Chapter IV: Part 4

“Thanks, Vesta. You’ll be worth a whole platoon of Tomingans if you do.”

The copter landed on the flat roof of the hotel. The guests were registered and shown to their rooms. The Forget-Me-Not’s air was hot and humid, and the visitors wore the only clothing to be seen. Nevertheless, Cloud was too squeamish to go all the way, so he still wore shorts and sandals, as well as the side-arm of his rank, when he went back up to the lobby to meet his crew.

Vesta, tail-tip waving gracefully a foot and a half above her head, was wearing only her sandals. Thlaskin wore shorts and space-boots. Maluleme had reduced her conventional forty one square inches of covering to a daring twenty five—two narrow ribbons and a couple of jewels. Nadine, alone of them all, had made no concession to that stickily sweltering climate. She’d be disgraced for life, Cloud supposed, if she cut down by even one the hundreds of feet of white glamorette in which she was swathed. But Manarkans didn’t sweat like Tellurians, he guessed—if they did, she’d either peel or smother before this job was over!

Cloud scanned the lobby carefully. Were they attracting too much attention? They were not. They had had to pose for Telenews shots, of course—the Chickladorians in particular had been held in the spots for all of five minutes—but that was all. Like any other spaceport city, Mingia was used to outlandish forms of warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life. Not counting his own group, he could see members of four different non-Tomingan races, two of which were completely strange to him. And Tommie, standing alone in front of one of the row of shop-windows comprising one wall of the lobby—and very close to a mirrored pillar—was intently studying a tobacconist’s display of domestic and imported cigars.

“QX,” the Blaster said then. “We aren’t kicking up any fuss. Do your stuff, Vesta.”

The girl sauntered over to the mirror, licked her forefinger, and began to smooth an imaginary roughness out of one perfect eyebrow. Thus, palm covering mouth—

“He still hangs out here, Tommie?”

“He still eats supper here every night, in the same private room.” Tommie did not move or turn her head; her voice could not be heard three feet away.

“When he comes in, take one good look at him and think ‘This is the one’—Nadine’ll take over from there. Then sneak down to the chief’s suite and join us.”

Vesta, with a final approving pat at her sleek head, sauntered on; past a display of belt-pouches in which she was not interested, pausing before one of ultra-fancy candies in which she very definitely was, and back to her own group.

“On the green,” she reported.

“Then I’ll go on about my business of getting things lined up to blow out vortices. You, Thlaskin and Maluleme, just run around and play. Act innocent—you’re just atmosphere for now. Nadine and Vesta, go down to my suite—here’s a key—and get your recorder and stuff ready. I’ll see you later.”

Cloud came back, however, rather sooner than he had intended.

“I didn’t get far—I’ll have to take you along if I want to get any business done,” he explained to Vesta. “Up to now, I’ve got along very nicely with English, Spanish, and spaceal, but not here. We’re a long ways from either Tellus or Vegia.”

“We are indeed. I don’t know what they do use for an interstellar language here—I’ll have to find out and see if I know it yet.” Vesta then switched to English. “While we wait, do you mind if I zpeak at you in Englizh? And will you ztop me and correct, please, the errors I will make? My pronunziazion is getting better, but I ztill have much trouble with your irregular verbs and pronouns. I come, but I am not yet arrive.”

“I’ll say you’re better!” Cloud knew that she had been studying hard; studying with an intensity of concentration comparable only to that of a cat on duty at a mouse-hole; but he had expected no such progress as this. “It’s amazing—you have scarcely any more accent now in English than in Spanish. I’ll be glad to coach you. What you just said was QX except for the last sentence. Idiomatically, you should have said ‘I’m coming along, but I’m not there yet,’” and Cloud explained in detail. “Now, for practice, brief me on this job we’ve got here.”

“Thankz a lot. Tommie’s brother, whom we’ll call Jim, runs a tobacco zhop here in town.” Cloud had had to explain what “briefing” meant, and he corrected many slight errors which are not given here. “A man who called himself ‘Number One’ organized a Protective Azzoziazion. Anyone not joining, he zaid, would zuffer the conzequenzez of a looze atomic vortex in his power plant. When he zhowed he meant buzzinez by exploding one right where and when he zaid he would, many merchants joined and began to pay. Jim did not. Inztead, he . . . I forget the idiom?”

“‘Stalled.’ That means delayed, played for time.”

