From their coign of vantage the two Patrolmen saw their gallant ship’s terrific
end, saw the `one pirate vessel suffer collision with the flying fragment, saw the other
escape inertialess, saw her disappear.
The inert pirate vessel had now almost exactly the same velocity as the lifeboat,
both in speed and in direction, only very slowly were the large craft and the small
approaching each other. Kinnison stood rigid, staring into his plate, his nervous hands
grasping the switches whose closing, at the first sign of detection. would render them
inertialess and would pour full blast into their driving projectors. But minute after minute
passed and nothing happened.
“Why don’t they do something?” he burst out, finally. “They know we’re here —
there isn’t a detector made that could be badly enough out of order to miss us at this
distance. Why, they can see us from there, with no detectors at all !”
“Asleep, unconscious, or dead,” vanBuskirk diagnosed, “and they’re not asleep.
Believe me, Kim, that ship was nudged. She must’ve been hit hard enough to lay her
whole crew out cold . .-. . . and say, she’s got a standard emergency inlet port — how
about it, huh?”
Kinnison’s mind leaped eagerly at the daring suggestion of his subordinate, but
he did not reply at once. Their first, their only duty, concerned the safety of two spools
of tape. But if the lifeboat lay there inert until the pirates regained control of their craft,
detection and capture were certain.
The same fate was as certain should they attempt flight with all nearby space so
full of enemy fliers. Therefore, hare-brained though it appeared at first glance, vanBus-
kirk’s wild idea was actually the safest course!
“All right, Bus, well try it. We’ll take a chance on going free and using a tenth of a
dyne of drive for a hundredth of a second. Get into the lock with your magnets.”
The lifeboat flashed against the pirate’s armored side and the sergeant, by deftly
manipulating his two small hand-magnets, worked it rapidly along the steel plating, to-
ward the driving jets. There, in the conventional location just forward of the main driving
projectors, was indeed the emergency inlet port, with its Galactic Standard controls.
In a few minutes the two warriors were inside, dashing toward the control room.
There Kinnison glanced at the board and heaved a sigh of relief.
“Fine! Same type as the one we studied. Same race, too,” he went on, eyeing
the motionless forms scattered about the floor. Seizing one of the bodies, he propped it
against a panel thus obscuring a multiple lens.
“That’s the eye overlooking the control room,” he explained unnecessarily. “We
can’t cut their headquarters vial-beams without creating suspicion, but we don’t want
them looking around in here until after we’ve done a little stage-setting.”
“But they’ll get suspicious anyway when we go free,” vanBuskirk protested.
“Sure, but we’ll arrange for that later. First thing we’ve got to do is to make sure
that all the crew except possibly one or two in here, are really dead. Don’t beam unless
you have to, we want to make it look as though everybody got killed or fatally injured in
the crash.”
A complete tour of the vessel, with a grim and distasteful accompaniment, was
made. Not all of the pirates were dead, or even disabled, but, unarmored as they were
and taken completely by surprise, the survivors could offer but little resistance. A cargo
port was opened and the Brittania’s lifeboat was drawn inside. Then back to the control
room, where Kinnison picked up another body and strode to the main panels.
‘This fellow,” he announced, ‘was hurt badly, but managed to get to the board.
He threw in the free switch, like this, and then full-blast drive, so. Then he pulled himself
over to the steering globe and tried to lay course back toward headquarters but couldn’t
quite make it. He died with the course set right there. Not exactly toward Sol, you notice
– that would be too much of a coincidence — but close enough to help a lot. His bracelet
got caught in the guard, like this. There is clear evidence as to exactly what happened.
Now we’ll get out of range of that eye, and let the body that’s covering it float away
naturally.”
‘Now what?’ asked vanBuskirk, after the two had hidden themselves.
“Nothing whatever until we have to,” was the reply. “Wish we could go on like
this for a couple of weeks, but no chance. Headquarters will get curious pretty quick as
to why we’re shoving off.”
Even as he spoke a furious burst of noise erupted from the communicator, a
noise which meant.
“Vessel F47U5961 Where are you going, and why? Report!”
At that brusk command one of the still forms struggled weakly to its knees and
tried to frame words, but fell back dead.
“Perfect!” Kinnison breathed into vanBuskirk’s ear. “Couldn’t have been better.
Now they’ll probably take their time about rounding us up . . . . . maybe we can get back
to somewhere near Tellus, after all . . . . . Listen, here comes some more.” The
communicator was again sending. “See if you can get a line on their transmitter.”
“If there are any survivors able to report, do so at once!” Kinnison understood the
dynamic cone to say. Then, the voice moderating as though the speaker had turned
from his microphone to someone nearby, it went on, “No one answers, sir. This, you
know, is the ship that was lying closest to the new Patrol ship when she exploded, so
close that her navigator did not have time to go free before collision with the debris. The
crew were apparently all killed or incapacitated by the shock.”
“If any of the officers survive have them brought in for trial,” a more distant voice
commanded. savagely. Boskone has no use for bunglers except to serve as examples.
Have the ship seized and returned here as soon as possible.”
“Could you trace it, Bus?” Kinnison demanded. “Even one line on their
headquarters would be mighty useful.”
“No, it came in scrambled — couldn’t separate it from the rest of the static out
there. Now what?”
“Now we eat and sleep. Particularly and most emphatically, we sleep.”
“Watches?”
“No need, I’ll be awakened in plenty of time if anything happens. My Lens, you
know.”
They ate ravenously and slept prodigiously, then ate and slept again. Rested and
refreshed, they studied charts, but vanBuskirk’s mind was very evidently not upon the
maps before them.
“You understand that jargon, and it doesn’t even sound like a language to me,”
he pondered. “It’s the Lens,. of course. Maybe it’s something that shouldn’t be talked
about?”
“No secret — not among us, at least,” Kinnison assured him. ‘The Lens receives
as pure thought any pattern of force which represents, or is in any way connected with,
thought. My brain receives this thought in English, since that is my native language. At
the same time my ears are practically out of circuit, so that I actually hear the English
language instead of whatever noise is being made. I do not hear the foreign sounds at
all. Therefore I haven’t the slightest idea what the pirates’ language sounds like, since I
have never heard any of it.
“Conversely, when I want to talk to someone who doesn’t know any language I
do, I simply think into the Lens and direct its force at him, and he thinks I am talking to
him in his own mother tongue. Thus, you are hearing me now in perfect Valerian Dutch,
even though you know that I can speak only a dozen or so words of it, and those with a
vile American accent. Also, you are hearing it in my voice, even though you know I am
actually not saying a word, since you can see that my mouth is wide open and that
neither my lips, tongue, nor vocal cords are moving. If you were a Frenchman you
would be hearing this in French, or, if you were a Manarkan and couldn’t talk at all, you
would be getting it as regular Manarkan telepathy.”
“Oh . . . . I see . . . . I think,” the astounded Dutchman gulped. “Then why
couldn’t you talk back to them through their phones?”
“Because the Lens, although a mighty fine and versatile thing, is not
omnipotent,” Kinnison replied, dryly. “It sends out only thought, and thought-waves,
lying below the level of the ether, cannot affect a microphone. The microphone, not
being itself intelligent, cannot receive thought. Of course I can broadcast a thought —
everybody does, more or less — but without a Lens at the other end I can’t reach very
far. Power, they tell me, comes with practice – I’m not so good at it yet.”
“You can receive a thought . . . . . everybody broadcasts . . . . . Then you can