urgent mental commands. “These Catlats are a very minor pest of this planet Delgon.
There are others worse by far. Fortunately, your thoughts are upon a frequency never
used here — if I had not been so very close to you I would not have heard you at all —
but should the Overlords have a listener upon that band your unshielded thinking may
already have done irreparable harm. Follow me. I will slow my speed to yours, but hurry
all possible!”
“You tell ‘im, Chief,” vanBuskirk said, and fell silent, his mind as nearly a perfect
blank as his iron will could make it.
“This is a screened thought, through my Lens,” Kinnison took up the
conversation. “You don’t need to slow down on our account — we can develop any
speed you wish. Lead on!”
The Velantian leaped into the air and flashed away in headlong flight. Much to
his surprise the two human beings kept up with him effortlessly upon their inertialess
drives, and after a moment Kinnison directed another thought.
“If time is an object, Worsel, know that my companion and I can carry you
anywhere you wish to go at a speed hundreds of times greater than this that we are
using,” he vouchsafed.
It developed that time was of the utmost possible Importance and the three
closed in. Mighty wings folded back, hands and talons gripped armor chains, and the
group, inertialess all, shot away at a pace that Worsel of Velantia had never imagined
even in his wildest dreams of speed. Their goal, a small, featureless tent of thin sheet
metal, occupying a barren spot in a writhing, crawling expanse of lushly green jungle,
was reached in a space of minutes. Once inside, Worsel sealed the opening and turned
to his armored guests.
“We can now think freely in open converse. This wall is the carrier of a screen
through which no thought can make its way.”
“This world you call by a name I have interpreted as Delgon,” Kinnison began,
slowly. “You are a native of Velantia, a planet now beyond the sun. Therefore I
assumed that you were taking us to your space-ship. Where is that ship?”
“I have no ship,” the Velantian replied, composedly, “nor have I need of one. For
the remainder of my life – which is now to be measured in a few of your hours — this
tent is my only . . .
“No ship!” vanBuskirk broke in. “I hope we won’t have to stay on this
Noshabkeming — forgotten planet forever — and I’m not very keen on going much
further in that lifeboat, either.”
“We may not have to do either of those things,” Kinnison reassured his sergeant.
“Worsel comes of a long-lived tribe, and the fact that he thinks his enemies are going to
get hint in a few hours doesn’t make it true, by any means — there are three of us to
reckon with now. Also, when we need a space-ship we’ll get one, if we have to build it.
Now, let’s find out what this is all about. Worsel, start at the beginning and don’t skip a
thing. Between us we can surely find a way out, for all of us.”
Then the Velantian told his story. There was much repetition, much roundabout
thinking, as some of the concepts were so bizarre as to defy transmission, but finally
the Patrolmen had a fairly complete picture of the situation then obtaining within that
strange solar system.
The inhabitants of Delgon were bad, being characterized by a type and a depth
of depravity impossible for a human mind to visualize. Not only were the Delgonians
enemies of the Velantians in the ordinary sense of the word, not only were they pirates
and robbers, not only were they their masters, taking them both as slaves and as food –
– cattle, but there was something more, something deeper and worse, something only
partially transmissible from mind to mind — a horribly and repulsively Saturnalian type
of mental and intellectual, as well as biological, parasitism. This relationship had gone
on for ages, and during those ages rebellion was impossible, as any Velantian capable
of leading such a movement disappeared before he could make any headway at all.
Finally, however, a thought screen had been devised, behind which Velantia
developed a high science of her own. The students of this science lived with but one
purpose in life, to free Velantia from the tyranny of the Overlords of Delgon. Each
student, as be reached the zenith of his mental power, went to Delgon, to study and if
possible to destroy the tyrants. And after disembarking upon the soil of that dread
planet no Velantian, whether student or scientist or private adventurer, had ever
returned to Velantia.
“But why don’t you lay a complaint against them before the Council?” demanded
vanBuskirk. “They’d straighten things out in a hurry.”
“We have not heretofore known, save by the most unreliable and roundabout
reports, that such an organization as your Galactic. Patrol really exists,” the Velantian
replied, obliquely. ‘Nevertheless, many years since, we launched a space-ship toward
its nearest reputed base. However, since that trip requires three normal lifetimes, with
deadly peril in every moment, it will be a miracle if the ship ever completes it.
Furthermore, even if the ship should reach its destination, our complaint will probably
not even be considered. because we have not a single shred of real evidence with
which to support it. No living Velantian has even seen a Delgonian, nor can anyone
testify to the truth of anything I have told you. While we believe that that is the true
condition of affairs, our belief is based, not upon evidence admissible in a court of law,
but upon deductions from occasional thoughts radiated from this planet. Nor were these
thoughts alike in tenor . . . . .
“Skip that for a minute — we’ll take the picture as correct,” Kinnison broke in.
‘Nothing you have said so far shows any necessity for you to die in the next few hours.”
“The only object in life for a trained Velantian is to liberate his planet from the
horrors of subjection to Delgon. Many such have come here, but not one has found a
workable idea, not one has either returned to or even communicated with Velantia after
starting work here. I am a Velantian. I am here. Soon I shall open that door and get in
touch with the enemy. Since better men than I am have failed, I do not expect to
succeed. Nor shall I return to my native planet. As soon as I start to work the
Delgonians will command me to come to them. In spite of myself I will obey that
command, and very shortly thereafter I shall die, in what fashion I do not know.”
“Snap out of it, Worsel!” Kinnison ordered, bruskly. “That’s the rankest kind of
defeatism, and you know it. Nobody ever got to the first check-station on that kind of
fuel.”
“You are talking about something now about which you know nothing whatever.”
For the first time Worsel’s thoughts showed passion. “Your thoughts are idle — ignorant
— vain. You know nothing whatever of the mental power of the Delgonians.”
“Maybe not — I make no claim to being a mental giant — but I do know that
mental power alone cannot overcome a definitely and positively opposed will. An
Arisian could probably break my will, but I’ll stake my life that no other mentality in the
known Universe can do it!”
“You think so, Earthling?” and a seething sphere of mental force encompassed
the Tellurian’s brain. Kinnison’s senses reeled at the terrific impact, but he shook off the
attack and smiled.
“Come again, Worsel. That one jarred me to the heels, but it didn’t quite ring the
bell.”
“You flatter me,” the Velantian declared in surprise. “I could scarcely touch your
mind — could not penetrate even its outermost defenses, and I exerted all my force. But
that fact gives me hope. My mind is n.° course inferior to theirs, but since I could not
influence yea at all, even in direct contact and at full power, you may .be able to resist
the minds of the Delgonians. Are you willing to hazard the stake you mentioned a
moment ago? Or rather, I ask you, by the Lens you wear, so to hazard it — with the
liberty of an entire people dependent upon the outcome.”
“Why not? The spools come first, of course — but without you our spools would
both be buried now inside the cliff of the Catlats. Fix it so your people will find these
spools and carry on with them in case we fail, and I’m your man. There — now tell me
what we’re apt to be up against, and then let loose your dogs.”
“That I cannot do. I know only that they will direct against us mental forces such