Chapter X

While Kathryn Kinnison was working with her father in the hyperspatial tube and with Mentor of Arisia, and while Camilla and Tregonsee were sleuthing the inscrutable "X", Constance was also at work. Although she lay flat upon her back, not moving a muscle, she was working as she had never worked before. Long since she had put her indetectable speedster into the control of a director-by-chance. Now, knowing nothing and caring less of where she and her vessel might be or might go, physically completely relaxed, she drove her "sensories" out to the full limit of their prodigious range and held them there for hour after hour. Worsel-like, she was not consciously listening for any particular thing; she was merely increasing her already incredibly vast store of knowledge. One hundred percent receptive, attached to and concerned with only the brain of her physical body, her mind sped at large sampling, testing, analyzing, cataloguing every item with which its most tenuous fringe came in contact. Through thousands of solar systems that mind went; millions upon millions of entities either did or did not contribute something worth while.

Suddenly there came something that jarred her into physical movement--a burst of thought upon a band so high that it was practically always vacant. She shook herself, got up, lighted an Alsakanite cigarette, and made herself a pot of coffee.

"This is important, I think," she mused. "I'd better get to work on it while it's fresh."

She sent out a thought tuned to Worsel, and was surprised when it went unanswered. She investigated, finding that the Velantian's screens were full up and held hard--he was fighting Overlords so savagely that he had not felt her thought. Should she take a hand in this brawl? She should not, she decided, and grinned fleetingly. Her erstwhile tutor would need no help in that comparatively minor chore. She would wait, rest up a bit, and eat, before she called him.

"Worsel! Con calling. What goes on there, fellow old snake?" She finally launched her thought. "You've stuck that sharp tail of yours into some of my business--I hope."

"I hope so," Worsel sent back. "Been quite a while since I saw you close up--how about coming aboard?"

"Coming at max," and she did.

Before entering the _Velan_, however, she put on a personal gravity damper, set at nine hundred eighty centimeters. Strong, tough, and supple as she was she did not relish the thought of the atrocious accelerations used and enjoyed by Velantians everywhere.

"What did you make of that burst of thought?" she asked by way of greeting. "Or were you having so much fun that you missed it?"

"What burst?" Then, after Constance had explained, "I was busy--but _not_ having fun."

"Somebody who didn't know you might believe that," the girl derided. "This thought was important, I think--much more so than dilly-dallying with Overlords, as you were doing. It was 'way up--on this band here." She illustrated.

"So?" Worsel came as near to whistling as one of his inarticulate race could come. "What were they like? Tell me all that you can."

"VWZY, to four places." Con concentrated. "Multilegged--not exactly carapaceous, but pretty nearly. Spiny, too, I believe. The world was cold, dismal, barren; but not frigid, but he ... it ... didn't seem exactly like an oxygen-breather--more like what a warm-blooded Palainian would perhaps look like, if you can imagine such a thing. Mentality very high--precisionist grade--no thought of cities as such. The sun was a typical yellow dwarf. Does any of this ring a bell in your mind?"

"No." Worsel thought intensely for minutes. So did Constance. Neither had any idea then that the girl was describing the form assumed in their autumn by the dread inhabitants of the planet Ploor!

"This may indeed be important," Worsel broke the mental silence. "Shall we explore together?"

"We shall." They tuned to the desired band. "Give it plenty of shove, too. Go!"

* * * * *

Out and out and out the twinned receptors sped; to encounter finally a tenuous, weak, and utterly cryptic vibration. One touch--the merest possible contact--and it disappeared. It vanished before even Con's electronics-fast reactions could get more than a hint of directional alignment; and neither of the observers could read any part of it.

Both of these developments were starkly incredible, and Worsel's long body tightened convulsively, rock-hard, in the violence of the mental force now driving his exploring mind. Finding nothing, he finally relaxed.

"Any Lensman, anywhere, can read and understand any thought, however garbled or scrambled, or however expressed," he thought at Constance. "Also, I have always been able to get an exact line on anything I could perceive, but all I know about this one is that it seemed to come mostly from somewhere over that way. Did you do any better?"

"Not much, if any." If the thing was surprising to Worsel, it was sheerly astounding to his companion. She, knowing the measure of her power, thought to herself--not to the Velantian: "Girl, file _this_ one carefully away in the big black book!"

Slight as were the directional leads, the _Velan_ tore along the indicated line at maximum blast. Day after day she sped, a wide-flung mental net out far ahead and out farther still on all sides. They did not find what they sought, but they did find--something.

"What is it?" Worsel demanded of the quivering telepath who had made the report.

"I don't know, sir. Not on that ultra-band, but well below it--there. Not an Overlord, certainly, but something perhaps equally unfriendly."

