Chapter XV

Inch by inch, foot by foot, Kinnison fought his way back along the corpse-littered corridor. Under the ravening force of the attacker's beams his defensive screens flared into pyrotechnic splendor, but they did not go down. Fierce-driven metallic slugs spanged and whanged against the unyielding dureum of his armor, but that, too, held. Dureum is incredibly massive, unbelievably tough, unimaginably hard--against these qualities and against the thousands of horsepower driving that veritable tank and energizing its screens the zwilniks might just as well have been shining flashlights at him and throwing confetti. His immediate opponents could not touch him, but the Boskonians were bringing up reserves that he didn't like a little bit; mobile projectors with whose energies even his screens could not cope.

He had, however, one great advantage over his enemies. He had the sense of perception; they did not. He could see them, but they could not see him. All he had to do was to keep at least one opaque wall between them until he was securely behind the mobile screens, powered by the stupendous generators of the _Dauntless_, which VanBuskirk and his Valerians were so earnestly urging toward him. If a door was handy in the moment of need, he used it. If not, he went through a wall.

The Valerians were fighting furiously and were coming fast. Those two words, when applied to members of that race, mean something starkly incredible to anyone who has never seen Valerians in action. They average little less than seven feet in height; something over four hundred pounds in weight; and are muscled, boned, and sinewed against a normal gravitational force of almost three times that of Earth. VanBuskirk's weakest warrior could do, in full armor, a standing high jump of fourteen feet against one Tellurian gravity; he could handle himself and the thirty-pound monstrosity which was his space-ax with a blinding speed and a devastating efficiency literally appalling to contemplate. They are the deadliest hand-to-hand fighters ever known; and, unbelievable as it may seem to any really highly advanced intelligence, they did and still do fairly revel in that form of combat.

The Valerian tide reached the battling Gray Lensman--closed around him.

"Hi ... you little ... Tellurian ... wart!" Major Peter VanBuskirk boomed this friendly thought, a yell of pure joy, in cadence with the blows of his utterly irresistible weapon. His rhythm broke--his frightful ax was stuck. Not even dureum-inlaid armor could bar the inward course of those furiously driven beaks; but sometimes it made it fairly difficult to get them out. The giant pulled, twisted--put one red-splashed boot on the battered breastplate--bent his mighty back--heaved viciously. The weapon came free with a snap that would have broken any ordinary man's arms, but the Valerian's thought rolled smoothly on: "Ain't we got fun?"

"Ho, Bus, you big Valerian baboon!" Kinnison thought back in kind. "Thought maybe we would need you and your gang--thanks for the ride. But back, now, and fast!"

Although the Valerians did not like to retreat, after even a successful operation, they knew how to do it. Hence in a matter of minutes all the survivors--and their losses had been surprisingly small--were back inside the _Dauntless_.

"You picked up my speedster, Frank." It was a statement, not a question, directed at the young Lensman standing beside the Chief Pilot's board.

"Of course, sir. They're massing fast, and without any hostile demonstration, as you said they would." He nodded unconcernedly at the plate, which showed the sky dotted with warlike shapes.

"No maulers?"

"None detectable as yet."

"QX. Original orders stand. At detection of one mauler, execute Operation Able without further instructions. Tell everybody that, while the announcement of Operation Able will put me out of control instantly and automatically, until such announcement I will give instructions. What they will be like I haven't the foggiest notion. It depends on what His Nibs upstairs decides to do--it's his move next."

* * * * *

As though the last phrase were a cue, a burst of noise rattled from the speaker--of which only the words "Bradlow Thyron" were intelligible to the un-Lensed members of the crew. That name, however, explained why they were not being attacked--yet. Kalonia had heard much of that intransigent and obdurate pirate and of the fabulous prowess of his ship; and Kinnison was pretty sure that they were much more interested in his ship than in him.

"I can't understand you!" The Gray Lensman barked, in the polyglot language he had so lately learned. "Talk pidgin!"

"Very well. I see that you are indeed Bradlow Thyron, as we were informed. What do you mean by this outrageous attack? Surrender! Disarm your men, take off their armor, and march them out of your vessel, or we will blast you as you lie there--Mendonai, vice admiral, speaking!"

"I abase myself." Kinnison-Thyron did not sneer--exactly--and he did incline his stubborn head perhaps one millimeter; but he made no move to comply with the orders so summarily issued. Instead:

"What kind of planet is this, anyway?" he demanded, hotly. "I come here to see this louse Harkleroy because a friend of mine tells me that he's a big shot and so interested in my line that we can do a lot of business with each other. I give the lug fair warning, too--tell him plain that I've been around plenty and that if he tries to give me the works I'll rub him out like a pencil mark. So what happens? In spite of what I just tell him he tries dirty work on me, and I go to work on him--which he certainly has got coming to him. Then you and your flock of little tin boats come barging in as though I'd busted a law or something. Who do you think you are, anyway? What license you got to be butting into a private business deal?"

