“We have all wondered about the Lens, sir, of course,” Maitland ventured. “The outlaws apparently keep up with us in science. I have always supposed that what science can build, science can duplicate. Surely more than one Lens has fallen into the hands of the outlaws?”
“If it had been a scientific invention or discovery it would have been duplicated long ago,” the Commandant made surprising answer. “It is, however, not essentially scientific in nature. It is almost entirely philosophical, and was developed for us by the Arisians.
“Yes, each of you was sent to Arisia quite recently,” von Hohendorff went on, as the newly commissioned officers stared, dumbfounded, at him and at each other. “What did you think of them, Murphy?”
“At first, sir, I thought that they were some new kind of dragon, but dragons with brains that you could actually feel. I was glad to get away, sir. They fairly gave me the creeps, even though I never did see one of them so much as move.”
“They are a peculiar race,” the Commandant went on. “Instead of being mankind’s worst enemies, as is generally believed, they are the sine qua non of our Patrol and of Civilization. I cannot understand them; I do not know of anyone who can. They gave us the Lens; yet Lensmen must not reveal that fact to any others. They make a Lens to fit each candidate; yet no two candidates, apparently, have ever seen the same things there, nor is it believed that anyone has ever seen them as they really are. To all except Lensmen they seem to be completely anti-social; and even those who become Lensmen go to Arisia only once in their lives. They seem—although I caution you that this seeming may contain no more of reality than the physical shapes you thought you saw—to be supremely indifferent to all material things.
“For more generations than you can understand they have devoted themselves to thinking; mainly of the essence of life. They say that they know scarcely anything fundamental concerning it; but even so they know more about it than does any other known race. While ordinarily they will have no intercourse whatever with outsiders, they did consent to help the Patrol, for the good of all intelligence.
“Thus, each being about to graduate into Lensmanship is sent to Arisia, where a Lens is built to match his individual life force. While no mind other than that of an Arisian can understand its operation, thinking of your Lens as being synchronized with, or in exact resonance with, your own vital principle or ego will give you a rough idea of it. The Lens is not really alive, as we understand the term. It is, however, endowed with a sort of pseudo-life, by virtue of which it gives off its strong, characteristically changing light as long as it is in metal-to-flesh circuit with the living mentality for which it was designed. Also by virtue of that pseudo-life, it acts as a telepath through which you may converse with other intelligences, even though they may possess no organs of speech or of hearing.
“The Lens cannot be removed by anyone except its wearer without dismemberment; it glows as long as its rightful owner wears it; it ceases to glow in the instant of its owner’s death and disintegrates shortly thereafter. Also—and here is the thing that renders completely impossible the impersonation of a Lensman—not only does the Lens not glow if worn by an importer; but if a Lensman be taken alive and his Lens removed, that Lens kills in a space of seconds any living being who attempts to wear it. As long as it glows—as long as it is in circuit with its living owner—it is harmless; but in the dark condition its pseudo-life interferes so strongly with any life to which it is not attuned that that life is destroyed forthwith.”
A brief silence fell, during which the young men absorbed the stunning import of what their Commandant had been saying. More, there was striking into each young consciousness a realization of the stark heroism of the grand old Lensman before them, a man of such fiber that although physically incapacitated and long past the retirement age, he had conquered his human emotions sufficiently to accept deliberately his ogre’s role because in that way he could best further the progress of his Patrol!
“I have scarcely broken the ground,” von Hohendorff continued. “I have merely given you an introduction to your new status. During the next few weeks, before you are assigned to duty, other officers will make clear to you the many things about which you are still in the dark. Our time is growing short, but we perhaps have time for one more question.”
“Not a question, sir, but something more important,” Kinnison spoke up. “I speak for the Class when I say that we have misjudged you grievously, and we wish to apologize.”
