“Decade by decade your minds have become stronger. Finally you came to be fitted with a Lens. Your mind, while pitifully undeveloped, had a latent capacity and a power that made your return here certain. There are several others who will return. Indeed, it has become a topic of discussion among us as to whether you or one other would be the first advanced student.”
“Who is that other, if I may ask?”
“Your friend, Worsel the Velantian.”
“He’s got a real mind—’way, ’way ahead of mine,” the Lensman stated, as a matter of self-evident fact.
“In some ways, yes. In other and highly important characteristics, no.”
“Huh?” Kinnison exclaimed. “In what possible way have I got it over him?”
“I am not certain that I can explain it exactly in thoughts which you can understand. Broadly speaking, his mind is the better trained, the more fully developed. It is of more grasp and reach, and of vastly greater present power. It is more controllable, more responsive, more adaptable than is yours—now. But your mind, while undeveloped, is of considerable greater capacity than his, and of greater and more varied latent capabilities. Above all, you have a driving force, a will to do, an undefeatable mental urge that no one of his race will ever be able to develop. Since I predicted that you would be the first to return, I am naturally gratified that you have developed in accordance with that prediction.”
“Well, I have been more or less under pressure, and I got quite a few lucky breaks. But at that, it seemed to me that I was progressing backward instead of forward.”
“It is ever thus with the really competent. Prepare yourself!”
He launched a mental bolt, at the impact of which Kinnison’s mind literally turned inside out in a wildly gyrating spiral vortex of dizzyingly confused images.
“Resist!” came the harsh command.
“Resist! How?” demanded the writhing, sweating Lensman. “You might as well tell a fly to resist an inert spaceship!”
“Use your will—your force—your adaptability. Shift your mind to meet mine at every point. Apart from these fundamentals neither I nor anyone else can tell you how; each mind must find its own medium and develop its own technique. But this is a very mild treatment indeed, one conditioned to your present strength. I will increase it gradually in severity, but rest assured that I will at no time raise it to the point of permanent damage. Constructive exercises will come later, the first step must be to build up your resistance. Therefore resist!”
The force, which had not slackened for an instant, waxed slowly to the very verge of intolerability; and grimly, doggedly, the Lensman fought it. Teeth locked, muscles straining, fingers digging savagely into the hard leather upholstery of his chair he fought it; mustering his every ultimate resource to the task…
Suddenly the torture ceased and the Lensman slumped down, a mental and physical wreck. He was white, trembling, sweating: shaken to the very core of his being. He was ashamed of his weakness. He was humiliated and bitterly disappointed at the showing he had made; but from the Arisian there came a calm, encouraging thought.
“You need not feel ashamed; you should instead feel proud, for you have made a start which is almost surprising, even to me, your sponsor. This may seem to you like needless punishment, but it is not. This is the only possible way in which that which you seek may be found.”
“In that case, go to it,” the Lensman declared. “I can take it.”
The “advanced instruction” went on, with the pupil becoming ever stronger; until he was taking without damage thrusts that would at first have slain him instantly. The bouts became shorter and shorter, requiring as they did such terrific outpourings of mental force that no human mind could stand the awful strain for more than half an hour at a time.
And now these savage conflicts of wills and minds were interspersed with real instruction; with lessons neither painful nor unpleasant. In these the aged scientists probed gently into the youngster’s mind, opening it out and exposing to its owner’s gaze vast caverns whose very presence he had never even suspected. Some of these storehouses were already partially or completely filled; needing only arrangement and connection. Others were nearly empty. These were catalogued and made accessible. And in all, permeating everything, was the Lens.
“Just like clearing out a clogged-up water system; with the Lens the pump that couldn’t work!” exclaimed Kinnison one day.
“More like that than you at present realize,” assented the Arisian. “You have observed, of course, that I have not given you any detailed instructions nor pointed out any specific abilities of the Lens which you have not known how to use. You will have to operate the pump yourself, and you have many surprises awaiting you as to what your Lens will pump, and how. Our sole task is to prepare your mind to work with the Lens, and that task is not yet done. Let us on with it.”
After what seemed to Kinnison like weeks the time came when he could block out Mentor’s suggestions completely; nor, now blocked out, should the Arisian be able to discern that fact. The Lensman gathered all his force together, concentrated it, and hurled it back at his teacher; and there ensued a struggle none the less Titanic because of its essential friendliness. The very ether seethed and boiled with the fury of the mental forces there at grips, but finally the Lensman beat down the other’s screens. Then, boring deep into his eyes, he willed with all his force to see that Arisian as he really was. And instantly the scholarly old man subsided into a…a BRAIN! There were a few appendages, of course, and appurtenances, and incidentalia to nourishment, locomotion, and the like, but to all intents and purposes the Arisian was simply and solely a brain.
Tension ended, conflict ceased, and Kinnison apologized.
“Think nothing of it,” and the brain actually smiled into Kinnison’s mind. “Any mind of power sufficient to neutralize the forces which I have employed is of course able to hurl no feeble bolts of its own. See to it, however, that you thrust no such force at any lesser mind, or it dies instantly.”
