Galactic Patrol

by Edward E Smith

  “Oh, no, sir—please!” He knew what rewards were granted to failures, and Helmuth’s carefully chosen words had already produced the effect desired by their speaker. “They took me by surprise then, but I’ll go through this next time.”

  “Very well, I will give you one more chance. When you get close to the barrier, or whatever it is, go inert and put out all your screens. Man your plates and weapons, for whatever can hypnotize can be killed. Go ahead at full blast, with all the acceleration you can get. Crash through anything that opposes you and beam anything that you can detect or see. Can you think of anything else?”

  “That should be sufficient, sir.” The captain’s equanimity was completely restored, now that the warlike preparations were making more and more nebulous the sudden, but single, thought wave of the Arisian.

  “Proceed!”

  The plan was carried out to the letter. This time the pirate craft struck the frail barrier inert, and its slight force offered no tangible bar to the prodigious mass of metal. But this time, since the barrier was actually passed, there was no mental warning and no possibility of retreat.

  Many men have skeletons in their closets. Many have phobias, things of which they are consciously afraid. Many others have them, not consciously, but buried deep in the subconscious; specters which seldom or never rise above the threshold of perception. Every sentient being has, if not such specters as these, at least a few active or latent dislikes, dreads, or outright fears. This is true, no matter how quiet and peaceful a life the being has led.

  These pirates, however, were the scum of space. They were beings of hard and criminal lives and of violent and lawless passions. Their hates and conscience-searing deeds had been legion, their count of crimes long, black, and hideous. Therefore, slight indeed was the effort required to locate in their conscious minds—to say noting of the noxious depths of their subconscious ones—visions of horror fit to blast stronger intellects than theirs. And that is exactly what the Arisian Watchman did. From each pirate’s total mind, a veritable charnel pit, he extracted the foulest, most unspeakable dregs, the deeply hidden things of which the subject was in the greatest fear. Of these things he formed a whole of horror incomprehensible and incredible, and this ghastly whole he made incarnate and visible to the pirate who was its unwilling parent; as visible as though it were composed of flesh and blood, of copper and steel. Is it any wonder that each member of that outlaw crew, seeing such an abhorrent materialization, went instantly mad?

  It is of no use to go into the horribly monstrous shapes of the things, even were it possible; for each of them was visible to only one man, and none of them was visible to those who looked on from the safety of the distant base. To them the entire crew simply abandoned their posts and attacked each other, senselessly and in insane frenzy, with whatever weapons came first to hand. Indeed, many of them fought bare-handed, weapons hanging unused in their belts, gouging, beating, clawing, biting until life had been rived horribly away. In other parts of the ship DeLameters flamed briefly, bars crashed crunchingly, knives and axes sheared and trenchantly bit. And soon it was over—almost. The pilot was still alive, unmoving and rigid at his controls.

  Then he, too, moved; rapidly and purposefully. He cut in the Bergenholm, spun the ship around, shoved her drivers up to maximum blast, and steadied her into an exact course—and when Helmuth read that course even his iron nerves failed him momentarily. For the ship was flying, not for its own home port, but directly toward Grand Base, the jealously secret planet whose spatial coordinates neither that pilot nor any other creature of the pirates’ rank and file had ever known!

  Helmuth snapped out orders, to which the pilot gave no heed. His voice—for the first time in his career—rose to a howl, but the pilot still paid no attention. Instead, eyes bulging with horror and fingers curved tensely into veritable talons, he reared upright upon his bench and leaped as though to clutch and to rend some unutterably appalling foe. He leaped over his board into thin and empty air. He came down a-sprawl in a maze of naked, high-potential bus-bars. His body vanished in a flash of searing flame and a cloud of thick and greasy smoke.

  The bus-bars cleared themselves of their gruesome “short” and the great ship, manned now entirely by corpses, bored on.

  “…stinking klebots, the lily-livered cowards!” the department head, who had also been yelling orders, was still pounding his desk and yelling. “If they’re that afraid—go crazy and kill each other without being touched—I’ll have to go myself…”

  “No, Sansteed,” Helmuth interrupted curtly. “You will not have to go. There is, after all, I think, something there—something that you may not be able to handle. You see, you missed the one essential key fact.” He referred to the course, the setting of which had shaken him to the very core.

  “Let be,” he silenced the other’s flood of question and protest. “It would serve no purpose to detail it to you now. Have the ship taken back to port.”

  Helmuth knew now that it was not superstition that made spacemen shun Arisia. He knew that, from his standpoint at least, there was something very seriously amiss. But he had not the faintest conception of the real situation, nor of the real and terrible power which the Arisians. could, and upon occasion would, wield.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Kinnison Brings Home the Bacon

  ELMUTH SAT AT HIS DESK, thinking; thinking with all the coldly analytical precision of which he was capable.

  This Lensman was both powerful and tremendously resourceful. The cosmic-energy drive, developed by the science of a world about which the Patrol knew nothing, was Boskone’s one great item of superiority. If the Patrol could be kept in ignorance of that drive the struggle would be over in a year; the culture of the iron hand would be unchallenged throughout the galaxy. If, however, the Patrol should succeed in learning Boskone’s top secret, the war between the two cultures might well be prolonged indefinitely. This Lensman knew that secret and was still at large, of that he was all too certain. Therefore the Lensman must be destroyed. And that brought up the Lens.