"Ah, I had not heard that version." Vision came on; the face upon the plate was typically Kalonian--blue, cold, cruel, and keen. "Harkleroy was warned, you say? Definitely?"

"I warned him plenty definitely. Ask any of the zwilniks in that private office of his. Most of them are still alive, and they all must of heard it."

The plate fogged, the speaker again gave out gibberish. The Lensmen knew, however, that the commander of the cruisers above them was indeed questioning the dead zwilnik's guards. They knew that Kinnison's story was being corroborated in full.

"You interest me." The Boskonian's language again became intelligible to the group at large. "We will forget Harkleroy--stupidity brings its own reward and the property damage is of no present concern. From what I have been able to learn of you, you have never belonged to that so-called Civilization. I know for a fact that you are not, and never have been, one of us. How have you been able to survive? And why do you work alone?"

"'How' is easy enough--by keeping one jump ahead of the other guy, like I did with your pal here, and by being smart enough to have good engineers put into my ship everything that any other one ever had and everything they could dream up besides. As to 'why,' that's simple, too. I don't trust anybody except myself. If nobody except myself ever knows what I'm going to do, or when, nobody except myself is ever going to be able to stick a knife into me when I ain't looking--see? So far, it's paid off big. I'm still around, and still healthy, while them that trusted other guys ain't."

"I see. Crude, but graphic. The more I study you, the more convinced I become that you would be a worth-while addition to our force--"

"No deal, Mendonai," Kinnison interrupted, shaking his unkempt head positively. "I never yet took orders from no boss, and I ain't going to, never."

"You misunderstand me, Thyron." The zwilnik was queerly patient and much too forbearing. Kinnison's insulting omission of his title should have touched him off like a rocket. "I was not thinking of you in any minor capacity, but as an ally. An entirely independent ally, working with us in certain mutually advantageous undertakings."

"Such as?" Kinnison allowed himself to betray his first sign of interest. "You may be talking sense now, brother, but what's in it for me? Believe me, there's got to be plenty."

"There will be plenty. With the ability you have already shown, and with our vast resources back of you, you will take more every week than you have been taking in a year."

"Yeah? People like you just love to do things like that for people like me. What do _you_ figure on getting out of it?" Kinnison wondered, and Lensed a sharp thought to his junior at the board.

"On your toes, Frank. He's stalling for something, and I'm betting it's maulers."

"None detectable yet, sir."

* * * * *

"We stand to gain, of course," the pirate admitted, smoothly. "For instance, there are certain features of your vessel which might--just possibly, you will observe, and speaking only to mention an example--be of some interest to our naval designers. Also, we have heard that you have an unusually hot battery of primary beams. You might tell me about some of those things now; or at least refocus your plate so that I can see something besides your not unattractive face."

"I might not, too. What I've got here is my own business, and stays mine."

"Is that what we are to expect from you in the way of co-operation?" The commander's voice was still low and level, but now bore a chill of deadly menace.

"Co-operation!" The cutthroat chief was unimpressed. "I'll maybe tell you a thing or two--eat out of your dish--after I get good and sold on your proposition, whatever it is, but not one second sooner!"

The commander glared. "I weary of this. You probably are not worth the trouble, after all. I might as well blast you out now as later. You know that I can, of course, as well as I do."

"Do I?" Kinnison did sneer, this time. "Act your age, pal. As I told that fool Harkleroy, this ain't the first planet I ever sat down on, and it won't be the last. And don't call no maulers," as the Boskonian officer's hand moved almost imperceptibly toward a row of buttons. "If you do, _I_ start blasting as soon as we spot one on our plates--and they're full out right now."

"_You_ would start blasting?" The zwilnik's surprise--almost amazement--was plain, but the hand stopped its motion.

"Yeah--me. Them heaps of scrap metal you got up there don't bother me a bit, but maulers I can't handle, and I ain't afraid to tell you so because you probably know it already. I can't stop you from calling 'em, if you want to, but bend both ears to this--I can outrun 'em, and I'll guarantee that you personally won't be alive to see me run. Why? Because your ship will be the first one I'll whiff on the way out. And if the rest of your heaps stick around long enough to try to stop me, I'll whiff twenty-five or thirty more of them before your maulers can get close enough so that I'll have to flit. Now, if your brains are made out of the same kind of thick, blue mud that Harkleroy's was, start something!"

