going out after his zwilniks in a ground car, and of course we had to let him go. He
became confused, lost control, let something-possibly a zwilnik’s bomb-get under his
leading edge, and the wind and the trencos’ did the rest. He was Lageston of Mercator
V-a good man, too. What is your pressure now?”
“Five hundred millimeters.”
“Slow down. Now, if you cannot conquer the tendency to believe your eyes, you
had better shut off your visiplates and watch only the pressure gauge.”
“Being warned, I can disbelieve my eyes, I think,” and for a minute or so
communication ceased.
At a startled oath from vanBuskirk, Kinnison glanced into the plate and it needed
all his nerve to keep from wrenching savagely at the controls. For the whole planet was
tipping, lurching. spinning, gyrating madly in a frenzy of impossible motions, and even
as the Patrolmen stared a huge mass of something shot directly toward the ship!
“Sheer off, Kim!” yelled the Valerian.
“Hold it, Bus,” cautioned the Lensman. ‘That’s what we’ve got to expect, you
know-I passed all the stuff along as I got it. Everything, that is, except that a ‘zwilnik’ is
anything or anybody that comes after thionite, and that a ‘trenco’ is anything, animal or
vegetable, that lives on the planet. QX, Tregonsee-seven hundred, and I’m holding
steady-I hope!”
“Steady enough, but you are too far away for our landing beam to grasp you.
Apply a little drive . . . . . Shift course to your left and down . . . . . more left . . . . . up a
trifle . . . that’s it . . . . . slow down . . . . . QX.”
There was a gentle, snubbing shock, and Kinnison again translated to his
companions the stranger’s thoughts.
“We have you. Cut off all power and lock all controls in neutral. Do nothing more
until I instruct you to come out.”
Kinnison obeyed, and, released from all duty, the visitors stared in fascinated
incredulity into the visiplate. For that at which they stared was and must forever remain
impossible of duplication upon Earth, and only in imagination can it be even faintly
pictured. Imagine all the fantastic and monstrous creatures of a delirium-tremens vision
incarnate and actual. Imagine them being hurled through the air, borne by a dust-laden
gale more severe than any the great American dust-bowl or Africa’s Sahara Desert ever
endured. Imagine this scene as being viewed, not in an ordinary, solid distorting mirror,
but in one whose falsely reflecting contours were changing constantly, with no logical or
intelligible rhythm, into new and ever more grotesque warps. If imagination has been
equal to the task, the resultant is what the visitors tried to see.
At first they could make nothing whatever of it. Upon nearer approach, however,
the ghastly distortion grew less and the flatly level expanse took on a semblance of
rigidity. Directly beneath them they made out something that looked like an immense,
flat blister upon the otherwise featureless terrain. Toward this blister their ship was
drawn.
A port opened, dwarfed in apparent size to a mere window by the immensity of
the structure one of whose entrances it was. Through this port the vast bulk of the
spaceship was wafted upon the landing-bars, and behind it the mighty bronze-and-steel
gates clanged shut. The lock was pumped to a vacuum, there was a hiss of entering air,
a spray of vaporous liquid bathed every inch of the vessel’s surface, and Kinnison felt
again the calm thought of Tregonsee, the Rigellian Lensman.
“You may now open your air-lock and emerge. If I have read aright our
atmosphere is sufficiently like your own in oxygen content so that you will suffer no ill
effects from it. It may be well, however, to wear your armor until you have become
accustomed to its considerably greater density.”
“That’ll be a relief !” growled vanBuskirk’s deep bass, when his chief had
transmitted the thought. “I’ve been breathing this thin stuff so long I’m getting light-
headed.”
“That’s gratitude!” Thorndyke retorted. “We’ve been running our air so heavy that
all the rest of us are thickheaded now. If the air in this space-port is any heavier than
what we’ve been having, I’m going to wear armor as long as we stay here!”