“Oh, yez. Jim ztalled, and Tommie went looking for help, knowing the government here thoroughly corrupt. Impozzible to alleviate intolerable zituazion.”

“_What_ a vocabulary!”

“Iz wrong?” Vesta demanded.

“No, is _right_,” Cloud assured her. “I was complimenting you, young lady—you’ll be teaching _me_ English before this trip is over.”

The class in English Conversation went on until the Manarkan warned its two participants to get ready; that Tommie, having identified the gangster, had left the lobby, had joined her brother, and was bringing him with her.

“Is that safe, do you think?” Vesta asked.

“For now, before anything starts, yes.” Cloud replied. “After tonight, no.”

The Tomingans arrived; Vesta let them in and introduced Jim to Nadine and Cloud. The brother was taller, heavier, craggier than the sister; his cigar was longer, thicker, and blacker than hers. Otherwise, they were very much alike. Cloud waved them both into comfortable chairs, for there was no time for conversation. Nadine began to write; Vesta to record.

The Big Shot—Nadine took an instant to flash into Cloud’s mind a very good picture of the fellow—was in his private room, but if a dinner were to be on the program it would be later. There were two men in the room; Number One and another man, whom he thought of and spoke to as “Number Nine.” At present the affair was strictly business. Number Nine was handing money to Number One, who was making notes in a book. Twenty credits from Number Seventeen; 50 from No. 20; 25 from No. 26; 175 from No. 29; 19 credits—all he could raise—from No. 30; 125 from No. 31, and so on. . . .

The gangsters thought that they were being very smart and cagey in using numbers instead of names, but neither had any idea of the power of a really good telepathic mind, or of that of a really good linguist. Each of those numbers meant something to either or to both of those men, and whatever it was—a name, a picture, a storefront or address, or a fleeting glimpse of personality pattern—Nadine seized and transmitted, either in shorthand or by force of mind, or both; and Vesta taped, in machine-gun-fast Spanish, every written word and every nuance of thought.

The list was long. At its end:

“Three more didn’t pay up, huh? The same ones holding out as last time, and three more besides, huh?” This was Number One, thinking deeply. “I don’t like it. . . . Ninety Two, huh? I don’t like it a bit—or him, either. I’ll have to do something about him.”

“Yeah. Ninety Two. The others all give the same old tear-jerker that they didn’t have it, that our assessments were too stiff for their take, and so on, but Ninety Two didn’t, this time. He simply blew his top. He was hotter than the business end of a blow-torch.” Not much to Cloud’s surprise, Nadine at this point poured into his mind the picture of excessively angry Jim. “Not only he didn’t fork over, he told me to tell you something.”

There was a long pause.

“Well, spill it!” Number One barked. “What did he say?”

“Shall I give it to you straight boss, or maybe I better tone it down some?”

“Straight!”

“He said for you to go roast, for fourteen thousand years, in the hottest corner you can find of the hottest hell of Telemachia, and take your Srizonified association with you. Take your membership papers and stick ’em. Blow his place up and be damned to you, he says. If you kill him in the blast he’s left stuff in a deposit box that’ll blow all the Srizonified crooked politicians and lawmen in the Fourth Continent off of their perches and down onto their Srizonified butts. An’ if you _don’t_ get him, he says, he’ll come after you with blasters in both hands. Make it plain, he says, that it’s _you_ he’ll be after—not me. That’s exactly what he told me to tell you, boss.”

“Me? ME?” Number One demanded. The towering rage, which he had been scarcely able to control, subsided into a warily intense speculation. “How did he find out about _me_? Somebody’ll burn for this!”

“I dunno, boss, but it looks like you said a mouthful about having to do something about him. We got to make an example of _somebody_, boss—or else—in my book it’d better be 92. He’s organizing, sure as hell, and if we don’t knock him off it’ll spread fast.”

“Hm . . . m . . . m. Yes, but just him personally, not his place. I’m not afraid of any evidence he can leave, of itself, but in connection with the other thing it might be bad. His place is too big; too centrally located. No matter what time of night it goes off it’ll kill too many people and do too much damage. Yellow Castle might dump us instead of trying to ride out such a storm.”

“Yeah, they might, at that. Prob’ly would. And the dogooders might get some of them Srizonified Lensmen in here besides. But an ordinary bomb would do the job.”

