If Major Gannel were bona-fide, all well and good. Boskonia needed the
strongest possible leaders, and if any other man showed himself superior to Alcon,
Alcon should and would die. However, there was a bare possibility that . . . Was Gannel
bona-fide? That point should be cleared up without delay. And Fossten, after a
quizzical, searching, more than half contemptuous inspection of the furiously
discomfited Tyrant, followed the rebellious, the contumaceous, the enigmatic Gannel to
his rooms.
He knocked and was admitted. A preliminary and entirely meaningless
conversation occurred. Then:
“Just when did you leave the Circle?” the visitor demanded, sharply.
“What do you want to know for?” Kinnison shot back. That question didn’t mean a
thing to him. Maybe it didn’t to the big fellow, either—it could be just a catch—but he
didn’t intend to give any kind of an analyzable reply to any question that this ape asked
him.
Nor did he, through thirty minutes of viciously skillful verbal fencing. That
conversation was far from meaningless, but it was entirely unproductive of results; and it
was a baffled, intensely thoughtful Fossten who at its conclusion left Gannel’s quarters.
From those quarters he went to the Hall of Records, where he requisitioned the major’s
dossier. Then to his own private laboratory, where he applied to those records every
test known to the scientists of his ultra-suspicious race.
The photographs were right in every detail. The prints agreed exactly with those
he himself had secured from the subject not twenty four hours since. The typing was
right. The ink was right. Everything checked. And why not? Ink, paper, fiber, and film
were in fact exactly what they should have been. There had been no erasures, no
alterations. Everything had been aged to the precisely correct number of days. For
Kinnison had known that this check-up was coming; and while the experts of the Patrol
were not infallible, Mentor of Arisia was.
Even though he had found exactly what he had expected to find, the suspicions
of the prime minister were intensified rather than allayed. Besides his own, there were
two unreadable minds upon Thrale, where there should have been only one. He knew
how Alcon’s had been treated—could Gannel’s possibly be a natural phenomenon? If
not, who had treated it, and why?
There were three, and only three possibilities. Another Eddorian, another
member of the Innermost Circle, working against him? Probably not; this job was too
important. The All-Highest would not permit it. The Arisian who had been hampering
him so long? Much more likely. Star A Star? Most likely of all.
Not enough data . . . but in any event, circumspection was very definitely
indicated. The show-down would come at a time and a place of his own choosing, not
the foe’s.
He left the palace then, ostensibly to attend a function at the Military Academy.
There, too, everything checked. He visited the town in which Gannel had been
born—finding no irregularities whatever in the records of the birth. He went to the city in
which Gannel had lived for the greater part of his life; where he assured himself that
school records, club records, even photographs and negatives, all dead-centered the
beam.
He studied the minds of six different persons who had known Gannel from
childhood. As one they agreed that the Traska Gannel who was now Traska Gannel
was in fact the real Traska Gannel, and could not by any possibility be anyone else. He
examined their memory tracks minutely for scars, breaks, or other evidences of surgery;
finding none. In fact, none existed, for the therapists who had performed those
operations had gone back clear to the very beginnings, to the earliest memories of the
Gannel child.
In spite of the fact that all the data thus far investigated were so precisely what
they should have been—or because of it—the prime minister was now morally certain
that Gannel was, in some fashion or other, completely spurious. Should he go farther,
delve into unimportant but perhaps highly revealing side issues? He should. He did so
with a minute attention to detail anticipated only by Mentor of Arisia. He found nothing
amiss in any particular, but he was still unsatisfied. The mind who had falsified those
records so flawlessly—if they had in fact been falsified—had done a beautiful piece of
work; as masterly a job as he himself could have done. He himself would have left no
traces; neither, in all probability, had the unknown.
Who, then, and why? This was no ordinary plot, no part of any ordinary scheme
to overthrow Alcon. It was bigger, deeper, far more sinister. Nothing so elaborate and
efficient originating upon Thrale could possibly have been developed and executed
without his knowledge and at least his tacit consent. It could not be Eddorian. That
narrowed the field to two—the Arisian or Star A Star.
His mind flashed back, reviewing everything that had been ascribed to that
mysterious Director of Lensmen. Something clicked.
BLAKESLEE!
This was much finer than the Blakeslee affair, of course; more subtle and more
polished by far. It was not nearly as obvious, as blatant, but the basic similarity was
nevertheless there. Could this similarity have been accidental? No—unthinkable. In this
undertaking accidents could be ruled out— definitely. Whatever had been done had
been done deliberately and after meticulous preparation.
But Star A Star never repeated . . . Therefore, this time, he had repeated;
deliberately, to throw Alcon and his psychologists off the trail. But he, Fossten, was not
to be deceived by even such clever tactics.
Gannel was, then, really Gannel, just as Blakeslee had really been Blakeslee.
Blakeslee had obviously been under control. Here, however, there were two
possibilities. First, Gannel might be under similar control. Second, Star A Star might
have operated upon Gannel’s mind so radically as to make an entirely different man of
him. Either hypothesis would explain Gannel’s extreme reticence in submitting to any
except the most superficial mental examination. Each would account for Gannel’s calm
certainty that Alcon was afraid to attack him openly. Which of these hypotheses was the
correct one could be determined later. It was unimportant, anyway, for in either case
there was now accounted for the heretofore inexplicable power of Gannel’s mind.
In either case it was not Gannel’s mind at all, but that of THE Lensman, who was
making Gannel act as he could not normally have acted. Somewhere hereabouts, in
either case, there actually was lurking Boskonia’s Nemesis’ the mentality whom above
all others Boskonia was raving to destroy; the one Lensman who had never been seen
or heard or perceived: the feared and detested Lensman about whom nothing whatever
had ever been learned.
That Lensman, whoever he might be, had at last met his match. Gannel, as
Gannel, was of no importance whatever: the veriest pawn. But he who stood behind
Gannel . . . Ah! . . . He, Gharlane himself, would wait and he would watch. Then, at
precisely the correct instant, he would pounce!
And Kinnison, during the absence of the prime minister, worked swiftly and
surely. Twelve men died, and as they ceased to live twelve others, grimly ready and
thoroughly equipped for any emergency, took their places. And during that same minute
of time Kinnison strode into Alcon’s private sanctum.
The Tyrant hurled orders to his guards—orders which were not obeyed He then
went for his own weapons, and he was fast—but Kinnison was faster. Alcon’s guns and
hands disappeared and the sickened Tellurian slugged him into unconsciousness.
Then, grimly, relentlessly, he took every item of interest from the Thralian’s mind, killed
him, and assumed forthwith the title and the full authority of the Tyrant of Thrale.
Unlike most such revolutions, this one was accomplished with very little
bloodshed and with scarcely any interference with the business of the realm. Indeed, if
anything, there was an improvement in almost every respect, since the new men were
more thoroughly trained and were more competent than the previous officers hod been.
Also, they had arranged matters beforehand so that their accessions could be made
with a minimum of friction.
They were as yet loyal to Kinnison and to Boskonia: and in a rather faint hope of
persuading them to stay that way, without developing any queer ideas about
overthrowing him, the Lensman called them into conference.
“Men, you know how you got where you are,” he began, coldly. “You are loyal to
me at the moment. You know that real cooperation is the only way to achieve maximum
productivity, and that true cooperation cannot exist in any regime in which the
department heads, individually or en masse, are trying to do away with the dictator.
“Some of you will probably be tempted very shortly to begin to work against me
instead of for me and with me. I am not pleading with you, nor even asking you out of
gratitude for what I have done for you, to refrain from such activities. Instead, I am