Some of the officers tried then to go for their blasters, but it was already too late; their
shaking, trembling, almost paralyzed muscles could not be forced to function.
An even worse shock followed almost instantly, for the prime minister, under the
incredibly mounting intensity of the Lensman’s poignant thrusts, found it necessary to
concentrate his every iota of power upon his opponent. Fossten’s form of flesh
dissolved, revealing to all beholders except Kinnison what their prime minister actually
was—and he had not been very much wrong in saying that that sight would drive any
human being mad. Most of the Boskonians did go mad, then and there; but they did not
rush about nor scream. They could not move purposefully, but only twitched and writhed
horribly as they lay grotesquely a-sprawl. They could not scream or shriek, but only
mouthed and mumbled meaningless burblings.
And ever higher, ever more brilliant flamed the Lens as Kinnison threw all of his
prodigious will-power, all of his tremendous, indomitable drive, through it and against
the incredibly resistant thing to which he was opposed. This was the supreme, the
climactic battle of his life thus far. Ether and sub-ether seethed and boiled invisibly
under the frightful violence of the forces there unleashed. The men in the control room
lay still; all life rived away. Now death spread throughout the confines of the vast space-
ship.
Indomitably, relentlessly, the Gray Lensman held his offense upon that
unimaginably high level; his Lens flooding the room with intensely coruscant
polychromatic light. He did not know, then or ever, how he did it. He never did suspect
that he was not alone. It seemed as though his Lens, of its own volition in this time of
ultimate need, reached out into unguessable continua and drew therefrom an added, an
extra something. But, however it was done, Kinnison and his Lens managed to hold;
and under the appalling, the never-ceasing concentration of force the monster’s
defenses began gradually to weaken and go down.
Then sketchily, patchily, there was revealed to Kinnison’s sight and sense of
perception—a—a—a BRAIN!
There was a body, of sorts, of course—a peculiarly neckless body designed
solely to support that gigantic, thin-skulled head. There were certain appendages of
limbs, and such-like appurtenances and incidentalia to nourishment, locomotion, and
the like; but to all intents and purposes the thing was simply and solely a brain.
Kinnison knew starkly that it was an Arisian—it looked enough like old Mentor to
be his twin brother. He would have been stunned, except for the fact that he was far too
intent upon victory to let any circumstance, however distracting, affect his purpose. His
concentration upon the task in hand was so complete that nothing—literally nothing
whatever—could sway him from it.
Step by short, hard, jerky step, Kinnison advanced. Close enough, he selected
certain areas upon the sides of that enormous head and with big, hard, open hands he
went viciously to work. Right, left, right, left, he slapped those bulging temples brutally,
rocking monstrous head and repulsive body from side to side, pendulum-like, with every
stunning blow.
His fist would have smashed that thin skull, would perhaps have buried itself
deep within the soft tissues of that tremendous brain; and Kinnison did not want to kill
his inexplicable opponent—yet. He had to find out first what this was all about.
He knew that he was due to black out soon as he let go, and he intended to
addle the thing’s senses so thoroughly that he would be completely out of action for
hours—long enough to give the Lensman plenty of time in which to recover his strength.
He did so.
Kinnison did not quite faint. He did, however, have to lie down flat upon the floor;
as limp, almost, as the dead men so thickly strewn about.
And thus, while the two immense Grand Fleets met in battle, Boskonia’s flagship
hung inert and silent in space afar; manned by fifteen hundred corpses, one
unconscious Brain, and one utterly exhausted Gray Lensman.
CHAPTER 21
The Battle of Klovia
Boskonia’s Grand Fleet was, as has been said, enormous. It was not as large as
that of the Patrol in total number of ships, since no ordinary brain nor any possible
combination of such brains could have coordinated and directed the activities of so vast
a number of units. Its center was, however, heavier; composed of a number and a
tonnage of super-maulers which made it self-evidently irresistible.
