No luck. One of Nadreck’s minor tentacles was already curled around a switch, tensed and ready. Kandron was still in air when a relay snapped shut and four canisters of duodec detonated as one. Duodecaplylatomate, that frightful detonant whose violence is exceeded only by that of nuclear disintegration!
There was an appalling flash of viciously white light, which expanded in milliseconds into an enormous globe of incandescent gas. Cooling and darkening as it expanded rapidly, into the near-vacuum of interplanetary space, the gases and vapors soon became invisible. Through and throughout the entire volume of volatilization Nadreck drove analyzers and detectors, until he knew positively that no particle of material substance larger in diameter than five microns remained of either Kandron or his space-ship. He then called the Gray Lensman.
“Kinnison? Nadreck of Palain VII calling, to report that my assignment has been completed. I have destroyed Kandron of Onlo.”
“Good! Fine business, ace! What kind of a picture did you get? He must have known something about the higher echelons—or did he? Was he just another dead end?”
“I did not go into that.”
“Huh? Why not?” Kinnison demanded, exasperation in every line of his thought.
“Because it was not included in the project,” Nadreck explained, patiently. “You already know that one must concentrate in order to work efficiently. To secure the requisite minimum of information it was necessary to steer his thoughts into one, and only one, set of channels. There were some foreign side-bands, of course, and it may be that some of them touched upon this new subject which you have now, too late, introduced…no, there were no such.”
“Damnation!” Kinnison exploded; then by main strength shut himself up. “QX, ace; skip it. But listen, my spiny and murderous friend. Get this—engrave it in big type right on the top-side inside of your thick skull—what we want is INFORMATION, not mere liquidation. Next time you get hold of such a big shot as Kandron must have been, don’t kill him until either: first, you get some leads as to who or what the real head of the outfit is; or, second, you make sure that he doesn’t know. Then kill him all you want to, but FIND OUT WHAT HE KNOWS FIRST. Have I made myself clear this time?”
“You have, and as coordinator your instructions should and will govern. I point out, however, that the introduction of a multiplicity of objectives into a problem not only destroys its unity, but also increases markedly both the time necessary for, and the actual personal danger involved in, its solution.”
“So what?” Kinnison countered, as evenly as he could. “That way, we may be able to get the answer some day. Your way, we never will. But the thing’s done—there’s no use yapping and yowling about it now. Have you any ideas as to what you should do next?”
“No. Whatever you wish, that I shall try to do.”
“I’ll check with the others.” He did so, receiving no helpful ideas until he consulted his wife.
“Hi, Kim, my dear!” came Clarrissa’s buoyant thought; and, after a brief but intense greeting: “Glad you called. Nothing definite enough yet to report to you officially, but there are indications that Lyrane IX may be an important…”
“Nine?” Kinnison interrupted. “Not Eight again?”
“Nine,” she confirmed. “A new item. So I may be doing a flit over there one of these days.”
“Uh-uh,” he denied. “Lyrane Nine would be none of your business. Stay away from it.”
“Says who?” she demanded. “We went into this once before, Kim, about you telling me what I could and couldn’t do.”
“Yeah, and I came out second best.” Kinnison grinned. “But now, as coordinator, I make suggestions to even Second-Stage Lensmen, and they follow them—or else. I therefore suggest officially that you stay away from Lyrane IX on the grounds that since it is colder than a Palainian’s heart, it is definitely not your problem, but Nadreck’s. And I’m adding this—if you don’t behave yourself I’ll come over there and administer appropriate physical suasion.”
“Come on over—that’d be fun!” Clarrissa giggled, then sobered quickly. “But seriously, you win, I guess—this time. You’ll keep me informed?”
“I’ll do that. Clear ether, Cris!” and he turned back to the Palainian.
“…so you see this is your problem. Go to it, little chum.”
“I go, Kinnison.”
CHAPTER
18
Camilla Kinnison, Detector
OR HOURS CAMILLA AND Tregonsee wrestled separately and fruitlessly with the problem of the elusive “X”. Then, after she had studied the Rigellian’s mind in a fashion which he could neither detect nor employ, Camilla broke the mental silence.
“Uncle Trig, my conclusions frighten me. Can you conceive of the possibility that it was contact with my mind, not yours, that made ‘X’ run away?”
“That is the only tenable conclusion. I know the power of my own mind, but I have never been able to guess at the capabilities of yours. I fear that I, at least, underestimated our opponent.”
“I know I did, and I was terribly wrong. I shouldn’t have tried to fool you, either, even a little bit. There are some things about me that I just can’t show to most people, but you are different—you’re such a wonderful person!”
“Thanks, Camilla, for your trust.” Understandingly, he did not go on to say that he would keep on being worthy of it. “I accept the fact that you five, being children of two Second-Stage Lensmen, are basically beyond my comprehension. There are indications that you do not as yet thoroughly understand yourself. You have, however, decided upon a course of action.”
“Oh—I’m so relieved! Yes, I have. But before we go into that, I haven’t been able to solve the problem of ‘X’. More, I have proved that I cannot solve it without more data. Therefore, you can’t either. Check?”