  What was it? A peculiar bauble indeed; impossible of duplication because of some subtlety of intra-atomic arrangement, and possessing peculiar and dire potentialities. The old belief that no one except a Lensman could wear a Lens was true—he had proved it. The Lens must account in some way for the outstanding ability of the Lensman, and it must tie in, somehow, with both Arisia and the thought-screens. The Lens was the one thing possessed by the Patrol which his own forces did not have. He must and would have it, for it was undoubtedly a powerful arm. Not to be compared, of course, with their own monopoly of cosmic energy—but that monopoly was now threatened, and seriously. That Lensman must be destroyed.

  But how? It was easy to say “Comb Trenco, inch by inch,” but doing it would prove a Herculean task. Suppose that the Lensman should again escape, in that volume of so fantastically distorted media? He had already escaped twice, in much clearer ether than Trenco’s. However, if his information should never get back to Prime Base little harm would be done, and ships had been thrown around every solar system the Lensman could reach. Not even a grain-of-dust meteorite could pass those screens without detection. So much for the Lensman. Now about getting the secret of the Lens.

  Again, how? There was something upon Arisia; something connected in some way with the Lens and with thought—possibly also with those thought-screens…

  His mind bashed back over the unorthodox manner of his acquirement of those devices—unorthodox in that he had neither stolen them nor murdered their inventor. A person had come to him with pass-words and credentials which could not be ignored; had handed him a heavily-sealed container, which, he said, had come from a planet named Ploor, had remarked casually “Thought-screen data—you’ll know when you need ’em”; and had gone.

  Whatever the Arisian was it had mental power; of that fact there could be no doubt. Out of the full sphere of space, what was the mathematical probability that the pilo
t of that deathship would have set by accident his course so exactly upon Grand Base? Vanishingly small. Treachery would not explain the facts—not only had the pilot been completely insane when he laid the course, but also he did not know where Grand Base was.

  As an explanation mental force alone seemed fantastic, but no other as yet presented itself as a possibility. Also, it was supported by the unbelievable, the absolutely definite refusal of Gildersleeve’s normally fearless crew even to approach the planet. It would take an unheard-of mental force so to affect such crime-hardened veterans.

  Helmuth was not one to underestimate an enemy. Was there a man beneath that dome, save himself, of sufficient mental caliber to undertake the now necessary mission to Arisia? There was not. He himself had the finest mind on the planet; else that other had deposed him long since and had sat at the control desk himself. He was sublimely confident that no outside thought could break down his definitely opposed will—and besides, there were the thought screens, the secret of which he had not as yet shared with anyone. The time had come to use those screens.

  It has already been made clear that Helmuth was not a fool. No more was he a coward. If he himself could best of all his force do a thing, that thing he did; with the coldly ruthless efficiency that marked alike his every action and his every thought.

  How should he go? Should he accept that challenge, and take Gildersleeve’s rebellious crew of cutthroats to Arisia? No. In the event of an outcome short of complete success, it would not do to lose face before that band of ruffians. Moreover, the idea of such a crew going insane behind him was not one to be relished. He would go alone.

  “Wolmark, come to the center,” he ordered. When that worthy appeared he went on. “Be seated, as this is to be a serious conference. I have watched with admiration and appreciation, as well as some mild amusement, the development of your lines of information; especially those concerning affairs which are most distinctly not in your department. They are, however, efficient—you already know exactly what has happened.” A statement this, in no wise a question.

  “Yes, sir,” quietly. Wolmark was somewhat taken aback, but not at all abashed.

  “That is the reason you are here now. I thoroughly approve of you. I am leaving the planet for a few days, and you are the best man in the organization to take charge in my absence.”

  “I suspected that you would be leaving, sir.”

  “I know you did: but I am now informing you, merely to make sure that you develop no peculiar ideas in my absence, that there are at least a few things which you do not suspect at all. That safe, for instance,” nodding toward a peculiarly shimmering globe of force anchoring itself in air. “Even your highly efficient spy system has not been able to learn a thing about that.”

  “No, sir, we have not—yet,” he could not forbear adding.

  “Nor will you, with any skill or force known to man. But keep on trying, it amuses me. I know, you see, of all your attempts. But to get on. I now say, and for your own good I advise you to believe, that failure upon my part to return to this desk will prove highly unfortunate for you.”

  “I believe that, sir. Any man of intelligence would make such arrangement, if he could. But sir, suppose that the Arisians…”

  “If your ‘if he could’ implies a doubt, act upon it and learn wisdom,” Helmuth advised him coldly. “You should know by this time that I neither gamble nor bluff. I have made arrangements to protect myself. Both from enemies, such as the Arisians and the Patrol, and from friends, such as ambitious youngsters who are trying to supplant me. If I were not entirely confident of getting back here safely, my dear Wolmark, I would not go.”

  “You misunderstand me, sir. Really, I have no idea of supplanting you.”

