possibly can. In the meantime she’s my personal responsibility. So—no passes’. She’s
strictly off limits.”
“Ill pass the word, sir.”
“Thanks.” The Gray Lensman broke the connection and got into communication
with Helen of Lyrane, who gave him a resume of everything that had happened.
Two ships—big ships, immense space-cruisers—appeared near the airport.
Nobody saw them coming, they came so fast. They stopped, and without warning or
parley destroyed all the. buildings and all the people nearby with beams like Kinnison’s
needle-beam, except much larger. Then the ships landed and men disembarked. The
Lyranians killed ten of them by direct mental impact or by monsters of the mind, but
after that everyone who came out of the vessel wore thought-screens and the persons
were quite helpless. The enemy had burned down and melted a part of the city, and as
a further warning were then making formal plans to execute publicly a hundred leading
Lyranians—ten for each man they had killed.
Because of the screens no communication was possible, but the invaders had
made it clear that if there was one more sign of resistance, or even of non-cooperation,
the entire city would be beamed; every living thing in it blasted out of existence. She
herself had escaped so far. She was hidden in a crypt in the deepest sub-cellar of the
city. She was, of course, one of the ones they wanted to execute, but finding any of
Lyrane’s leaders would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. They were still
searching, with .many persons as highly unwilling guides. They had indicated that they
would stay there until the leaders were found; that they would make the Lyranians tear
down their city, stone by stone, until they were found.
“But how could they know who you leaders are?” Kinnison wanted to know.
“Perhaps one of our persons weakened under their torture,” Helen replied
equably. “Perhaps they have among them a mind of power. Perhaps in some other
fashion. What matters it? The thing of importance is that they do know.”
“Another thing of importance is that it’ll hold them there until we get there,”
Kinnison thought “Typical Boskonian technique, I gather. It won’t be many hours now.
Hold them off if you can.”
“I think that I can,” came tranquil reply. “Through mental contact each person
acting as guide knows where each of us hidden ones is, and is avoiding all our hiding-
places.”
“Good. Tell me all you can about those ships, their size, shape, and armament.”
She could not, it developed, give him any reliable information as to size. She
thought that the present invaders were smaller than the Dauntless, but she could not be
sure. Compared to the little airships which were the only flying structures with which she
was familiar, both Kinnison’s ship and those now upon Lyrane were so immensely huge
that trying to tell which was larger was very much like attempting to visualize, the
difference between infinity squared and infinity cubed. On shape, however, she was
much better; she spread in the Lensman’s mind an accurately detailed picture of the two
space-ships which the Patrolman intended to engage.
In shape they were ultra-fast, very much like the Dauntless herself. Hence they
certainly were not maulers. Nor, probably, were they first-line battleships, such as had
composed the fleet which had met Civilization’s Grand Fleet off the edge of the Second
Galaxy. Of course, the Patrol had had in that battle ultra-fast shapes which were ultra-
powerful as well— such as this same Dauntless—and it was a fact that while Civilization
was designing and building, Boskonia could very well have been doing the same thing.
On the other hand, since the enemy could not logically be expecting real trouble in
Dunstan’s Region, these buckets might very well be second-line or out-of-date stuff . . .
“Are those ships lying on the same field we landed on?” he asked at that point in
his cogitations.
“Yes.”
“You can give me pretty close to an actual measurement of the difference, then,”
he told her. “We left a hole in that field practically our whole length. How does it
compare with theirs?”
“I can find that out, I think,” and in due time she did so; reporting that the
Dauntless was the longer, by some twelve times a person’s height.
“Thanks, Helen.” Then, and only men, did Kinnison call his officers into
consultation in the control room.
He told them everything he had learned and deduced about the two Boskonian
vessels which they were about to attack. Then, heads bent over a visitank, the
Patrolmen began to discuss strategy and tactics.
CHAPTER 6
Back to Lyrane
The Dauntless approached Lyrane II so nearly that the planet showed a
perceptible disk upon the plates, the observers began to study their detectors carefully.
Nothing registered, and a brief interchange of thoughts with the Chief Person of Lyrane
informed the Lensman that the two Boskonian warships were still grounded. Indeed,
they were going to stay grounded until after the hundred Lyranian leaders, most of
whom were still safely hidden, had been found and executed, exactly as per
announcement The strangers had killed many persons by torture and were killing more
in attempts to make them reveal the hiding-places of the leaders, but little if any real
information was being obtained.
“Good technique, perhaps, from a bull-headed, dictatorial standpoint, but it
strikes me as being damned poor tactics,” grunted Malcolm Craig, the Dauntless’
grizzled captain, when Kinnison had relayed the information.
“Ill say it’s poor tactics,” the Lensman agreed. “If anybody of Helmuth’s caliber
were down there one of those heaps would be out on guard, flitting all over space.”
“But how could they be expecting trouble ‘way out here, nine thousand parsecs
from anywhere?” argued Chatway, the Chief Firing Officer.
“They ought to be—that’s the point.” This from Henderson. “Where do we land,
Kim, did you find out?”
“Not exactly; they’re on the other side of the planet from here, now. Good thing
we don’t have to get rid of a Tellurian intrinsic this time—it’ll be a near thing as it is.” And
it was.
Scarcely was the intrinsic velocity matched to that of the planet when the
observers reported that the airport upon which the enemy lay was upon the horizon.
Inertialess, the Dauntless flashed ahead, going inert and into action simultaneously
when within range of the zwilnik ships. Within range of one of them, that is; for short as
the time had been, the crew of one of the Boskonian vessels had been sufficiently alert
to get her away. The other one did not move; then or ever.
The Patrolmen acted with the flawless smoothness of long practice and perfect
teamwork. At the first sign of zwilnik activity as revealed by his spy-rays, Nelson, the
Chief Communications Officer, loosed a barrage of ethereal and sub-ethereal
interference through which no communications beam or signal could be driven. Captain
Craig barked a word into his microphone and every dreadful primary that could be
brought to bear erupted as one weapon. Chief Pilot Henderson, after a casual glance
below, cut in the Bergenholms, tramped in his blasts, and set the cruiser’s narrow nose
into his tracer’s line. One glance was enough. He needed no orders as to what to do
next It would have been apparent to almost anyone, even to one of the persons of
Lyrane, that that riddled, slashed, three-quarters fused mass of junk never again would
be or could contain aught of menace. The Patrol ship had not stopped: had scarcely
even paused. Now, having destroyed half of the opposition en passant, she legged it
after the remaining half.
“Now what, Kim?” asked Captain Craig. “We cant englobe him and he no doubt
mounts tractor shears. We’ll have to use the new tractor zone, won’t we?” Ordinarily the
gray-haired four-striper would have made his own decisions, since he and he alone
fought his ship; but these circumstances were far from ordinary. First, any Unattached
Lensman, wherever he was, was the boss. Second, the tractor zone was new; so brand
new that even the Dauntless had not as yet used it. Third, the ship was on detached
duty, assigned directly to Kinnison to do with as he willed. Fourth, said Kinnison was
high in the confidence of the Galactic Council and would know whether or not the
present situation justified the use of the new mechanism.
“If he can cut a tractor, yes,” the Lensman agreed. “Only one ship. He can’t get
away and he can’t communicate—safe enough. Go to it.”
The Tellurian ship was faster than the Boskonian; and, since she had been only
seconds behind at the start, she came within striking distance of her quarry in short
order. Tractor beams reached out and seized; but only momentarily did they hold. At the
first pull they were cut cleanly away. No one was surprised; it had been taken for
granted that all Boskonian ships would by this time have been equipped with tractor