Chapter IV

Space-suited complete, except for helmets, and with those ready at hand, Kinnison and VanBuskirk sat in the tiny control room of their lifeboat as it drifted inert through interstellar space. Kinnison was poring over charts taken from the _Brittania's_ pilot room; the sergeant gazed idly into a detector plate.

"No clear ether yet, I don't suppose," the captain remarked, as he rolled up a chart and tossed it aside.

"No let-up for a second; they're not taking any chances at all. Found out where we are? Alsakan ought to be hereabouts somewhere, hadn't it?"

"I've got our coördinate roughly. Alsakan would be fairly close for a ship, but it's out of the question for us. Nothing much inhabited around here, either, apparently; to say nothing of being civilized. Scarcely one to the block. Don't think I've been out here before. Have you?"

"Off my beat entirely. How long do you figure it'll be before it's safe for us to blast off?"

"Can't start blasting until your plates are clear. Anything we can detect can detect us as soon as we start putting out power."

"We may be in for a spell of waiting then----" VanBuskirk broke off suddenly and his tone changed to one of tense excitement. "Great blasts of fire! Look at that!"

"Blinding blue blazes!" Kinnison exclaimed, staring into the plate. "With all macro-universal space and all the time in eternity to play around in, the blind god of chance had to bring her back here and now!"

For there, right in their laps, not a hundred miles away, lay the _Brittania_ and her two pirate captors!

"Better go free, hadn't we?" whispered VanBuskirk.

"Daren't!" grunted Kinnison. "At this range they'd spot us in a split second. Acting like a hunk of loose metal's our only chance. We'll be able to dodge any flying chunks, I think. There she goes!"

From their coign of vantage the two patrolmen saw their gallant ship's terrific end, saw the one pirate vessel suffer collision with the flying fragment, saw the other escape inertialess, saw her disappear.

The inert pirate vessel had now almost exactly the same velocity as the lifeboat, both in speed and in direction; only very slowly were the large craft and the small approaching each other. Kinnison stood rigid, staring into his plate, his nervous hands grasping the switches whose closing, at the first sign of detection, would render them inertialess and would pour full blast into their driving projectors. But minute after minute passed and nothing happened.

"Why don't they do something?" he burst out, finally. "They know we're here. There isn't a detector made that could be badly enough out of order to miss us at this distance. Why, they can _see_ us from there, with no detectors at all!"

"Asleep, unconscious, or dead," VanBuskirk diagnosed. "And they certainly are not asleep. And believe me, Kim, that ship was nudged. It's quite possible that she was hit hard enough to lay out most of her crew cold--anyway enough of them to put her out of control. And say, it's a practical certainty that she has a standard emergency inlet port. How about it, huh?"

* * * * *

Kinnison's mind leaped eagerly at the daring suggestion of his subordinate, but he did not reply at once. Their first, their _only_ duty, concerned the safety of two spools of tape. But if the lifeboat lay there inert until the pirates regained control of their craft, detection and capture were certain. The same fate was as certain should they attempt flight with all near-by space so full of enemy fliers. Therefore, hare-brained though it appeared at first glance, VanBuskirk's wild idea was actually the safest course!

"All right, Bus, we'll try it. We'll take a chance on going free and using a tenth of a dyne of drive for a hundredth of a second. Get into the lock with your magnets."

The lifeboat flashed against the pirate's armored side and the sergeant, by deftly manipulating his two small hand magnets, worked it rapidly along the steel plating toward the driving jets. There, in the conventional location just forward of the main driving projectors, was indeed the emergency inlet port, with its galactic-standard controls.

In a few minutes the two warriors were inside, dashing toward the control room. There Kinnison glanced at the board and heaved a sigh of relief.

"Fine! Same type as the one we studied. Same race, too," he went on, eyeing the motionless forms scattered about the floor. Seizing one of the bodies, he propped it against a panel, thus obscuring a multiple lens.

"That's the eye overlooking the control room," he explained unnecessarily. "We can't cut their headquarters visibeams without creating suspicion, but we don't want them looking around in here until after we have done a little stage setting for them."

"But they'll get suspicious anyway when we go free," VanBuskirk protested.

"Sure, but we'll arrange for that later. First thing we've got to do is to make sure that all the crew, except possibly one or two in here, are really dead. Don't beam unless you have to; we want to make it look as though everybody got killed or fatally injured in the crash."

