commissioned officer with an exaggerated formality. “Say, Bus, I’ve been doing some
thinking. Why wouldn’t it be a good idea to . . . .”
“Uh-uh, it would not,” denied the fighter, positively. “I know what you’re going to
say-that you want in on this party-but don’t say it.”
“But I . . . . .” Kinnison began to argue.
“Nix,” the Valerian declared flatly. “You’ve got to stay with your speedster. No
room for her inside, she’s clear full of cargo and my men. You can’t clamp on outside,
because that would give the whole thing away. And besides, for the first and last time in
my life I’ve got a chance to give a Gray Lensman orders. Those orders are to stay out
of and away from this ship-and I’ll see to it that you do, too, you little Tellurian shrimp!
Boy, what a kick I get out of that!”
“You would, you big, dumb Valerian ape-you always were a small-souled types”
Kinnison retorted. “Piggy-piggy . . . . Haynes, huh?”
“Uh-huh.” VanBuskirk nodded. “How else could I talk so rough to you and get
away with it? However, don’t feel too bad-you aren’t missing a thing, really. It’s in the
cans already, and your fun is up ahead somewhere. And by the way, Kim,
congratulations. You had it coming. We’re all behind you, from here to the Magellanic
Clouds and back.”
“Thanks. The same to you, Bus, and many of ’em. Well, if you won’t let me stow
away, I’ll tag along behind, I guess. Clear ether-or rather, I hope it’s full of pirates by
tomorrow morning.- Won’t be, though, probably, don’t imagine they’ll move until we’re
almost there.”
And tag along Kinnison did, through thousands and thousands of parsecs of
uneventful voyage.
,Part of the time he spent in the speedster dashing hither and yon. Most of it,
however, he spent in the vastly more comfortable mauler, to the armored side of which
his tiny vessel clung with its magnetic clamps while he slept and ate, gossiped and
read, exercised and played with the mauler’s officers and crew, in deep-space
comradery. It so happened, however, that when the long-awaited attack developed he
was out in his speedster, and thus saw and heard everything from the beginning.
Space was filled with the old, familiar interference. The raider flashed up, locked
on with magnets, and began to beam. Not heavily-scarcely enough to warm up the
defensive screens-and Kinnison probed into the pirate with his spy-ray.
“Terrestrials-North Americans!” he exclaimed, half aloud, startled for an instant.
“But naturally they would be, since this is a put-up job and over half the crew were New
York gangsters.”
“The blighter’s got his spy-ray screens up,” the pilot was grumbling to his captain.
The fact that he spoke in English was immaterial to the Lensman, he would have
understood equally well any other possible form of communication or of thought
exchange. “What wasn’t part of the plan, was it?”
If Helmuth or one of the other able minds at Grand Base had been directing that
attack it would have stopped right there. The pilot had shown a flash of feeling that, with
a little encouragement, might have grown into a suspicion. But the captain was not an
imaginative man. Therefore.
“Nothing was said about it, either way,” he replied. “Probably the mate’s on duty-
he isn’t one of us, you know. The captain will open up. If he doesn’t do it pretty quick I’ll
open her up myself . . . . there, the port’s opening. Slide a little forward . . . hold it! Go
get ’em, men!”
Men, hundreds of them, armed and armored, swarmed through the freighter’s
locks. But as the last man of the boarding party passed the portal something happened
that was most decidedly not on the program. The outer port slammed shut and its
toggles drove home!
“Blast those screens! Knock them down-get in there with a spray-ray!” barked the
pirate captain. He was not one of those hardy and- valiant souls who, like Gildersleeve,
led in person the attacks of his cut-throats. He emulated instead the higher Boskonian
officials and directed his raids from the safety of his control-room, but, as has been
intimated, he was not exactly like those officials. It was only after it was too late that he
became suspicious. “I wonder if somebody could have double-crossed us? . . . .
Highjackers?”
“We’ll bally soon know,” the pilot growled, and even as he spoke the spy-ray got
through, revealing a very shambles.
For vanBuskirk and his Valerians had not been caught napping, nor were they a
crew-unarmored, partially armed, and rendered even more impotent by internal mutiny,
strife, and slaughter-such as the pirates had expected to find.
Instead, the boarders met a force that was overwhelmingly superior to their own.
Not only in the strength and agility of its units, but also in that at least one semi-portable
projector commanded every corridor of the freighter. In the blasts of those projectors
most of the pirates died instantly, not knowing what struck them.
They were the fortunate ones. The others knew what was coming and saw it as it
came, for the Valerians did not even draw their DeLameters. They knew that the
pirates’ armor could withstand for minutes any hand-weapon’s beams, and they
disdained to remount the heavy semi-portables. They came in with their space-axes,
and at the sight the pirates broke and ran screaming in panic fear. But they could not
escape. The toggles of the exit port were socketed and locked.
Therefore the storming party died to the last man, and, as vanBuskirk had
foretold, it was scarcely even a struggle. For ordinary armor is so much tin-plate against
a Valerian swinging a space-axe.
The spy-ray of the pirate captain got through just 3n time to see the ghastly finale
of the massacre, and his face turned first purple, then white.
“The Patrol!” he gasped. “Valerians-a whole company of them ! I’ll say we’ve
been double-crossed !”
“Righto — we’ve been jolly well had,” the pilot agreed. “You don’t know the half of
it, either. Somebody’s coming, and it isn’t a boy scout. If a mauler should suck us in,
we’d be very much a spent force, what?”
“Cut the gabble!” snapped the captain. “Is it a mauler, or not?”
“A bit too far away yet to say, but it probably is. They wouldn’t have sent those
jaspers out without cover, old bean-they know we can burn that freighter’s screens
down in an hour. Better get ready to run, what?”
The commander did so, wild thoughts racing through his mind. If a mauler got
close enough to him to use magnets, he was done. His heaviest beams wouldn’t even
warm up a mauler’s screens, his defenses wouldn’t stand up for a second against a
mauler’s blasts . . . . , and he’d be ordered back to base . . . . .”
“Tally ho, old fruit !” The pilot slammed on maximum blast. “It’s a mauler and
we’ve been bloody well jobbed. Back to base?”
“Yes,” and the discomfited captain energized his communicator, to report to his
immediate superior the humiliating outcome of the supposedly carefully-planned coup.
CHAPTER 16
Kinnison Meets the Wheelmen
As the pirate fled into space Kinnison followed, matching his quarry in course and
speed. He then cut in the automatic controller on his drive, the automatic recorder on
his plate, and began to tune in his beam-tracer, only to be brought up short by the
realization that the spyray’s point would not stay in the pirate’s control room without
constant attention and manual adjustment. He had known that, too. Even the most
precise of automatic controllers, driven by the most carefully stabilized electronic
currents, are prone to slip a little at even such close range as ten million miles,
especially in the bumpy ether near solar systems, and there was nothing to correct the
slip. He had not thought of that before, the pilot always made those minor corrections
as a matter of course.
But now he was torn between two desires. He wanted to listen to the
conversation that would ensue as soon as the pirate captain got into communication
with his superior officers, and, especially should Helmuth put in his beam, he very much
wanted to trace it and thus secure another line on the headquarters he was so anxious
to locate. He now feared that be could not do both-a fear that soon was to prove well
grounded-and wished fervently that for a few minutes he could be two men. Or at least
a Velantian, they had eyes and hands and separate brain-compartments enough so
that they could do half-a-dozen things at once and do each one well. He could not, but
he could try. Maybe he should have brought one of the boys along, at that. No, that
would wreck everything, later on, he would have to do the best he could.