“So our best bet is for you and the Fleet to get out of here as fast as Klono will let you,” he concluded. “Go straight out Rift Ninety Four, staying as far away as possible from both the spiral arm and the galaxy proper. Unlimber every spotting-screen you’ve got—put them to work along the line between Lyrane and the Second Galaxy. Plot all the punctures, extending the line as fast as you can. We’ll join you at max and transfer to the Z9M9Z—her tank is just what the doctors ordered for the job we’ve got to do.”
“Well, if you say so, I suppose that’s the way it’s got to be,” Haynes grumbled. He had been growling and snorting under his breath ever since it had become evident what Kinnison’s recommendation was to be. “I don’t like this thing of standing by and letting zwilniks thumb their noses at us, like Prellin did on Bronseca. That once was once too damned often.”
“Well, you got him, finally, you know,” Kinnison reminded, quite cheerfully, “and you can have these Eich, too—sometime.”
“I hope,” Haynes acquiesced, something less than sweetly. “QX, then—but put out a few jets. The quicker you get out here the sooner we can get back and clean out this hoo-raw’s nest.”
Kinnison grinned as he cut his beam. He knew that it would be some time before the Port Admiral could hurl the metal of the Patrol against Lyrane VIII; but even he did not realize just how long a time it was to be.
What occasioned the delay was not the fact that the communicator was in operation only at intervals: so many screens were out, they were spaced so far apart, and the punctures were measured and aligned so accurately that the periods of non-operation caused little or no loss of time. Nor was it the vast distance involved; since, as has already been pointed out, the matter in the inter-galactic void is so tenuous that spaceships are capable of enormously greater velocities than any attainable in the far denser medium filling interstellar space.
No: what gave the Boskonians of Lyrane VIII their greatly lengthened reprieve was simply the direction of the line established by the communicator-beam punctures. Reasoning from analogy, the Lensmen had supposed that it would lead them into a star-cluster, fairly well away from the main body of the Second Galaxy, in either the zenith or the nadir direction. Instead of that, however, when the Patrol surveyors got close enough so that their possible error was very small, it became clear that their objective lay inside the galaxy itself.
“I don’t like this line a bit, chief,” Kinnison told the admiral then. “It’d smell like Limburger to have a fleet of this size and power nosing into their home territory, along what must be one of the hottest lines of communication they’ve got.”
“Check,” Port Admiral Haynes agreed. “QX so far, but it would begin to stink pretty quick now. We’ve got to assume that they know about spotting screens, whether they really do or not. If they do, they’ll have this line trapped from stem to gudgeon, and the minute they detect us they’ll cut this line out entirely. Then where’ll you be?”
“Right back where I started from—that’s what I’m yowling about. To make matters worse, it’s credits to millos that the ape we’re looking for isn’t going to be anywhere near the end of this line.”
“Huh? How do you figure that?” Haynes demanded.
“Logic. We’re getting up now to where these zwilniks can really think. We’ve already assumed that they know about our beam tracers and detector nullifiers. Aren’t they apt to know that we have inherently undetectable ships and almost perfectly absorptive coatings? Where does that land you?”
“Urn…m…m. I see. Since they can’t change the nature of the beam, they’ll run it through a series of relays…with each leg trapped with everything they can think of…at the first sign of interference they’ll switch, maybe half way across the galaxy. Also, they might very well switch around once in a while, anyway, just on general principles.”
“Check. That’s why you’d better take the fleet back home, leaving Nadreck and me to work the rest of this line with our speedsters.”
“Don’t be dumb, son; you can think straighter than that.” Haynes gazed quizzically at the younger man.
“What else? Where am I overlooking a bet?” Kinnison demanded.
“It is elementary tactics, young man,” the admiral instructed, “to cover up any small, quiet operation with a large and noisy one. Thus, if I want to make an exploratory sortie in one sector I should always attack in force in another.”
“But what would it get us?” Kinnison expostulated. “What’s the advantage to be gained, to make up for the unavoidable losses?”
“Advantage? Plenty! Listen!” Haynes’ bushy gray hair fairly bristled in eagerness. “We’ve been on the defensive long enough. They must be weak, after their losses at Tellus; and now, before they can rebuild, is the time to strike. It’s good tactics, as I said, to make a diversion to cover you up, but I want to do more than that. We should start an actual, serious invasion, right now. When you can swing it, the best possible defense—even in general—is a powerful offense, and we’re all set to go. We’ll begin it with this fleet, and then, as soon as we’re sure that they haven’t got enough power to counter-invade, we’ll bring over everything that’s loose. We’ll hit them so hard that they won’t be able to worry about such a little thing as a communicator line.”
“Hm…m. Never thought of it from that angle, but it’d be nice. We were coming over here sometime, anyway—why not now? I suppose you’ll start on the edge, or in a spiral arm, just as though you were going ahead with the conquest of the whole galaxy?”
“Not ‘just as though’,” Haynes declared. “We are going through with it. Find a planet on the outer edge of a spiral arm, as nearly like Tellus as possible…”
“Make it nearly enough like Tellus and maybe I can use it for our headquarters on this ‘coordinator’ thing,” Kinnison grinned.
