merely blacker blobs against a background of black. Here and there, however, were to
be seen automotive vehicles moving about, and the three invaders crouched against a
convenient wall, waiting for one to come along the “street” in which they were.
Eventually one did.
As it passed them Worsel sprang into headlong, gliding flight, Kinnison’s heavy
knife in one gnarled fist. And as he sailed he struck-lethally. Before that luckless
Delgonian s brain could radiate a single thought it was in no condition to function at all,
for the head containing it was bouncing in the gutter. Worsel backed the peculiar
conveyance along the curb and his two companions leaped into it, lying flat upon its
floor and covering themselves from sight as best they could.
Worsel, familiar with things Delgonian and looking enough like a native of the
planet to pass a casual inspection in the dark, drove the car. Streets and thoroughfares
he traversed at reckless speed, finally drawing up before a long, low building, entirely
dark. He scanned his surrounding with care, in every direction. Not a creature was in
sight.
“All is clear, friends,” he thought, and the three adventurers sprang to the
building’s entrance. The door-it had a door, of sorts-was locked, but vanBuskirk’s axe
made short work of that difficulty. Inside, they braced the wrecked door against
intrusion, then Worsel led the way into the unlighted interior. Soon he flashed his lamp
about him and stepped upon a black, peculiarly-marked tile set into the floor,
whereupon a harsh, white light illuminated the room.
“Cut it, before somebody takes alarm!” snapped Kinnison.
“No danger of that,” replied the Velantian. “There are no windows in any of these
rooms, no light can be seen from outside. This is the control room of the city’s power
plant. If you can convert any of this power to your uses, help yourselves to it. In this
building is also a Delgonian arsenal. Whether or not anything in it can be of service to
you is of course for you to say. I am now at your disposal..,
Kinnison had been studying the panels and instruments. Now he and vanBuskirk
tore open their armor-they had already learned that the atmosphere of Delgon, while
not as wholesome for them as that in their suits, would for a time at least support
human life-and wrought diligently with pliers, screwdrivers, and other tools of the
electrician. Soon their exhausted batteries were upon the floor beneath the instrument
panel, absorbing greedily the electrical fluid from the bus-bars of the Delgonians.
“Now, while they’re getting filled up, let’s see what these people use for guns.
Lead on, Worsel!”
CHAPTER 7
The Passing of the Overlords
With Worsel in the lead, the three interlopers hastened along a corridor, past branching
and intersecting hallways, to a distant wing of the structure. There, it was evident,
manufacturing of weapons was carried on, but a quick study of the queer-looking
devices and mechanisms upon the benches and inside the storage racks lining the
walls convinced Kinnison that the room could yield them nothing of permanent benefit.
There were high-powered beam-projectors, it was true, but they were so heavy that
they were not even semi-portable. There were also hand weapons of various peculiar
patterns, but without exception they were ridiculously inferior to the DeLameters of the
Patrol in every respect of power, range, controllability, and storage capacity.
Nevertheless, after testing them out sufficiently to make certain of the above findings,
he selected an armful of the most powerful models and turned to his companions.
“Let’s go back to the power room,” he urged. “I’m nervous as a cat. I feel stark
naked without my batteries, and if anyone should happen to drop in there and do away
with them, we’d be sunk without a trace.”
Loaded down with Delgonian weapons they hurried back the way they had come.
Much to Kinnison’s relief he found that his forebodings had been groundless, the
batteries were still there, still absorbing myriawatt-hour after myriawatt-hour from the
Delgonian generators. Staring fixedly at the innocuous-looking containers, he frowned
in thought.
“Better we insulate those leads a little heavier and put the cans back in our
armor,” he suggested finally. “They’ll charge just as well in place, and it doesn’t stand to
reason that this drain of power can go on for the rest of the night without somebody
noticing it. And when that happens those Overlords are bound to take plenty of steps —
none of which we have any idea what are going to be.”
