shears.
These shears had been developed originally by the scientists of the Patrol.
Immediately following that invention, looking forward to the time when Boskone would
have acquired it, those same scientists set themselves to the task of working out
something which would be just as good as a tractor beam for combat purposes, but
which could not be cut. They got it finally—a globular shell of force, very much like a
meteorite screen except double in phase. That is, it was completely impervious to
matter moving in either direction, instead of only to that moving inwardly. Even if exact
data as to generation, gauging, distance, and control of this weapon were
available—which they very definitely are not—it would serve no good end to detail them
here. Suffice it to say that the Dauntless mounted tractor zones, and had ample power
to hold them.
Closer up the Patrol ship blasted. The zone snapped on, well beyond the
Boskonian, and tightened. Henderson cut the Bergenholms. Captain Craig snapped out
orders and Chief Firing Officer Chatway and his boys did their stuff.
Defensive screens full out, the pirate stayed free and tried to run. No soap. She
merely slid around upon the frictionless inner surface of the zone. She rolled and she
spun. Then she went inert and rammed. Still no soap. She struck the zone and
bounced; bounced with all of her mass and against all the power of her driving thrust.
The impact jarred the Dauntless to her very skin; but the zone’s anchorages had been
computed and installed by top-flight engineers and they held. And the zone itself held. It
yielded a bit, but it did not fail and the shear-planes of the pirates could not cut it.
Then, no other course being possible, the Boskonians fought. Of course,
theoretically, surrender was possible, but it simply was not done. No pirate ship ever
had surrendered to a Patrol force, however large; none ever would. No Patrol ship had
ever surrendered to Boskone—or would. That was the unwritten, but grimly understood
code of this internecine conflict between two galaxy-wide and diametrically-opposed
cultures; it was and had to be a war of utter and complete extermination. Individuals or
small groups might be captured bodily, but no ship, no individual, even, ever, under any
conditions, surrendered. The fight was—always and everywhere—to the death.
So this one was. The enemy was well-armed of her type, but her type simply did
not carry projectors of sufficient power to crush the Dauntless” hard-held screens. Nor
did she mount screens heavy enough to withstand for long the furious assault of the
Patrol ship’s terrific primaries.
As soon as the pirate’s screens went down the firing stopped; that order had
been given long since. Kinnison wanted information, he wanted charts, he wanted a few
living Boskonians. He got nothing. Not a man remained alive aboard the riddled hulk,
the chart-room contained only heaps of fused ash. Everything which might have been of
use to the Patrol had been destroyed, either by the Patrol’s own beams or by the pirates
themselves after they saw they must lose.
“Beam it out,” Craig ordered, and the remains of the Boskonian warship
disappeared.
Back toward Lyrane II, then, the Dauntless went, and Kinnison again made
contact with Helen, the Elder Sister. She had emerged from her crypt and was directing
affairs from her— “office” is perhaps the word—upon the top floor of the city’s largest
building. The search for the Lyranian leaders, the torture and murder of the citizens, and
the destruction of the city had stopped, all at once, when the grounded Boskonian
cruiser had been blasted out of commission. The directing intelligences of the raiders
had remained, it developed, within the “safe” confines of their vessel’s walls; and when
they ceased directing, their minions in the actual theater of operations ceased
operating. They had been grouped uncertainly in an open square, but at the first
glimpse of the returning Dauntless they had dashed into the nearest large building, each
man seizing one, or sometimes two persons as he went. They were now inside, erecting
defenses and very evidently intending to use the Lyranians both as hostages and as
shields.
Motionless now, directly over the city, Kinnison and his officers studied through
their spy-rays the number, armament, and disposition of the enemy force. There were
one hundred and thirty of them, human to about six places. They were armed with the
usual portable weapons carried by such parties. Originally they had had several semi-
portable projectors, but since all heavy stuff must be powered from the mother-ship, it
had been abandoned long since. Surprisingly, though, they wore full armor. Kinnison
had expected only thought-screens, since the Lyranians had no offensive weapons
save those of the mind; but apparently either the pirates did not know that or else were
guarding against surprise.
Armor was—and is—heavy, cumbersome, a handicap to fast action, and a
nuisance generally; hence for the Boskonians to have dispensed with it would not have
been poor tactics. True, the Patrol did attack, but that could not have been what was
expected. In fact, had such an attack been in the cards, that Boskonian punitive party
would not have been on the ground at all. It was equally true that canny old Helmuth,
who took nothing whatever for granted, would have had his men in armor. However, he
would have guarded much more completely against surprise . . . but few commanders
indeed went to such lengths of precaution as Helmuth did. Thus Kinnison pondered.
“This ought to be as easy as shooting fish down a well— but you’d better put out
space-scouts just the same,” he decided, as he Lensed a thought to Lieutenant Peter
vanBuskirk. “Bus? Do you see what we see?”
“Uh-huh, we’ve been peeking a bit,” the huge Dutch-Valerian responded, happily.
“QX. Get your gang wrapped up in their tinware. I’ll see you at the main lower
starboard lock in ten minutes.” He cut off and turned to an orderly. “Break out my G-P
cage for me, will you, Spike? And I’ll want the ‘copters—tell them to get hot.”
“But listen, Kim!” and “You can’t do that, Kinnison!” came simultaneously from
Chief Pilot and Captain, neither of whom could leave the ship in such circumstances as
these. They, the vessel’s two top officers, were bound to her; while the Lensman,
although ranking both of them, even aboard the ship, was not and could not be bound
by anything.
“Sure I can—you fellows are just jealous, that’s all,” Kinnison retorted, cheerfully.
“I not only can, I’ve got to go with the Valerians. I need a lot of information, and I can’t
read a dead man’s brain—yet.”
While the storming party was assembling the Dauntless settled downward,
coming to rest in the already devastated section of the town, as close as possible to the
building in which the Boskonians had taken refuge.
One hundred and two men disembarked: Kinnison, vanBuskirk, and the full
company of one hundred Valerians.
Each of those space-fighting wild-cats measured seventy eight inches or more
from sole to crown; each was composed of four hundred or more pounds of the
fantastically powerful, rigid, and reactive brawn, bone, and sinew necessary for survival
upon a planet having a surface gravity almost three times that of small, feeble Terra.
Because of the women held captive by the pirates, the Valerians carried no
machine rifles, no semi-portables, no heavy stuff at all; only their DeLameters and of
course their space-axes. A Valerian trooper without his space-axe? Unthinkable! A dire
weapon indeed, the space-axe. A combination and sublimation of battle-axe, mace,
bludgeon, and lumberman’s picaroon; thirty pounds of hard, tough, space-tempered
alloy; a weapon of potentialities limited only by the physical strength and bodily agility of
its wielder. And vanBuskirk’s Valerians had both—plenty of both. One-handed, with
simple flicks of his incredible wrist, the smallest Valerian of the Dauntless” boarding
party could manipulate his atrocious weapon as effortlessly as, and almost unbelievably
faster than, a fencing master handles his rapier or an orchestra conductor waves his
baton.
With machine-like precision the Valerians fell in and strode away; vanBuskirk in
the lead, the helicopters hovering overhead, the Gray Lensman bringing up the rear.
Tall and heavy, strong and agile as he was—for a Tellurian—he had no business in that
front line, and no one knew that fact better than he did. The puniest Valerian of the
company could do in full armor a standing high jump of over fourteen feet against one
Tellurian gravity; and could dodge, feint, parry, and swing with a blinding speed starkly
impossible to any member of any of the physically lesser breeds of man.
Approaching the building they spread out, surrounded it; and at a signal from a
helicopter that the ring was complete the assault began. Doors and windows were
locked, barred, and barricaded, of course; but what of that? A few taps of the axes and
a few blasts of the DeLameters took care of things very nicely; and through the