A complete tour of the vessel, with a grim and distasteful accompaniment, was made. Not all of the pirates were dead, or even disabled; but, unarmored as they were and taken completely by surprise, the survivors could offer but little resistance. A cargo port was opened and the _Brittania's_ lifeboat was drawn inside. Then back to the control room, where Kinnison picked up another body and strode to the main panels.

"This fellow," he announced, "was hurt badly, but managed to get to the board. He threw in the free switch, like this, and then full-blast drive, so. Then he pulled himself over to the steering globe and tried to lay the pointers back toward headquarters, but couldn't quite make it. He died with the course set right there. Not exactly toward the solar system, you notice--that would be too much of a coincidence--but close enough to help a lot. His bracelet got caught in the guard, like this. There is clear evidence as to exactly what happened. Now we'll get out of range of that eye, and let the body that's covering it float away naturally."

"Now what?" asked VanBuskirk, after the two had hidden themselves.

"Nothing whatever until we have to," was the reply. "Wish we could go on like this for a couple of weeks, but there's not a chance. Headquarters will get curious pretty quick as to why we're shoving off."

* * * * *

Even as he spoke a furious burst of noise erupted from the communicator; a noise which meant:

"Vessel F47U596! Where are you going, and why? Report!"

At that brusque command one of the still forms struggled weakly to its knees and tried to frame words, but fell back dead.

"Perfect!" Kinnison breathed into VanBuskirk's ear. "Couldn't have been better. Now they'll probably take their time about rounding us up. Listen, here comes some more."

The communicator was again sending. "See if you can get a direction on their transmitter!"

"If there are any survivors able to report, do so at once!" Kinnison understood the dynamic cone to say. Then the voice moderating, as though the speaker had turned from his microphone to someone near-by, it went on, "No one answers, sir. This, you know, is the ship that was lying closest to the new patrol ship when she exploded; so close that her navigator did not have time to go free before collision with the débris. The crew were apparently all killed or incapacitated by the shock."

"If any of the officers survive have them brought in for trial," a more distant voice commanded, savagely. "Boskone has no use for bunglers except to serve as examples. Have the ship seized and returned here as soon as possible."

"Could you trace it, Bus?" Kinnison demanded. "Even one line on their headquarters would be mighty useful."

"No, it came in scrambled--couldn't separate it from the rest of the static out there. Now what?"

"Now we eat and sleep. Particularly and most emphatically, we sleep."

"Watches?"

"No need; I'll be awakened in plenty of time if anything happens. My Lens, you know."

They ate ravenously and slept prodigiously; then ate and slept again. Rested and refreshed, they studied charts, but VanBuskirk's mind was very evidently not upon the maps before them.

"You understand that jargon, and it doesn't even sound like a language to me," he pondered. "It's the Lens, of course. Maybe it's something that shouldn't be talked about?"

"No secret--not among us, at least," Kinnison assured him. "The Lens receives as pure thought any pattern of force which represents, or is in any way connected with, thought. My brain receives this thought in English, since that is my native language. At the same time my ears are practically out of circuit, so that I actually hear the English language instead of whatever noise is being made. I do not hear the foreign sounds at all. Therefore, I haven't the slightest idea what the pirates' language sounds like, since I have never heard any of it.

"Conversely, when I want to talk to some one who doesn't know any language I do, I simply think into the Lens and direct its force at him. He thinks I'm talking to him in his own mother tongue. Thus, you are hearing me now in perfect Valerian Dutch, even though you know that I can speak only a dozen or so words of it, and those with a vile American accent. Also, you are hearing it in my voice, even though you know I am actually not saying a word, since you can see that my mouth is wide open and that neither my lips, tongue, nor vocal cords are moving. If you were a Frenchman you would be hearing this in French; or, if you were a Manarkan and couldn't talk at all, you would be getting it as regular Manarkan telepathy."

"Oh--I see--I think," the astounded Dutchman gulped. "Then why couldn't you talk back to them through their phones?"

"Because the Lens, although a mighty fine and versatile thing, is not omnipotent," Kinnison replied, dryly. "It sends out only thought; and thought waves, lying below the level of the ether, cannot affect a microphone. The microphone, not being itself intelligent, cannot receive thought. Of course, I can broadcast a thought--everybody does; more or less--but even with the full amplification of the Lens the range is very limited. In Lens-to-Lens communication we can cover real distances, but without a Lens at the other end I can cover only a few thousand kilometers. Of course, power increases with practice, and I'm not very good at it yet."

"You can receive a thought----Everybody broadcasts----Then you can read minds?" VanBuskirk stated, rather than asked.

"When I so will it, yes. That was what I was doing while we were mopping up. I demanded the galactic coördinates of their base from every one of them alive, but none of them knew them. I got a lot of pictures and descriptions of the buildings, layout, arrangements and personnel of the base, but not a hint as to its location in space. The navigators were all dead, and not even the Arisians understand death. But that's getting pretty deeply into philosophy and it's time to eat again. Let's go!"

* * * * *

Days passed uneventfully, but finally the communicator again began to talk. Two pirate ships were closing in upon the supposedly derelict cruiser, discussing with each other the exact point of convergence of the three courses.

"I was hoping that we'd be able to communicate with base before they caught up with us," Kinnison remarked. "But I guess it's no dice--the ether's as full of interference as ever. They're a suspicious bunch, and they aren't going to let us get away with a single thing if they can help it. You've got that duplicate of their communications unscrambler built?"

"Yes. That was it you just listened to. I built it out of our own stuff, and I've gone over the whole ship with a cleaner. As far as I can see there isn't a trace, not even a fingerprint, to show that anybody except her own crew has ever been aboard."

"Good work! This course takes us right through a planetary system in a few minutes and we'll have to unload there. Let's see. This chart marks planets two and three as inhabited, but with a red reference number, twenty-seven. That means practically unexplored and unknown. No patrol representation or connection--no commerce--state of civilization unknown--visited only once, in the Third Galactic Survey. That was in the days of the semi-inert drive, when it took years to cross the galaxy. Not so good, apparently--but maybe all the better for us, at that. Anyway, it's a forced landing, so get ready to shove off."

They boarded their lifeboat, placed it in the cargo lock, opened the outer port upon its automatic block, and waited. At their awful galactic speed the diameter of a solar system would be traversed in such a small fraction of a second that observation would be impossible, to say nothing of computation. They would have to act first and compute later.

They flashed into the strange system. A planet loomed terrifyingly close--at their frightful velocity almost invisible even upon their ultra-vision plates. The lifeboat shot out, becoming inert as it passed the screen. The cargo port swung shut. Luck had been with them; the planet was scarcely a million miles away. While VanBuskirk drove toward it, Kinnison made hasty observations.

"Could have been better--but could have been a lot worse," he reported. "This is Planet 4. Uninhabited, which is very good. Three, though, is clear over across the Sun, and Two isn't any too close for a space-sun flight--better than eighty million miles. Easy enough as far as distance goes--we've all made longer hops in our suits--but we'll be open to detection for at least twenty minutes. Can't be helped, though. Here we are!"

"Going to land her free, huh?" VanBuskirk whistled. "What a chance!"

"It'd be a bigger one to take the time to land her inert. Her power will hold--I hope. We'll inert her and match velocities with her when we come back. We'll have more time then."

* * * * *

The lifeboat stopped instantaneously, in a free landing, upon the uninhabited, desolate, rocky soil of the strange world. Without a word the two men leaped out, carrying fully packed knapsacks. A portable projector was then dragged out and its fierce beam directed into the base of the hill beside which they had landed. A cavern was quickly made, and while its glassy walls were still smoking-hot the lifeboat was driven within it. With their DeLameters the two wayfarers then undercut the hill, so that a great slide of soil and rock obliterated every sign of the visit. Kinnison and VanBuskirk could find their vessel again, from their accurately taken bearings; but, they hoped, no one else could.

Then, still without a word, the two adventurers flashed upward. The atmosphere of the planet, tenuous and cold though it was, nevertheless, so sorely impeded their progress, that minutes of precious time were required for the driving projectors of their suits to force them through its thin layer. Eventually, however, they were in interplanetary space and were flying at quadruple the speed of light. Then VanBuskirk spoke.

"Landing the boat, hiding it, and this trip are the danger spots. Heard anything yet?"

"No, and I don't believe we will. I think probably we've lost them completely. Won't know definitely, though, until after they catch the ship, and that won't be for ten minutes yet. We'll be landed by then."

A world now loomed beneath them, a pleasant, Earthly-appearing world of scattered clouds, green forests, rolling plains, wooded and snow-capped mountain ranges, and rolling oceans. Here and there were to be seen what looked like cities, but Kinnison gave them a wide berth, electing to land upon an open meadow in the shelter of a towering black and glassy cliff.

"Ah, just in time; they're beginning to talk," Kinnison announced. "Unimportant stuff yet, opening the ship and so on. I'll relay the talk as nearly verbatim as possible when it gets interesting." He fell silent, then went on in a singsong tone, as though he were reciting from memory, which, in effect, he was:

"'Captains of ships P4J263 and EQ769B47 calling Helmuth! We have stopped and have boarded the F47U569. Everything is in order and as deduced and reported by your observers. Every one aboard is dead. They did not all die at the same time, but they all died from the effects of the collision. There is no trace of outside interference and all the personnel are accounted for.'

"'Helmuth, speaking for Boskone. Your report is inconclusive. Search the ship minutely for tracks, prints, scratches. Note any missing supplies or misplaced items of equipment. Study carefully all mechanisms, particularly converters and communicators, for signs of tampering or dismantling.'

"Whew!" whistled Kinnison. "They'll find where you took that communicator apart, Bus, just as sure as hell's a man-trap!"

"No, they won't," declared VanBuskirk as positively. "I did it with rubber-nosed pliers, and if I left a scratch or a scar or a print on it I'll eat it, tubes and all!"

A pause.

"'We have studied everything most carefully, O Helmuth, and find no trace of tampering or visit.'

"Helmuth again: 'Your report is still inconclusive. Whoever did what has been done is probably a Lensman, and certainly has _brains_. Give me the present recorded serial number of all port openings, and the exact number of times you have opened each port.'

"Ouch!" groaned Kinnison. "If that means what I think it does, all hell's out for noon. Did you see any numbering recorders on those ports? I didn't. Of course, neither of us thought of such a thing. Shut up, here comes some more stuff.

"'Port-opening recorder serial numbers are as follows.' They don't mean a thing to us. 'We have opened the emergency inlet port once and the starboard lock twice. No other port at all.'

"And here's Helmuth again: 'Ah, as I thought. The emergency port was opened once by outsiders, and the starboard cargo port twice. The Lensman came aboard, headed the ship toward Sol, took his lifeboat aboard, listened to us, and departed at his leisure. And this in the very midst of our fleet, the entire personnel of which was supposed to be looking for him! How supposedly intelligent spacemen could be guilty of such utter and indefensive stupidity?'

"He's tellin' 'em plenty, Bus, but there's no use repeating it. The tone can't be reproduced, and it's simply taking the hide right off their backs. Here's some more: 'General broadcast! Ship F47U596 in its supposedly derelict condition flew from the point of destruction of the patrol ship, on course longitude three five one point two seven degrees, latitude five point two three degrees, distance twenty-four thousand seven hundred parsecs. Cancel all previous orders and investigate.' No use repeating it, Bus, he's simply giving directions for scouring our whole line of flight. Fading out--they're going on, or back. This outfit, of course, is good for only the closest kind of close-up work."

"And we're out of the frying pan into the fire, huh?"

"Oh, no; we're a lot better off than we were. We're on a planet and not using any power that they can trace. Also, they've got to cover so much territory that they can't comb it very fine, and that gives the rest of the fellows a break. Furthermore----"

* * * * *

A crushing weight descended upon his back, and the two found themselves fighting for their lives. From the bare, supposedly safe rock face of the cliff there had emerged rope-tentacled monstrosities in a ravenously attacking swarm. In the raving blasts of DeLameters hundreds of the gargoyle horde vanished in vivid flashes of radiance, but on they came, by thousands and, it seemed, by millions, dashing madly toward them.

Eventually, the batteries energizing the projectors became exhausted. Then flailing coil met shearing steel, fierce-driven parrot beaks clanged against space-tempered armor, bulbous heads pulped under hard-swung axes; but not for the fractional second necessary for inertialess flight could the two patrolmen win clear. Then Kinnison sent out his S O S.

"A Lensman calling help! A Lensman calling help!" he broadcast with the full power of mind and Lens.

Immediately a high, girlish voice poured into his brain: "Coming, wearer of the Lens! Coming at speed to the cliff of the Catlats. Hold until I come! I arrive in thirty----"

Thirty what? What possible intelligible relative measure of that unknown and unknowable concept, time, can be conveyed by thought alone?

"Keep slugging, Bus!" Kinnison panted. "Help is on the way. A local cop--voice sounds like a woman--will be here in thirty somethings. Don't know whether it's thirty minutes or thirty days; but we'll still be here."

"Maybe so and maybe not," grunted the Dutchman. "Something's coming besides help. Look up and see if you see what I think I do."

Kinnison did. Through the air from the top of the cliff there was hurtling downward toward them a veritable dragon: a nightmare's horror of hideously reptilian head, of leathern wings, of viciously fanged jaws, of frightfully taloned feet, of multiple knotty arms, of long, sinuous, heavily scaled serpent's body. In fleeting glimpses through the writhing tentacles of his opponents Kinnison perceived, little by little, the full picture of that unbelievable monstrosity; and, accustomed as he was to the outlandish denizens of worlds even yet scarcely known to man, his very senses reeled at the sight.

