed
you as to the Overlords’ ability to use weapons. While the situation has never arisen, it
is only logical to suppose that as soon as we are seen by any Delgonian the controllers
will order all the inhabitants of the city to capture us and bring us to them.”
“What a guy!” interjected vanBuskirk. ‘”Did you ever see his top for looking at the
bright side of life?”
“Only in conversation,” the Lensman replied. “When the ether gets crowded, you
notice, he’s right in there, blasting away and not saying a word. But to get back to the