“No. Got to be a vortex. We promised ’em an atomic flare, so that’s what it’s got to be. It doesn’t have to be 92, though. We can get away easy enough with killing a few people, so I’d say somebody in the outskirts—53 would be as good as any. So tell 53 his place gets it at midnight tomorrow night, and the fewer people in it the more will stay alive.”

“Check. And I’ll take care of 92?”

“Of course. You don’t have to be told _every_ move to make.”

“Just wanted to make sure, is all. What do I do in the big fireworks?” It was clear that the underling was intensely curious about the phenomenon, but his curiosity was not to be satisfied.

“Nothing,” his chief informed him flatly. “That isn’t your dish. Now we’ll eat.”

Number One stopped talking, but he did not stop thinking; and Nadine could read, and Vesta could transcribe, thoughts as well as words.

“Besides, it’s about time for 31 to earn some of the credits we’re paying him,” was the grimly savage thought.

This thought was accompanied by a picture, which Nadine spread in full in Cloud’s mind. A tall, lean, gray Tellurian was aiming a mechanism—the details of which were so vague that it could have been anything from a vest-pocket flash-pencil up to a half-track mobile projector—at a power-plant, which immediately and enthusiastically went out of control in a blindingly incandescent flare of raw energy.

Fairchild!

Cloud’s mind raced. That vortex on Deka _hadn’t_ been accidental, then, even though there had been no evidence—no suspicion—even the Lensmen hadn’t guessed that the radiationist had been anything other than a very minor cog in Graves’ thionite-producing machine! Nobody except Fairchild knew what he did or how he did it—the mob must have tried to find out, too, but he wouldn’t give—but this stuff was very definitely for the future; not for now.

“QX, girls. A nice job—thanks,” he said. “Now, Vesta, please tape the actual facts and the actual words of the interview—none of the pictures or guesses—in Middle Plateau Tomingan. Wherever possible, bracket real names and addresses with the code numbers. Tommie and Jim can help you on that.”

She did so.

When they came to that part of the transcription dealing with Number Ninety Two, Jim stiffened and swelled in rage.

“Ask him if that’s an accurate report,” Cloud directed.

“It’s accurate enough as far as it goes,” Jim boomed. His voice, deeper and louder than Tommie’s, and not nearly as musical, almost shook the walls. “But he left out half of it. What I really told him would have burned all the tape off of that recorder.”

“But they left in that . . . that awful one, three times.” Tommie, tough as she was, was shocked. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“Srizonified?” Cloud whispered to Vesta. “It sounded bad, but not _that_ hot. Is it?”

“Yes, the hottest in the language. I never saw it in print, and heard it only once, and that was by accident. Like most such things, though, it doesn’t translate—‘descended from countless generations of dwellers in stinking, unflowering mud’ is as close as I can come to it in Spanish.”

“QX. Finish up the tape and make two copies of it.”

When the copies were ready Cloud handed them to Tommie.

“Tell him to take one of these down to the Tomingan equivalent of the D. A.’s office the first thing in the morning,” he instructed Vesta. “The other ought to go to a big law firm—an honest one, if she knows of any. Now ask Jim what he thinks he’s going to do.”

“I’m going to get a pair of blasters and. . . .”

“Yeah?” Cloud’s biting monosyllable, so ably translated by the Vegian, stopped him in mid-sentence. “What chance do you think you stand of getting home tonight in one piece? Your copter is probably mined right now, and they’ve undoubtedly made arrangements to blast you if you leave here any other way, even on foot. If you want to stay alive, though, I’ve got a suggestion to make.”

“You may be right, sir.” Jim’s bluster died away as he began really to think. “Do you see a way out?”

“Yes. Ordinary citizens don’t wear armor here, any more than anywhere else, so ordinary gangsters don’t use semi-portables. So, when you leave here, go to Tommie’s room instead of out. They’ll lay for you, of course, but while they’re waiting Tommie will go out to our ship and bring back my G-P armor. You put it on, walk out openly, and take a ground-car—_not_ a copter—to the ship. If they know armor they won’t shoot at you, because you could shoot back. When you get to the ship go in, lock the port behind you, and stay there until I tell you to come out.”

Jim, influenced visibly by the pleasant possibility of shooting back, accepted the plan joyously; and, after making sure that there were no spies or spy-rays on watch, the two Tomingans left the room.

A few minutes later, with the same precaution, Vesta and the Manarkan went to their own rooms; but they were on hand again after breakfast next morning.

