particular hurry, especially since Cris was finding heavy going and thick ether at her end
of the line, too. They had been in communication at least once every day, usually
oftener; and Clarrissa had reported seethingly, in near-masculine, almost-deep-space
verbiage, that that damned red-headed hussy of a Helen was a hard nut to crack.
Kinnison grinned sourly every time he thought of Lyrane II. Those matriarchs
certainly were a rum lot. They were a pig-headed, self-centered, mulishly stubborn
bunch of cockeyed knotheads, he decided. Non-galaxy-minded; as shortsightedly anti-
social as a flock of mad Radeligian cateagles. He’d better . . . no, he hadn’t better,
either—he’d have to lay off. If Cris, with all her potency and charm, with all her drive and
force of will, with all her sheer power of mind and of Lens, couldn’t pierce their armor,
what chance did any other entity of Civilization have of doing it? Particularly any male
creature? He’d like to half-wring their beautiful necks, all of them; but that wouldn’t get
him to the first check-station, either. He’d just have to wait until she broke through the
matriarchs’ crust—she’d do it, too, by Klono’s prehensile tail!—and then they’d really
ride the beam.
So Kinnison waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. When he got tired of waiting
he gave a few more lessons in snobbishness and in the gentle art of self-preservation to
the promising young Lonabarian thug whom he had selected to inherit the business,
lock, stock, and barrel—including goodwill, if any—if, as, and when he was done with it.
Then he waited some more; waited, in fact, until Bleeko was forced, by his silent
pressure, to act.
It was not an overt act, nor an unfriendly—he simply called him up on the
visiphone.
“What do you think you’re trying to do?” Bleeko demanded, his darkly handsome
face darker than ever with wrath.
“You.” Kinnison made succinct answer. “You should have taken my advice about
pondering the various aspects of an iceberg.”
“Bah!” the other snorted. “That silliness?”
“Not as silly as you think. That was a warning, Bleeko,’ that the stuff showing
above the surface is but a very small portion of my total resources. But you could not or
would not learn by precept. You had to have it the hard way. Apparently, however, you
have learned. That you have not been able to locate my forces I am certain. I am almost
as sure that you do not want to try me again, at least until you have found out what you
do not know. But I can give you no more time—you must decide now, Bleeko, whether it
is to be peace or war between us. I still prefer a peaceful settlement, with an equitable
division of the spoils; but if you want war, so be it.”
“I have decided upon peace,” the Lonabarian said, and the effort of it almost
choked him. “I, Menjo Bleeko the Supreme, will give you a place beside me. Come to
me here, at once, so that we may discuss the terms of peace.”
“We will discuss them now,” Kinnison insisted.
“Impossible!.Barred and shielded as this room is . . .”
“It would be,” Kinnison interrupted with a nod, “for you to make such an
admission as you have just made.”
“. . . I do not trust unreservedly this communication .line. If you join me now, you
may do so in peace. If you do not come to me, here and now, it is war to the death.”
“Fair enough, at that,” the Lensman admitted. “After all, you’ve got to save your
.face, and I haven’t—yet. And if I team up with you I can’t very well stay out of your
palace forever. But before I come there I want to give you three things—a reminder, a
caution, and a warning. I remind you. that our first exchange of amenities cost you a
thousand times as much as it did me. I caution you to consider again, and more
carefully this time, the iceberg. I warn” you that if we again come into conflict you will
lose not only a mine, but everything you have, including your life. So see to it that you
lay no traps for me. I come.”
He went out into the shop. “Take over, Sport,” he told his gangster protege. “I’m
going up to the palace to see Menjo Bleeko. If I’m not back in two hours, and if your
grapevine reports that Bleeko is out of the picture, what I’ve left in the store here is
yours until I come back and take it away from you.”
“I’ll take care of it, Boss—thanks,” and the Lensman knew that in true Lonabarian
gratitude the youth was already, mentally, slipping a long, keen knife between his ribs.
Without a qualm, but with every sense stretched to the limit and in instant
readiness for any eventuality, Kinnison took a cab to the palace arid entered its heavily-
guarded portals. He was sure that they would not cut him down before he got to
Bleeko’s room—that room would surely be the one chosen for the execution.
Nevertheless, he took no chances. He was supremely ready to slay instantly every
guard within range of his sense of perception at the first sign of inimical activity. Long
before he came to them, he made sure that the beams which were set to search him for
concealed weapons were really search-beams and not lethal vibrations.
And as he passed those beams each one of them reported him clean. Rings, of
course; a stick-pin, and various other items of adornment. But Cartiff, the great jeweler,
would be expected to wear very large and exceedingly costly gems. And the beam has
never been projected which could penetrate those Worsel-designed, Thorndyke-built
walls of force; to show that any one of those flamboyant gems was not precisely what it
appeared to be.
Searched, combed minutely, millimeter by cubic millimeter, Kinnison was
escorted by a heavily-armed quartette of Bleeko’s personal guards into His
Supremacy’s private study. All four bowed as he entered—but they strode in behind
him, then shut and locked the door.
“You fool!” Bleeko gloated from behind his massive desk. His face flamed with
sadistic joy and anticipation. “You trusting, greedy fool! I have you exactly where I want
you now. How easy! How simple! This entire building is screened and shielded—by my
screens and shields. Your friends and accomplices, whoever or wherever they are, can
neither see you nor know what is to happen to you. If your ship attempts your rescue it
will be blasted out of the ether. I will, personally, gouge out your eyes, tear off your
nails, strip your hide from your quivering carcass . . .” Bleeko was now, in his raging
exaltation, fairly frothing at the mouth.
“That would be a good trick if you could do h,” Kinnison remarked, coldly. “But
the real fact is that you haven’t even tried to use that pint of blue mush that you call a
brain. Do you think me an utter idiot? I put on an apt and you fell for it . . .”
“Seize him, guards! Silence his yammering—tear out his tongue!” His Supremacy
shrieked, leaping out of his chair as though possessed.
The guards tried manfully, but before they could touch him —before any one of
them could take one full step—they dropped. Without being touched by material object
or visible beam, without their proposed victim having moved a muscle, they died and
fell. Died instantly, in their tracks; died completely, effortlessly, painlessly, with every
molecule of the all-important compound without which life cannot even momentarily
exist shattered instantaneously into its degradation products; died not knowing even
that they died.
Bleeko was shaken, but he was not beaten. Needle-ray men, sharpshooters all,
were stationed behind those walls. Gone now the dictator’s intent to torture his victim to
death. Slaying him out of hand would have to suffice. He flashed a signal to the
concealed marksmen, but that order too went unobeyed. For Kinnison had perceived
the hidden gunmen long since, and before any of them could align his sights or press
his firing stud each one of them ceased to live. The zwilnik then flipped on his
communicator and gobbled orders. Uselessly; for death sped ahead. Before any mind at
any switchboard could grasp the meaning of the signal, it could no longer, think.
“You fiend from hell!” Bleeko screamed, in mad panic now, and wrenched open a
drawer in order to seize a weapon of his own. Too late. The Lensman had already
leaped, and as he landed he struck—not gently. Lonabar’s tyrant collapsed upon the
thick-piled rug in a writhing, gasping heap; but he was not unconscious. To suit
Kinnison’s purpose he could not be unconscious; he had to be in. full possession of his
mind.
The Lensmen crooked one brawny arm around the zwilnik’s neck in an
unbreakable strangle-hold and flipped off his thought-screen. Physical struggles were of