Chapter XII

Helmuth sat at his desk, thinking--thinking with all the coldly analytical precision of which he was capable.

This Lensman was, in truth, a foeman worthy of his steel. The cosmic-energy drive, developed by the science of a world which the patrol did not know existed, 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 did manage to learn the secret of power, to all intents and purposes unlimited, 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, simple of ultimate quantitative analysis, but actually impossible of duplication because of some subtlety of intra-atomic arrangement. Also, it was of peculiar and dire potentiality. Not a man of his force could even wear one; he had watched several of them die horribly in attempting to do so. It must account in some way for the outstanding ability of the Lensmen, and it must tie in, somehow, both with Arisia and with the thought-screens. This 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 this information should never get back to Prime Base, little harm would be done. Ships could and would be thrown around the solarian system in such numbers that not even a grain-of-dust meteorite could pass that screen without detection. Nothing--nothing whatever--would be allowed to enter that system until this whole affair had been settled. There were other patrol bases, of course, but with the Prime Base isolated, nothing really serious could happen. So much for the Lensman. Now about getting the secret of the Lens.

Again, how? There was something upon Arisia, and that something was connected in some way with the Lens and with thought--possibly also with the new thought-screens. Whatever it was, it had mental power, of that there was no doubt. Out of the full sphere of space, what was the mathematical probability that the pilot of that death ship would have set, by accident, his course so exactly upon this planet? Vanishingly small. Treachery would not explain the facts. The pilot had been insane when he had laid the course. As an explanation, mental force alone seemed fantastic, but none 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, his own personal property as yet. Of no other will could he say the same; no other would he trust with those screens. Of all his force, he was the only one whom he could be _sure_ of. Therefore, he would go himself.

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 a serious conference. I have watched with admiration and appreciation, as well as some mild amusement, the development of your lines of information, particularly those covering affairs which are most distinctly not in your department. They are, however, efficient. You already know exactly what has happened." A definite statement this, is no wise a question.

"Yes, sir," Wolmark said quietly. He 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 approximately twenty 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," Helmuth said, 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 some 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 making arrangements to supplant me. If I were not entirely confident of getting back here safely, my dear Wolmark, I would not go."

"You misunderstood 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 solarian system 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." Helmuth strode away.

He was whisked to the space port, where his special speedster awaited him.

* * * * *

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. "Wherever, think you, originated those screens? We did not foresee your theft of them from Velantia, but think you that we would allow to remain at large a thing which we could not neutralize?

"Know, fool, once and for all, that Arisia does 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 basis and the goal of 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, who were already an ancient race when the remotest ancestors of your own were still wriggling in their planet's primordial slime.

"You consider yourself cold, hard, ruthless. Comparatively you are weak, soft, tender as a child unborn. 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 calm and cold now. He would 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 in 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 consciousness.

* * * * *

He awakened white and shaking, wringing wet with perspiration and so weak that he could scarcely sit erect, but with a supremely blissful 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. We well 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 a 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.

* * * * *

Since Wolmark believed implicitly Helmuth's statement that it would be poor technique to oppose his return, the planet's screens went down at Helmuth's signal. His first act was to call all the department heads to the center, for an extremely important council of war.

There he told them everything that had happened, calmly and concisely, concluding: "They are aloof, disinterested, unpartisan to a degree I find it impossible to understand. They disapprove of us on purely philosophical grounds, but they will take no active part against us as long as we stay away from their solar system. Therefore, we cannot obtain knowledge of the Lens by direct action, but there are other methods which shall be worked out in due course.

"The Arisians do approve of the patrol, and have helped them to the extent of giving them the Lens. There, however, they stop. If the Lensmen do not know how to use their Lenses efficiently--and I gather that they do not--we 'shall be allowed to conquer and to flourish for a time.' We _will_ conquer, and we will see to it that the time of our flourishing will be a long one indeed.

"The whole situation, then, boils down to this: our cosmic energy against the Lens of the patrol. Ours is the much more powerful arm, but our only hope of immediate success lies in keeping the patrol in ignorance of our cosmic-energy receptors and converters. One Lensman already has that knowledge. Therefore, gentlemen, it is very clear that the death of that Lensman has now become absolutely imperative. We _must_ find him, if it means the abandonment of our every other enterprise throughout the galaxy. Give me a full report upon the screening of the solarian system."

"It is done, sir," came the quick reply. "That system is completely blockaded. Ships are spaced so closely that even the electromagnetic detectors have a five-hundred-per-cent overlap. Visual detectors have at least two-hundred-fifty-per-cent overlap. Nothing as large as one centimeter in any dimension can get through without detection and observation."

"And how about the search of Trenco?"

"Results are still negative. One of our ships, a Rigellian, with papers all in order, visited Trenco space port openly. No one was there except the regular force of Rigellians. Our captain was in no position to be too inquisitive, but the missing ship was certainly not in the port and he gathered that he was the first visitor they had had in a month. We learned on Rigel IV that Tregonsee, the Lensman actually there, has been there for a month and will not be relieved for another month. He was the only Lensman there. We are, of course, carrying on the search for the rest of the planet. About half the personnel of each vessel to land has been lost. But they started with double crews and replacements are being sent."

