“I said cut me loose if you can’t hold me!” Kinnison snapped, “and I meant it. That’s an official order. Remember it!”
“Official order be damned!” snorted vanBuskirk, still plying his ponderous mace. “They won’t get you into that hole without breaking me in two, and that will be a job of breaking in anybody’s language. Now shut your pan,” he concluded grimly. “We’re here, and I’m going to be too busy, even to think, very shortly.”
He spoke truly. He had already selected his point of resistance, and as he reached it he thrust the head of his mace into the crack behind the open trap-door, jammed its shaft into the shoulder-socket of his armor, set blocky legs and Herculean arms against the cliffside, arched his mighty back, and held. And the surprised Catlats, now inside the gloomy fastness of their tunnel, thrust anchoring tentacles into crevices in the wall and pulled; harder, ever harder.
Under the terrific stress Kinnison’s heavy armor creaked as its air-tight joints accommodated themselves to their new and unusual positions. That armor, of space-tempered alloy, of course would not give way—but what of its anchor?
Well it was for Kimball Kinnison that day, and well for our present civilization, that the Brittania’s quartermaster had selected Peter vanBuskirk for the Lensman’s mate, for death, inevitable and horrible, resided within that cliff, and no human frame of Earthly growth, however armored, could have borne for even a fraction of a second the violence of the Catlats’ pull.
But Peter vanBuskirk, although of Earthly-Dutch ancestry, had been born and reared upon the planet Valeria, and that massive planet’s gravity—over two and one half times Earth’s—had given him a physique and a strength almost inconceivable to us life-long dwellers upon small, green Terra. His head, as has been said, towered seventy-eight inches above the ground; but at that he appeared squatty because of his enormous spread of shoulder and his startling girth. His bones were elephantine—they had to be, to furnish adequate support and leverage for the incredible masses of muscle overlaying and surrounding them. But even vanBuskirk’s Valerian strength was now being taxed to the uttermost.
The anchoring chains hummed and snarled as the clamps bit into the rings. Muscles writhed and knotted, tendons stretched and threatened to snap; sweat rolled down his mighty back. His jaws locked in agony and his eyes started from their sockets with the effort; but still vanBuskirk held.
“Cut me loose!” commanded Kinnison at last. “Even you can’t take much more of that. No use letting them break your back… Cut, I tell you… I said CUT, you big, dumb, Valerian ape!”
But if vanBuskirk heard or felt the savagely-voiced commands of his chief he gave no heed. Straining to the very ultimate fiber of his being, exerting every iota of loyal mind and every atom of Brobdingnagian frame: grimly, tenaciously, stubbornly the gigantic Dutchman held.
Held while Worsel of Velantia, that grotesquely hideous, that fantastically reptilian ally, plowed toward the two Patrolmen through the horde of Catlats; a veritable tornado of rending fang and shearing talon, of beating wing and crushing snout of mailed hand and trenchant tail:
Held while that demon incarnate drove closer and closer, hurling entire Catlats and numberless dismembered fragments of Catlats to the four winds as he came:
Held until Worsel’s snake-like body, a supple and sentient cable of living steel, tipped with its double-edged, razor-keen, scimitar-like sting, slipped into the tunnel beside Kinnison and wrought grisly havoc among the Catlats close-packed there!
As the terrific tension upon him was suddenly released vanBuskirk’s own efforts hurled him away from the cliff. He fell to the ground, his overstrained muscles twitching uncontrollably, and on top of him fell the fettered Lensman. Kinnison, his hands now free, unfastened the clamps linking his armor to that of vanBuskirk and whirled to confront the foe—but the fighting was over. The Catlats had had enough of Worsel of Velantia; and, screaming and shrieking in baffled rage, the last of them were disappearing into their caves.
VanBuskirk got shakily to his feet. “Thanks for the help, Worsel, we were just about to run out of time…” he began, only to be silenced by an insistent thought from the grotesquely monstrous stranger.