"An Eich!" Both Worsel and Con exclaimed the thought, and the girl went on, "It was practically certain that we couldn't get them all on Jarnevon, of course, but none have been reported before. Where are they, anyway? Get me a chart, somebody. It's Novena, and they're on the ninth planet out--Novena IX. Tune up your heavy artillery, Worsel--it'd be nice if we could take the head man alive, but that much luck probably isn't in the cards."

The Velantian, even though he had issued instantaneously the order to drive at full blast toward the indicated planet, was momentarily at a loss. Kinnison's daughter entertained no doubts as to the outcome of the encounter she was proposing--but she had never seen an Eich close up. He had. So had her father. Kinnison had come out a very poor second in that affair, and Worsel knew that he could have done no better, if as well. However, that had been upon Jarnevon, actually inside one of its strongest citadels, and neither he nor Kinnison had been prepared.

"What's the plan, Worsel?" Con demanded, vibrantly. "How're you figuring on taking 'em?"

"Depends on how strong they are. If it's a long-established base, we'll simply have to report it to LaForge and go on about our business. If, as seems more probable from the fact that it hasn't been reported before, it is a new establishment of refugees from Jarnevon--or possibly only a grounded spaceship so far--we'll go to work on them ourselves. We'll soon be close enough to find out."

"QX," and a fleeting grin passed over Con's vivacious face. For a long time she had been working with Mentor the Arisian, specifically to develop the ability to "out-Worsel Worsel", and now was the best time she ever would have to put her hard schooling to test.

* * * * *

Hence, Master of Hallucination though he was, the Velantian had no hint of realization when his Klovian companion, working through a channel which he did not even know existed, took control of every compartment of his mind. Nor did the crew, in particular or _en masse_, suspect anything amiss when she performed the infinitely easier task of taking over theirs. Nor did the unlucky Eich, when the flying _Velan_ had approached their planet closely enough to make it clear that their establishment was indeed a new one, being built around the nucleus of a crippled Boskonian battleship. Except for their commanding officer they died then and there--and Con was to regret bitterly, later, that she had made this engagement such a one-girl affair.

The battleship apparently was not in shape to meet the _Velan_ in open space, since it did not; but it could have operated and to all seeming did operate as a formidable fortress indeed from its fixed position on the ground. Under the fierce impact of its offensive beams the Velantians saw their very wall shields flame violet. In return they saw their mighty secondary beams stopped cold by the Boskonian's inner screens, and had to bring into play the inconceivable energies of their primaries before the enemy's spaceship-fortress could be knocked out. And this much of the battle was real. Instrument- and recorder-tapes could be and were being doctored to fit; but spent primary shells could not be simulated. Nor was it thinkable that this tremendous ship and its incipient Base should be allowed to survive.

Hence, after the dreadful primaries had quieted the Eich's main batteries and had reduced the groundworks to flaming pools of lava, needle-beamers went to work on every minor and secondary control board. Then, the great vessel definitely helpless as a fighting unit, Worsel and his hard-bitten crew thought that they went--thought-screened, full-armored, armed with semiportables and DeLameters--joyously into the hand-to-hand combat which each so craved. Worsel and two of his strongest henchmen attacked the armed and armored Boskonian captain. After a satisfying terrific struggle, in the course of which all three of the Velantians--and some others--were appropriately burned and wounded, they overpowered him and carried him bodily into the control room of the _Velan_. This part of the episode, too, was real; as was the complete melting down of the Boskonian vessel which occurred while the transfer was being made.

* * * * *

Then, while Con was engaged in the exceedingly delicate task of withdrawing her mind from Worsel's without leaving any detectable trace that she had ever been in it, there happened the completely unexpected; the one thing for which she was utterly unprepared. The mind of the captive captain was wrenched from her control as palpably as a loosely-held stick is snatched from a physical hand; and at the same time there was hurled against her impenetrable barriers an attack which could not possibly have stemmed from any Eichian mind!

If her mind had been free, she could have coped with the situation, but it was not. She _had_ to hold Worsel--she knew with cold certainty what would ensue if she did not. The crew? They could be blocked out temporarily--unlike the Velantian Lensman, no one of them could even suspect that he had been in a stasis unless it were long enough to be noticeable upon such timepieces as clocks. The procedure, however, occupied a millisecond or so of precious time; and a considerably longer interval was required to withdraw with the required tracelessness from Worsel's mind. Thus, before she could do anything except protect herself and the Velantian from that surprisingly powerful invading intelligence, all trace of it disappeared and all that remained of their captive was a dead body.

Worsel and Constance stared at each other, wordless, for seconds. The Velantian had a completely and accurately detailed memory of everything that had happened up to that instant, the only matter not quite clear being the fact that their hard-won captive was dead; the girl's mind was racing to fabricate a bulletproof explanation of that startling fact. Worsel saved her the trouble.