This was an impasse. Kinnison knew what he wanted the other to do, but he could not give him a suggestion, or even a hint, without tipping his hand. The officer, quite evidently, was in a quandary. He did not want to open fire upon this tremendous, this fabulous ship. Even if he could destroy it, such a course would be unthinkable--unless, indeed, the very act of destruction would brand as false rumor the tales of invincibility and invulnerability which had heralded its coming, and thus would operate in his favor at the court-martial so sure to be called. He was very much afraid, however, that those rumors were not false--a view which was supported very strongly both by Thyron's undisguised contempt for the Boskonian warships threatening him and by his equally frank declaration of his intention to avoid engagement with craft of really superior force. Finally, however, the Boskonian perceived one thing that did not quite fit.

* * * * *

"If you are as good as you claim to be, why aren't you doing a flit right now?" Mendonai asked, smoothly. "If you could get away, I should think that you'd be doing it. We've got stuff, you know, that's both heavy and fast."

"Because I don't _want_ to flit, that's why. Use your head, pal." This was better. Mendonai had shifted the conversation into a line upon which the Lensman could do a bit of steering. "I had to leave the First Galaxy because it got too hot for me, and I got no connections at all, yet, here in the Second. You folks need certain kinds of stuff that I've got, and I need other kinds, that you've got. So we could do a nice business, if you wanted to. That was what I had in mind with Harkleroy, but he got greedy. I don't mind saying that I'd like to do business with you, but I just got bit pretty bad, and I'll have to have some kind of solid guarantee that you mean business, and not monkey business, before I take a chance again. See?"

"I see. The idea is good, but its execution may prove difficult. I could give you my word, which I assure you has never been broken."

"Don't make me laugh." Kinnison snorted. "Would you take mine?"

"The case is different. I would not. Your point, however, is well taken. How about the protection of a high court of law? I will bring you an unalterable writ from any court you name."

"Uh-huh," the Gray Lensman dissented. "There never was no court yet that didn't take orders from the big shots who kept the fat cats fat, and lawyers are the crookedest crooks in the whole Universe. You'll have to do better than that, pal."

"Well, then, how about a Lensman? You know about Lensmen, don't you?"

"A Lensman!" Kinnison gasped. He shook his head violently. "Are you completely nuts, or do you think I am? I _do_ know Lensmen--a Lensman chased me from Alsakan to Vandemar once, and if I hadn't had a dose of Hell's own luck, he'd have got me. Lensmen chased me out of the First Galaxy--why else do you think I'm here? Use your brain, mister, use your brain!"

"You're thinking of Civilization's Lensmen--particularly of Gray Lensmen." The officer was manifestly enjoying Thyron's passion. "Ours--the Black Lensmen--are different--entirely different. They have as much power, or more, but they use it as it should be used. They work with us right along. In fact, they have been bumping Gray Lensmen off right and left lately."

"You mean that he could open up, for instance, your mind and mine, so that we could see that the other guy wasn't figuring on running in no stacked decks? And that he'd stand by and sort of referee this business deal we got on the fire? And do you know one yourself--personally?"

"He could, and would, do all that. Yes, I know one personally. His name is Melasnikov, and his office is on Kalonia III, not an hour's flit from here. He may not be there at the moment, but he will come in if I call. How about it--shall I call him now?"

"Don't work up a sweat. Sounds like it might work, if we can figure out an approach. I don't suppose that you and him would come out to me in space?"

"Hardly. After the way you have acted, you wouldn't expect us to, would you?"

"It wouldn't be very bright of you. And since I want to do business, I guess I got to meet you part way. How would this be? You pull your ships away, out of range. My ship takes station right above this here Lensman's office. I go down in my speedster, like I did here, and go inside to meet him and you. I'll wear my armor--and when I say it's real armor I ain't just snapping my choppers, neither."

"I can see only one slight flaw." The Boskonian was really trying to work out a mutually satisfactory solution. "The Lensman will open our minds to you in proof, however, that we will have no intention of bringing up our maulers or other heavy stuff while we are in conference."

"Right then he'll show you that you hadn't better, too." Kinnison grinned, wolfishly.

"What do you mean?" The officer demanded.

"I mean that I've got enough good big superatomic bombs aboard to blow the planet apart, and that the boys'll drop 'em all if you start playing dirty. I've got to take a little chance, of course, to start doing business, but it's a small one. If you ain't smart enough to know that what would happen would be mighty poor business, your Lensman will be--especially when it won't get you any dope on what makes this ship of mine tick the way she does. And the clincher is that even if you bring up everything you've got, I never did figure on living forever, and going out in an atomic blast of that size, together with your fleet and half your planet and you and your Lensman and seven hundred million other people, is as good a way as I can think of."

"If the Lensman's examination bears that out, it will constitute an absolute guarantee," the officer agreed. Hard as he was, he could not conceal the fact that he had been shaken: "Everything, then, is satisfactory?"

"On the green. Are you ready to flit?"

"We are ready."

"Call your Lensman, then, and lead the way. Boys, take her upstairs!"