* * * * *

As the quasi-reptilian organism descended, the cliff dwellers went mad. Their attack upon the two patrolmen, already vicious, became insanely frantic. Abandoning the gigantic Dutchman entirely, every Catlat within reach threw himself upon Kinnison and so enwrapped the Lensman's head, arms, and torso that he could scarcely move a muscle. Then entwining captors and helpless man moved slowly toward the largest of the openings in the cliff's obsidian face.

Upon that slowly moving mélange VanBuskirk hurled himself, deadly space ax swinging. But, hew and smite as he would, he could neither free his chief from the grisly horde enveloping him nor impede, measurably, that horde's progress toward its goal. However, he could and did cleave away the comparatively few cables confining Kinnison's legs.

"Clamp a leg lock around my waist, Kim," he directed, the flashing thought in no whit interfering with his prodigious ax play, "and as soon as I get a chance, before the real tussle comes, I'll couple us together with all the belt snaps I can reach. Wherever we're going we're going together! Wonder why they haven't ganged up on me, too, and what that lizard is doing? Been too busy to look, but thought he'd have been on my back before this."

"He won't be on your back. That's Worsel, the lad who answered my call. I told you his voice was funny? They can't talk or hear--use telepathy, like the Manarkans. He's cleaning them out in great shape. If you can hold me for three minutes, he'll have the lot of them whipped."

"I can hold you for three minutes against all the vermin between here and Andromeda," VanBuskirk declared. "There, I've got four snaps on you."

"Not too tough, Bus," Kinnison cautioned. "Leave enough slack so that you can cut me loose if you have to. Remember that the spools are more important than any one of us. Once inside that cliff we'll all be washed up--even Worsel can't help us there--so drop me rather than go in yourself."

"Um," grunted the Dutchman, non-committally. "There, I've tossed my spool out onto the ground. Tell Worsel that if they get us he is to pick it up and carry on. We'll go ahead with yours, inside the cliff if necessary."

"I said cut me loose if you can't hold me!" Kinnison snapped, "and I meant it. That's an official order. Remember it!"

"Official order be damned!" snorted VanBuskirk, still plying his ponderous mace. "They won't get you into that hole without breaking me in two, and that will be a job of breaking in anybody's language. Now shut your pan," he concluded grimly. "We're here, and I'm going to be too busy, even to think, very shortly."

He spoke truly. He had already selected his point of resistance, and as he reached it he thrust the head of his mace into the crack behind the open trap-door, jammed its shaft into the shoulder socket of his armor, set blocky legs and Herculean arms against the side of the cliff, arched his mighty back, and held. And the surprised Catlats, now inside the gloomy fastness of their tunnel, thrust anchoring tentacles in the wall and pulled harder, ever harder.

Under the terrific stress Kinnison's heavy armor creaked as its air-tight joints accommodated themselves to their new and unusual positions. That armor, of space-tempered alloy, would, of course, not give way--but what of its human anchor?

* * * * *

Well it was for Kimball Kinnison that day, and well for our present civilization, that the _Brittania's_ quartermaster selected Peter VanBuskirk for the Lensman's mate; for death, inevitable and horrible, resided within that cliff, and no human frame of Earthly upbringing, however armored, could have borne, for even a fraction of a second, the violence of the Catlats' pull.

But Peter VanBuskirk, although of Earthly Dutch ancestry, had been born and reared upon the planet Valeria, and that massive planet's gravity--over two and one half times Earth's--had given him a physique and a strength almost inconceivable to us life-long dwellers upon small, green Terra. His head, as has been said, towered seventy-eight inches above the ground; but at that he appeared squatty because of his enormous spread of shoulder and his startling girth. His bones were elephantine--they had to be, to furnish adequate support and leverage for the incredible masses of muscle overlaying and surrounding them. But even VanBuskirk's Valerian strength was now being taxed to the uttermost.

The anchoring chains hummed and snarled as the clamps bit into the rings. Muscles writhed and knotted; tendons stretched and threatened to snap; sweat rolled down his mighty back. His jaws locked in agony and his eyes started from their sockets with the effort; but still VanBuskirk held.

"Cut me loose!" commanded Kinnison at last. "Even you can't take much more of that. No use letting them break your back. _Cut_, I tell you. I said _cut_, you big, dumb, Valerian ape!"

But if VanBuskirk heard or felt the savagely voiced commands of his chief, he gave no heed. Straining to the very ultimate fiber of his being, exerting every iota of loyal mind and every atom of Brobdingnagian frame, grimly, tenaciously, stubbornly the gigantic Dutchman held.

Held while Worsel of Velantia, that grotesquely hideous, that fantastically reptilian ally, plowed toward the two patrolmen through the horde of Catlats; a veritable tornado of rending fang and shearing talon, of beating wing and crushing snout, of mailed hand and trenchant tail.

Held while that demon incarnate drove closer and closer, hurling entire Catlats and numberless dismembered fragments of Catlats to the four winds as he came.

Held while the raging tumult, whose center was Worsel, swept over his rigid body like an ocean wave breaking over an immovable rock.

Held until Worsel's snakelike body, a supple and sentient cable of living steel, tipped with its double-edged, razor-keen, scimitarlike sting, slipped into the tunnel beside Kinnison and wrought grisly havoc among the Catlats close-packed there!

As the terrific tension upon him was suddenly released VanBuskirk's own efforts hurled him away from the cliff. He fell to the ground, his overstrained muscles twitching uncontrollably, and on top of him fell the fettered Lensman. Kinnison, his hands now free, unfastened the clamps linking his armor to that of VanBuskirk and whirled to confront the foe. But the fighting was over. The Catlats had had enough of Worsel of Velantia; and, shrieking in baffled rage, the last of them were disappearing into their caves. He turned back to VanBuskirk, who was getting shakily to his feet.

"Thanks a lot, Worsel; we were just about to run out of time----" VanBuskirk began, only to be silenced by an insistent thought from the grotesque stranger.

"Stop that radiating! Do not think at all if you cannot screen your minds!" came the urgent mental commands. "These Catlats are a very minor pest of this planet Delgon. There are others worse by far. Fortunately, your thoughts are upon a frequency never used here--if I had not been so very close to you I would not have heard you at all--but should the Overlords have a listener upon that band, your unshielded thinking may already have done irreparable harm. Follow me. I will slow my speed to yours, but hurry all possible!"

"You tell 'im, chief," VanBuskirk said, and fell silent; his mind as nearly a perfect blank as his iron will could make it.

"This is a screened thought, through my Lens," Kinnison took up the conversation. "You don't need to slow down on our account. We can develop any speed you wish. Lead on!"

* * * * *

The Velantian leaped into the air and flashed away in headlong flight. Much to his surprise, the two human beings kept up with him effortlessly upon their inertialess drives, and after a moment Kinnison directed another thought.

"If time is an object, Worsel, know that my companion and I can carry you anywhere you wish to go at a speed hundreds of times greater than this that we are using," he vouchsafed.

It developed that time was of the utmost possible importance and the three closed in. Mighty wings folded back, hands and talons gripped armor chains, and the group, inertialess all, shot away at a pace that Worsel of Velantia had never even imagined in his wildest dreams of speed. Their goal, a small, featureless tent of thin sheet metal, occupying a barren spot in a writhing, crawling expanse of lushly green jungle, was reached in a space of minutes. Once inside, Worsel sealed the opening and turned to his armored guests.

"We can now think freely in open converse. This wall is the carrier of a screen through which no thought can make its way."

"This world you call by a name I have interpreted as Delgon," Kinnison began, slowly. "You are a native of Velantia, a planet now beyond the Sun. Therefore, I assumed that you were taking us to your space ship. Where is that ship?"

"I have no ship," the Velantian replied, composedly, "nor have I need of one. For the remainder of my life--which is now to be measured in a few of your hours--this tent is my only----"

"No ship!" VanBuskirk broke in. "I hope we won't have to stay on this God-forsaken planet forever--and I'm not very keen on going much farther in that lifeboat, either."

"We may not have to do either of those things," Kinnison reassured his sergeant. "Worsel comes of a long-lived tribe, and the fact that he thinks his enemies are going to get him in a few hours doesn't make it true, by any means. There are three of us to reckon with now. Also, when we need a space ship we'll get one, if we have to build it. Now, let's find out what this is all about. Worsel, start at the beginning and don't skip a thing. Between us we can surely find a way out, for all of us."

* * * * *

Then the Velantian told his story. There was much repetition, much roundabout thinking, as some of the concepts were so bizarre as to defy transmission, but finally the Earthman had a fairly complete picture of the situation within that strange solar system.

The inhabitants of Delgon were bad, being characterized by a type and a depth of depravity impossible for a mind of Earth to visualize. Not only were the Delgonians enemies of the Velantians in the ordinary sense of the word; not only were they pirates and robbers; not only were they their masters, taking them both as slaves and as food cattle; but there was something more, something deeper and worse, something only partially transmissible from mind to mind--a horribly and repulsively Saturnalian type of mental and intellectual, as well as biological, parasitism. This relationship had gone on for ages.

Finally, however, a thought-screen had been devised, behind which Velantia developed a high science of her own. The students of this science lived with but one purpose in life: to free Velantia from the tyranny of the Overlords of Delgon. Each student, as he reached the zenith of his mental power, went to Delgon, to study and if possible destroy the tyrants. And after disembarking upon the soil of that dread planet no Velantian, whether student or scientist or private adventurer, had ever returned to Velantia.

"But why don't you lay a complaint against them before the council?" demanded VanBuskirk. "They'd straighten things out in a hurry."

"We have not heretofore known, save by the most unreliable and roundabout reports, that such an organization as your Galactic Patrol really exists," the Velantian replied, obliquely. "Nevertheless, many years since, we launched a space ship toward its nearest reputed base. However, since that trip requires three normal lifetimes, with deadly peril in every moment, it will be a miracle if the ship ever completes it.

"Furthermore, even if the ship should reach its destination, our complaint will probably not even be considered, because we have not a single shred of real evidence with which to support it. No living Velantian has ever seen a Delgonian, nor can any one testify to the truth of anything I have told you. While we believe that that is the true condition of affairs, our belief is based, not upon evidence admissible in a court of law, but upon deductions from occasional thoughts radiated from this planet. Nor were these thoughts alike in tenor----"

"Skip that for a minute--we'll take the picture as correct," Kinnison broke in. "Nothing you have said so far shows any necessity for you to die in the next few hours."

"The only object in life for a trained Velantian is to liberate his planet from the horrors of subjection to Delgon. Many such have come here, but not one has found a workable idea; not one has either returned to or even communicated with Velantia after starting work here. I am a Velantian. I am here. Soon I shall open that door and get in touch with the enemy. Since better men than I am have failed, I do not expect to succeed. Nor shall I return to my native planet. As soon as I start to work the Delgonians will command me to come to them. In spite of myself I will obey that command, and very shortly thereafter I shall die, in what fashion I do not know."

* * * * *

"Snap out of it, Worsel!" barked Kinnison, roughly. "That's the rankest kind of defeatism, and you know it. Nobody ever got to the first check station on that kind of fuel."

"You are talking about something now about which you know nothing whatever." For the first time Worsel's thoughts showed passion. "Your thoughts are idle--ignorant--vain. You know nothing whatever of the mental power of the Delgonians."

"Maybe not--I make no claim of being a mental giant--but I do know that mental power alone cannot overcome a definitely and positively opposed _will_. An Arisian could probably break my will, but I'll stake my life that no other mentality in the known universe can do it!"

"You think so, Earthling?" And a seething sphere of mental force encompassed the Tellurian's brain. Kinnison's senses reeled at the terrific impact; but he shook off the attack and smiled.

"Come again, Worsel. That one jarred me to the heels, but it didn't quite ring the bell."

"You flatter me," the Velantian declared in surprise. "I could scarcely touch your mind--could not penetrate even its outermost defenses, and I exerted all my force. But that fact gives me hope. My mind is, of course, inferior to theirs, but since I could not influence you at all, even in direct contact and at full power, you may be able to resist the minds of the Delgonians. Are you willing to hazard the stake you mentioned a moment ago? Or rather, I ask you, by the Lens you wear, so to hazard it--with the liberty of an entire people dependent upon the outcome."

"Why not? The spools come first, of course--but without you our spools would both be buried now inside the cliff of the Catlats. Fix it so that your people will find these spools and carry on with them in case we fail, and I'm your man. There--now tell me what we're apt to be up against, and then let loose your dogs."

"That I cannot do. I know only that they will direct against you mental forces such as you never even imagined. I cannot forewarn you in any respect whatever as to what forms those forces may appear to assume. I know, however, that I shall succumb to the first bolt of force. Therefore, bind me with these chains before I open the shield. Physically, I am extremely strong, as you know; therefore, be sure to put on enough chains so that I cannot possibly break free, for if I can break away I shall undoubtedly kill both of you."

"How come all these things here, ready to hand?" asked VanBuskirk, as the two patrolmen so loaded the passive Velantian with chains, manacles, handcuffs, leg irons and straps that he could not move even his tail.

