far you. I know that you all want to shoot the first bolt, but remember that I personally
will strangle any and every one of you who beats my signal by a thousandth of a
second. It won’t be long now, the second hand is starting around an its last lap . . . .
Seep your hands off of those keys . . . . keep away from them, I tell you, or I’ll smack
you down . . . . fifteen seconds yet . . . . stay away, boys, let ’em alone . . . . going to
start counting now.” His voice dropped lower and lower. “Five -four-three-two-one-FIRE!
he yelled.
Perhaps some of the boys did beat the gun a trifle, but not many, or much. To all
intents and purposes it was one simultaneous blast of destruction that flashed down
from a hundred thousand projectors, each delivering the maximum blast of which it was
capable. There was no thought now of service life of equipment or of holding anything
back for a later effort. They had to hold that blast for only fifteen minutes, and if the task
ahead of them could not be done yin those fifteen minutes it probably could not be
done at all.
Therefore it is entirely useless even to attempt to describe what happened then,
or to portray the spectacle that ensued when beam met screen. Why try to describe
pink to a man born blind? Suffice it to say that those Patrol beams bid down, and that
Helmuth’s automatic screens resisted to the limit of their ability. Nor was that resistance
small.
Had Helmuths customary staff of keen-eyed, quick-witted lieutenants been at
their posts, to reenforce those Primary screens with the practically unlimited power
which could have been put behind them, his defense would not have failed under even
the unimaginable force of that Titanic thrust, but those lieutenants were not at their
posts. The screens of the twenty-six primary objectives failed, and the twenty-six
stupendous flotillas moved slowly, grandly, each along its designated line.
* * *
Every alarm in Helmuths dome had burst into frantic warning as the massed
might of the Galactic Patrol was hurled against the twenty,-six vital points of Grand
Base, but those alarms clamored in vain. No hands were raised to the switches whose
closing would unleash the hellish energies of Boskone’s irresistible projectors, no eyes
were upon the sighting devices which would align them against the attacking ships of
war. Only Helmuth, in his Innershielded control compartment, was left, and Helmuth
was the directing intelligence, the master mind, and not a mere operator. And, now that
he had no operators to direct, he was utterly helpless. He could see the stupendous
fleet of the Patrol, he could understand fully its dire menace, but he could neither stiffen
his screens nor energize a single beam. He could only sit, grinding his teeth in helpless
fury, and watch the destruction of the armament which, if it could only have been in
operation, would have blasted those battleships and maulers from the skies as though
they had been so many fluffy bits of thistledown.
Time after time he leaped to his feet, as if about to dash across to one of the
control stations, but each time he sank back into his seat at the desk. One firing-station
would be little, if any, better than none at all. Besides, that accursed Lensman was back
of this. He was-must be right here in the dome, somewhere. He wanted him to leave
this desk-that was what he was waiting fort As long as he stayed at the desk he himself
was safe. For that matter, this whole dome was safe. The projector had never been
mounted that could break down those screens. No-no matter what happened, he would
stay at the desk!
Kinnison, watching, marveled at his fortitude. He himself could not have stayed
there, he knew, and he also knew now that Helmuth was going to stay. Time was flying,
five of the fifteen minutes were gone. He had hoped that Helmuth would leave that well-
protected inner sanctum, with its unknown potentialities, but if the pirate would not
come out, the Lensman would go in. The storming of that inner stronghold was what his
new armor was for.
In he went, but he did not catch Helmuth napping. ,Even before he crashed the
screens his own defensive zones burst into furiously coruscant activity, and through that
flame there came tearing the metallic slugs of a high-power machine rifle.
Ha ! There was a rifle, even though he had not been able to find it! Clever guy,
that Helmuth! And what a break that he had taken time to learn how to hold this suit up
against the trickiest kind of machine-rifle fire!
Kinnison’s screens were almost those of a battleship, his armor almost,
relatively, as strong. And he could hold that armor upright. Therefore through the raging
beam of the semi-portable projector he plowed and straight up that torrent of raging
steel he drove his way. And now from his own mighty projector, against Helmuth’s
armor, there raved out a beam scarcely less potent than that of a semi-portable. The
Lensman’s armor did not mount a water-cooled machine rifle-there was a limit to what
even that powerful structure could carry-but grimly, with every faculty of his newly
enlarged mind concentrated upon that thought screened, armored head behind the
belching gun, Kinnison held his line and forged ahead.
Well it was that the Lensman was concentrating upon that screened head, for
when the screen weakened slightly and a thought began to seep through it toward an
enigmatically sparkling ball of force, Kinnison was ready. He blanketed the thought
savagely, before it could take form, and attacked the screen so viciously that Helmuth
had either to restore full coverage instantly or die then and there. For the Lensman had
studied that ball long and earnestly. It was the one thing about the whole base that he
could not understand, the one thing, therefore, of which he had been afraid.
But he was afraid of it no longer. It was operated, he now knew, by thought, and,
no matter how terrific its potentialities might be, it now was and would remain perfectly
harmless, for if the pirate chief softened his screen enough to emit a thought, he would
never think again.
Therefore he rushed. At full blast he hurdled the rifle and crashed full against the
armored figure behind it. Magnetic clamps locked and held, and, driving projectors
furiously ablaze, he whirled around and forced the madly struggling Helmuth back,
toward the line along which the bellowing rifle was still spewing forth a continuous storm
of metal.
Helmuth’s utmost efforts sufficed only to throw the Lensman out of balance, and
both figures crashed to the floor. And now the madly fighting armored pair rolled over
and over-straight into the line of fire.
First Kinnison, the bullets whining, shrieking off the armor of his personal
battleship and crashing through or smashing ringingly against whatever happened to be
in the ever-changing line or ricochet. Then Helmuth, and as the fierce-driven metal
slugs tore in their multitudes through his armor and through and through his body,
riddling his every vital organ, that was THE END