examination, and got into the thing. “Now give me two thousand rounds, unless I tell
you to stop. Shoot!”
Again the machine rifle burst into its ear-shattering song of hate, and, strong as
Kinnison was and powerfully braced by the blast of his drivers, he could not stand
against the awful force of those bullets. Over he went, backward, and the firing ceased.
“Keep it up!” he snapped. “Think there going to quit shooting at me because I fall
down?”
“But you had had nineteen hundred!” protested the officer.
“Keep on pecking until you run out of ammunition or until I tell you to stop,”
ordered Kinnison. “I’ve got to learn how to handle this thing under fire,” and the storm of
metal’ again began to crash against the reverberating shell of steel.
It hurled the Lensman down, rolled him over and over, slammed him against the
back-stop. Again and again he struggled upright, only to be hurled again to ground as
the riflemen, really playing the game now, swung their leaden hail from part to part of
the armor, and varied their attack from steady fire to short but savage bursts. But finally,
in spite of .everything the gun crew could do, Kinnison learned his controls.
Then, drivers flaring, he faced that howling, chattering muzzle and strode straight
into the stream of smoke- and flame-enshrouded steel. Now the air was literally full of
metal. Bullets and fragments of bullets whined and shrieked in mad abandon as they
ricocheted in all directions off that armor. Sand and bits of concrete flew hither and yon,
filling the atmosphere of the dugout. The rifle yammered at maximum, with its sweating
crew laboring mightily to keep its voracious maw full-fed. But, in spite of everything,
Kinnison held his line and advanced. He was barely six feet from that yelling, steel-
vomiting muzzle when the firing again ceased.
“Twenty thousand, sir,” the officer reported, crisply. “We’ll have to change barrels
before we can give you any more.”
‘That’s enough!” snapped Haynes. “Come out of there” Out Kinnison came. He
removed heavy ear-plugs, swallowed four times blinked and grimaced. Finally he
spoke.
“It works perfectly, sir, except for the noise. “It’s a good thing I’ve got a Lens-in
spite of the plugs I won’t be able to hear anything for three days !”
“How about the springs and shock-absorbers? Are you bruised anywhere? You
took some real bumps.”
“Perfect-not a bruise. Let’s look her over.”
Every inch of that armor’s surface was now marked by blurs, where the metal of
the bullets had rubbed itself off upon the shining alloy, but that surface was neither
scratched, scored, nor dented.
“Q%, boys-thanks,” Kinnison dismissed the riflemen. They probably wondered
how any man could see out through a helmet built up of inches-thick laminated alloys,
with neither window nor port through which to look, but if so, they, made no mention of
their curiosity. They, too, were Patrolmen.
“Is that thing an armor or a personal tank?” asked Haynes. “I aged ten years
while that was going on, but at that I’m glad you insisted on testing it. You can get away
with anything now.”
“It’s much better technique to learn things among friends than enemies,”
Kinnison laughed. “It’s heavy, of course-pretty close to a ton. I won’t be walking around
in it, though, I’ll be flying it. Well, sir, since everything’s all set, I think I’d better fly it over
to the speedster and start flitting, don’t you? I don’t know exactly how much time I’m
going to need on Trench.”
“Might as well,” the Port Admiral agreed, as casually, and Kinnison was gone.
“What a man!” Haynes stared after the monstrous figure until it vanished in the
distance, then strolled slowly toward his office, thinking as he went.
Nurse MacDougall had been highly irked and incensed at Kinnison’s casual
departure, without idle conversation or formal leave-takings. Not so Haynes. That
seasoned campaigner knew that Gray Lensmen-especially young Gray Lensmen-were
prone to get that way. He knew, as she would one day learn, that Kinnison was no
longer of Earth.