“You must have ‘power enough now so that we can all fly away from any
possible trouble,” Worsel suggested.
“But that’s just exactly what we’re not going to do!” Kinnison declared, with
finality. “Now that we’ve found a good charger, we aren’t going to leave it until our
accumulators are chock-a-block. It’s coming in faster than full draft will take it out, and
we’re going to get a full charge if we have to stand off all the vermin of Delgon to do it.”
Far longer than Kinnison had thought possible they were unmolested, but finally
a couple of Delgonian engineers came to investigate the unprecedented shortage in the
output of their completely automatic generators. At the entrance they were stopped, for
no ordinary tools could force the barricade vanBuskirk had erected behind that portal.
With leveled weapons the Patrolmen stood, awaiting the expected attack, but none
developed. Hour by hour the long night wore away, uneventfully. At daybreak, however,
a storming party appeared and massive battering rams were brought into play.
As the dull, heavy concussions reverberated throughout the building the
Patrolmen — each picked up two of the weapons piled before them and Kinnison
addressed the Velantian.
“Drag a couple of those metal benches across that corner and coil up behind
them,” he directed. “They’ll be enough to ground any stray charges-if they can’t see you
they won’t know you’re here, so probably nothing much will come your way direct.”
The Velantian demurred, declaring that he would not hide while his two
companions were fighting his battle, but Kinnison silenced him fiercely.
“Don’t be a fool !” the Lensman snapped. “One of these beams would fry you to
a crisp in ten seconds, but the defensive fields of our armor could neutralize a thousand
of them, from now on. Do as I say, and do it quick, or I’ll shock you unconscious and
toss you in there myself !”
Realizing that Kinnison meant exactly what he said, and knowing that,
unarmored as he was, he was utterly unable to resist either the Tellurian or their
common foe, Worsel unwillingly erected his metallic barrier and coiled his sinuous
length behind it. He hid himself just in time.
The outer barricade had fallen, and now a wave of reptilian forms flooded into
the control room. Nor was this any ordinary investigation. The Overlords had studied
the situation from afar, and this wave was one of heavily-armed — for Delgon-soldiery.
On they came, projectors fiercely ,aflame, confident in their belief that nothing could
stand before their blasts. But how wrong they were! The two repulsively erect bipeds
before them neither burned nor fell. Beams, no matter how powerful, did not reach.
them at all, but spent themselves in crackingly incandescent fury, inches from their
marks. Nor were these outlandish beings inoffensive. Utterly careless of the service-life
of the pitifully weak Delgonian projectors, they were using them at maximum drain and
at extreme aperture-and in the resultant beams the Delgonian soldier-slaves fell in
scorched and smoking heaps. On came reserves, platoon after platoon, only and
continuously to meet the same fate, for as soon as one projector weakened the
invincibly armored man would toss it aside and pick up another. But finally the last
commandeered weapon was exhausted and the beleaguered pair brought their own
DeLameters-the most powerful portable weapons known to the military scientists of the
Galactic Patrol-into play.
And what a difference! In those beams the attacking reptiles did not smoke or
burn. They. simply vanished in a blaze of flaming light, as did also the nearby walls and
a good share of the building beyond! The Delgonian hordes having disappeared,
vanBuskirk shut off his projector. Kinnison, however, left his on, angling its beam
sharply upward, blasting into fiery vapor the ceiling and roof over their heads,
remarking.
“While we’re at it we might as well fix things, so that we can make a quick get-
away if we want to.”
Then they waited. Waited, watching the needles of their meters creep ever
closer to the “full-charge” marks, waited while, as they suspected, the distant, cowardly-
hiding Overlords planned some other, more promising line of physical attack.
Nor was it long in developing. Another small army appeared, armored this time,
or, more accurately, advancing behind metallic shields. Knowing what to expect,
Kinnison was not surprised when the beam of his DeLameter not only failed to pierce
one of those shields, but did not in any way impede the progress of the Delgonian