“I thank you sincerely for the thought, although it is unnecessary. You could not have thought otherwise of me than as you did. It is not a pleasant task that we old men have; that of weeding out those who do not measure up. But we are too old for active duty in space—we no longer have the instantaneous nervous responses that are for that duty imperative—so we do what we can. However, the work has its brighter side, since each year there are about a hundred found worthy of the Lens. This, my one hour with the graduates, more than makes up for the year that precedes it; and the other oldsters have somewhat similar compensations.
“In conclusion, you are now able to understand what kind of mentalities fill our ranks. You know that any creature wearing the Lens is in every sense a Lensman, whether he be human or, hailing from some strange and distant planet, a monstrosity of a shape you have as yet not even imagined. Whatever his form, you may rest assured that he has been tested even as you have been; that he is as worthy of trust as are you yourselves. My last word is this—Lensmen die, but they do not fold up: individuals come and go, but the Galactic Patrol goes on!”
Then, again all martinet:
“Class Five, attention!” he barked. “Report upon the stage of the main auditorium!”
The Class, again a rigidly military unit, marched out of Room A and down the long corridor toward the great theater in which, before the massed Cadet Corps and a throng of civilians, they were formally to be graduated.
And as they marched along the graduates realized in what way the wearers of the Lens who emerged from Room A were different from the candidates who had entered it such a short time before. They had gone in as boys; nervous, apprehensive, and still somewhat unsure of themselves, in spite of their survival through the five long years of grueling tests which now lay behind them. They emerged from Room A as men: men knowing for the first time the real meaning of the physical and mental tortures they had undergone; men able to wield justly the vast powers whose scope and scale they could even now but dimly comprehend.
CHAPTER
2
In Command
ARELY A MONTH AFTER HIS graduation, even before he had entirely completed the post-graduate tours of duty mentioned by von Hohendorff, Kinnison was summoned to Prime Base by no less a personage than Port Admiral Haynes himself. There, in the Admiral’s private aero, whose flaring lights cut a right-of-way through the swarming traffic, the novice and the veteran flew slowly over the vast establishment of the Base.
Shops and factories, city-like barracks, landing-fields stretching beyond the far horizon; flying craft ranging from tiny one-man helicopters through small and large scouts, patrol-ships and cruisers up to the immense, globular superdreadnaughts of space—all these were observed and commented upon. Finally the aero landed beside a long, comparatively low building—a structure heavily guarded, inside Base although it was—within which Kinnison saw a thing that fairly snatched away his breath.
A space-ship it was—but what a ship!1 In bulk it was vastly larger even than the superdreadnaughts of the Patrol; but, unlike them, it was in shape a perfect tear-drop, streamlined to the ultimate possible degree.
“What do you think of her?” the Port Admiral asked.
“Think of her!” The young officer gulped twice before he attained coherence. “I can’t put it in words, sir; but some day, if I live long enough and develop enough force, I hope to command a ship like that.”
“Sooner than you think, Kinnison,” Haynes told him, flatly. “You are in command of her
beginning tomorrow morning”
“Huh? Me?” Kinnison exclaimed, but sobered quickly. “Oh, I see, sir. It takes ten years of proved accomplishment to rate command of a first-class vessel, and I have no rating at all. You have already intimated that this ship is experimental. There is, then, something about her that is new and untried, and so dangerous that you do not want to risk an experienced commander in her. I am to give her a work-out, and if I can bring her back in one piece I turn her over to her real captain. But that’s all right with me, Port Admiral—thanks a lot for picking me out. What a chance—What a chance!” and Kinnison’s eyes gleamed at the prospect of even a brief command of such a creation.
“Right—and wrong,” the old Admiral made surprising answer. “It is true that she is new, untried, and dangerous, so much so that we are unwilling to give her to any of our present captains. No, she is not really new, either. Rather, her basic idea is so old that it has been abandoned for centuries. She uses explosives, of a type that cannot be tried out fully except in actual combat. Her primary weapon is what we have called the ‘Q-gun’. The propellant is heptadetonite: the shell carries a charge of twenty metric tons of duodecaplylatomate.”
“But, sir…” Kinnison began.
“Just a minute, I’ll go into that later. While your premises were correct, your conclusion is not. You graduated Number One, and in every respect save experience you are as well qualified to command as is any captain of the Fleet; and since the Brittania is such a radical departure from any conventional type, battle experience is not a prerequisite. Therefore if she holds together through one engagement she is yours for good. In other words, to make up for the possibility of having yourself scattered all over space, you have a chance to win that ten years’ rating you mentioned a minute ago, all in one trip. Fair enough?”
“Fair? It’s fine—wonderful! And thanks a…”
“Never mind the thanks until you get back. You were about to comment, I believe, upon the impossibility of using explosives against a free opponent?”
“It can’t be impossible, of course, since the Brittania has been built. I just don’t quite see how it could have been made effective.”
“You lock to the pirate with tractors, screen to screen—dex about ten kilometers. You blast a hole through his screens to his wall-shield. The muzzle of the Q-gun mounts as annular multiplex projector which puts out a Q-type tube of force—Q47SM9, to be exact. As you can see from the type formula, this helix extends the gun-barrel from ship to ship and confines the propellant gases behind the projectile, where they belong. When the shell strikes the wall-shield of the pirate and detonates, something will have to give way—all the Brains agree that twenty tons of duodec, attaining a temperature of about forty million degrees absolute in less than one micro-second, simply cannot be confined.
“The tube and tractors, being pure force and computed for this particular combination of explosions, will hold, and our physicists have calculated that the ten-kilometer column of inert propellant gases will offer so much inertia and resistance that any possible wall-shield will have to go down. That is the point that cannot be tried out experimentally—it is quite within the bounds of possibility that the pirates may have been able to develop wall-screens as powerful as our Q-type helices, even though we have not.
“It should not be necessary to point out to you that if they have been able to develop a wall-shield that will stand up under those conditions, the back-blast through the breech of the Q-gun will blow the Brittania apart as though she were so much matchwood. That is only one of the chances—and perhaps not the greatest one—that you and your crew will have to take. They are all volunteers, by the way, and will get plenty of extra rating if they come through alive. Do you want the job?”
“You don’t have to ask me that, Chief—you know I want it!”
“Of course, but I had to go through the formality of asking, sometime. But to get on with the discussion, this pirate situation is entirely out of control, as you already know. We don’t even know whether Boskone is a reality, a figurehead, a symbol, or simply a figment of an old-time Lensman’s imagination. But whoever or whatever Boskone really is, some being or some group of beings has perfected a mighty efficient organization of outlaws; so efficient that we haven’t even been able to locate their main base.
“And you may as well know now a fact that is not yet public property—that even convoyed vessels are no longer safe. The pirates have developed ships of a new and extraordinary type; ships that are much faster than our heavy battleships, and yet vastly more heavily armed than our fast cruisers. Thus, they can outfight any Patrol vessel that can catch them, and can out-run anything of ours armed heavily enough to stand up against their beams.”
“That accounts for the recent heavy losses,” Kinnison mused.
“Yes,” Haynes went on, grimly. “Ship after ship of our best has been blasted out of the ether, doomed before it pointed a beam, and more will be. We cannot force an engagement on our terms, we must fight them where and when they please.
“That is the present intolerable situation. We must learn what the pirates’ new power-system is. Our scientists say that it may be anything, from cosmic-energy receptors and converters down to a controlled space-warp—whatever that may be. Anyway, they haven’t been able to duplicate it, so it is up to us to find out what it is. The Brittania is the tool our engineers have designed to get that information. She is the fastest thing in space, developing at full blast an inert acceleration of ten gravities. Figure out for yourself what velocity that means free in open space!”
“You have just said that we can’t have everything in one ship,” Kinnison said, thoughtfully. “What did they sacrifice to get that speed?”
“All the conventional offensive armament,” Haynes replied frankly. “She has no long-range beams at all, and only enough short-range stuff to help drive the Q-helix through the enemy’s screens. Practically her only offense is the Q-gun. But she has plenty of defensive screens, she has speed enough to catch anything afloat, and she has the Q-gun—which we hope will be enough.
“Now we’ll go over the general plan of action. The engineers will go into all the technical details with you, during a test flight that will last as long as you like. When you and your crew are thoroughly familiar with every phase of her operation, bring the engineers back here to Base and go out on patrol.
“Somewhere in the galaxy you will find a pirate vessel of the new type. You lock to him, as I said before. You attach the Q-gun well forward, being sure that the point of attachment is far enough away from the power-rooms so that the essential mechanisms will not be destroyed. You board and storm—another revival of the technique of older time. Specialists in your crew, who will have done nothing much up to that time, will then find out what our scientists want to know. If at all possible they will send it in instantly via tight-beam communicator. If for any reason it should be impossible for them to communicate, the whole thing is again up to you.”
The Port Admiral paused, his eyes boring into those of the younger man, then went on impressively.
“That information MUST get back to Base. If it does not, the Brittania is a failure; we will be back right where we started from, the slaughter of our men and the destruction of our ships will continue unchecked. As to how you are to do it we cannot give even general instructions. All I can say is that you have the most important assignment in the Universe today, and repeat—that information MUST GET BACK TO BASE. Now come aboard and meet your crew and the engineers.”
Under the expert tutelage of the designers and builders of the Brittania Lieutenant Kinnison drove her hither and thither through the trackless wastes of the galaxy.2 Inert and free, under every possible degree of power he maneuvered her, attacking imaginary foes and actual meteorites with equal zeal. Maneuvered and attacked until he and his ship were one; until he reacted automatically to her slightest demand; until he and every man of his eager and highly trained crew knew to the final volt and
to the ultimate ampere her gargantuan capacity both to give it and to take it.
Then and only then did he return to Base, unload the engineers, and set out upon the quest. Trail after trail he followed, but all were cold. Alarm after alarm he answered, but always he arrived too late, arrived to find gutted merchantman and riddled Patrol vessel, with no life in either and with nothing to indicate in which direction the marauders might have gone.
Finally, however:
“QBT! Calling QBT!” The Brittania’s code call blared from the sealed-band speaker, and a string of numbers followed—the spatial coordinates of the luckless vessel’s position.
Chief Pilot Henry Henderson punched the figures upon his locator, and in the “tank”—the enormous, minutely cubed model of the galaxy—there appeared a redly brilliant point of light. Kinnison rocketed out of his narrow bunk, digging sleep out of his eyes, and shot himself into place beside the pilot.
“Right in our laps!” he exulted. “Scarcely ten light-years away! Start scrambling the ether!” and as the vengeful cruiser darted toward the scene of depredation all space became filled with blast after blast of static interference through which, it was hoped, the pirate could not summon the help he was so soon to need.
But that howling static gave the pirate commander pause. Surely this was something new? Before him lay a richly laden freighter, its two convoying ships already practically out of action. A few more minutes and the prize would be his. Nevertheless he darted away, swept the ether with his detectors, saw the Brittania, and turned in headlong flight. For if this streamlined fighter was sufficiently convinced of its prowess to try to blanket the ether against him, that information was something that Boskone would value far above one shipload of material wealth.
But the pirate craft was now upon the visiplates of the Brittania, and, entirely ignoring the crippled space-ships, Henderson flung his vessel after the other. Manipulating his incredibly complex controls purely by touch, the while staring into his plate not only with his eyes, but with every fiber of his being as well, he hurled his huge mount hither and thither in frantic leaps. After what seemed an age he snapped down a toggle switch and relaxed long enough to grin at Kinnison.
Galactic Patrol Page 2