Second Stage Lensmen

by Edward E Smith

  “We didn’t slip—I slipped,” Kinnison stated, flatly. “When we took Bominger—the fat Chief Zwilnik of Radelix, you know—I took a bop on the head to learn that Boskone had more than one string per bow. Observers, independent, for every station at all important. I learned that fact thoroughly then, I thought. At least, we figured on Boskone’s having lines of communication past, not through, his Regional Directors, such as Prellin of Bronseca. Since I changed my line of attack at that point, I did not need to consider whether or not Crowninshield of Tressilia III was by-passed in the same way; and when I had worked my way up through Jalte in his star-cluster to Boskone itself, on Jarnevon, I had forgotten the concept completely. Its possibility didn’t even occur to me. That’s where I fell down.”

  “I still don’t see it!” Haynes protested. “Boskone was the top!”

  “Yeah?” Kinnison asked, pointedly. “That’s what I thought—but prove it.”

  “Oh.” The Port Admiral hesitated. “We had no reason to think otherwise…looked at in that light, this intervention would seem to be conclusive…but before that there was no…”

  “There were so,” Kinnison contradicted, “but I didn’t see them then. That’s where my brain went sour; I should have seen them. Little things, mostly, but significant. Not so much positive as negative indices. Above all, there was nothing whatever to indicate that Boskone actually was the top. That idea was the product of my own wishful and very low-grade thinking, with no basis or foundation in fact or in theory. And now,” he concluded bitterly, “because my skull is so thick that it takes an idea a hundred years to filter through it—because a sheer, bare fact has to be driven into my brain with a Valerian maul before I can grasp it—we’re sunk without a trace.”

  “Wait a minute, Kim, we aren’t sunk yet,” the girl advised, shrewdly. “The fact that, for the first time in history, an Arisian has taken the initiative in communicating with a human being, means something big—really big. Mentor does not indulge in what he calls ‘loose and muddy’ thinking. Every part of every thought he sent carries meaning—plenty of meaning.”

  “What do you mean?” As one, the three men asked substantially the same question; Kinnison, by virtue of his faster reactions, being perhaps half a syllable in the lead.

  “I don’t know, exactly,” Clarrissa admitted. “I’ve got only an ordinary mind, and it’s firing on half its jets or less right now. But I do know that his thought was ‘almost’ irreparable, and that he meant precisely that—nothing else. If it had been wholly irreparable he not only would have expressed his thought that way, but he would have stopped you before you destroyed Jarnevon. I know that. Apparently it would have become wholly irreparable if we had got…” she faltered, blushing, then went on, “…if we had kept on about our own personal affairs. That’s why he stopped us. We can win out, he meant, if you keep on working. It’s your oyster, Kim…it’s up to you to open it. You can do it, too—I just know you can.”

  “But why didn’t he stop you before you fellows smashed Boskone?” Lacy demanded, exasperated.

  “I hope you’re right, Cris—it sounds reasonable,” Kinnison said, thoughtfully. Then, to Lacy:

  “That’s an easy one to answer, doctor. Because knowledge that comes the hard way is knowledge that really sticks with you. If he had drawn me a diagram before, it wouldn’t have helped, the next time I get into a jam. This way it will. I’ve got to learn how to think, if it cracks my skull.”

  “Really think,” he went on, more to himself than to the other three. “To think so it counts.”

  “Well, what are we going to do about it?” Haynes was—he had to be, to get where he was and to stay where he was—quick on the uptake. “Or, more specifically, what are you going to do and what am I going to do?”

  “What I am going to do will take a bit of mulling over,” Kinnison replied, slowly. “Find some more leads and trace them up, is the best that occurs to me right now. Your job and procedure are rather clearer. You remarked out in space that Boskone knew that Tellus was very strongly held. That statement, of course, is no longer true.”

  “Huh?” Haynes half-pulled himself up from the davenport, then sank back. “Why?” he demanded.

  “Because we used the negasphere—a negative-matter bomb of planetary anti-mass—to wipe out Jalte’s planet, and because we smashed Jarnevon between two colliding planets,” the Lensman explained, concisely. “Can the present defenses of Tellus cope with either one of those offensives?”