"The Lensman Tregonsee's story may or may not be true," Helmuth mused. "It makes little difference. It would be impossible to hide that ship in the Trenco space port from even a casual inspection, and if the ship is not there the Lensman is not. He may be hiding somewhere else on the planet, but I doubt it. Continue to search, nevertheless. There are many things he may have done. I will have to consider them, one by one."

But Helmuth had very little time to consider what Kinnison might have done, for the Lensman had left Trenco long since. Because of the flare baffles upon his driving projectors his pace was slow; but to compensate for this condition the distance to be covered was short. Therefore, even as Helmuth was cogitating upon what next to do, the Lensman and his able crew were approaching the far-flung screen of Boskonian war vessels investing the entire solar system.

To approach that screen undetected was a physical impossibility, and before Kinnison realized that he was in a danger zone six tractors had flicked out, had seized his ship, and had jerked it up to combat range. But the Lensman was ready for anything, and again everything happened at once.

* * * * *

Warnings screamed into the distant pirate base and Helmuth, tense at his desk, took personal charge of his mighty fleet. On the field of action Kinnison's screens flamed out in stubborn defense; tracers and tractors snapped under his slashing shears; the baffles disappeared in an incandescent flare as he shot maximum blast into his drive; and space again became suffused with the output of his now ultra-powered multiplex scrambler.

And through that murk the Lensman directed a thought toward Earth, with the full power of mind and Lens.

"Port Admiral Haynes--Prime Base! Port Admiral Haynes--Prime Base! Urgent! Kinnison calling from the direction of Sirius--urgent!" he sent out the fiercely-driven message.

It so happened that at Prime Base it was deep night, and Port Admiral Haynes was sound asleep. But his ever-vigilant Lens received the message, and like the trigger-nerved old space cat that he was, the admiral came instantly awake. Scarcely had an eye flicked open than his answer had been hurled back: "Haynes acknowledging. Send it, Kinnison!"

"Coming in, in a pirate ship--VanBuskirk, Thorndyke, and I, and a crew of Velantians. All the pirates in space are on our necks. But we're coming in, in spite of hell and high water! Don't send up any ships to help us down. They could blast you out of space in a second, but they can't stop us. Get ready. It won't be long now!"

Then, after the port admiral had sounded the emergency alarm, Kinnison went on: "Our ship carries no markings, but there's only one of us and you'll know which one it is. We'll be doing the dodging. They'd be crazy to follow us down to base, with all the stuff you've got, but they act crazy enough to do almost anything. If they do follow us down, get ready to give 'em everything you've got. Here we are!"

Pursued and pursuers had touched the outermost fringe of the stratosphere; and, slowed down to optical visibility by even that highly rarefied atmosphere, the battle raged in incandescent splendor. One ship was spinning, twisting, looping, gyrating, jumping and darting hither and thither--performing every weird maneuver that the fertile and agile mind of the Lensman could improvise--to shake off the horde of attackers.

The pirates, on the other hand, were desperately determined that, whatever the cost, that Lensman should not land. Tractors would not hold and the inertialess ship could not be rammed. Therefore, their strategy was that which had worked so successfully four times before in similar case--to englobe the ship completely and thus beam her down. And while attempting this englobement they so massed their forces as to drive the Lensman's vessel as far as possible away from the grim and tremendously powerful fortifications of the patrol's Prime Base, almost directly below them.

* * * * *

But those four other patrol-manned pirate ships which the pirates had recaptured had not been driven by Lensmen; and in this ship Kinnison, the Lensman, was now calling upon his every resource of instantaneous nervous reaction, of brilliant brain and of lightning hand, to avoid that fatal trap. And avoid it he did, by series after series of fantastic maneuvers never set down in any manual of space combat.

Powerful as were the weapons of Prime Base, in that thick atmosphere their effective range was less than fifty miles. Therefore the gunners, idle at their controls, and the officers of the superdreadnaughts, chained by definite orders to the ground, fumed and swore as, powerless to help their battling fellows, they stood by and watched in their plates the furious engagement so high overhead.

But slowly, _so_ slowly, Kinnison won his way downward, keeping as close over base as he could without being englobed. Finally he managed to get within range of the gigantic projectors of the patrol. Only the heaviest of the fixed-mount guns could reach that mad whirlpool of ships, but each one of them raved out against the same spot at precisely the same instant. In the inferno which that spot instantly became, not even a full-driven wall shield could endure, and a vast hole yawned where pirate ships had been. The beams flicked off, and, timed by his Lens, Kinnison shot his ship through that hole before it could be closed, and arrowed downward toward base at maximum blast.

Ship after ship of the pirate horde followed him down in madly suicidal last attempts to blast him out, down toward the terrific armament of the base. Prime Base itself, the most dreaded, the most heavily armed, the most impregnable fortress of the Galactic Patrol! Nothing afloat could even threaten that citadel. The overbold attackers simply disappeared in brief flashes of coruscant vapor.

Kinnison flashed to ground in a free landing and called his commander.

"Did any of the other boys beat us in, sir?" he asked.

"No, sir," came the curt response. Congratulations, felicitations, and celebration would come later; he was now the port admiral receiving an official report.

"Then, sir, I have the honor to report that the expedition has succeeded." And he could not help adding informally, youthfully exultant at the success of his first real mission, "We've brought home the bacon!"