“You know, of course, that you have no evidence admissible in even an honest court,” Nadine began. “You knew it when you changed your mind about having a Tomingan voice, not Vesta’s, on those tapes.”

“Yes. Communicator-taps are out—violation of privacy.”

“Exactly. And telepathy is worse. Any attempt to introduce telepathic testimony, on almost any non-telepathic world, does more harm than good. So, beyond establishing the fact of guilt in your own mind—a fact already self-evident, since such outrages can happen only when both courts and police are corrupt from top to bottom—I fail to see what you hope to gain.”

“Wouldn’t a Tomingan Lensman be interested?”

“There are none. There never have been any.”

“Well, then, I’ll take it up myself, with. . . .”

Cloud stopped in mid-thought. With whom? He could talk to Phil Strong, certainly, but he wouldn’t get anywhere. He knew, as well as Nadine did, that the Galactic Patrol would not interfere with purely local politics unless something of inter-systemic scope was involved. The Galactic Council held, and probably rightly, that any people got the kind of local government they deserved. He certainly couldn’t expect the Patrol to over-ride planetary sovereignty in regard to a thing that hadn’t happened yet! He wrenched his mind away.

“Having any trouble following her, Nadine?” he asked.

“No. She’s just leaving the fast-way now; going into his office.”

Thus, through Nadine, Cloud accompanied Tommie into the office of the District Attorney, saw her tender the spool of tape, heard her explain in stormy language what it was.

“How did you get hold of it?” the D. A. demanded.

“How do you suppose?” Tommie shot back. “Do we have to come down to City Hall and take out a license to hang an ear onto such a stinking crumb, such a notorious mobster and general all-round heel as Number One is? Public Enemy Number One, it ought to be!”

“No, I wouldn’t say that you would,” the politician soothed. He had been thinking fast. “I’ll run this tape as soon as I can take a minute alone in my chambers, and I promise you full and fast action. They’ve gone too far, this time. Just what, specifically, do you want me to do?”

“I’m no lawyer, so I don’t know who does what, but I want this Protective Association junked and I want those murderers arrested. Today.”

“Some of these matters lie outside the province of this office, but I can and will take initiatory steps. No one will be harmed, I assure you.”

Apparently satisfied, Tommie left the D. A.’s office, but Nadine did not leave the D. A.’s mind. This was what the Blaster was after!

Sure enough, as soon as Tommie was out of sight, the official dashed into his private office and called Number One.

“One, they hung an ear on you last night!” he exclaimed, as soon as connection was made. “How come you didn’t. . . .”

“Horsefeathers!” the gangster snarled. “Who d’ya think you’re kidding?”

“But they did! I’ve got a copy of it right here.”

“Play it!”

The tape was played, and it was very clear that it was in no Tomingan’s voice.

“No, it wasn’t an ear,” the D. A. admitted.

“And I was blocked against spy-rays,” said Number One, “so it must have been a snooper. A snooper with a voice. Manarkans are snoopers, but they can’t talk. Most snoopers can’t . . . except maybe Ordoviks. There were a couple of them around last night. Can Ordoviks talk? And Chickladorians—are they snoopers?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either, but I’ll find out, and when I do I’ll go gunning.”

Tommie came back to Cloud’s room and her serenity, skin-deep at best, vanished completely as the new tape was played.

“Condemn and blast that lying, slimy, two-faced, double-crossing snake!” she roared. “I’ll call out the. . . .”

“You won’t either—pipe down!” Cloud ordered, sharply. “Mob rule never settled anything. That’s what you expected, isn’t it?”

“Well . . . more or less, I suppose . . . yes.”

“QX. We got _something_ to work on now, but we need more, and we’ve got only today to get it. Who’s the crookedest judge in town—the one most apt to be in on this kind of a deal?”

“Trellis. High Judge Rose Trellis of the Enchanting. . . .”

“Skip the embellishments. Take both of these tapes to Judge Trellis and _insist_ on seeing him at once.”

“It isn’t a him—she’s a her.”

“Her, then. Make it snappy. And don’t blow up if she gives you the brush-off. We’re after data. And on your way back, pick up that newspaper editor and bring him along.”

_Chapter 9_
▂▂▂▂▂▂TROUBLE ON TOMINGA

TOMMIE LEFT, accompanied mentally by Nadine, and reached the judge’s antechamber; with Vesta taping in Middle-Plateau Tomingan everything that occurred. The approach was difficult, and Tommie’s temper grew shorter and shorter.

