utmost to marshal some force able to cope effectively with this unheard-of violation of
their ages-old immunity.
A last wave of Delgonian slaves hurled themselves forward, futile projectors
furiously aflame, only to disappear in the DeLameters’ fans of force. The Patrolmen
hated to kill those mindless slaves, but it was a nasty job that had to be done. The
slaves out of the way, those ravening beams bored on into the massed Overlords.
And now Kinnison and vanBuskirk killed, if not joyously, at least relentlessly,
mercilessly, and with neither sign nor sensation of compunction. For this unbelievably
monstrous tribe needed killing, root and branch-not a scion or shoot of it should be
allowed to survive, to continue to contaminate the civilization of the galaxy. Back and
forth, to and fro, up and down swept the raging beams, playing on until in all the vast
volume of that gruesome chamber nothing lived save the two grim figures in its portal.
Assured of this fact, but with DeLameters still in hand, the two destroyers
retraced their way to the tunnel’s mouth, where Worsel anxiously awaited them. Lines
of communication again established, Kinnison informed the Velantian of all that had
taken place I and the latter gradually cut down the power of his thought-screen. Soon it
was at zero strength and he reported jubilantly that for the first time in untold ages, the
Overlords of Delgon were off the air!
“But surely the danger isn’t over yeti” protested Kinnison. “We couldn’t have got
them all in this one raid. Some of them must have escaped, and there must be other
dens of them on this planet somewhere?”
“Possibly, possibly,” the Velantian waved his tail airily -the first sign of
joyousness he had shown. “But their power is broken, definitely and forever. With these
new screens, and with the arms and armament which, thanks to you, we can now
fabricate, the task of wiping them out completely will be comparatively simple. Now you
will accompany me to Velantia, where, I assure you, the resources of the planet will be
put solidly behind you in your own endeavors. I have already summoned a space-ship-
in less than twelve days we will be back in Velantia and at work upon your projects. In
the meantime . . . . .”
“Twelve days! Noshabkeming the Radiant!” vanBuskirk exploded, and Kinnison
put in.
“Sure-you forget they haven’t got free drive. We’d better hop over and get our
lifeboat, I think. It’s not so good, either way, but in our own boat we’ll be open to
detection less than an hour, as against twelve days in the Velantians . And the pirates
may be here any minute. It’s as good as certain that their ship will be stopped and
searched long before it gets back to Velantia, and if we were aboard it’d be just too
bad.”
And, since the crew knows about us, the pirates soon will, and it’ll be just too
bad, anyway,” vanBuskirk reasoned.
“Not at all,” Interposed Worsel. `The few of my people who know of you have
been instructed to seal that knowledge. I must admit, however, that I am greatly
disturbed by your conceptions of these pirates of space. You see, until I met you I knew
nothing more of the pirates than I did of your Patrol.”
“What a world!” vanBuskirk exclaimed. “No Patrol and no pirates! But at that, life
might be simpler without both of them and without the free space-drive-more like it used
to be in the good old airplane days that the novelists rave about.”
“Of course I could not judge as to that.” The Velantian was very serious. “This in
which we live seems to be an out-of-the-way section of the galaxy, or it may be that we
have nothing the pirates want.”
“More likely it’s simply that, like the Patrol, they haven’t got organized into this
district yet,” suggested Kinnison. “There are so many thousands of millions of solar
systems in the galaxy that it will probably be thousands of years yet before the Patrol
gets into them all.”
“But about these pirates,” Worsel went back to his point. “If they have such
minds as those of the Overlords, they will be able to break the seals of cur minds.
However, I gather from your thoughts that their minds are not of that strength?”
“Not so far as I know,” Kinnison replied. “You folks have the most powerful
brains I ever heard of, short of the Arisians. And speaking of mental power, you can
hear thoughts a lot farther than I can, even with my Lens or with this pirate receiver I’ve
got. See if you can find out whether there are any pirates in space around here, will
you?”
While the Velantian was concentrating, vanBuskirk asked.
“Why, if his mind is so strong, could the Overlords put him under so much easier
than they could us `weak-minded’ human beings?”
“You are confusing ‘mind’ with `will,’ I think. Ages of submission to the Overlords
made the Velantians’ willpower zero, as far as the bosses were concerned. On the
other hand, you and I could raise stubbornness to sell to most people. In fact, if the
Overlords had succeeded in really breaking us down, back there, the chances are we’d
have gone insane.”
“Probably you’re right-we break, but don’t bend, huh?” and the Velantian was
ready to report.
“I have scanned space to the nearer stars-some eleven of your light-years-and
have encountered no intruding entities,” he announced.
“Eleven light-years-what a range!” Kinnison exclaimed. “However, that’s only a
shade over two minutes for a pirate ship at full blast. But we’ve got to take a chance
sometime, and the quicker we get started the sooner we’ll get back. We’ll pick you up
here, Worsel. No use in you going back to your tent-we’ll be back here long before you
could reach it. You’ll be safe enough, I think, especially with our spare DeLameters.
Let’s get going, Bus !”
Again they shot into the air, again they traversed the airless depths of
interplanetary space. To locate the temporary tomb of their lifeboat required only a few
minutes, to disinter her only a few more. Then again they braved detection in the void,
Kinnison tense at his controls, vanBuskirk in strained attention listening to and staring at
his unscramblers and detectors. But the ether was still blank as the lifeboat struck
Delgon’s atmosphere, it remained blank while the lifeboat, inert, blasted frantically to
match Worsel’s intrinsic velocity.
“All right, Worsel, snap it up!” Kinnison called, and went on to vanBuskirk, “Now,
you big, flat-footed Valerian spacehound, I hope that spaceman’s god of yours will see
to it our luck holds good for just fourteen minutes more. We’ve had more luck already
than we had any right to expect, but we can put a little more to most God-awful good
use I”
“Noshabkeming does bring spacemen luck,” insisted the giant, grimacing a
peculiar salute toward a small, golden image set inside his helmet, “and the fact that
you warty, runty, atheistic little space-fleas of Tellus haven’t got sense enough to know
it-not even enough sense to really believe in your own gods, even Klono-doesn’t
change matters at all.”
“That’s tellin’em, Bus !” Kinnison applauded. “But if it helps charge your batteries,
go to it . . . . Ready to blast! Lift!”
The Velantian had come aboard, the tiny airlock was again tight, and the little
vessel shot away from Delgon toward far Velanda. And still the ether remained empty
as far as the detectors could reach. Nor was this fact surprising, in spite of the
Lensman’s fears to the contrary, for the Patrolmen had given the pirates such an
extremely long line to cover that many days must yet elapse before the minions of
Boskone would get around to visit that unimportant, unexplored, and almost unknown
solar system. En route to his home planet Worsel got in touch with the crew of the
Velantian vessel already in space, ordering them to return to port post-haste and
instructing them in detail what to think and how to act should they be stopped and
searched by one of Boskone’s raiders. By the time these instructions had been given,
Velantia loomed large beneath the flying midget. Then, with Worsel as guide, Kinnison
drove over a mighty ocean upon whose opposite shore lay the great city in which
Worsel lived.
“But I would like to have them welcome you as befits what you have done, and
have you go to the Dome!” mourned the Velantian. “Think of it! You have done a thing
which for ages the massed power of the planet has been trying vainly to accomplish,
and yet you insist that I alone take credit for it!”
‘I don’t insist on any such thing,” argued Kinnison, “even though it’s practically all
yours, anyway. I insist only on your keeping us and the Patrol out of it, and you know as
well as I do why you’ve got to do that. Tell them anything else you want to. Say that a