“More truth than poetry in that, fellow. We find it and take over. Comb out the zwilniks with a fine-tooth comb. Make it the biggest, toughest base the universe ever saw—like Jarnevon, only more so. Bring in everything we’ve got and expand from that planet as a center, cleaning everything out as we go. We’ll civilize ’em!”
And so, after considerable ultra-range communicator work, it was decided that the Galactic Patrol would forthwith assume the offensive.
Haynes assembled Grand Fleet. Then, while the two black speedsters kept unobtrusively on with the task of plotting the line, Civilization’s mighty armada moved a few thousand parsecs aside and headed at normal touring blast for the nearest outcropping of the Second Galaxy.
There was nothing of stealth in this maneuver, nothing of finesse, excepting in the arrangements of the units. First, far in the van, flew the prodigious, irregular cone of scout cruisers. They were comparatively small, not heavily armed or armored, but they were ultra-fast and were provided with the most powerful detectors, spotters, and locators known. They adhered to no rigid formation, but at the will of their individual commanders, under the direct supervision of Grand Fleet Operations in the Z9M9Z, flashed hither and thither ceaselessly—searching, investigating, mapping, reporting.
Backing them up came the light cruisers and the cruising bombers—a new type, this latter, designed primarily to bore in to close quarters and to hurl bombs of negative matter. Third in order were the heavy defensive cruisers. These ships had been developed specifically for hunting down Boskonian commerce raiders within the galaxy. They wore practically impenetrable screen, so that they could lock to and hold even a super-dreadnought. They had never before been used in Grand Fleet formation; but since they were now equipped with tractor zones and bomb-tubes, theoretical strategy found a good use for them in this particular place.
Next came the real war-head—a solidly packed phalanx of maulers. All the ships up ahead had, although in varying degrees, freedom of motion and of action. The scouts had practically nothing else; fighting was not their business. They could fight, a little, if they had to; but they always ran away if they could, in whatever dire
ction was most expedient at the time. The cruising bombers could either take their fighting or leave it alone, depending upon circumstances—in other words, they fought light cruisers, but ran away from big stuff, stinging as they ran. The heavy cruisers would fight anything short of a mauler, but never in formation: they always broke ranks and fought individual dog-fights, ship to ship.
But that terrific spear-head of maulers had no freedom of motion whatever. If knew only one direction—straight ahead. It would swerve aside for an inert planet, but for nothing smaller; and when it swerved it did so as a whole, not by parts. Its function was to blast through—straight through—any possible opposition, if and when that opposition should have been successful in destroying or dispersing the screens of lesser vessels preceding it. A sunbeam was the only conceivable weapon with which that stolid, power-packed mass of metal could not cope; and, the Patrolmen devoutly hoped, the zwilniks didn’t have any sunbeams—yet.
A similar formation of equally capable maulers, meeting it head-on, could break it up, of course. Theoretical results and war-game solutions of this problem did not agree, either with each other or among themselves, and the thing had never been put to the trial of actual battle. Only one thing was certain—when and if that trial did come there was bound to be, as in the case of the fabled meeting of the irresistible force with the immovable object, a lot of very interesting by-products.
Flanking the maulers, streaming gracefully backward from their massed might in a parabolic cone, were arranged the heavy battleships and the super-dreadnoughts; and directly behind the bulwark of flying fortresses, tucked away inside the protecting envelope of big battle-wagons, floated the Z9M9Z—the brains of the whole outfit.
There were no free planets, no negaspheres of planetary anti-mass, no sunbeams. Such things were useful either in the defense of a Prime Base or for an all-out, ruthlessly destructive attack upon such a base. Those slow, cumbersome, supremely powerful weapons would come later, after the Patrol had selected the planet which they intended to hold against everything the Boskonians could muster. This present expedition had as yet no planet to defend, it sought no planet to destroy. It was the vanguard of Civilization, seeking a suitable foothold in the Second Galaxy and thoroughly well equipped to argue with any force mobile enough to bar its way.
While it has been said that there was nothing of stealth in this approach, to the Second Galaxy, it must not be thought that it was unduly blatant or obvious: any carelessness or ostentation would have been very poor tactics indeed. Civilization’s Grand Fleet advanced in strict formation, with every routine military precaution. Its nullifiers were full on, every blocking screen was out, every plate upon every ship was hot and was being scanned by alert and keen-eyed observers.
But every staff officer from Port Admiral Haynes down, and practically every line officer as well, knew that the enemy would locate the invading fleet long before it reached even the outer fringes of the galaxy toward which it was speeding. That stupendous tonnage of ferrous metal could not be disguised; nor could it by any possible artifice be made to simulate any normal tenant of the space which it occupied.
The gigantic flares of the heavy stuff could not be baffled, and the combined grand flare of Grand Fleet made a celestial object which would certainly attract the electronic telescopes of plenty of observatories. And the nearest such ’scopes, instruments of incredible powers of resolution, would be able to pick them out, almost ship by ship, against the relatively brilliant background of their own flares.
The Patrolman, however, did not care. This was, and was intended to be, an open, straightforward invasion; the first wave of an attack which would not cease until the Galactic Patrol had crushed Boskonia throughout the entire Second Galaxy.