“Get out of my way!” she bellowed finally at the sergeant-at-arms barring her way to the judicial Presence, in a voice that rattled the windows and was audible above four blocks of city traffic. “Or shoot, if you want to get yourself and this building and half of Mingia blown clear up into the stratosphere! Jump! Before I take that blaster and shove it so far down your throat it’ll hit day-before-yesterday’s breakfast!”

The guard did not have quite enough nerve to shoot, and Tommie almost wrenched the door of the judge’s inner office off its hinges as she went in.

“What’s this, pray? Get out! Sergeant-at. . . .”

“Shut up, Rose Trellis of the Enchanting Vistas of Exotic Blooms—you’re listening, not talking. Here’s two tapes of what Number One and his misbegotten scum have been doing. Play ’em! And then _do something_ about ’em! And listen, you lying, double-crossing, back-biting slime-lizard!” Tommie’s prettily-made-up face was in shocking contrast to the venemous fury in Tommie’s eyes as she leaned over the judge’s massive desk until nose was a scant ten inches from nose. “If that atomic blast goes off tonight you and your whole Srizonified crew will wish to all your devils you’d never been born!”

Whirling around, Tommie strode out; nor did anyone attempt to stop her. No one knew what would happen if they did; and no one cared to find out.

Judge Trellis did not play the tapes. In panic fashion she called the District Attorney, who promptly made it a three-way with Number One. The three talked busily for minutes, then met in person, together with several lesser lights, in a heavily-guarded room. This conference, the subject matter of which was so obvious as to require no detailing here, went on for a long time.

So long, in fact, that Tommie and the newspaper man got back to Cloud’s hotel room while Vesta was still taping a word-by-word report of the proceedings. Tommie was subdued, almost apologetic.

“I know you told me not to blow up, Captain Cloud, but they made me so mad I couldn’t help it.”

“In this case just as well you did; maybe better. You scared her into calling a meeting, and they’ve spilled every bean in the pot. We’ve got exactly what we wanted—enough to stop that gang right in its tracks. Now, as soon as the girls get the last of it, we’ll let your editor in on it.”

It was soon over, and Cloud, after a quick run-down of the situation and a play-back of parts of the tapes for the newshawk’s benefit, concluded:—

“So, over the long pull, the issue isn’t—can’t be—in doubt. Public opinion will be aroused. There are honest judges, there are a lot of honest cops. At the next election this corrupt regime will be thrown out of office. However, that election is a year away, the present powers-that-be are all in the syndicate, and we must do something _today_ to stop the destruction scheduled for tonight. Little Flower-and-so-on tells me that you’re a crusading type, fighting a losing battle against this mob—that they’ve got you just about whipped—so I thought you would be interested in taking a slug at ’em by getting out an extra—strong enough to stir up enough public sentiment so they wouldn’t dare go ahead. Would you like to do that?”

“Would I?” The newsman grinned wolfishly. “I’ll get out the extra, yes; but I’ll do a lot more than that. I’ll print a hundred thousand dodgers and drop ’em from copters. I’ll have blimps dragging streamers all over the sky. I’ll buy time on every radio and tri-di station in town—have the juiciest bits of these tapes broadcast, every hour on the hour. Mister, I’ll tear this town wide open before sundown tonight!”

He left, breathing fire and sulphurous smoke, and Cloud made motions to attract the Manarkan’s attention.

“Nadine? These Tomingans take things big, don’t they? All to the good, with one exception—will any repercussions—flarebacks—hit you? Those characters are tough, and will be desperate, and I wouldn’t want to put you in line with a blaster.”

“No . . . almost certainly not,” Nadine replied, after a minute of thought. “They are looking for a telepath with a voice, which they won’t find on Tominga. They know Manarkans well—many of us live here permanently—and I’m quite sure that none of the gang would suspect such an unheard-of thing as Vesta and I have been doing. They are not imaginative, and such a thing never happened before—not here, at least.”

“No? Why not? What’s strange about it?”

“The whole situation is new—unique. This is probably the first time in history that these exact circumstances—especially in regard to personnel—have come together. Consider, please, the ingredients: a real and bitter grievance, victims willing and anxious to take drastic action, a sympathetic telepath who is also an expert in shorthand, a master linguist, and, above all, a director or programmer—you—both able and willing to fit the parts together so that they work.”

“Um . . . m . . . m. Never thought of it in that way. Could be, I guess. Well, all we can do now is wait and see what happens.”

They waited, and saw. The crusading editor did everything he had promised. The extra hit the streets, its headlines screaming “CORRUPTION!” in the biggest type possible to use. The taped conversations, with names, amounts, times, and places, were printed in full. The accompanying editorial should have been written with sulphuric acid on asbestos paper. The leaflets, gaily littering the city, were even more vitriolic. Every hour, on the hour, speakers gave out what sound-trucks were blaring continuously—irrefutable proof that the city of Mingia was being run by a corrupt, rotten, vicious machine.

Mingia’s citizens responded, but not quite as enthusiastically as the Blaster, from his limited acquaintance with the breed, had expected. There was some organizing, some demonstrating; but there was also quite a lot of “So what? If they don’t, some other gang of politicians will.”

Cloud, however, when he went to his rooms after supper, was well pleased with what he had seen. They _couldn’t_ blast 53, not after the events of the afternoon. The Chickladorians and Vesta and Nadine, when they came in, agreed with him. The situation was under control. They were tired, they said. It had been a long, hard day, and they were going to hit the sack. They left.

Cloud intended to stay awake until midnight, just to see what would happen, but he didn’t. He was tired, too, and within a couple of minutes after he relaxed, alone, he was sound asleep in his chair.

Thus he did not hear the vicious thunder-clap of the atomic explosion at midnight; did not see the reflected brilliance of its glare. Nor did he hear the hurrying footsteps in the hotel’s corridors. What woke him up was the concussion that jarred the whole neighborhood when a half-ton bomb demolished the building which had been Number One’s headquarters.

Cloud jumped up, then, and ran out into the hall and along it to Vesta’s room. He pounded. No answer. The door was unlocked. He opened it. Vesta was not there!

Nadine was gone, too. So were the Chickladorians.

He rushed up to the lobby, only to encounter again the difficulty that had stopped him short before. _He could not make himself understood!_ He didn’t know three words of Upper Plateau, and nobody he could find knew even one word of English, Spanish, Spaceal, or any other language at his command.

He took an elevator down to the street level and flagged a cruising cab. He handed the driver the largest Tomingan bill he had; then, pointing straight ahead and making furious pushing motions, he made it plain that he knew where he wanted to go, and wanted to get there in a hurry. The hacker, stimulated by more cash than he had seen for a week, drove wherever Cloud pointed; and broke—or at least bent—most of Mingia’s speed-laws in his eagerness to oblige.

Cloud’s destination, of course, was the spaceport; but when he got to the _Vortex Blaster I_, Jim wasn’t there any more. None of his crew was aboard, either. The lifeboats were all in place, but the flitter was gone. So were both suits of armor—and the semi-portables—and the spare DeLameters—and both needles—even his space-hatchet!

He went up to the control room and glanced over the board. Everything was on zero except one meter, which was grazing the red. All four semis and both needles were running wide open—pulling every watt they could possibly draw!

Angry as he was, Cloud did not think of cutting the circuit. If he had thought of it he wouldn’t have done it. He didn’t know exactly what his officers were doing, of course, but he could do a shrewd job of guessing. If he had known what they were up to he wouldn’t have permitted it, but it was too late to do anything about it now. With those terrific weapons in operation they _might_ get back alive—without them, they certainly would not. _What_ a land-office business those semis were doing!

They were.

Tommie and her brother, wearing Cloud’s two suits of armor, were each _carrying_ a semi-portable; wielding it, if not as easily as an Earthly gunner wields a sub-machine-gun, much more effectively. They were burning down a thick steel door. Well behind them, the third semi was bathing the whole front of the building in a blinding glare of radiance. In back, the fourth was doing the same to the rear wall. On the sides, the two needle-beams were darting from window to window, burning to a crisp any gangster gunner daring to show his head to aim.

For the Tomingans had not been nearly as optimistic as had Cloud, and they had made complete preparation for reprisal in case Number One should make good his threat. The Manarkan had been willing to cooperate. Thlaskin, ditto. Vesta had been quiveringly eager. Maluleme had gone along. They had not mutinied—they simply did not tell Cloud a thing about what they were going to do.

