“MY people! As you have already been told, my forces have won the complete
victory which my foresight and my leadership made inevitable. This milestone of
progress is merely a repetition upon a grander scale of those which I have already
accomplished upon a somewhat smaller; an extension and a continuation of the
carefully considered procedure by virtue of which I shall see to it that My Plan succeeds.
“As one item in that scheduled procedure I removed the weakling Alcon, and in
the stead of his rule of oppression, short-sightedness, corruption, favoritism, and greed,
I substituted my beneficient regime of fair play, of mutual cooperation for the good of all.
“I have now accomplished the next major step in my program; the complete
destruction of the armed forces which might be, which would be employed to hamper
and to nullify the development and the fruition of My Plan.
“I shall take the next step immediately upon my return to my palace. There is no
need to inform you now as to the details of what I have in mind. In broad, however, it
pleases me to inform you that, having crushed all opposition, I am now able to institute
and shall proceed at once to institute certain changes in policy, in administration, and in
jurisdiction. I assure you that all of these changes will be for the best good of all save
the enemies of society.
“I caution you therefore to cooperate fully and willingly with my officers who may
shortly come among you with instructions; some of these, perhaps, of a nature not
hitherto promulgated upon Thrale. Those of you who do so cooperate will live and will
prosper; those who do not will die in the slowest, most hideous fashions which all the
generations of Thralian torturers have been able to devise.”
CHAPTER 22
The Taking of Thrale
Up to the present, Kinnison’s revolution, his self-advancement into the
dictatorship, had been perfectly normal; in perfect accordance with the best tenets of
Boskonian etiquette. While it would be idle to contend that any of the others of the High
Command really approved of it—each wanted intensely that high place for
himself—none of them had been strong enough at the moment to challenge the Tyrant
effectively and all of them knew that an ineffective challenge would mean certain death.
Wherefore each perforce bided his time; Gannel would slip, Gannel would become lax
or over-confident—and that would be the end of Gannel.
They were, however, loyal to Boskonia. They were very much in favor of the rule
of the strong and the ruthless. They believed implicitly that might made right They
themselves bowed the knee to anyone strong enough to command such servility from
them; in turn they commanded brutally an even more abject servility from those over
whom they held in practice, if not at law, the power of life and death.
Thus Kinnison knew that he could handle his cabinet easily enough as long as he
could make them believe that he was a Boskonian. There was, there could be, no real
unity among them under those conditions; each would be fighting his fellows as well as
working to overthrow His Supremacy the Tyrant. But they all hated the Patrol and all
that it stood for with a whole-hearted fervor which no one adherent to Civilization can
really appreciate. Hence at the first sign that Gannel might be in league with the Patrol
they would combine forces instantly -against him; automatically there would go into
effect a tacit agreement to kill him first and then, later, to fight it out among themselves
for the prize of the Tyrancy.
And that combined opposition would be a formidable one indeed. Those men
were really able. They were as clever and as shrewd and as smart and as subtle as
they were hard. They were masters of intrigue; they simply could not be fooled. And if
their united word went down the line that Traska Gannel was in fact a traitor to
Boskonia, an upheaval would ensue which would throw into the shade the bloodiest
revolutions of all history. Everything would be destroyed.
Nor could the Lensman hurl the metal of the Patrol against Thrale in direct frontal
attack. Not only was it immensely strong, but also there were those priceless records,
without which it might very well be the work of generations for the Patrol to secure the
information which it must, for its own security, have.
No. Kinnison, having started near the bottom and worked up, must now begin all
over again at the top and work down; and he must be very, very sure that no alarm was
given until at too late a time for the alarmed ones to do anything of harm to the
Lensman’s cause. He didn’t know whether he had jets enough to swing the load or
not— a lot depended on whether or not he could civilize those twelve devils of his—but
the scheme that the psychologists had worked out was a honey and he would certainly
give it the good old college try.
Thus Grand Fleet slowed down; and, with the flagship just out of range of the
capital’s terrific offensive weapons, it stopped. Half a dozen maulers, towing a blackly
indetectable, imperceptible object, came up and stopped. The Tyrant called, from the
safety of his control room, a conference of his cabinet in the council chamber.
“While I have not been gone very long in point of days,” he addressed them
smoothly, via plate, “and while I of course trust each and every one of you, there are
certain matters which must be made clear before I land. None of you has, by any
possible chance, made any effort to lay a trap for me, or anything of the kind?” There
may have been a trace of irony in the speaker’s voice.
They assured him, one and all, that they had not had the slightest idea of even
considering such a thing.
“It is well. None of you have discovered, then, that by changing locks and
combinations, and by destroying or removing certain inconspicuous but essential
mechanisms of an extremely complicated nature—and perhaps substituting others—I
made it quite definitely impossible for any one of all of you to render this planet
inertialess. I have brought back with me a negasphere of planetary anti-mass, which no
power at your disposal can effect. It is here beside me in space; please study it
attentively. It should not be necessary for me to inform you that there are countless
other planets from which I can rule Boskonia quite as effectively as from Thrale; or that,
while I do not relish the idea of destroying my home planet and everything upon it, I
would not hesitate to do so if it became a matter of choice between that action and the
loss of my life and my position.”
They believed the statement. That was the eminently sensible thing to do. Any
one of them would have done the same; hence they knew that Gannel would do exactly
what he threatened—if he could. And as they studied Gannel’s abysmally black ace of
trumps they knew starkly that Gannel could. For they had found out, individually, that
the Tyrant had so effectively sabotaged Thrale’s Bergenholms that they could not
possibly be made operative until after his return. Consequently repairs had not been
started—any such activity, they knew, would be a fatal mistake.
By out-guessing and out-maneuvering the members of his cabinet Gannel had
once more shown his fitness to rule. They accepted that fact with a good enough grace;
indeed, they admired him all the more for the ability thus shown. No one of them had
given himself away by any overt moves; they could wait. Gannel would slip yet—quite
possibly even before he got back into his palace. So they thought, not knowing that the
Tyrant could read at will their most deeply-hidden plans; and, so thinking, each one
pledged anew in unreserved terms his fealty and his loyalty.
“I thank you, gentlemen.” The Tyrant did not, and the officers were pretty sure
that he did not, believe a word of their protestations. “As loyal cabinet members, I will
give you the honor of sitting in the front of those who welcome me home. You men and
your guards will occupy the front boxes in the Royal Stand. With you and around you
will be the entire palace personnel—I want no person except the, usual guards inside
the buildings or even within the grounds when I land. Back of these you will have
arranged the Personal Troops and the Royal Guards. The remaining stands and all of
the usual open grounds will be for the common people— first come, first served.
“But one word of caution. You may wear your side-arms, as usual. Bear in mind,
however, that armor is neither usual nor a part of your full-dress uniform, and that any
armored man or men in or near the concourse will be blasted by a needle-ray before I