  “Not until you get a good opportunity, you mean—I understand you thoroughly, and as I have said before, I approve of you. Go ahead with all your plans. I have kept at least one lap ahead of you so far, and if the time should ever come when I can no longer do so, I shall no longer be fit to speak for Boskone. You understand, of course, that the most important matter now in work is the search for the Lensman of which the combing of Trenco and the screening of the Patrol’s systems are only two phases?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well. I can, I think, leave matters in your hands. If anything really serious comes up, such as a development in the Lensman case, let me know at once. Otherwise do not call me. Take the desk,” and Helmuth strode away.

  He was whisked to the space-port, where there awaited him his special speedster, equipped long since with divers and sundry items of equipment whose functions were known only to himself.

  For him the trip to Arisia was neither long nor tedious. The little racer was fully automatic, and as it tore through space he worked as coolly and efficiently as he was wont to do at his desk. Indeed, more so, for here he could concentrate without interruption. Many were the matters he planned and the decisions he made, the while his portfolio of notes grew thicker and thicker.

  As he neared his destination he put away his work, actuated his special mechanisms, and waited. When the speedster struck the barrier and stopped Helmuth wore a faint, hard smile, but that smile disappeared with a snap as a thought crashed into his supposedly shielded brain.

  “You are surprised that your thought-screens are not effective?” The thought was coldly contemptuous. “I know in essence what the messenger from Ploor told you concerning them when he gave them to you, but he spoke in ignorance. We of Arisia know thought in a way that no member of his race is now or ever will be able to understand.

  “Know, Helmuth, that we Arisians do not want and will not tolerate uninvited visitors. Your presence is particularly distasteful, representing as you do a despotic, degrading, and antisocial culture. Evil and good are of course purely relative, so it cannot be said in absolute terms that your culture is evil. It is, however, based upon greed, hatred, corruption, violence, and fear. Justice it does not recognize, nor mercy, nor truth except as a scientific utility. It is basically opposed to liberty. Now liberty—of person, of thought, of action—is the basic and the goal of the civilization to which you are opposed, and with which any really philosophical mind must find itself in accord.

  “Inflated overweeningly by your warped and perverted ideas, by your momentary success in dominating your handful of minions, tied to you by bonds of greed, of passion, and of crime, you come here to wrest from us the secret of the Lens; from us, a race as much abler than yours as we are older—a ratio of millions to one.

  “You consider yourself cold, hard, ruthless. Compared to me, you are weak, soft, tender; as helpless as a new-born child. That you may learn and appreciate that fact is one reason why you are living at this present moment. Your lesson will now begin.”

  Then Helmuth, starkly rigid, unable to move a muscle, felt delicate probes enter his brain. One at a time they pierced his innermost being, each to a definitely selected center. It seemed that each thrust carried with it the ultimate measure of exquisitely poignant anguish possible of endurance, but each successive needle carried with it an even more keenly unbearable thrill of agony.

  Helmuth was not now calm and cold. He could have screamed in wild abandon, but even that relief was denied him. He could not even scream; all he could do was sit there and suffer.

  Then he began to see things. There, actually materializing in the empty air of the speedster, he saw in endless procession things he had done, either in person or by proxy, both during his ascent to his present high place in the pirates’ organization and since the attainment of that place. Long was the list, and black. As it unfolded his torment grew more and ever more intense, until finally, after an interval that might have been a fraction of a second or might have been untold hours, he could stand no more. He fainted, sinking beyond the reach of pain into a sea of black unconsciousness.

  He awakened white and shaking, wringing wet with perspiration and so weak that he could scarcely sit erect, but with a supremely bli
ssful realization that, for the time being at least, his punishment was over.

  “This, you will observe, has been a very mild treatment,” the cold Arisian accents went on inside his brain. “Not only do you still live, you are even still sane. We now come to the second reason why you have not been destroyed. Your destruction by us would not be good for that struggling young civilization which you oppose.

  “We have given that civilization an instrument by virtue of which it should become able to destroy you and everything for which you stand. If it cannot do so it is not yet ready to become a civilization and your obnoxious culture shall be allowed to conquer and to flourish for a time.

  “Now go back to your dome. Do not return. I know that you will not have the temerity to do so in person. Do not attempt to do so by any form whatever of proxy.”

  There were no threats, no warnings, no mention of consequences; but the level and incisive tone of the Arisian put a fear into Helmuth’s cold heart the like of which he had never before known.

  He whirled his speedster about and hurled her at full blast toward his home planet. It was only after many hours that he was able to regain even a semblance of his customary poise, and days elapsed before he could think coherently enough to consider as a whole the shocking, the unbelievable thing that had happened to him.

  He wanted to believe that the creature, whatever it was, had been bluffing—that it could not kill him, that it had done its worst. In similar case he would have killed without mercy, and that course seemed to him the only logical one to pursue. His cold reason, however, would not allow him to entertain that comforting belief. Deep down he knew that the Arisian could have killed him as easily as it had slain the lowest member of his band, and the thought chilled him to the marrow.

  What could he do? What could he do? Endlessly, as the miles and light-years reeled off behind his hurtling racer, this question reiterated itself; and when his home planet loomed close it was still unanswered.