concentrable power, a mental and psychological drive whose capabilities you do not
and cannot fully appreciate. I perceived those latent capabilities when I assembled your
Lens, and developed them when I developed you. It was their presence which made it
certain that you would return here for that development; they made you what you
intrinsically are.”
“QX then—skip it. What shall I do with him? It’s going to be a real job of work,
any way you figure it, for us to keep him alive and harmless until we get him back there
to Arisia.”
“We do not want him here,” Mentor replied without emotion. “He has no present
or future place within our society. Nor, however I consider the matter, can I perceive that
he has any longer a permissible or condonable place in the all-inclusive Scheme of
Things. He has served his purpose. Destroy him, therefore, forthwith, before he
recovers consciousness; lest much and grievous harm befall you.”
“I believe you, Mentor. You said something then, if anybody ever did. Thanks,”
and communication ceased.
The Lensman’s ray-gun flamed briefly and whatever it was that lay there became
a smoking, shapeless heap.
Kinnison noticed then that a call-light was shining brightly upon a communicator
panel. This thing must have taken longer than he had supposed. The battle must be
over, otherwise all space would still be filled with interference through which no long-
range communicator beam could have been driven. Or . . . could Boskonia have . . . no,
that was unthinkable. The Patrol must have won. This must be Haynes, calling him . . .
It was. The frightful Battle of Klovia was over. While many of the Patrol ships had
yielded, either by choice or by necessity, to the Boskonians’ challenge, most of them
had not. And the majority of those who did so yield, came out victorious.
While fighting in any kind of recognized formation against such myriads of
independently-operating, widely-spaced individual ships was of course out of the
question, Haynes and his aides had been able to work out a technique of sorts. General
orders were sent out to sub-fleet commanders, who in turn relayed them to the
individual captains by means of visual beams. Single vessels, then, locked to equal or
inferior craft—avoiding carefully anything larger than themselves— with tractor zones
and held grimly on. If they could defeat the foe, QX. If not, they hung on; until shortly
one of the Patrol’s maulers—who had no opposition of their own class to face—would
come lumbering up. And when the dreadful primary batteries of one of those things cut
loose that was, very conclusively, that.
Thus Boskonia’s mighty fleet vanished from the skies.
The all-pervading interference was cut off and Port Admiral Haynes, not daring to
use his Lens in what might be a critical instant, sat down at his board and punched a
call. Time after time he punched it. Finally he shoved it in and left it in; and as he stared,
minute after minute, into the coldly unresponsive plate his face grew gray and old.
Just before he decided to Lens Kinnison anyway, come what might, the plate
lighted up to show the smiling, deeply space-tanned face of the one for whom he had
just about given up hope.
“Thank God!” Haynes’ exclamation was wholly reverent; his strained old face lost
twenty years in half that many seconds. “Thank God you’re safe. You did it, then?”
“I managed it, but just by the skin of my teeth—I didn’t have half a jet to spare. It
was Old Man Boskone himself, in person. And you?”
“Clean-up—one hundred point zero zero zero percent.”
“Fine business!” Kinnison exulted. “Everything’s on the exact center of the green,
then—come on!”
And Civilization’s Grand Fleet went.
The Z9M9Z flashed up to visibility, inerted, and with furious driving blasts full
ablaze, matched her intrinsic velocity to that of the Boskonian flagship—the only
Boskonian vessel remaining in that whole vast volume of space. Tractors and pressors
were locked on and balanced. Flexible—or, more accurately, not ultimately
rigid—connecting tubes were pushed out and sealed. Hundreds, yes thousands, of
men— men in full Thralian uniform—strode through those tubes and into the Thralian
ship. The Z9M9Z unhooked and a battleship took her place. Time after time the
maneuver was repeated, until it seemed as though Kinnison’s vessel, huge as she was,
could not possibly carry the numbers of men who marched aboard.
Those men were all human or approximately so—nearly enough human, at least,
to pass as Thralians under a casual inspection. More peculiarly, that army contained an
astounding number of Lensmen. So many Lensmen, it is certain, had never before been
gathered together into so small a space.
But the fact that they were Lensmen was not apparent; their Lenses were not
upon their wrists, but were high upon their arms, concealed from even the most prying
eyes within the sleeves of their tunics.
Then the captured flagship, her Bergenholms again at work, the Z9M9Z, and the
battleships which had already assumed the intrinsic velocity possessed originally by the
Boskonians, spread out widely in space. Each surrounded itself with a globe of intensely
vivid red light. Orders as to course and power flashed out. The word was given and
spectacular fire flooded space as that vast host of ships, guided by those red beacons,
matched in one prodigious and beautiful maneuver its intrinsic velocity to theirs.
Finally, all the intrinsics in exact agreement, Grand Fleet formation was remade.
The term “remade” is used advisedly, since this was not to be a battle formation. For
Traska Gannel had long since sent a message to his capital; a terse and truthful
message which was, nevertheless, utterly misleading. It was:
“My forces have won, my enemy has been wiped out to the last man. Prepare for
a two-world broadcast, to cover both Thrale and Onlo, at hour ten today of my palace
time.”
The formation, then, was not one of warfare, but of boasting triumph. It was the
consciously proud formation of a Grand Fleet which, secure in the knowledge that it has
blasted out of – the ether everything which can threaten it, returns victoriously home to
receive as its just due the plaudits and the acclaim of the populace.
Well in the van—alone in the van, in fact, and strutting —was the flagship. She,
having originated upon Thrale and having been built specifically for a flagship, would be
recognized at sight. Back of her came, in gigantic co-axial cones, the sub-fleets;
arranged now not class by class of ships, but world by world of origin. One mauler,
perhaps, or two; from four or five to a dozen or more battleships; an appropriate number
of cruisers and of scouts; all flying along together in a tight little group.
But not all of the Patrol’s armada was in that formation. It would have been very
poor technique indeed to have had Boskonia’s Grand Fleet come back to home ether
forty percent larger than it had set out. Besides, the Z9M9Z simply could not be allowed
to come within detector range of any Boskonian look-out. She was utterly unlike any
other vessel ever to fly: she would not, perhaps, be recognized for what she really was,
but it would be evident to the most casual observer that she was not and could not be of
Thrale or Boskonia.
The Z9M9Z, then, hung back—far back—escorted and enveloped by the great
number of warships which could not be made to fit into the roll-call of the Tyrant’s
original Grand Fleet.
The sub-fleet which was originally from Thrale could land without any trouble
without arousing any suspicion. Boskonian and Patrol designs were not identical, of
course: but the requirements of sound engineering dictated that externals should be
essentially the same. The individual ships now bore the correct identifying symbols and
insignia. The minor differences could not be perceived until after the vessels had
actually landed, and that would be—for the Thralians—entirely too late.
Thralian hour ten arrived. Kinnison, after a long, minutely searching inspection of
the entire room, became again in every millimeter Traska Gannel, the Tyrant of Thrale.
He waved a hand. The scanner before him glowed: for a full minute he stared into it
haughtily, to give his teeming millions of minions ample opportunity to gaze upon the
inspiring countenance of His Supremacy the Feared.
He knew that the scanner revealed clearly every detail of the control room behind
him, but everything there was QX. There wasn’t a chance that some person would fail to
recognize a familiar face at any post, for not a single face except his own would be
visible. Not a head back of him would turn, not even a rear-quarter profile would show: it
would be lese majeste of the most intolerable for any face, however inconspicuous, to
share the lime-light with that of the Tyrant of Thrale while His Supremacy was
addressing his subjects. Serenely and assuredly enough, then, Tyrant Gannel spoke: