Chapter XIII

A powerful fleet had been sent to rescue those of the _Brittania's_ crew who might have managed to stay out of the clutches of the pirates. The wildly enthusiastic celebration inside Prime Base was over. Outside the force walls of the reservation, however, it was just beginning. Thorndyke, VanBuskirk, and the Velantians were in the thick of it. No one on Earth, except a few planetographers, had ever heard of Velantia, and those highly intelligent reptilian beings knew even less of Tellus. Nevertheless, simply because they had aided the patrolmen, the visitors were practically given the keys to the planet, and they were enjoying the experience tremendously.

"We want Kinnison! We want Kinnison!" the festive crowd, led by Universal Telenews men, had been yelling; and finally the Lensman came out. But after one pose before a lens and a few words into a microphone, he pleaded, "There's my call, now--urgent!" and fled back inside Reservation. Then the milling tide of celebrants rolled back toward the city, taking with it every patrolman who could get leave.

Engineers and designers were swarming through and over the pirate ship Kinnison had driven home, each armed with a sheaf of blue prints already prepared from the long-cherished data spool, each directing a corps of mechanics in dismantling some mechanism of the great space rover. It was to this hive of bustling activity that Kinnison had been called. He stood there, answering as best he could the multitude of questions being fired at him from all sides, until he was rescued by no less a personage than Port Admiral Haynes.

"You gentlemen can get your information from the data sheets better than you can from Kinnison," he remarked with a smile, "and I want to take his report without any more delay."

Hand under arm, the old Lensman led the young one away. But once inside his private office he summoned neither secretary nor recorder. Instead, he pushed the buttons which set up a complete-coverage shield and spoke.

"Now, son, open up. Out with it--everything that you have been holding back ever since you landed. I got your signal."

"Well, yes, I have been holding back," Kinnison admitted. "I haven't got enough jets to be sticking my neck out in fast company, even if it were something to be discussed in public, which it is not. I'm glad you could give me this time so soon. I want to go over an idea with you, and with _no one else_. It may be as cockeyed as Trenco's ether--you are to be the sole judge as to that--but you will know, no matter how goofy it is, that I mean well."

"That certainly is not an overstatement," Haynes replied, dryly. "Go ahead."

"The great peculiarity of space combat is that we fly free, but fight inert," Kinnison began, apparently irrelevantly, but choosing his phraseology with care. "To force an engagement one ship locks to the other first with tracers, then with tractors, and goes inert. Thus, relative speed determines the ability to force or to avoid engagement; but it is relative power that determines the outcome. Heretofore, the pirates----

* * * * *

"And by the way, we are belittling our opponents and building up a disastrous overconfidence in ourselves by calling them pirates. It has been thought before that they were not pirates, and now we know definitely that they are not. It is more than a race or a system. It is actually a galaxy-wide culture. It is an absolute despotism, holding its authority by means of a rigid system of rewards and punishments. In our eyes it is fundamentally wrong, but it works. _How_ it works! It is organized just as we are, and is apparently as strong in bases, vessels and personnel. In my own mind I have been calling the whole culture 'Boskonia,' since no one seems to know who or what Boskone really is. Perhaps Boskone really _is_ the name of the entire organization?

"But to get on with the thought. Boskonia has had all the best of it, both in speed--except for the _Brittania's_ momentary advantage--and in power. That advantage is now lost to them. We will have, then, two immense powers, each galactic in scope, each tremendously powerful in arms, equipment, and personnel; each having exactly the same weapons and defenses, and each determined to wipe out the other. A stalemate is inevitable; an absolute deadlock; a sheerly destructive war of attrition which will go on for centuries and which must end in the annihilation of both Boskonia and civilization."

"But our new shears and screens!" protested the older man. "They give us an overwhelming advantage. We can force or avoid engagement, as we please. You know the plan to crush them. You helped to develop it."

"Yes, I know the plan. I also know that we will not crush them. So do you. We both know that our advantage will be only temporary." The young Lensman, unimpressed, was in deadly earnest.

* * * * *

The admiral did not reply for a time. Deep down, he himself had felt the doubt; but neither he nor any other of his school had ever mentioned the thing that Kinnison had now so boldly put into words. He knew that whatever one side had, of weapon or armor or of equipment, would sooner or later become the property of the other--as was witnessed by the desperate venture which Kinnison himself had so recently and so successfully concluded. He knew that the devices installed in the vessels captured upon Velantia had been destroyed before falling into the hands of the enemy, but he also knew that with entire fleets so equipped the new arms could not be kept secret indefinitely.

Therefore, he finally replied: "That may be true." He paused, then went on like the indomitable veteran that he was, "But we have the advantage now and we'll drive it while we've got it. After all, we _may_ be able to hold it long enough."

"I've just thought of one more thing that would help: communication." Kinnison did not argue the previous point, but went ahead. "It seems to be impossible to drive any kind of a communicator beam through the double interference----"

"_Seems_ to be!" barked Haynes. "It _is_ impossible! Nothing but a thought----"

"That's it exactly--_thought_!" interrupted Kinnison in turn. "The Velantians can do things with a Lens that nobody would believe possible. Why not examine some of them for Lensmen? I'm sure that Worsel could pass, and probably many others. They can drive thoughts through anything except their own thought-screens--and what communicators they would make!"

"That idea has distinct possibilities and will be followed up. However, it is not what you wanted to discuss. G.A.!"

"QX," Kinnison went into Lens-to-Lens communication. "I want some kind of a shield or screen that will neutralize or nullify a detector. I asked Hotchkiss, the communications expert, about it--under seal. He said that it had never been investigated, even as an academic problem in research, but that it was theoretically possible."

"This room is shielded, you know." Haynes was surprised at the use of the Lenses. "Is it _that_ important?"

"I don't know. As I said before, I may be cockeyed; but if my idea is any good at all that nullifier is the most important thing in the universe, and if word of it gets out it will be absolutely useless. You see, sir, over the long route, the only really permanent advantage that we have over Boskonia, the one thing that they cannot get, is the Lens. There must be some way to use it. If that nullifier is possible, and if we can keep it a secret, I believe that I have found it. At least, I want to try something. It may not work--probably it won't; it's a mighty slim chance--but if it does, we may be able to wipe out Boskonia in a few months, instead of carrying on forever a war of attrition. First, I want to go to----"

"Hold on!" Haynes snapped. "I've been thinking, too. I can't see any possible relation between such a device and any real military weapon, or the Lens, either. If I can't, not many others can, and that's a point in your favor. If there is anything at all in your idea, it is too big to share with any one, even me. Keep it yourself."

"But it's a peculiar hook-up, and may not be any good at all," protested Kinnison. "You might want to cancel it."

"No danger of that," came the positive statement. "You know more about the pirates--pardon me, about Boskonia--than any other patrolman. You believe that your idea has some slight chance of success. Very well--that fact is enough to put every resource of the patrol back of you. Put your idea on a tape and seal the spool in your private box in the vault, so that it will not be lost in case of your death. Then go ahead. If it is possible to develop that nullifier, you shall have it. Hotchkiss will take charge of it, and have any other Lensmen he wants. No one except Lensmen will work on it or know anything about it. Only one will be made and no records will be kept. It will not even exist until you yourself release it to us."

"Thanks, sir." And Kinnison left the room.

* * * * *

Then for weeks Prime Base was the scene of an activity furious indeed. New apparatus was designed and tested; shears for tracers and tractors, generators of screens against cosmic-energy intake, scramblers for the communicators of the enemy, and many other things. Each item was designed and tested, redesigned and retested, until even the most skeptical of the patrol's engineers could no longer find in it anything to criticize. Then, throughout the galaxy, the ships of the patrol were called into their sector bases to be rebuilt.

There were to be two great classes of vessels. Those of the first were to have speed and defense--nothing else. They were to be the fastest things in space, and able to defend themselves against attack. That was all. Vessels of the second class had to be built from the keel upward, since nothing even remotely like them had theretofore been conceived. They were to be huge, ungainly, slow--simply storehouses of incomprehensibly vast powers of offense. They carried projectors of a size and power never before set upon movable foundations, nor were they dependent upon cosmic energy. They carried their own, in bank upon stupendous bank of Gargantuan accumulators. In fact, each of these monstrous floating fortresses was to be able to generate screens of such design and power that no vessel anywhere near them could receive cosmic energy!

This, then, was the bolt which civilization was preparing to hurl against Boskonia. In theory the thing was simplicity itself. The ultra-fast cruisers would catch the enemy, lock on with tractors, and go inert, thus anchoring in space. Then, while absorbing and dissipating everything that the opposition could send, they would put out a peculiarly patterned interference, the center of which could easily be located. The mobile fortresses would then come up, cut off the Boskonians' power intake, and finish up the job.

Not soon was that bolt forged; but in time civilization was ready to launch its stupendous and, it was generally hoped and believed, conclusive attack upon Boskonia. Every sector base and sub-base was ready; the zero hour had been set.

At Prime Base Kimball Kinnison, the youngest Tellurian ever to wear the four silver stripes of captain, sat at the conning plate of the cruiser _Brittania II_, so named at his own request. He thrilled inwardly as he thought of her speed. Such was her force of drive that, streamlined to the ultimate degree although she was, she had special wall shields, and special dissipators to radiate into space the heat of friction of the medium through which she tore so madly. Otherwise she would have destroyed herself in an hour of full blast, even in the hard vacuum of interstellar space!

And in his office Port Admiral Haynes watched a chronometer. Minutes to go--then seconds.

"Clear ether and light landings." His deep voice was gruff with unexpressed emotion. "Five seconds.... QX.... Lift!" And the fleet shot into the air.

* * * * *

The first objective of this solarian fleet was twofold, and this first hop was to be a short one indeed. For the Boskonians had established bases upon both Pluto and Neptune, right here in the solarian system. So close to Prime Base were these bases that only intensive screening and constant vigilance had kept their spy rays out; so powerful were they that the ordinary battleships of the patrol had been impotent against them. Now they were to be removed. Therefore the fleet, cruisers and "maulers" alike, divided into two parts; one part flashing toward Neptune, the other toward slightly more distant Pluto.

Short as was the time necessary to traverse any interplanetary distance, the solarians were detected and were met in force by the ships of Boskone. But scarcely had battle been joined when the enemy began to realize that this was to be a battle the like of which they had never before seen; and when they began to understand it, it was too late. They could not run, and all space was so full of interference that they could not even report to Helmuth what was going on. These first, peculiarly teardrop-shaped vessels of the patrol did not fight at all. They simply held on like bulldogs, taking without response everything that the white-hot projectors could hurl into them.

Their defensive screens radiated fiercely, high into the violet, under the appalling punishment being dealt out to them by the batteries of ship and shore, but they did not go down. Nor did the grip of a single tractor loosen from its anchorage. And in minutes the squat and monstrous maulers came up. Out went their cosmic-energy blocking screens, out shot their tractor beams, and out from the refractory throats of their stupendous projectors there raved the most terrifically destructive forces generable by man.

Boskonian outer screens scarcely even flickered as they went down before the immeasurable, the incredible violence of that thrust. The second course offered a briefly brilliant burst of violet radiance as it gave way. The inner screen resisted stubbornly as it ran the spectrum in a wildly coruscant display of pyrotechnic splendor; but it, too, went through the ultra-violet and into the black.

Now the wall shield itself--that inconceivably rigid fabrication of pure force, which only the instantaneous detonation of twenty metric tons of "duodec" had ever been known to rupture--was all that barred from the base metal of Boskonian walls the utterly indescribable fury of the maulers' beams. Now force was streaming from that shield in veritable torrents.

So terrible were the conflicting energies there at grips that their neutralization was actually visible and tangible. In sheets and masses, in terrific, ether-racking vortices, and in miles-long, pillaring streamers and flashes, those energies were being hurled away--hurled to all the points of the sphere's full compass, filling and suffusing all near-by space.

The Boskonian commanders stared at their instruments, first in bewildered amazement and then in sheer, stark, unbelieving horror as their power intake dropped to zero and their wall shields began to fail--and still the attack continued in never-lessening power. Surely that beaming _must_ slacken down soon. No conceivable mobile plant could throw such a load for long!

But those mobile plants could--and did. The attack kept up, at the extremely high level upon which it had begun. No ordinary storage cells fed those mighty projectors; along no ordinary busbars were their Titanic amperages borne. Those maulers were designed to do just one thing--to _maul_--and that one thing they did well, relentlessly and thoroughly.

* * * * *

Higher and higher into the spectrum the defending wall shields began to radiate. At the first blast they had leaped almost through the visible spectrum, in one unbearably fierce succession of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo, up to a sultry, coruscating, blindingly hard violet. Now the doomed shields began leaping erratically into the ultra-violet. To the eye they were already invisible; upon the recorders they were showing momentary flashes of black.

Soon they went down; and in the instant of each failure one vessel of Boskonia was no more. For, that last defense gone, nothing save unresisting metal was left to withstand the ardor of those ultra-powerful, ravening beams. As has already been said, no substance, however refractory or resistant or inert, can endure even momentarily in such a field of force. Therefore, every atom, alike of vessel and of contents, went to make up the searing, seething burst of brilliant, incandescently luminous vapor which suffused all circumambient space.

Thus passed out of the scheme of things the vessels of the solarian detachment of Boskonia. Not a single vessel escaped; the cruisers saw to that. And then the attack thundered on to the bases themselves. Here the cruisers were useless; they merely formed an observant fringe, the while continuing to so blanket all channels of communication that the doomed bases could send out no word of what was happening to them. The maulers moved up and grimly, doggedly, methodically went to work.

Since a base is always much more powerfully armored than is a battleship, the reduction of these fortresses took longer than had the destruction of the fleet. But the bases could no longer draw power from the Sun or from any other heavenly body, and their other sources of power were comparatively weak. Therefore, their defenses also failed under that never-ceasing assault. Course after course their screens went down, and with the last one went the base. The maulers' beams went through metal and masonry as effortlessly as steel-jacketed bullets go through butter, and bored on, deep into the planet's bedrock, before their frightful force was spent.

Then around and around they spiraled, until nothing whatever was left of the Boskonian works; until only a seething, white-hot lake of molten lava in the midst of the planet's frigid waste was all that remained to show that anything had ever been built there.

Surrender had not been thought of. Quarter or clemency had not been asked, nor offered. Victory, of itself, was not enough. This was, and of stern necessity had to be, a war of utter, complete, and merciless extinction.