In his training of his operations staff Kinnison had not overlooked a single bet,
had not made a single move which by its falsity might have excited Premier Fossten’s
all-too-ready suspicions. They had handled Grand Fleet as a whole in vast, slow
maneuvers; plainly the only kind possible to so tremendous a force. Kinnison and his
officers had in turn harshly and thoroughly instructed the sub-fleet commanders in the
various arts and maneuvers of conquering units equal to or smaller than their own.
That was all; and to the Boskonians, even to Fossten, that had been enough.
That was obviously all that was possible. Not one of them realized that Tyrant Gannel
very carefully avoided any suggestion that there might be any intermediate tactics, such
as that of three or four hundred sub-fleets, too widely spread in space and too
numerous to be handled by any ordinary mind or apparatus, to englobe and to wipe out
simultaneously perhaps fifty sub-fleets whose commanders were not even in
communication with each other. This technique was as yet the exclusive property of the
Patrol and the Z9M9Z.
And in that exact operation, a closed book to the zwilniks, lay—supposedly and
tactically—the Patrol’s overwhelming advantage. For Haynes, through his four highly-
specialized Rigellian Lensmen and thence through the two hundred Rigellian operator-
computers, could perform maneuvers upon any intermediate scale he pleased. He
could handle his whole vast Grand Fleet and its every component part—he supposed—
as effectively, as rapidly, and almost as easily as a skilled chess player handles his
pieces and his pawns. Neither Kinnison nor Haynes can be blamed, however, for the
fact that their suppositions were somewhat in error; it would have taken an Arisian to
deduce that this battle was not to be fought exactly as they had planned it.
Haynes had another enormous advantage in knowing the exact number, rating,
disposition, course, and velocity of every main unit of the aggregation to which he was
opposed. And third, he had the sunbeam, concerning which the enemy knew nothing at
all and which was now in good working order.
It is needless to say that the sunbeam generators were already set to hurl that
shaft of irresistible destruction along the precisely correct line, or that Haynes’ Grand
Fleet formation had been made with that particular weapon in mind. It was not an
orthodox formation; in any ordinary space-battle it would have been sheerly suicidal. But
the Port Admiral, knowing for the first time in his career every pertinent fact concerning
his foe, knew exactly what he was doing.
His fleet, instead of driving ahead to meet the enemy, remained inert and
practically motionless well within the limits of Klovia’s solar system. His heavy stuff,
instead of being massed at the center, was arranged in a vast ring. There was no center
except for a concealing screen of heavy cruisers.
When the far-flung screens of scout cruisers came into engagement, then, the
Patrol scouts near the central line did not fight, but sped lightly aside. So did the light
and heavy-cruisers and the battleships. The whole vast center of the Boskonians drove
onward, unopposed, into—nothing.
Nevertheless they kept on driving. They could, without orders, do nothing else,
and no orders were forthcoming from the flagship. Commanders tried to get in touch
with Grand Fleet Operations, but could not; and, in failing, kept on under their original
instructions. They had, they could have, no suspicion that any minion of the Patrol was
back of what had happened to their top brass. The flagship had been in the safest
possible position and no attack had as yet been made. They probably wondered futilely
as to what kind of a mechanical breakdown could have immobilized and completely
silenced their High Command, but that was—strictly —none of their business. They had
had orders, very definite orders, that no matter what happened they were to go on to
Klovia and to destroy it. Thus, however wondering, they kept on. They were on the line.
They would hold it. They would blast out of existence anything and everything which
might attempt to bar their way. They would reach Klovia and they would reduce it to its
component atoms.
Unresisted, then, the Boskonian center bored ahead into nothing, until Haynes,
through his Rigellians, perceived that it had come far enough. Then Klovia’s brilliantly
shining sun darkened almost to the point of extinction. Along the line of centers, through
the space so peculiarly empty of Patrol ships, there came into being the sunbeam—a