Number One had not been in his headquarters, of course, when that thousand-pound bomb let go. He thought himself safe—but he wasn’t. Nadine the telepath knew exactly where he was and exactly what he was doing. Vesta the linguist poured the information along, via the flitter’s broadcaster, to the receivers of hundreds of ground-cars and copters far below. Thlaskin the Master Pilot kept the flitter close enough to the fleeing Number One so that Nadine could read him—fully, she thought—but far enough away to avoid detection. Thus, wherever he went, Number One was pursued relentlessly, and his merciless pursuers closed in faster and faster.

Number One’s flight, however, was not aimless. He knew that a snooper was on him, and had enough power of mind to shield a few highly important thoughts. He wasn’t really THE Big Shot. He had called Yellow Castle, though, and they had told him that he could come in in one hour—the army would be ready. But did he have an hour, or not?

He did; just barely. The saps were snapping at his heels when he switched to a jet job and took off in a screaming straight line for the Castle.

Vesta wanted to ram him to drop a lifeboat on him, to wreck him in any way possible; but Thlaskin refused. Captain Cloud would be mad enough at what they’d done already—any such rough stuff as _that_ would be altogether too damn much! And, since the rebels’ jets were still on the ground, Number One had reached sanctuary unharmed.

Yellow Castle, however, was not as impregnable as the gangsters had supposed. They had armor, true, but it was not at all like Cloud’s. They had weapons, true, but nothing even faintly resembling the frightful semi-portable projectors of the Galactic Patrol—nothing even remotely approaching the Patrol’s beam-fed needle beams.

Thus the Tomingans, Tommie and Jim, stood in armor of proof scarcely an arm’s length from Yellow Castle’s heavy steel door and burned it down into a brooklet of molten metal. Then on in; blasting down everything that resisted and, finally, everything that moved. Nor did any gangster escape. Those who managed to avoid the armored pair were blasted by one of the other semis or speared by one of the needles.

Yellow Castle, already furiously ablaze, was left to burn. Jim, after giving instructions as to how his lieutenants were to dispose of such small fry as might be left alive in the city proper, helped his sister load the Blaster’s weapons and armor into a ground-car. They drove out into the middle of a great open field. The flitter landed; Cloud’s borrowed equipment was hauled aboard. Tommie and Jim followed it.

“If you were really smart, I think you’d flit right now,” Vesta said to Tommie. “Captain Cloud isn’t going to like this a little bit.”

“I know it. I’m not smart. This was worth anything he cares to do about it. Besides, I want to thank him myself and tell him good-bye in person.”

The flitter took off and returned to her mother-ship. Tommie and Thlaskin put her away, then the peculiarly assorted six went up to the control room and faced the quietly seething Tellurian.

Not boldly—only Tommie and Nadine were really at ease. Jim was defiant. Thlaskin was nervous and apprehensive; Maluleme was just plain scared. So was Vesta—her tail drooped to the floor; she seemed to have shrunk to four-fifths her normal size; her usual free-swinging, buoyant gait had changed almost to a slink.

Cloud stared at Nadine—chill, stern, aloof; an up-to-date Joan of Arc or a veritable destroying angel—nodded at her to synchronize with his mind. She did so, and her mind bore out everything implied by her attitude and expression. She was outraged to her innermost fiber by the conditions she had just helped to correct.

“You were the prime operator in this thing,” he thought, flatly. “With your knowledge of law and your supposed respect for it, how could you take it into your own hands? Become part of a law-breaking mob?”

“It was necessary. Law in Mingia was shackled—completely inoperative. We freed it.”

“By murder?”

“It was not murder. The lives of all who were killed were already forfeit. The corrupt judges, officials, and police officers will be dealt with by Mingian law, now again operative. Of all your crew, only Tommie could by any chance have been taken or recognized. If our coup had failed, she and Jim would have been shot without trial. Since we succeeded, however, Tommie was not recognized, being in your armor, and Jim is now Mingia’s hero. He is also the new Commissioner of Police. Hence, aside from breaking local laws—which, as I have explained, do not count—we are guilty only of unauthorized use of Patrol equipment.”

“Huh? How about interfering in planetary affairs, the worst in the book? And revealing Stage Ten stuff to a Stage Eight planet?”

“You are wrong on both counts,” Nadine informed him. “We were on shore leave—that fact is in the log. We volunteered, purely as individuals, for one day of service in the Underground. This procedure, while of course forbidden to armed personnel of the Patrol, is perfectly legal to its civilian employees. A special ruling would have to be made to cover this particular incident, and no _ex post facto_ penalties could be imposed.”