"It has been tried before, many times," Worsel replied bleakly, "but the rescuers, being Velantians, also succumbed to the force and took off the irons. Now I caution you, with all the power of my mind--no matter what you see, no matter what I may command you or beg of you, no matter how urgently you yourself may wish to do so--_do not liberate me under any circumstances_ unless and until things appear exactly as they do now and that door is shut. Know fully and ponder well the fact that if you release me while that door is open it will be because you have yielded to Delgonian force, and that not only will all three of us die, lingeringly and horribly, but also, and worse, that our deaths will not have been of any benefit to civilization. Do you understand? Are you ready?"

"I understand. I am ready," thought Kinnison and VanBuskirk as one.

"Open that door."

* * * * *

Kinnison did so. For a few minutes nothing happened. Then three-dimensional pictures began to form before their eyes--pictures which they knew existed only in their own minds, yet which were composed of such solid substance that they obscured from vision everything else in the material world. At first hazy and indistinct, the scene--for it was in no sense now a picture--became clear and sharp. And, piling horror upon horror, sound was added to sight. And directly before their eyes, blotting out completely even the solid metal of the wall only a few feet distant from them, the two outlanders saw and heard something which can be represented only vaguely by imagining Dante's Inferno an actuality and raised to the _n_th power!

In a dull and gloomy cavern there lay, sat, and stood hordes of _things_. These beings--the "nobility" of Delgon--had reptilian bodies, somewhat similar to Worsel's, but they had no wings and their heads were distinctly apish rather than crocodilian. Every greedy eye in the vast throng was fixed upon an enormous screen which, like that in a motion-picture theater, walled off one end of the stupendous cavern.

Slowly, shudderingly, Kinnison's mind began to take in what was happening upon that screen. And it was really happening, Kinnison was sure of that. This was not a picture any more than this whole scene was an illusion. It was all an actuality--somewhere.

Upon that screen there were stretched out victims. Hundreds of these were Velantians, more hundreds were winged Delgonians, and scores were creatures whose like Kinnison had never seen. And all these were being tortured; tortured to death both in fashions known to the Inquisitors of old and ways of which even those experts had never an inkling.

Some were being twisted outrageously in three-dimensional frames. Others were being stretched upon racks. Many were being pulled horribly apart, chains intermittently but relentlessly extending each helpless member. Still others were being lowered into pits of constantly increasing temperatures or were being attacked by gradually increasing concentrations of some foully corrosive vapor which ate away their tissues, little by little. And, apparently the pièce de résistance of the hellish exhibition, one luckless Velantian, in a spot of hard, cold light, was being pressed out flat against the screen, as an insect might be pressed between two panes of glass. Thinner and thinner he became, under the influence of some awful, invisible force, in spite of every exertion of inhumanely powerful muscles driving body, tail, wings, arms, legs, and head in every frantic maneuver which grim and imminent death could call forth.

Physically nauseated, brainsick at the atrocious visions blasting his mind and at the screaming of the damned assailing his ears, Kinnison strove to wrench his mind away, but was curbed savagely by Worsel.

"You _must_ stay! You _must_ pay attention!" commanded the Velantian. "This is the first time any living being has seen so much! You _must_ help me now! They have been attacking me from the first; but, braced by the powerful negatives in your mind, I have been able to resist and have transmitted a truthful picture so far. But they are surprised at my resistance and are concentrating more force. I am slipping fast. You _must_ brace my mind! And when the picture changes--as change it must, and soon--do not believe it. Hold fast, brothers of the Lens, for your own lives and for the people of Velantia. There is more--and worse!"

Kinnison stayed. So did VanBuskirk, fighting with all his stubborn Dutch mind. Revolted, outraged, nauseated as they were at the sights and sounds, they stayed. Flinching with the victims as they were fed into the hoppers of slowly turning mills; wincing at the unbelievable acts of the boilers, the beaters, the scourgers, the flayers; suffering themselves every possible and many apparently impossible nightmares.

The light in the cavern now changed to a strong, greenish-yellow glare; and in that hard illumination it was to be seen that each dying being was surrounded by a palely glowing aura. And now, crowning horror of that unutterably horrible orgy of sadism resublimed, from the eyes of each one of the monstrous audience there leaped out visible beams of force. These beams touched the aura of the dying prisoners--touched and clung. And as they clung the aura shrank and disappeared.

The Overlords of Delgon were actually _feeding_ upon the ebbing life forces of their tortured, dying victims!