Grand Fleet bored serenely on. Superbly confident in her awful might, grandly contemptuous of whatever she was to face, she stormed along; uncaring that at that very moment the foe was massing his every defensive arm to hurl her back or to blast her out of existence.
CHAPTER
15
Klovia
S HAYNES AND THE GALACTIC Council had already surmised, Boskonia was now entirely upon the defensive. She had made her supreme bid in the effort which had failed so barely to overcome the defenses of hard-held Tellus. It was, as has been seen, a very near thing indeed, but the zwilnik chieftains did not and could not know that. Communication through the hyper-spatial tube was impossible, no ordinary communicator beam could be driven through the Patrol’s scramblers, no Boskonian observers could be stationed near enough to the scene of action to perceive or to record anything that had occurred, and no single zwilnik ship or entity survived to tell of how nearly Tellus had come to extinction.
And, in fine, it would have made no difference in the mind of Alcon of Thrale if he had known. A thing which was not a full success was a complete failure; to be almost a success meant nothing. The invasion of Tellus had failed. They had put everything they had into that gigantically climactic enterprise. They had shot the whole wad, and it had not been enough. They had, therefore, abandoned for the nonce humanity’s galaxy entirely, to concentrate their every effort upon the rehabilitation of their own depleted forces and upon the design and construction of devices of hitherto unattempted capability and power.
But they simply had not had enough time to prepare properly to meet the invading Grand Fleet of Civilization. It takes time—lots of time—to build such heavy stuff as maulers and flying fortresses, and they had not been allowed to have it. They had plenty of lighter stuff, since the millions of Boskonian planets could furnish upon a few hours’ notice more cruisers, and even more first-line battleships, than could possibly be used efficiently, but their back-bone of brute force and fire-power was woefully weak.
Since the destruction of a solid center of maulers was theoretically, improbable to the point of virtual impossibility, neither Boskonia nor the Galactic Patrol had built up any large reserve of such structures. Both would now build up such a reserve as rapidly as possible, of course, but half-built structures could not fight.
The zwilniks had many dirigible planets, but they were too big. Planets, as has been seen, are too cumbersome and unwieldy for use against a highly mobile and adequately-controlled fleet.
Conversely, humanity’s Grand Fleet was up to its maximum strength and perfectly balanced. It had suffered losses in the defense of Prime Base, it is true; but those losses were of comparatively light craft, which Civilization’s inhabited world could replace as quickly as could Boskonia’s.
Hence Boskonia’s fleet was at a very serious disadvantage as it formed to defy humanity just outside the rim of its galaxy. At two disadvantages, really, for Boskonia then had neither Lensmen nor a Z9M9Z; and Haynes, canny old master strategist that he was, worked upon them both.
Grand Fleet so far had held to one right-line course, and upon this line the zwilnik defense had been built. Now Haynes swung aside, forcing the enemy to re-form: they had to engage him, he did not have to engage them. Then, as they shifted—raggedly, as he had supposed and had hoped that they would—he swung again. Again, and again; the formation of the enemy becoming more and more hopelessly confused with each shift.
The scouts had been reporting constantly; in the seven-hundred-foot lenticular tank of the Z9M9Z there was spread in exact detail the disposition of every unit of the foe. Four Rigellian Lensmen, now thoroughly trained and able to perform the task almost as routine, condensed the picture—summarized it—in Haynes’ ten-foot tactical tank. And finally, so close that another swerve could not be made, and with the line of flight of his solid fighting core pointing straight through the loosely disorganized nucleus of the enemy, Haynes gave the word to engage.
The scouts, remaining free, flashed aside into their prearranged observing positions. Everything else went inert and bored ahead. The light cruisers and the cruising bombers clashed first, and a chill struck at Haynes’ stout old heart as he learned that the enemy did have negative-matter bombs.
Approximately half of the light cruisers of Grand Fleet were bombers. This was deliberate, for in the use of the new arm there were involved problems which theoretical strategy could not completely solve. Theoretically, a bomber could defeat a conventional light cruiser of equal tonnage one hundred percent of the time, provided—here was the rub!—that the conventional cruiser did not blast her out of the ether before she could get her bombs into the vitals of the foe. For, in order to accommodate the new equipment, something of the old had to be decreased: something of power, of armament, of primary or secondary beams, or of defensive screen. Otherwise the size and mass must be so increased that the ship would no longer be a light cruiser, but a heavy one.
And the Patrol’s psychologists had had ideas, based upon facts which they had gathered from Kinnison and from Illona and from many spools of tape—ideas by virtue of which it was eminently possible that the conventional light cruisers of Civilization, with their heavier screen and more and hotter beams, could vanquish the light cruisers of the foe, even though they should turn out to be negative-matter bombers.
Hence the fifty-fifty division of types; but, since Haynes was not thoroughly sold upon either the psychologists or their ideas, the commanders of his standard light cruisers had received very explicit and definite orders. If the Boskonians should have bombs and if the high-brows’ idea did not pan out, they were to turn tail and run, at maximum and without stopping to ask questions or to get additional instructions.
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