“I had not reached that conclusion, but I accept your statement as truth.”
“One of those uncommon powers of mine, to which you referred a while ago, is a wide range of perception, from large masses down to extremely tiny components. Another, or perhaps a part of the same one, is that, after resolving and analyzing these fine details, I can build up a logical and coherent whole by processes of interpolation and extrapolation.”
“I can believe that such things would be possible to such a mind as yours must be. Go on.”
“Well, that is how I know that I underestimated Mr. ‘X’. Whoever or whatever he is, I am completely unable to resolve the structure of his thought. I gave you all I got of it. Look at it again, please—hard. What can you make of it now?”
“It is exactly the same as it was before; a fragment of a simple and plain introductory thought to an audience. That is all.”
“That’s all I can see, too, and that’s what surprises me so.” The hitherto imperturbable and serene Camilla got up and began to pace the floor. “That thought is apparently absolutely solid; and since that is a definitely impossible condition, the truth is that its structure is so fine that I cannot resolve it into its component units. This shows that I am not nearly as competent as I thought I was. When you and dad and the others reached that point, you each went to Arisia. I’ve decided to do the same thing.”
“That decision seems eminently sound.”
“Thanks, Uncle Trig—that was what I hoped you’d say. I’ve never been there, you know, and the idea scared me a little. Clear ether!”
There is no need to go into detail as to Camilla’s bout with Mentor. Her mind, like Karen’s, had had to mature of itself before any treatment could be really effective; but, once mature, she took as much in one session as Kathryn had taken in all her many. She had not suggested that the Rigellian accompany her to Arisia; they both knew that he had already received all he could take. Upon her return she greeted him casually as though she had been gone only a matter of hours.
“What Mentor did to me, Uncle Trig, shouldn’t have been done to a Delgonian catlat. It doesn’t show too much, though, I hope—does it?”
/> “Not at all.” He scanned her narrowly, both physically and mentally. “I can perceive no change in gross. In fine, however, you have changed. You have developed.”
“Yes, more than I would have believed possible. I can’t do much with my present very poor transcription of that thought, since the all-important fine detail is missing. We’ll have to intercept another one. I’ll get it all, this time.”
“But you did something with this one, I am sure. There must have been some developable features—a sort of latent-image effect?”
“A little. Practically infinitesimal compared to what was really there. Physically, his classification to four places is TUUV; quite a bit like the Nevians, you notice. His home planet is big, and practically covered with liquid. No real cities, just groups of half-submerged, temporary structures. Mentality very high, but we knew that already. Normally, he thinks upon a very short wave, so short that he was then working at the very bottom of his range. His sun is a fairly hot main-sequence star, of spectral class somewhere around F, and it’s probably more or less variable, because there was quite a distinct implication of change. But that’s normal enough, isn’t it?”
Within the limits imposed by the amount and kind of data available, Camilla’s observations and analyses had been perfect, her reconstruction flawless. She did not then have any idea, however, that “X” was in fact a spring-form Plooran. More, she did not even know that such a planet as Ploor existed, except for Mentor’s one mention of it.
“Of course. Peoples of planets of variable suns think that such suns are the only kind fit to have planets. You cannot reconstruct the nature of the change?”
“No. Worse, I can’t find even a hint of where his planet is in space—but then, I probably couldn’t, anyway, even with a whole, fresh thought to study.”
“Probably not. ‘Rigel Four’ would be an utterly meaningless thought to anyone ignorant of Rigel; and, except when making a conscious effort, as in directing strangers, I never think of its location in terms of galactic coordinates. I suppose that the location of a home planet is always taken for granted. That would seem to leave us just about where we were before in our search for ‘X’, except for your implied ability to intercept another of his thoughts, almost at will. Explain, please.”
“Not my ability—ours.” Camilla smiled, confidently. “I couldn’t do it alone, neither could you, but between us it won’t be too difficult You, with your utterly calm, utterly unshakable certainty, can drive a thought to any corner of the universe. You can fix and hold it steady on any indicated atom. I can’t do that, or anything like it, but with my present ability to detect and to analyze I’m not afraid of missing ‘X’ if we can come within parsecs of him. So my idea is a sort of piggy-back hunting trip; you to take me for a ride, mentally, very much as Worsel takes Con, physically. That would work, don’t you think?”
“Perfectly, I am sure.” The stolid Rigellian was immensely pleased. “Link your mind with mine, then, and we will set out. If you have no better plan of action mapped out, I would suggest starting at the point where we lost him and working outward, covering an expanding sphere.”
“You know best. I’ll stick to you wherever you go.”
Tregonsee launched his thought; a thought which, at a velocity not to be measured even in multiples of that of light, generated the surface of a continuously enlarging sphere of space. And with that thought, a very part of it, sped Camilla’s incomprehensibly delicate, instantaneously reactive detector web. The Rigellian, with his unhuman perseverance, would have surveyed total space had it been necessary; and the now adult Camilla would have stayed with him. However, the patient pair did not have to comb all of space. In a matter of hours the girl’s almost infinitely tenuous detector touched, with infinitesimal power and for an inappreciable instant of time, the exact thought-structure to which it had been so carefully attuned.