  “I’m afraid not…no,” the Port Admiral admitted. “But…”

  “We can admit no ‘buts’, admiral,” Kinnison declared, with grim finality. “Having used those weapons, we must assume that the Boskonian scientists—we’ll have to keep on calling them ‘Boskonians’, I suppose, until we find a truer name—had recorders on them and have now duplicated them. Tellus must be made safe against anything we have ever used; against, as well, everything that, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, we can conceive of the enemy using.”

  “You’re right… I can see that,” Haynes nodded.

  “We’ve been underestimating them right along,” Kinnison went on. “At first we thought they were merely organized outlaws and pirates. Then, when it was forced upon us that they could match us—overmatch us in some things—we still wouldn’t admit that they must be as large and as wide-spread as we are—galactic in scope. We know now that they were wider-spread than we are. Inter-galactic. They penetrated into our galaxy, riddled it, before we knew that theirs was inhabited or inhabitable. Right?”

  “To a hair, although I never thought of it in exactly that way before.”

  “None of us have—mental cowardice. And they have the advantage,” Kinnison continued, inexorably, “in knowing that our Prime Base is on Tellus; whereas, if Jarnevon was not in fact theirs, we have no idea whatever where it is. And another point. Was that fleet of theirs a planetary outfit?”

  “Well, Jarnevon was a big planet, and the Eich were a mighty warlike race.”

  “Quibbling a bit, aren’t you, chief?”

  “Uh-huh,” Haynes admitted, somewhat sheepishly. “The probability is very great that no one planet either built or maintained that fleet.”

  “And that leads us to expect what?”

  “Counter-attack. In force. Everything they can shove this way. However, they’ve got to rebuild their fleet, besides designing and building the new stuff. We’ll have time enough, probably, if we get started right now.”

  “But, after all, Jarnevon may have been their vital spot,” Lacy submitted.

  “Even if that were true, which it probably isn’t,” the now thoroughly convinced Port Admiral sided in with Kinnison, “it doesn’t mean a thing, Sawbones. If they should blow Tellus out of space it wouldn’t kill the Galactic Patrol. It would hurt it, of course, but it wouldn’t cripple it seriously. The other planets of Civilization could, and certainly would, go ahead with it.”

  “My thought exactly,” from Kinnison. “I check you to the proverbial nineteen decimals.”

  “Well, there’s a lot to do and I’d better be getting at it.” Haynes and Lacy got up to go. “See you in my office when convenient?”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I tell Clarrissa goodbye.”

  * * *

  At about the same time that Haynes and Lacy went to Nurse MacDougall’s room, Worsel the Velantian arrowed downward through the atmosphere toward a certain flat roof. Leather wings shot out with a snap and in a blast of wind—Velantians can stand eleven Tellurian gravities—he came in his customary appalling landing and dived unconcernedly down a nearby shaft. Into a corridor, along which he wriggled blithely to the office of his old friend, Master Technician LaVerne Thorndyke.

  “Verne, I have been thinking,” he announced, as he coiled all but about six feet of his sinuous length into a tight spiral upon the rug and thrust out half a dozen weirdly stalked eyes.

  “That’s nothing new,” Thorndyke countered. No human mind can sympathize with
or even remotely understand the Velantian passion for solid weeks of intense, uninterrupted concentration upon a single thought. “What about this time? The whichness of the why?”

  “That is the trouble with you Tellurians,” Worsel grumbled. “Not only do you not know how to think, but you…”

  “Hold on!” Thorndyke interrupted, unimpressed. “If you’ve got anything to say, old snake, why not say it? Why circumnavigate total space before you get to the point?”

  “I have been thinking about thought…”

  “So what?” the technician derided. “That’s even worse. That’s a logarithmic spiral if there ever was one.”

  “Thought—and Kinnison,” Worsel declared, with finality.

  “Kinnison? Oh—that’s different. I’m interested—very much so. Go ahead.”

  “And his weapons. His DeLameters, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know, and you know I don’t know. What about them?”

  “They are so…so…so obvious.” The Velantian finally found the exact thought he wanted. “So big, and so clumsy, and so obtrusive. So inefficient, so wasteful of power. No subtlety—no finesse.”

  “But that’s far and away the best hand-weapon that has ever been developed!” Thorndyke protested.

  “True. Nevertheless, a millionth of that power, properly applied, could be at least a million times as deadly.”

  “How?” The Tellurian, although shocked, was dubious.

  “I have reasoned it out that thought, in any organic being, is and must be connected with one definite organic compound—this one,” the Velantian explained didactically, the while there appeared within the technician’s mind the space formula of an incredibly complex molecule; a formula which seemed to fill not only his mind, but the entire room as well. “You will note that it is a large molecule, one of very high molecular weight. Thus it is comparatively unstable. A vibration at the resonant frequency of any one of its component groups would break it down, and thought would therefore cease.”

  It took perhaps a minute for the full import of the ghastly thing to sink into Thorndyke’s mind. Then, every fiber of him flinching from the idea, he began to protest.

  “But he doesn’t need it, Worsel. He’s got a mind already that can…”

  “It takes much mental force to kill,” Worsel broke in equably. “By that method one can slay only a few at a time, and it is exhausting work. My proposed method would require only a minute fraction of a watt of power and scarcely any mental force at all.”

  “And it would kill—it would have to. That reaction could not be made reversible.”

  “Certainly,” Worsel concurred. “I never could understand why you soft-headed, soft-hearted, soft-bodied human beings are so reluctant to kill your enemies. What good does it do merely to stun them?”

  “QX—skip it” Thorndyke knew that it was hopeless to attempt to convince the utterly unhuman Worsel of the fundamental rightness of human ethics. “But nothing has ever been designed small enough to project such a wave.”

  “I realize that. Its design and construction will challenge your inventive ability. Its smallness is its great advantage. He could wear it in a ring, in the bracelet of his Lens; or, since it will be actuated, controlled, and directed by thought, even imbedded surgically beneath his skin.”

  “How about backfires?” Thorndyke actually shuddered. “Projection…shielding…”

  “Details—mere details,” Worsel assured him, with an airy flip of his scimitared tail.

  “That’s nothing to be running around loose,” the man argued. “Nobody could tell what killed them, could they?”

  “Probably not.” Worsel pondered briefly. “No. Certainly not. The substance must decompose in the instant of death, from any cause. And it would not be ‘loose’, as you think; it should not become known, even. You would make only the one, of course.”

  “Oh. You don’t want one, then?”

  “Certainly not. What do I need of such a thing? Kinnison only—and only for his protection.”

  “Kim can handle it…but he’s the only being this side of Arisia that I’d trust with one… QX, give me the dope on the frequency, wave-form, and so on, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  CHAPTER

  2

  Invasion Via Tube

  ORT ADMIRAL HAYNES, NEWLY chosen president of the Galactic Council and by virtue of his double office the most powerful entity of Civilization, set instantly into motion the vast machinery which would make Tellus safe against any possible attack. He first called together his Board of Strategy; the same keen-minded tacticians who had helped him plan the invasion of the Second Galaxy and the eminently successful attack upon Jarnevon. Should Grand Fleet, many of whose component fleets had not yet reached their home planets, be recalled? Not yet—lots of time for that. Let them go home for a while first. The enemy would have to rebuild before they could attack, and there were many more pressing matters.

  Scouting was most important. The planets near the galactic rim could take care of that. In fact, they should concentrate upon it, to the exclusion of everything else of warfare’s activities. Every approach to the galaxy—yes, the space between the two galaxies and as far into the Second Galaxy as it was safe to penetrate—should be covered as with a blanket. That way, they could not be surprised.

  Kinnison, when he heard that, became vaguely uneasy. He did not really have a thought; it was as though he should have had one, but didn’t. Deep down, far off, just barely above the threshold of perception an indefinite, formless something obtruded itself upon his consciousness. Tug and haul at it as he would, he could not get the drift. There was something he ought to be thinking of, but what in all the iridescent hells from Vandemar to Alsakan was it? So, instead of flitting about upon his declared business, he stuck around; helping the General Staff—and thinking.

  And Defense Plan BBT went from the idea men to the draftsmen, then to the engineers. This was to be, primarily, a war of planets. Ships could battle ships, fleets fleets; but, postulating good tactics upon the other side, no fleet, however armed and powered, could stop a planet. That had been proved. A planet had a mass of the order of magnitude of one times ten to the twenty fifth kilograms, and an intrinsic velocity of somewhere around forty kilometers per second. A hundred probably, relative to Tellus, if the planet came from the Second Galaxy. Kinetic energy, roughly, about five times ten to the forty first ergs. No, that was nothing for any possible fleet to cope with.

  Also, the attacking planets would of course be inertialess until the last strategic instant. Very well, they must be made inert prematurely, when the Patrol wanted them that way, not the enemy. How? HOW? The Bergenholms upon those planets would be guarded with everything the Boskonians had.

  The answer to that question, as worked out by the engineers, was something they called a “super-mauler”. It was gigantic, cumbersome, and slow; but little faster, indeed, than a free planet. It was like Helmuth’s fortresses of space, only larger. It was like the special defense cruisers of the Patrol, except that its screens were vastly heavier. It was like a regular mauler, except that it had only one weapon. All of its incomprehensible mass was devoted to one thing—power! It could defend itself; and, if it could get close enough to its objective, it could do plenty of damage—its dreadful primary was the first weapon ever developed capable of cutting a Q-type helix squarely in two.

  And in various solar systems, uninhabitable and worthless planets were converted into projectiles. Dozens of them, possessing widely varying masses and intrinsic velocities. One by one they flitted away from their parent suns and took up positions—not too far away from our Solar System, but not too near.

  And finally Kinnison, worrying at his tantalizing thought as a dog worries a bone, crystallized it. Prosaically enough, it was an extremely short and flamboyantly waggling pink skirt which catalyzed the reaction; which acted as the seed of the crystallization. Pink—a Chickladorian—Xylpic the Navigator—Overlords of Delgon. Thus flashed the tr
ain of thought, culminating in:

  “Oh, so that’s it!” he exclaimed, aloud. “A TUBE—just as sure as hell’s a mantrap!” He whistled raucously at a taxi, took the wheel himself, and broke—or at least bent—most of the city’s traffic ordinances in getting to Haynes’ office.

  The Port Admiral was always busy, but he was never too busy to see Gray Lensman Kinnison; especially when the latter demanded the right of way in such terms as he used then.

  “The whole defense set-up is screwy,” Kinnison declared. “I thought I was overlooking a bet, but I couldn’t locate it. Why should they fight their way through inter-galactic space and through sixty thousand parsecs of planet-infested galaxy when they don’t have to?” he demanded. “Think of the length of the supply line, with our bases placed to cut it in a hundred places, no matter how they route it. It doesn’t make sense. They’d have to out-weigh us in an almost impossibly high ratio, unless they have an improbably superior armament.”

  “Check.” The old warrior was entirely unperturbed. “Surprised you didn’t see that long ago. We did. I’ll be very much surprised if they attack at all.”

  “But you’re going ahead with all this just as though…”

  “Certainly. Something may happen, and we can’t be caught off guard. Besides, it’s good training for the boys. Helps morale, no end.” Haynes’ nonchalant air disappeared and he studied the younger man keenly for moments. “But Mentor’s warning certainly meant something, and you said ‘when they don’t have to’. But even if they go clear around the galaxy to the other side—an impossibly long haul—we’re covered. Tellus is far enough in so they can’t possibly take us by surprise. So—spill it!”

  “How about a hyperspatial tube? They know exactly where we are, you know.”

  “Um…m…m.” Haynes was taken aback. “Never thought of it…possible, distinctly a possibility. A duodec bomb, say, just far enough underground…”

  “Nobody else thought of it, either, until just now,” Kinnison broke in. “However, I’m not afraid of duodec—don’t see how they could control it accurately enough at this three-dimensional distance. Too deep, it wouldn’t explode at all. What I don’t like to think of, though, is a negasphere. Or a planet, perhaps.”