"It is, of course, true," he thought at her finally, "that any mind of sufficient power can destroy by force of will alone the entity of flesh in which it resides. I never thought about this matter before in connection with the Eich, but no detail of the experience your father and I had with them on Jarnevon would support any contention that they do not have minds of the requisite power, and today's battle, being purely physical, would not throw any light on the subject. I wonder if a thing like that could be stopped? That is, if we had been on time--?"

"That's it, I think." Con put on her most disarming, most engaging grin in preparation for the most outrageous series of lies of her long career. "And I don't think it can be stopped--at least I couldn't stop him. You see, I got into him a fraction of a second before you did, and in that instant, just like that," in spite of the fact that Worsel could not hear, she snapped her finger ringingly, "Faster even than that, he was gone. I didn't think of it until you brought it up, but you are as right as can be--he killed himself to keep us from finding out whatever it was that he knew about what is left of Boskonia."

Worsel stared at her with six eyes now instead of one, gimlet probes which glanced imperceptibly off her shield. He was not consciously trying to break down her barriers--to his fullest perception they were already down; no barriers were there. He was not consciously trying to integrate or reintegrate any detail or phase of the episode just past--no iota or trace of falsity had appeared at any point or instant. Nevertheless, deep down within those extra reaches that made Worsel of Velantia what he was, a vague disquiet refused to down. It was too ... too--Worsel's consciousness could not supply the adjective.

Had it been too easy? Very decidedly it had not. His utterly worn-out, battered and wounded crew refuted that thought. So did his own body, slashed and burned, as well as did the litter of primary shells and the heaps of smoking slag which had once been an enemy stronghold.

Also, even though he had not theretofore thought that he and his crew possessed enough force to do what had just been done, it was starkly unthinkable that anyone, even an Arisian, could have helped him do anything without his knowledge. Particularly how could this girl, daughter of Kimball Kinnison although she was, possibly have stuff enough to play unperceived the part of guardian angel to him, Worsel of Velantia?

Least able of all the Second-Stage Lensmen to appreciate what the Children of the Lens really were, he did not, then or ever, have any inkling of the real truth. But Constance, far behind her cheerfully innocent mask, shivered as she read exactly his disturbed and disturbing thoughts. For, conversely, an unresolved enigma would affect him more than it would any of his fellow L2's. He would work on it until he did resolve it, one way or another. This thing had to be settled, _now_. And there was a way--a good way.

* * * * *

"But I _did_ help you, you big lug!" she stormed, stamping her booted foot in emphasis. "I was in there every second, slugging away with everything I had. Didn't you even feel me, you dope?" She allowed a thought to become evident; widened her eyes in startled incredulity. "You _didn't_!" she accused, hotly. "You were reveling so repulsively in the thrill of body-to-body fighting, just like you were back there in that cavern of Overlords, that you couldn't have felt a thought if it was driven into you with a D2P pressor! And I'll bet credits to millos that I _did_ help you, too--that if I hadn't been in there pitching, dulling their edges here and there at critical moments, you'd've had a time getting them at all! I'm going to flit right now, and I hope I _never_ see you again as long as I live!"

This vicious counterattack, completely mendacious though it was, fitted the facts so exactly that Worsel's inchoate doubts vanished. Moreover, he was even less well equipped than are human men to cope with the peculiarly feminine weapons Constance was using so effectively. Wherefore the Velantian capitulated, almost abjectly, and the girl allowed herself to be coaxed down from her high horse and to become her usual sunny and impish self.

But when the _Velan_ was once more on course and she had retired to her cabin, it was not to sleep. Instead, she thought. Was this intellect of the same race as the one whose burst of thought she had caught such a short time before, or not? She could not decide--not enough data. The first thought had been unconscious and quite revealing; this one simply a lethal weapon, driven with a power the very memory of which made her gasp again. They could, however, be the same--the mind with which she had been _en rapport_ could very well be capable of generating the force she had felt. If they were the same, they were something that should be studied, intensively and at once; and she herself had kicked away her only chance to make that study. She had better tell somebody about this, even if it meant confessing her own bird-brained part, and get some competent advice. Who?

Kit? No. Not because he would smack her down--she _ought_ to be smacked down!--but because his brain wasn't enough better than her own to do any good. In fact, it wasn't a bit better than hers.

Mentor? At the very thought she shuddered, mentally and physically. She would call him in, fast enough, regardless of consequences to herself, if it would do any good, but it wouldn't. She was starkly certain of that. He wouldn't smack her down, like Kit would, but he wouldn't help her, either. He'd just sit there and sneer at her while she stewed, hotter and hotter, in her own juice.

"In a childish, perverted, and grossly exaggerated way, Daughter Constance, you are right," the Arisian's thought rolled sonorously into her astounded mind. "You got yourself into this--get yourself out. One promising fact, however, I perceive--although seldom and late--you at last begin really to think."

In that hour Constance Kinnison grew up.