Kinnison started to stammer a reply, but the Arisian went on:
“No, son, I knew and know that the warning is superfluous. If you were not worthy of this power and were you not able to control it properly you would not have it. You have obtained that which you sought. Go, then, with power.”
“But this is only one phase, barely a beginning!” protested Kinnison.
“Ah, you realize even that? Truly, youth, you have come far, and fast. But you are not yet ready for more, and it is a truism that the reception of forces for which a mind is not prepared will destroy that mind. Thus, when you came to me you knew exactly what you wanted. Do you know with equal certainty what more you want from us?”
“No”
“Nor will you for years, if ever. Indeed, it may well be that only your descendants will be ready for that for which you now so dimly grope. Again I say, young man, go with power.”
Kinnison went.
CHAPTER
19
Judge, Jury, and Executioner
T HAD TAKEN THE LENSMAN A long time to work out in his mind exactly what it was that he had wanted from the Arisians, and from no single source had the basic idea come. Part of it had come from his own knowledge of ordinary hypnosis; part from the ability of the Overlords of Delgon to control from a distance the minds of others; part from Worsel, who, working through Kinnison’s own mind, had done such surprising things with a Lens; and a great part indeed from the Arisians themselves, who had the astounding ability literally and completely to superimpose their own mentalities upon those of others, wherever situate. Part by part and bit by bit the Tellurian Lensman had built up his plan, but he had not had the sheer power of intellect to make it work. Now he had that, and was ready to go.
Where? His first impulse was to return to Aldebaran I and to invade again the stronghold of the Wheelmen, who had routed him so ignominiously in his one encounter with them. Ordinary prudence, however, counseled against that course.
“You’d better lay off them a while, Kim, old boy,” he told himself quite frankly. “They’ve got a lot of jets and you don’t know how to use this new stuff of yours yet. Better pick out something easier to take!”
Ever since leaving Arisia he had been subconsciously aware of a difference in his eyesight. He was seeing things much more clearly than he had ever seen them before; more sharply and in greater detail. Now this awareness crept into his consciousness and he glanced toward his tube-lights. They were out—except for the tiny lamps and bulls-eyes of his instrument board the vessel must be in complete darkness. He remembered then with a shock that when he entered the speedster he had not turned on his lights—he could see and had not thought of them at all!
This, then, was the first of the surprises the Arisian had promised him. He now had the sense of perception of the Rigellians. Or was it that of the Wheelmen? Or both? Or were they the same sense? Intently aware now, he focused his attention upon a meter before him. First upon its dial, noting that the needle was exactly upon the green hair-line of normal operation. Then deeper. Instantly the face of the instrument disappeared—moved behind his point of sight, or so it seemed—so that he could see its coils, pivots, and other interior parts. He could look into and study the grain and particle-size of the dense, hard condensite of the board itself. His vision was limited, apparently, only by his will to see.
“Well—ain’t—that—something?” he demanded of the universe at large; then, as a thought struck him; “I wonder if they blinded me in the process?”
He switched on his lamps, discovering that his vision was unimpaired and normal in every respect; and a rigid investigation proved to him conclusively that in addition to ordinary vision he now had an extra sense—or perhaps two of them—and that he could change from one to the other, or use them simultaneously, at will! But the very fact of this discovery gave Kinnison pause.
He hadn’t better go anywhere, or do anything, until he had found out something about his new equipment. The fact was that he didn’t even know what he had, to say nothing of knowing how to use it. If he had the sense of a Zabriskan fontema he would go somewhere where he could do a little experimenting without getting his jets burned off in case something slipped at a critical moment. Where was the nearest Patrol base? A big one, fully defended… Let’s see… Radelix would be about the closest Sector Base, he guessed—he’d find out if he could raid that outfit without getting caught at it.
Off he shot, and in due course a fair, green, Earthlike planet lay beneath his vessel’s keel. Since it was Earthlike in climate, age, atmosphere, and mass, its people were of course more or less similar to humanity in general characteristics, both of body and of mind. If anything, they were even more intelligent than Earthlings, and their Patrol base was a very strong one indeed. His spy-ray would be useless, since all Patrol bases were screened thoroughly and continuously—he would see what a sense of perception would do. From Tregonsee’s explanation, it ought to work at this range.
It did. When Kinnison concentrated his attention upon the base he saw it. He advanced toward it at the speed of thought and entered it; passing through screens and metal walls without hindrance and without giving alarm. He saw men at their accustomed tasks and heard, or rather sensed, their conversation: the everyday chat of their professions. A thrill shot through him at a dazzling possibility thus revealed.
If he could make one of those fellows down there do something without his knowing that he was doing it, the problem was solved. That computer, say; make him uncover that calculator and set up a certain integral on it. It would be easy enough to get into touch with him and have him do it, but this was something altogether different.
Kinnison got into the computer’s mind easily enough, and willed intensely what he was to do; but the officer did not do it. He got up; then, staring about him in bewilderment, sat down again.
