might get nipped in their dash, but their crews elected without hesitation to take the
chance. Four boats, it was already known, had been captured by the pirates. The
others . . . .
“Only eight boats,” Kinnison mused. “Not so good–but it could have been a lot
worse-they might have got us all by this tune-and maybe some of them are just out of
our reach.” Then, turning to the Velantian, who had withdrawn his mind as soon as the
job was. done.
`Thanks, Worsel,” he said simply. “Some of those lads coming in have got plenty
of just what it takes, and how we can use them !”
One by one the lifeboats made port, where their crews were welcomed briefly but
feelingly before they were put to work. Nelson, one of the last pair to arrive, was
particularly welcome.
“Nels, we need you badly,” Kinnison informed him as soon as greetings had
been exchanged. “The pirates have a beam, carrying a peculiarly scrambled signal, that
they can receive and decode through any ordinary kind of blanketing interference, and
you’re the best man we’ve got to study their system. Some of these Velantian scientists
can probably help you a lot on that-any race that can develop a screen against thought
figures ought to know more than somewhat about vibration in general. We’ve got
working models of the pirates’ instruments, so you can figure out their patterns and
formulas. When you’ve done that, I want you .and your Velantians to design something
that will scramble all the pirates’ communicator beams in space, as far as you can
reach. If you can fix things so they can’t talk any more than we can it’ll help a lot,
believe me!”
“QX, Chief, we’ll give if the works,” and the radio man called for tools, apparatus,
and electricians.
Then throughout the great airport the many Velantians and the handful of
Patrolmen labored mightily, side by side, and to very good effect indeed. Slowly the port
became ringed about by, and studded everywhere with, monstrous mechanisms.
Everywhere there were projectors, refractory throated demons ready to vomit forth
every force known to the expert technicians of the Patrol. There were absorbers, too,
backed by their bleeder resistors, air-gaps, ground-rods, and racks for discharged
accumulators. There, too, were receptors and converters for the cosmic energy which
was to empower many of the devices. There were, of course, atomic motor-generators
by the score, and battery upon battery of gigantic accumulators. And Nelson’s high-
powered scrambler was ready to go to work.
These machines appeared crude, rough, unfinished, for neither time nor labor
had been wasted upon non-essentials. But inside each one the moving parts fitted with
micrometric accuracy and with hair-spring balance. All, without exception, functioned
perfectly.
At Worsel’s call, Kinnison climbed up out of a great beam-proof pit, the top of
whose wall was practically composed of tractor-beam projectors. Pausing only to make
sure that a sticking switch on one of the screen-dome generators had been replaced,
he hurried to the heavily armored control room, where his little force of fellow Patrolmen
awaited him.
“They’re coming, boys,” he announced. “You all know what to do. There are a lot
more things we could have done if we’d had more time, but as it is we’ll just go to work
on them with what we’ve got,” and Kinnison, again all brisk Captain, bent over his
instruments.
In the ordinary course of events the pirate would have flashed up to the planet
with spy-rays out and issuing a peremptory demand for the planet to show a clean bill of
health or to surrender instantly such fugitives as might lately have landed upon it. But
Kinnison did not-could not-wait for that. The spy-rays, he knew, would reveal the
presence of his armament, and such armament most certainly did not belong to this
planet. Therefore he acted first, and everything happened practically at once.
A tracer lashed out, the pilot-ray of the rim-battery of extraordinarily powerful
tractors. Under their terrific pull the inertialess ship flashed toward their center of action.
At the same moment there burst into activity Nelson’s scrambler, a dome-screen
against cosmic-energy intake, and a full circle of super-powered projectors.
All these things occurred in the twinkling of an eye, and the vessel was being
slowed down by the atmosphere of Velantia before her startled commander could even
realize that he was being attacked. Only the automatically-reacting defensive screens
saved that ship from instant destruction, but they did so save it and in seconds the
pirates’ every weapon was furiously ablaze.
In vain. The defenses of that pit could take it. They were driven by mechanisms
easily able to absorb the output of any equipment mountable upon a mobile base, and
to his consternation the pirate found that his cosmic-energy intake was at, and
remained at, zero. He sent out call after call for help, but could not make contact with
any other pirate station-ether and sub-ether alike were closed to him, his signals were
blanketed completely. Nor could his drivers, even though operating at ruinous overload,
move him from the geometrical center of that incandescently flaming pit, so
inconceivably rigid were the tractors’ clamps upon him.
And soon his power began to fail. His vessel, designed to operate upon cosmic-
energy intake, carried only enough accumulators for stabilization of power-flow, an
amount ridiculously inadequate for a combat as profligate of energy as this. But
strangely enough, as his defenses weakened, so lessened the power of the attack. It
was no part of the Lensman’s plan to destroy this superdreadnaught of the void.
“That was one good thing about the old Brittania,” he gritted, as he cut down step
by step the power of his beams, “what power she had, nobody could block her off from!”
Soon the stored-up energy of the battleship was exhausted and she lay there,
quiescent. Then giant pressors went into action and she was lifted over the wall of the
pit, to settle down in an open space beside it-open, but still under the domes of force.
Kinnison had no needle-rays as yet, the time at his disposal having been
sufficient only for the construction of the absolutely essential items of equipment. Now,
while he debated with his fellows as to what part of the vessel to destroy in order to
wipe out its crew, the pirates themselves ended the debate. Ports yawned in the
vessel’s side and they came out fighting.
For they were not a breed to die like rats in a trap, and they knew that to remain
inside their vessel was to die whenever and however their captors willed. They knew
also that die they must if they could not conquer. Their surrender, even if it should be
accepted, would mean only a somewhat later death in the lethal chambers of the Law.
In the open, they could at least take some of their foes with them.
Furthermore, not being men as we know men, they had nothing in common with
either human beings or Velantians. Both to them were vermin, as they themselves were
to the beings manning this surprisingly impregnable fortress here in this waste corner of
the galaxy. Therefore, space-hardened veterans all, they fought, with the insane ferocity
and desperation of the ultimately last stand, but they did not conquer. Instead, and to
the last man, they died.
As soon as the battle was over, before the interference blanketing the pirates’
communicators was cut off, Kinnison went through the captured vessel, destroying the
headquarters visiplates and every automatic sender which could transmit any kind of a
message to any pirate base. Then the interference was stopped, the domes were
released, and the ship was removed from the field of operations. Then, while
Thorndyke and his reptilian aides-themselves now radio experts of no mean
attainments-busied themselves at installing a high-powered scrambler aboard her,
Kinnison and Worsel scanned space in search of more prey. Soon they found it, more
distant than the first one had been – two solar systems away-and in an entirely different
direction. Tracers and tractors and interference and domes of force again became the
order of the day. Projectors again raved out in their incandescent might, and soon
another immense cruiser of the void lay beside her sister ship. Another, and another,
then for a long time space was blank.
The Lensman then energized his ultra-receiver, pointing his antenna carefully
into the galactic line to Helmet’s base, as laid down for him by the Velantian
astronomers. Again, so tight and hard was Helmuth’s beam, he had to drive his
apparatus so unmercifully that the tube-noise almost drowned out the signals, but again
he was rewarded by hearing faintly the voice of the pirate Director of Operations
. . . . . four vessels, all within or near one of those five solar systems, have
ceased communicating, each cessation being accompanied by a period of blanketing
interference of a pattern never before registered. You two vessels who are receiving