“Halt!” she flashed, and Tregonsee’s mighty super-dreadnaught shot away along the indicated line at maximum blast.
“You are not now thinking at him, of course, but how sure are you that he did not feel your detector?” Tregonsee asked.
“Positive,” the girl replied. “I couldn’t even feel it myself until after a million-fold amplification. It was just a web, you know, not nearly solid enough for an analyzer or a recorder. I didn’t touch his mind at all. However, when we get close enough to work efficiently, which will be in about five days, we will have to touch him. Assuming that he is as sensitive as we are, he will feel us; hence we will have to work fast and according to some definite plan. What are your ideas as to technique?”
“I may offer a suggestion or two, later, but I resign leadership to you. You already have made plans, have you not?”
“Only a framework; we’ll have to work out the details together. Since we agree that it was my mind that he did not like, you will have to make the first contact.”
“Of course. But since the action of thought is so nearly instantaneous, are you sure that you will be able to protect yourself in case he overcomes me at that first contact?” If the Rigellian gave any thought at all to his own fate in such a case, no trace of it was evident.
“My screens are good. I am fairly certain that I could protect both of us, but it might slow me down a trifle; and even an instant’s delay might keep me from getting the information we want. It would be better, I think, to call Kit in. Or, better yet, Kay. She can stop a super-atomic bomb. With Kay covering us, we will both be free to work.”
Again they went into a union of minds; considering, weighing, analyzing, rejecting, and—a few times—accepting. And finally, well within the five-day time limit, they had drawn up a completely detailed plan of action.
How uselessly that time was spent! For that action, instead of progressing according to their carefully worked-out plan, was ended almost in the instant of its beginning.
According to plan, Tregonsee tuned his mind to “X’s” pattern as soon as they had come within working range. He reached out as delicately as he could, and his best was very fine work indeed. He might just as well have struck with all his power, for at first touch of the fringe, extremely light and entirely innocuous though it was, the stranger’s barriers flared into being and there came back instantly a mental bolt of such vicious intensity that it would have gone through Tregonsee’s hardest-held block as though no barrier had been there. But that bolt did not strike Tregonsee’s shield. Instead, it struck Karen Kinnison’s, which has already been described.
It did not exactly bounce, nor did it cling, nor did it linger, even for a microsecond, to do battle as expected. It simply vanished; as though that minute interval of time had been sufficient for the enemy to have recovered from the shock of encountering a completely unexpected resistance, to have analyzed the texture of the shield, to have deduced from that analysis the full capabilities of its owner and operator, to have decided that he did not care to have any dealings with the entity so deduced, and finally, as he no doubt supposed, to have begun to retreat in good order.
His retreat, however, was not in good order. He did not escape, this time. This time, as she had declared that she would be, Camilla was ready for anything—literally anything. Everything she had—and she had plenty—was on the trips; tense, taut, and poised. Knowing that Karen, the Ultimate of Defense, was on guard, she was wholly free to hurl her every force on the instant. Scarcely had the leading element of her probe touched the stranger’s screens, however, when those screens, “X” himself, his vessel and any others that might have been accompanying it, and everything tangible in nearby space, all disappeared at once in the inconceivably violent, the ultimately cataclysmic detonation of a super-atomic bomb.
It may not, perhaps, be generally known that the “completely liberating” or “super-atomic” bomb liberates one hundred percent of the component energy of its total mass in approximately sixty nine hundredths of one microsecond. Its violence and destructiveness thus differ, both in degree and in kind, from those of t
he earlier type, which liberated only the energy of nuclear fission, very much as the radiation of S-Doradus differs from that of Earth’s moon. Its mass attains, and holds for an appreciable length of time, a temperature to be measured only in millions of Centigrade degrees; which fact accounts in large part for its utterly incredible vehemence.
Nothing inert in its entire sphere of primary action can even begin to move out of the way before being reduced to its subatomic constituents and thus contributing in some measure to the cataclysm. Nothing is or becomes visible until the secondary stage begins; until the frightful globe has expanded to a diameter of thousands of yards and by this expansion has cooled down to a point at which some of its radiation lies in the visible violet And as for lethal radiation—there are radiations and they are lethal.
The conflict with “X” had occupied approximately two milliseconds of actual time. The expansion had been progressing for a second or two when Karen lowered her shield.
“Well, that finished that,” she commented. “I’d better get back on the job. Did you find out what you want to know, Cam, or not?”
“I got a little in the moment before the explosion. Not much.” Camilla was deep in study. “It’s going to be quite a job of reconstruction. One thing of interest to you, though, is that this ‘X’ had quit sabotage temporarily and was on his way to Lyrane IX, where he had some important…”
“Nine?” Karen asked sharply. “Not Eight? I’ve been watching Eight, you know—I haven’t even thought of Nine.”
“Nine, definitely. The thought was clear. You might give it a scan once in a while. How is mother doing?”
“She’s doing a grand job, and that Helen is quite an operator, too. I’m not doing much—just a touch here and there—I’ll see what I can see on Nine. I’m not the scanner or detector you are, though, you know—maybe you’d better come over here too. Suppose?”
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