had something to do with this, but I didn’t-the Lensman did it all himself.”
“Um . . . . m.” Crandall stared at Kinnison, new respect in his eyes. “I knew that
Unattached Lensmen were good, but I had no idea they were that good. No wonder
Helmuth has been getting his wind up about you. I’ll string along with any one who can
take a whole base, single-handed, and make such a bally ass to boot out of such a
keen old bird as Helmuth is. But I’m in a bit of a dither, not so say a funk, about what’s
going to happen when we pop into Prime Base without you. Every man jack of us, you
know, is slated for the lethal chamber without trial. Miss MacDougall will do her bit, of
course, but what I mean is has she enough jets to swing it, what?”
“She has, but to avoid all argument I’ve fixed that up, too. Here’s a tape, telling
all about what happened. It ends up with my recommendation for a full pardon for each
of you, and for a job at whatever he is found best fitted for. Signed with my thumb-print.
Give it or send it to Port Admiral Haynes as soon as you land. I’ve got enough jets, I
think, so that it will go as it lays.”
“Jets? You? Right-o! You’ve got jets enough to lift fourteen freighters off the
North Pole of Valeria. What next?”
“Stores and supplies for my speedster. I’m doing a long flit and this ship has
supplies to burn, so load me up, Plimsoll down.”
The speedster was stocked forthwith. Then, with nothing more than a casually
waved salute in the way of farewell, Kinnison boarded his tiny space-ship and shot
away toward his distant goal. Crandall, the pilot, sought his bunk, while Blakeslee
started his long trick at the board. In an hour or so the head nurse strolled in.
“Kim?” she queried, doubtfully.
“No, Miss MacDougall-Blakeslee. Sorry . . . . ”
“Oh, I’m glad of that-that means that everything’s settled. Where’s the Lensman-
in bed?”
“He has gone, Miss.”
“Gone! Without a word? Where?”
“He didn’t say.”
“He wouldn’t, of course.” The nurse turned away, exclaiming inaudibly, “Gone! I’d
like to cuff him for that, the lug! GONE! Why, the great, big, lobsterly clinker!”
CHAPTER 22
Preparing for the Test
But Kinnison was not heading for Helmuth’s base yet. He was splitting the ether toward
Aldebaran instead, as fast as his speedster could go, and she was one of the fastest
things in the galaxy. He had two good reasons for going there before tackling Boskone’s
Grand Base. First, to try out his skill upon non-human intellects. If be could handle the
Wheelmen he was ready to take the far greater hazard. Second, he owed those
wheelers something, and he did not like to call in the whole Patrol to help him pay his
debts. He could, he thought, handle that base himself.
Knowing exactly where it was, he had no difficulty in finding the volcanic shaft
which was its entrance. Down that shaft his sense of perception sped. He found the
lookout plates and followed their power leads. Gently, carefully, he insinuated his mind
into that of the Wheelman at the board, discovering, to his great relief, that that
monstrosity was no more difficult to handle than had been the Radeligian observer.
Mind or intellect, he found, were not affected at all by the shape of the brains
concerned, quality, reach, and power were the essential factors. Therefore he let
himself in and took position in the same room from which he had been driven so
violently. Kinnison examined with interest the wall through which he had been blown,
noting that it had been repaired so perfectly that he could scarcely find the joints which
had been made.
These wheelers, the Lensman knew, had explosives, since the bullets which had
torn their way through his armor and through his flesh had been propelled by that
agency. Therefore, to the mind within his grasp he suggested “the place where
explosives are kept?” and the thought of that mind flashed to the store-room in
question. Similarly, the thought of the one who had access to that room pointed out to
the Lensman the particular Wheelman he wanted. It was as easy as that, and since he
took care not to look at any of the weird beings, he gave no alarm.
Kinnison withdrew his mind delicately, leaving no trace of its occupancy, and
went to investigate the arsenal. There he found a few cases of machine-rifle cartridges,
and that was all. Then into the mind of the munitions officer, where he discovered that
the heavy bombs were kept in a distant crater, so that no damage would be done by
any possible explosion.
“Not quite as simple as I thought,” Kinnison ruminated, “but there’s a way out of
that, too.”
There was. It took an hour or so of time, and he had to control two Wheelmen
instead of one, but he found that he could do that. When the munitions master took out
a bomb-scow after a load of H.E., the crew had no idea that it was anything except a
routine job. The only Wheelman who would have known differently, the one at the
lookout board, was the other whom Kinnison had to keep under control. The scow went
out, got its load, and came back. Then, while the Lensman was flying out into space,
the scow dropped down the shaft. So quietly was the whole thing done that not a
creature in that whole establishment knew that anything was wrong until it was too late
to act-and then none of them knew anything at all. Not even the crew of the scow
realized that they were dropping too fast.
Kinnison did not know what would happen if a mind – to say nothing of two of
them – died while in his mental grasp, and he did not care to find out. Therefore, a
fraction of a second before the crash, he jerked free and watched.
The explosion and its consequences did not look at all impressive from the
Lensman’s coign of vantage. The mountain trembled a little, then subsided noticeably.
From its summit there erupted an unimportant little flare of flame, some smoke, and an
insignificant shower of rock and debris.
However, when the scene had cleared there was no longer any shaft leading
downward from that crater, a floor of solid rock began almost at its lip. Nevertheless the
Lensman explored thoroughly all the region where the stronghold had been, making
sure that the clean-up had been one hundred percent effective.
Then, and only then, did he point the speedster’s streamlined nose toward star
cluster AC 257-4736.
* * *
In his hidden retreat so far from the galaxy’s crowded suns and worlds, Helmuth
was in no enviable or easy frame of mind. Four times he had declared that that
accursed Lensman, whoever he might be, must be destroyed, and had mustered his
every available force to that end, only to have his intended prey slip from his grasp as
effortlessly as a droplet of mercury eludes the clutching fingers of a child.
That Lensman, with nothing except a speedster and a bomb, had taken and had
studied one of Boskone’s new battleships, thus obtaining for his Patrol the secret of
cosmic energy. Abandoning his own vessel, then crippled and doomed to capture or
destruction, he had stolen one of the ships searching for him and in it he had calmly
sailed to Velantia, right through Helmuth’s screen of blockading vessels. He had in
some way so fortified Velantia as to capture six Boskonian battleships. In one of those
ships he had won his way back to Prime Base, with information of such immense
importance that it had robbed the Boskonian organization of its then overwhelming
superiority. More, he had found or had developed new items of equipment which, save
for Helmuth’s own success in obtaining them, would have given the Patrol a definite
and decisive superiority over Boskonia. Now both sides were equal, except for that
Lensman and . . . . the Lens.
Helmuth still quailed inwardly whenever he thought of what he had undergone at
the Arisian barrier, and he had given up all thought of securing the secret of the Lens by
force or from Arisia. But there must be other ways of getting it . . . . .
And just then there came in the urgent call from Boyssia II, followed by the
stunningly successful revolt of the hitherto innocuous Blakeslee, culminating as it did in
the destruction of Helmuth’s every Boyssian device of vision or of communication. Blue-
white with fury, the Boskonian flung his net abroad to take the renegade, but as he
settled back to await results a thought struck him like a blow from a fist. Blakeslee was
innocuous. He never had had, did not now have and never would have, the cold nerve