“What’s the matter?” asked one of his fellows. “Forget something?”
“Not exactly,” the computer still stared. “I was going to set up an integral. I didn’t want it, either—I could swear that somebody told me to set it up.”
“Nobody did,” grunted the other, “and you’d better start staying home nights—then maybe you wouldn’t get funny ideas.”
This wasn’t so good, Kinnison reflected. The guy should have done it, and shouldn’t have remembered a thing about it. Well, he hadn’t really thought he could put it across at that distance, anyway—he didn’t have the brain of an Arisian. He’d have to follow his original plan, of close-up work.
Waiting until the base was well into the night side of the planet and making sure that his flare-baffles were in place, he allowed the speedster to drop downward, landing at some little distance from the fortress. There he left the ship and made his way toward his objective in a rapid series of long, inertialess hops. Lower and shorter became the hops. Then he cut off his power entirely and walked until he saw before him, rising from the ground and stretching interminably upward, an almost invisibly shimmering web of force. This, the prowler knew, was the curtain which marked the border of the Reservation; the trigger upon which a touch, either of solid object or of beam, would initiate a succession of events which he was in no position to stop.
To the eye that base was not impressive, being merely a few square miles of level ground, outlined with low, broad pill-boxes and studded here and there with harmless-looking, bulging domes. There were a few clusters of buildings. That was all—to the eye—but Kinnison was not deceived. He knew that the base itself was a thousand feet underground; that the pill-boxes housed lookouts and detectors; and that those domes were simply weathershields which, rolled back, would expose projectors second in power not even to those of Prime Base itself.
Far to the right, between two tall pylons of metal, was a gate; the nearest opening in the web. Kinnison had avoided it purposely; it was no part of his plan to subject himself yet to the scrutiny of the all-inclusive photocells of that entrance. Instead, with his new sense of perception, he sought out the conduits leading to those cells and traced them down, through concrete and steel and masonry, to the control room far below. He then superimposed his mind upon that of the man at the board and flew boldly toward the entrance. He now actually had a dual personality; since one part of his mind was in his body, darting through the air toward the portal, while the other part was deep in the base below, watching him come and acknowledging his signals.
A trap lifted, revealing a sloping, tunneled ramp, down which the Lensman shot. He soon found a convenient storeroom; and, slipping within it, he withdrew his control carefully from the mind of the observer, wiping out all traces of that control as he did so. He then watched apprehensively for a possible reaction. He was almost sure that he had performed the operation correctly, but he had to be absolutely certain; more than his life depended upon the outcome of this test. The observer, however, remained calm and placid at his post; and a close reading of his thoughts showed that he had not the faintest suspicion that anything out of the ordinary had occurred.
One more test and he was through. He must find out how many minds he could control simultaneously, but he’d better do that openly. No use making a man feel like a fool needlessly—he’d done that once already, and once was one time too many.
Therefore, reversing the procedure by which he had come, he went back to his speedster, took her out into the ether, and slept. Then, when the light of morning flooded the base, he cut his detector nullifier and approached it boldly.
“Radelix base! Lensman Kinnison of Tellus, Unattached, asking permission to land. I wish to confer with your commanding officer, Lensman Gerrond.”
A spy-ray swept through the speedster, the web disappeared, and Kinnison landed, to be greeted with a quiet and cordial respect. The base commander knew that his visitor was not there purely for pleasure—Gray Lensmen did not take pleasure jaunts. Therefore he led the way into his private office and shielded it.
“My announcement was
not at all informative,” Kinnison admitted then, “but my errand is nothing to be advertised. I’ve got to try out something, and I want to ask you and three of your best and—‘stubbornest’, if I may use the term—officers to cooperate with me for a few minutes. QX?”
“Of course.”
Three officers were called in and Kinnison explained. “I’ve been working for a long time on a mind-controller, and I want to see if it works. I’ll put your books on this table, one in front of each of you. Now I would like to try to make two or three of you—all four of you if I can—each bend over, pick up his book, and hold it. Your part of the game will be for each of you to try not to pick it up, and to put it back as soon as you possibly can if I do make you obey. Will you?”
“Sure!” three of them chorused, and “There will be no mental damage, of course?” asked the commander.
“None whatever, and no after-effects. I’ve had it worked on myself, a lot.”
“Do you want any apparatus?”
“No, I have everything necessary. Remember, I want top resistance.”
“Let her come! You’ll get plenty of resistance. If you can make any one of us pick up a book, after all this warning, I’ll say you’ve got something.”
Officer after officer, in spite of strainingly resisting mind and body, lifted his book from the table, only to drop it again as Kinnison’s control relaxed for an instant. He could control two of them—any two of them—but he could not quite handle three. Satisfied, he ceased his efforts; and, as the base commander poured long, cold drinks for the sweating five, one of his fellows asked:
“What did you do, anyway, Kinnison—oh, pardon me, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Sorry,” the Tellurian replied uncomfortably, “but it isn’t ready yet. You’ll all know about it as soon as possible, but not just now.”
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