“Stop that radiating! Do not think at all if you cannot screen your minds!” came urgent mental commands. “These Catlats are a very minor pest of this planet Delgon. There are others worse by far. Fortunately, your thoughts are upon a frequency never used here—if I had not been so very close to you I would not have heard you at all—but should the Overlords have a listener upon that band your unshielded thinking may already have done irreparable harm. Follow me. I will slow my speed to yours, but hurry all possible!”
“You tell ’im, Chief,” vanBuskirk said, and fell silent; his mind as nearly a perfect blank as his iron will could make it.
“This is a screened thought, through my Lens,” Kinnison took up the conversation. “You don’t need to slow down on our account—we can develop any speed you wish. Lead on!”
The Velantian leaped into the air and flashed away in headlong flight. Much to his surprise the two human beings kept up with him effortlessly upon their inertialess drives, and after a moment Kinnison directed another thought.
“If time is an object, Worsel, know that my companion and I can carry you anywhere you wish to go at a speed hundreds of times greater than this that we are using,” he vouchsafed.
It developed that time was of the utmost possible importance and the three closed in. Mighty wings folded back, hands and talons gripped armor chains, and the group, inertialess all, shot away at a pace that Worsel of Velantia had never imagined even in his wildest dreams of speed. Their goal, a small, featureless tent of thin sheet metal, occupying a barren spot in a writhing, crawling expanse of lushly green jungle, was reached in a space of minutes. Once inside, Worsel sealed the opening and turned to his armored guests.
“We can now think freely in open converse. This wall is the carrier of a screen through which no thought can make its way.”
“This world you call by a name I have interpreted as Delgon,” Kinnison began, slowly. “You are a native of Velantia, a planet now beyond the sun. Therefore I assumed that you were taking us to your space-ship. Where is that ship?”
“I have no ship,” the Velantian replied, composedly, “nor have I need of one. For the remainder of my life—which is now to be measured in a few of your hours—this tent is my only…”
“No ship!” vanBuskirk broke in. “I hope we won’t have to stay on this Noshabkeming-forgotten planet forever—and I’m not very keen on going much further in that lifeboat, either.”
“We may not have to do either of those things,” Kinnison reassured his sergeant. “Worsel comes of a long-lived tribe, and the fact that he thinks his enemies are going to get him in a few hours doesn’t make it true, by any means—there are three of us to reckon with now. Also, when we need a space-ship we’ll get one, if we have to build it. Now, let’s find out what this is all about. Worsel, start at the beginning and don’t skip a thing. Between us we can surely find a way out, for all of us.”
Then the Velantian told his story. There was much repetition, much roundabout thinking, as some of the concepts were so bizarre as to defy transmission, but finally the Patrolmen had a fairly complete picture of the situation then obtaining within that strange solar system.
The inhabitants of Delgon were bad, being characterized by a type and a depth of depravity impossible for a human mind to visualize. Not only were the Delgonians enemies of the Velantians in the ordinary sense of the word; not only were they pirates and robbers; not only were they their masters, taking them both as slaves and as food-cattle; but there was something more, something deeper and worse, something only partially transmissible from mind to mind—a horribly and repulsively Saturnalian type of mental and intellectual, as well as biological, parasitism. This relationship had gone on for ages, and during those ages rebellion was impossible, as any Velantian capable of leading such a movement
disappeared before he could make any headway at all.
Finally, however, a thought screen had been devised, behind which Velantia developed a high science of her own. The students of this science lived with but one purpose in life, to free Velantia from the tyranny of the Overlords of Delgon. Each student, as he reached the zenith of his mental power, went to Delgon, to study and if possible to destroy the tyrants. And after disembarking upon the soil of that dread planet no Velantian, whether student or scientist or private adventurer, had ever returned to Velantia.
“But why don’t you lay a complaint against them before the Council?” demanded vanBuskirk. “They’d straighten things out in a hurry.”
“We have not heretofore known, save by the most unreliable and roundabout reports, that such an organization as your Galactic Patrol really exists,” the Velantian replied, obliquely. “Nevertheless, many years since, we launched a space-ship toward its nearest reputed base. However, since that trip requires three normal lifetimes, with deadly peril in every moment, it will be a miracle if the ship ever completes it. Furthermore, even if the ship should reach its destination, our complaint will probably not even be considered. because we have not a single shred of real evidence with which to support it. No living Velantian has even seen a Delgonian, nor can anyone testify to the truth of anything I have told you. While we believe that that is the true condition of affairs, our belief is based, not upon evidence admissible in a court of law, but upon deductions from occasional thoughts radiated from this planet. Nor were these thoughts alike in tenor…”
“Skip that for a minute—we’ll take the picture as correct,” Kinnison broke in. “Nothing you have said so far shows any necessity for you to die in the next few hours.”
“The only object in life for a trained Velantian is to liberate his planet from the horrors of subjection to Delgon. Many such have come here, but not one has found a workable idea; not one has either returned to or even communicated with Velantia after starting work here. I am a Velantian. I am here. Soon I shall open that door and get in touch with the enemy. Since better men than I am have failed, I do not expect to succeed. Nor shall I return to my native planet. As soon as I start to work the Delgonians will command me to come to them. In spite of myself I will obey that command, and very shortly thereafter I shall die, in what fashion I do not know.”
“Snap out of it, Worsel!” Kinnison ordered, bruskly. “That’s the rankest kind of defeatism, and you know it. Nobody ever got to the first check-station on that kind of fuel.”
“You are talking about something now about which you know nothing whatever.” For the first time Worsel’s thoughts showed passion. “Your thoughts are idle—ignorant—vain. You know nothing whatever of the mental power of the Delgonians.”
“Maybe not—I make no claim to being a mental giant—but I do know that mental power alone cannot overcome a definitely and positively opposed will. An Arisian could probably break my will, but I’ll stake my life that no other mentality in the known Universe can do it!”
“You think so, Earthling?” and a seething sphere of mental force encompassed the Tellurian’s brain. Kinnison’s senses reeled at the terrific impact, but he shook off the attack and smiled.
“Come again, Worsel. That one jarred me to the heels, but it didn’t quite ring the bell.”
“You flatter me,” the Velantian declared in surprise. “I could scarcely touch your mind—could not penetrate even its outermost defenses, and I exerted all my force. But that fact gives me hope. My mind is of course inferior to theirs, but since I could not influence you at all, even in direct contact and at full power, you may be able to resist the minds of the Delgonians. Are you willing to hazard the stake you mentioned a moment ago? Or rather, I ask you, by the Lens you wear, so to hazard it—with the liberty of an entire people dependent upon the outcome.”
“Why not? The spools come first, of course—but without you our spools would both be buried now inside the cliff of the Catlats. Fix it so your people will find these spools and carry on with them in case we fail, and I’m your man. There—now tell me what we’re apt to be up against, and then let loose your dogs.”
“That I cannot do. I know only that they will direct against us mental forces such as you have never even imagined—I cannot forewarn you in any respect whatever as to what forms those forces may appear to assume. I know, however, that I shall succumb to the first bolt of force. Therefore bind me with these chains before I open the shield. Physically I am extremely strong, as you know; therefore be sure to put on enough chains so that I cannot possibly break free, for if I can break away I shall undoubtedly kill both of you.”
“How come all these things here, ready to hand?” asked vanBuskirk, as the two Patrolmen so loaded the passive Velantian with chains, manacles, hand-cuffs, leg-irons and straps that he could not move even his tail.
“It has been tried before, many times,” Worsel replied bleakly, “but the rescuers, being Velantians, also succumbed to the force and took off the irons. Now I caution you, with all the power of my mind—no matter what you see, no matter what I may command you or beg of you, no matter how urgently you yourself may wish to do so—DO NOT LIBERATE ME UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES unless and until things appear exactly as they do now and that door is shut. Know fully and ponder well the fact that if you release me while that door is open it will be because you have yielded to Delgonian force; and that not only will all three of us die, lingeringly and horribly; but also and worse, that our deaths will not have been of any benefit to civilization. Do you understand? Are you ready?”
“I understand—I am ready,” thought Kinnison and vanBuskirk as one.
“Open that door.”
Kinnison did so. For a few minutes nothing happened. Then three-dimensional pictures began to form before their eyes—pictures which they knew existed only in their own minds, yet which were composed of such solid substance that they obscured from vision everything else in the material world. At first hazy and indistinct, the scene—for it was in no sense now a picture—became clear and sharp. And, piling horror upon horror, sound was added to sight. And directly before their eyes, blotting out completely even the solid metal of the wall only a few feet distant from them, the two outlanders saw and heard something which can be represented only vaguely by imagining Dante’s Inferno in actuality and raised to the Nth power!
In a dull and gloomy cavern there lay, sat, and stood hordes of things. These beings—the “nobility” of Delgon—had reptilian bodies, somewhat similar to Worsel’s, but they had no wings and their heads were distinctly apish rather than crocodilian. Every greedy eye in the vast throng was fixed upon an enormous screen which, like that in a motion-picture theater, walled off one end of the stupendous cavern.
Slowly, shudderingly, Kinnison’s mind began to take in what was happening upon that screen. And it was really happening, Kinnison was sure of that—this was not a picture any more than this whole scene was an illusion. It was all an actuality—somewhere.
Upon that screen there were stretched out victims. Hundreds of these were Velantians, more hundreds were winged Delgonians, and scores were creatures whose like Kinnison had never seen. And all these were being tortured: tortured to death both in fashions known to the Inquisitors of old and in ways of which even those experts had never an inkling. Some were being twisted outrageously in three-dimensional frames. Others were being stretched upon racks. Many were being pulled horribly apart, chains intermittently but relentlessly extending each helpless member. Still others were being lowered into pits of constantly increasing temperature or were being attacked by gradually increasing concentrations of some foully corrosive vapor which ate away their tissues, little by little. And, apparently the piece de resistance of the hellish exhibition, one luckless Velantian, in a spot of hard, cold light, was being pressed out flat against the screen, as an insect might be pressed between two panes of glass. Thinner and thinner he became under the influence of some awful, invisible force; in
spite of every exertion of inhumanly powerful muscles driving body, tail, wings, arms, legs, and head in every frantic maneuver which grim and imminent death could call forth.
Physically nauseated, brain-sick at the atrocious visions blasting his mind and at the screaming of the damned assailing his ears, Kinnison strove to wrench his mind away, but was curbed savagely by Worsel.
“You must stay! You must pay attention!” commanded the Velantian. “This is the first time any living being has seen so much—you must help me now! They have been attacking me from the first; but, braced by the powerful negatives in your mind, I have been able to resist and have transmitted a truthful picture so far. But they are surprised at my resistance and are concentrating more force… I am slipping fast…you must brace my minds. And when the picture changes—as change it must, and soon—do not believe it. Hold fast, brothers of the Lens, for your own lives and for the people of Velantia. There is more—and worse!”
Kinnison stayed. So did vanBuskirk, fighting with all his stubborn Dutch mind. Revolted, outraged, nauseated as they were at the sights and sounds, they stayed. Flinching with the victims as they were fed into the hoppers of slowly turning mills; wincing at the unbelievable acts of the boilers, the beaters, the scourgers, the flayers; suffering themselves every possible and many apparently impossible nightmares of slow and hideous torture—with clenched fists and locked teeth, with sweating foreheads over white and straining faces, Kinnison and vanBuskirk stayed.
The light in the cavern now changed to a strong, greenish-yellow glare; and in that hard illumination it was to be seen that each dying being was surrounded by a palely glowing aura. And now, crowning horror of that unutterably horrible orgy of Sadism resublimed, from the eyes of each one of the monstrous audience there leaped out visible beams of force. These beams touched the auras of the dying prisoners; touched and clung. And as they clung, the auras shrank and disappeared.
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