made arrangements to protect myself. both from enemies, such as the Arisians and the
Patrol, and from friends, such as ambitious youngsters who are trying to supplant me. If
I were not entirely confident of getting back here safely, my dear Wolmark, I would not
go.”
“You misunderstand me, sir. Really, I have no idea of supplanting you.”
“Not until you get a good opportunity, you mean-I understand you thoroughly,
and as I have said before, I approve of you. Go ahead with all your plans. I have kept at
least one lap ahead of you so far, and if the time should ever come when I can no
longer do so, I shall no longer be fit to speak for Boskone. You understand, of course,
that the most important matter now in work is the search for the Lensman of which the
combing of Trenco and the screening of the Patrol’s systems are only two phases?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well. I can, I think, leave matters in your hands. If anything really serious
comes up, such as a development in the Lensman case, let me know at once.
Otherwise do not call me. Take the desk,” and Helmuth strode away.
He was whisked to the space-port, where there awaited him his special
speedster, equipped long since with divers and sundry items of equipment whose
functions were known only to himself.
For him the trip to Arisia was neither long nor tedious. The little racer was fully
automatic, and as it tore through space he worked as coolly and efficiently as he was
wont to do at his desk. Indeed, more so, for here he could concentrate without
interruption. Many were the matters he planned and the decisions he made, the while
his portfolio of notes grew thicker and thicker.
As he neared his destination he put away his work, actuated his special
mechanisms, and waited. When the speedster struck the barrier and stopped Helmuth
wore a faint, hard smile, but that smile disappeared with a snap as a thought crashed
into his supposedly shielded brain.
“You are surprised that your thought-screens are not effective?” The thought was
coldly contemptuous. “I know in essence what the messenger from Ploor told you
concerning them when he gave them to you, but he spoke in ignorance. We of Arisia
know thought in a way that no member of his race is now or ever will be able to
understand.
“Know, Helmuth, that we Arisians do not want and will not tolerate uninvited
visitors. Your presence is particularly distasteful, representing as you do a despotic,
degrading, and antisocial culture. Evil and good are of course purely relative, so it
cannot be said in absolute terms that your culture is evil. It is, however, based upon
greed, hatred, corruption, violence, and fear. Justice it does not recognize, nor mercy,
nor truth except as a scientific utility. It is basically opposed to liberty. Now liberty-of
person, of thought, of action-is the basic and the goal of the civilization to which you are
opposed, and with which any really philosophical mind must find itself in accord.
“Inflated – overweeningly by your warped and perverted ideas, by your
momentary success in dominating your handful of minions, tied to you by bonds of
greed, of passion, and of crime, you come here to wrest from us the secret of the Lens,
from us, a race as much abler than yours as we are older-a ratio of millions to one.
“You consider yourself cold, hard, ruthless. Compared to me, you are weak, soft,
tender, as helpless as a newborn child. That you may learn and appreciate that fact is
one reason why you are living at this present moment. Your lesson will now begin.”
Then Helmuth, starkly rigid, unable to move a muscle, felt delicate probes enter
his brain. One at a time they pierced his innermost being, each to a definitely selected
center. It seemed that each thrust carried with it the ultimate measure of exquisitely
poignant anguish possible of endurance, but each successive needle carried with it an
even more keenly unbearable thrill of agony.
Helmuth was not now calm and cold. He could have screamed in wild abandon,
but even that relief was denied him. He could not even scream, all he could do was sit
there and suffer.
Then he began to see things. There, actually materializing in the empty air of the
speedster, he saw in endless procession things he had done, either in person or by
proxy, both during his ascent to his present high place in the pirates’ organization and
since the attainment of that place. Long was the list, and black. As it unfolded his
torment grew more and ever more intense, until finally, after an interval that might have
been a fraction of a second or might have been untold hours, he could stand no more.
He fainted, sinking beyond the reach of pain into a sea of black unconsciousness.
He awakened white and shaking wringing wet with perspiration and so weak that
he could scarcely sit erect, but with a supremely blissful realization that, for the time
being at least, his punishment was over.
“This, you will observe, has been a very mild treatment,” the cold Arisian accents
went on inside his brain. “Not only do you still live, you are even still sane. We now
come to the second reason why you have not been destroyed. Your destruction by us
would not be good for that struggling young civilization which you oppose.
“We have given that civilization an instrument by virtue of which it should
become able to destroy you and everything for which you stand. If it cannot do so it is
not yet ready to become a civilization and your obnoxious culture shall be allowed to
conquer and to flourish for a time.
“Now go back to your dome. Do not return. I know that you will not have the
temerity to do so in person. Do not attempt to do so by any form whatever of proxy.”
There were no threats, no warnings, no mention of consequences, but the level
and incisive tone of the Arisian put a fear into Helmuth’s cold heart the like of which he
had never before known.
He whirled his speedster about and hurled her at full blast toward his home
planet. It was only after many hours that he was able to regain even a semblance of his
customary poise, and days elapsed before he could think coherently enough to
consider as a whole the shocking, the unbelievable thing that had happened to him.
He wanted to believe that the creature, whatever it was, had been bluffing-that it
could not kill him, that it had done its worst. In similar case he would have killed without
mercy, and that course seemed to him the only logical one to pursue. His cold reason,
however, would not allow him to entertain that comforting belief. Deep down he knew
that the Arisian could have killed him as easily as it had slain the lowest member of his
band, and the thought chilled him to the marrow.
What could he do? What could he do? Endlessly, as the miles and light-years
reeled off behind his hurtling racer, this question reiterated itself, and when his home
planet loomed close it was still unanswered.
Since Wolmark believed implicitly his statement that it would be poor technique
to oppose his return, the planet’s screens went down at Helmuth’s signal. His first act
was to call all the department heads to the center, for an extremely important council of
war. There he told them everything that had happened, calmly and concisely,
concluding.
“They are aloof, disinterested, unpartisan to a degree I find it impossible to
understand. They disapprove of us on purely philosophical grounds, but they will take
no active part against us as long as we stay away from their solar system. Therefore we
cannot obtain knowledge of the Lens by direct action, but there are other methods
which shall be worked out in due course.
-The Arisians do approve of the Patrol, and have helped them to the extent of
giving them the Lens. There, however, they stop. If the Lensmen do not know how to
use their Lenses efficiently-and I gather that they do not-we ‘shall be allowed to conquer
and to flourish for a time. We will conquer, and we will see to it that the time of bur
flourishing, will be a long one indeed.
`The whole situation, then, boils down to this, our cosmic energy against the
Lens of the Patrol. Ours is the much more powerful ant, but our only hope of immediate
success lies in keeping the Patrol in ignorance of our cosmic-energy receptors and
converters. One Lensman already has that knowledge. Therefore, gentlemen, it is very
clear that the death of that Lensman has now become absolutely imperative. We must
find him, if it means the abandonment of our every other enterprise throughout this