Kinnison opened the, air-lock, found the atmosphere of the space-port
satisfactory, and stepped out, to be greeted cordially by Tregonsee the Lensman.
This – this apparition was at least erect, which was something. His body was the
size and shape of an oil-drum. Beneath this massive cylinder of a body were four short,
blocky legs upon which he waddled about with surprising speed. Midway up the body,
above each leg, there sprouted out a ten-foot-long, writhing, boneless, tentacular arm,
which toward the extremity branched out into dozens of lesser tentacles, ranging in size
from hair-like tendrils up to mighty fingers two inches or more in diameter. Tregonsee’s
head was merely a neckless, immobile, bulging dome in the center of the flat upper
surface of his body — a dome bearing neither eyes nor ears, but only four equally-
spaced toothless mouths and four single, flaring nostrils.
But Kinnison felt no qualm of repugnance at Tregonsee’s monstrous
appearance, for embedded in the leathery flesh of one arm was the Lens. Here, the
Lensman knew, was in every essential a MAN — and probably a super-man.
“Welcome to Trenco, Kinnison of Tellus,” Tregonsee was saying. “While we are
near neighbors in space, I have never happened to visit your planet. I have
encountered Tellurians here, of course, but they were not of a type to be received as
guests.”
“No, a zwilnik is not a high type of Tellurian,” Kinnison agreed. “I have often
wished that I could have your sense of perception, if only for a day. It must be
wonderful indeed to be able to perceive a thing as a whole, inside and out, instead of
having vision stopped at its surface, as is ours. And to be independent of light or
darkness, never to be lost or in need of instruments, to know definitely where you are in
relation to every other object or thing around you-that, I think, is the most marvelous
sense in the Universe.”
“Just as I have wished for sight and hearing, those two remarkable and to us
entirely unexplainable senses. I have dreamed, I have studied volumes, on color and
sound. Color in art and in nature, sound in music and in the voices of loved ones, but
they remain meaningless symbols upon a printed page. However, such thoughts are
vain. In all probability neither of us would enjoy the other’s equipment if he bad it, and
this interchange is of no material assistance to you.”
In flashing thoughts Kinnison then communicated to the other Lensman
everything that had transpired since he left Prime Base.
“I perceive that your Bergenholm is of standard fourteen rating,” Tregonsee said,
as the Tellurian finished his story. “We have several spares here, and, while they all
have regulation Patrol mountings, it would take much less time to change mounts than
to overhaul your machine.”
“That’s so, too-I never thought of the possibility of your having spares on band-
and we’ve lost a lot of time al. ready. How long will it take?”
“One shift of labor to change mounts, at least eight to rebuild yours enough to be
sure that it will get you home.”
“We’ll change mounts, then, by all means. I’ll call the boys . . . . .”
“There is no need of that. We are amply equipped, and neither you humans nor
the Velantians could handle our tools.” Tregonsee made no visible motion nor could
Kinnison perceive a break in his thought, but while he was conversing with the Tellurian
half a dozen of his blocky Rigellians had dropped whatever they had been doing and
were scuttling toward the visiting ship. “Now I must leave you for a time, as I have one
more trip to make this afternoon.”
“Is there anything I can do to help you?” asked Kinnison.
“No,” came the definite negative. “I will return in three hours, as well before
sunset the wind makes it impossible to get even a ground-car into the port. I will then
show you why you can be of little assistance to us.”
Kinnison spent those three hours watching the Rigellians work upon the
Bergenholm, there was no need for direction or advice. They knew what to do and they
did it. Those tiny, hairlike fingers, literally hundreds of them at once, performed delicate
tasks with surpassing nicety and dispatch, when it came to heavy tasks the larger digits
or even whole arms wrapped themselves around the work and, with the solid bracing of
the four block-like legs, exerted forces that even vanBuskirk’s giant frame could not
have approached.
As the end of the third hour neared, Kinnison watched with a spy-ray-there were