He was now only of the galaxy, not of any one tiny dust-grain of it. He was of the
Patrol. He was the Patrol, and he was taking his new responsibilities very seriously
indeed. In his fierce zeal to drive his campaign through to a successful end he would
use man or woman, singly or in groups, ships, even Prime Base itself, exactly as he
had used them. as pawns, as mere tools, as means to an end. And, having used them,
he would leave them as unconcernedly and as unceremoniously as he would drop
pliers and spanner, and with no more realization that he had violated any of the nicer
amenities of life as it is lived!
And as he strolled along and thought, the Port Admiral smiled quietly to himself.
He knew, as Kinnison would learn in time, that the universe was vast, that time was
long, and that the Scheme of Things, comprising the whole of eternity and the Cosmic
All, was a something incomprehensibly immense indeed, with which cryptic thought the
space-hardened veteran sat down at his desk and resumed his interrupted labors.
But Kinnison had not yet attained Haynes’ philosophic viewpoint, any more than
he had his age, and to him the trip to Trench seemed positively interminable. Eager as
he was to put his plan of campaign to the test, he found that mental urgings, or even
audible invective, would not make the speedster go any faster than the already
incomprehensible top speed of her drivers’ maximum blast. Nor did pacing up and down
the little control room help very much. Physical exercise he had to perform, but it did not
satisfy him. Mental exercise was impossible, he could think of nothing except Helmuth’s
base.
Eventually, however, he approached Trench and located without difficulty the
Patrol’s space-port. Fortunately, it was then at about eleven o’clock, so that he did not
have to wait long to land. He drove downward inert, sending ahead of him a thought.
“Lensman of Trench Space-port-Tregonsee or his relief? Lensman Kinnison of
Sol III asking permission to land.”
“It is Tregonsee,” came back the thought. “Welcome, Kinnison. You are on the
correct line. You have, then, perfected an apparatus to see truly in this distorting
medium?”
“I didn’t perfect it-it was given to me.”
The landing bars lashed out, seized the speedster, and eased her down into the
lock, and, as soon as she had been disinfected, Kinnison went into consultation with
Tregonsee. The Rigellian was a highly important factor in the Tellurian’s scheme, and
since he was also a Lensman he was to be trusted implicitly. Therefore Kinnison told
him briefly what occurred and what he had it in mind to do, concluding.
“So you see, I need about fifty kilograms of thlonite. Not fifty milligrams, or even
grams, but fifty kilograms, and, since there probably isn’t that much of the stuff louse in
the whole galaxy, I came over here to ask you to make it for me.”
Just like that. Calmly asking a Lensman. whose duty it was to kill any being even
attempting to gather a single Treconian plant, to make for him more of the prohibited
drug than was ordinarily processed throughout the galaxy during a Solarian month! It
would be just such an errand were one to walk into the Treasury Department at
Washington and Inform the Chief of the Narcotics Bureau, quite nonchalantly, that he
had dropped in to pick up ten tons of heroin! But Tregonsee did not flinch or question-
he was not even surprised. This was a Gray Lensman.
“That should not be too difficult,” Tregonsee replied, after a moment’s study. “We
have several thionite processing units, confiscated from zwilnik outfits and not yet sent
in, and all of us are of course familiar with the technique of extracting and Purifying the
drug.”
He issued orders and shortly Trench Space-port presented the astounding
spectacle of a full crew of the Galactic Patrol devoting its every energy to the whole-
hearted breaking of the one law it was supposed most rigidly, and without fear or favor,
to enforce!
It was a little after noon, the calmest hour of Trench’s day. The wind had died to
“nothing”, which, on the planet, meant that a strong man could stand against it, could
even, if he were agile as well as strong, walk about in it. Therefore Kinnison donned his
light armor and was soon busily harvesting broad-leaf, which, he had been informed,
was the richest source of thionite.
He had been working for only a few minutes when a flat came crawling up to
him, and, after ascertaining that his armor was not good to eat, drew off and observed
him intently. Here was another opportunity for practice and in a flash the Lensman
availed himself of it. Having practiced for hours upon the minds of various Earthly
animals, he entered this mind easily enough, finding that the trench was considerably