“That’s quibbling if I ever heard any, but you’re probably right—legally—at that. But how do you wiggle out of the ‘revealing’ charge?”

“In the specific meaning of the word, as defined by the highest courts, nothing was revealed. Weapons and armor were seen, of course; but they have been seen on Tominga before. Nothing new was learned; hence there was no revealment. And as for Jim’s leaving the ship against your orders, you had no right to issue such orders in the first place.”

Still seething, but on a considerably lower level, Cloud pondered. It _wasn’t_ murder—nobody would or could call it that. “Extermination” would be more like it—or “justifiable germicide.” She was probably right on the rest of it, too. Even though he was, by virtue of being the captain of the _Vortex Blaster I_, an officer of the Patrol—strictly speaking a commander, not a captain—there wasn’t a thing in the world he could do about it.

Nadine had been keeping Vesta posted; and the latter, recovering miraculously her wonted spirit and with tail again aloft, was passing the good news along to the others.

“Don’t get _too_ cocky, sister!” Tommie advised her sharply. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Huh?” Vesta’s tail dropped to half-mast. “Why not?”

“You just said she pleaded guilty for all of us to unauthorized use of Patrol equipment. For what we really did that’s certainly a featherweight plea—if I ever get into a real jam I certainly want her for my lawyer—but he can make it plenty tough for us if he wants to.”

“I got a question to ask, boss,” Thlaskin put in, before Cloud said anything. “You got a license to be sore as hell, no argument about that, but I ask you—are you sore mostly because we took the stuff or because we didn’t let you in on it? We _couldn’t_ do that, boss, and you know why.”

Cloud did know why. The pilot had put his finger right on the sore spot, and the Blaster was honest enough to admit it.

“That’s it, I guess.” He grinned wryly.

Tommie, who had been whispering to Vesta, asked: “You got back here while we were still sucking juice, didn’t you?”

“Yes, and as Nadine will undoubtedly point out if I don’t, that fact makes me an accomplice for not pulling the switches on you. So, already being an accessory during and after the fact, I may as well go the route. If any of us gets hauled up, we all do.”

“No fear of that,” Tommie assured him. “One thing Tomingans are good at is keeping their mouths shut. Maluleme and Vesta will spill everything they know, and brag about it, sooner or later,” the Vegian did not relish translating this passage, but she did so, and accurately, nevertheless, “but that won’t do any harm. It’s _you_ that’s in the driver’s seat. You could’ve nailed us all to the cross if you liked, and I for one didn’t expect to get off easy. Thanks. I’ll remember this. So will everybody else who knows. You’re washing me out, of course?”

“Not unless you want to stay here on Tominga. You’re a good engineer, and I can’t picture this as happening again, can you?”

“Hardly. I like this better than stationary work. Thanks again, chief. My brother wants to thank you, too.”

After the sincerely grateful and appreciative Tomingan had gone, Cloud said:

“Vesta and Maluleme—if Tommie was right about you two having to talk, make a note of this. Don’t do it as long as you’re members of this crew. If you do, I’ll fire you the second I find out about it. Now everybody—as far as I’m concerned none of this ever happened. We came here to blow out vortices and that’s all we did. We’ll go back to the hotel, get a few hours sleep, and. . . .”

The long-range communicator, silent for weeks, came suddenly to life in English.

“Calling space-ship _Vortex Blaster One_, Commander Neal Cloud. Acknowledge, please. Calling space-ship _Vortex Blaster One_. . . .”

“Space-ship _Vortex Blaster One_ acknowledging.” The detector-coupled projector had swung into exact alignment. “Commander Cloud speaking.”

“Space-ship YB216P9, of First Continent, Tominga, relaying message from Philip Strong of Tellus. Will you accept message?”

“Will accept message. Ready.”

“Begin message. Report in person as soon as convenient. Answer expected. End message. Signed Philip Strong. Repeat, please. We will relay reply.”

Cloud repeated. Then: “Reply. To Philip Strong, Vortex Control Laboratory, Tellus. Begin message. Remess. Will leave Manarka fourteenth Sol for Tellus. End of message. Signed Neal Cloud. Repeat, please.”

That done, he turned to his crew. “Now we’ll _have_ to go to work!”

With Vesta to translate, two days sufficed to rid Tominga of her loose atomic vortices; and no one so much as suspected that the Patrol ship or any of its crew had had anything to do with the upheaval in Mingia.

The trip to Manarka, a two-day flit, was uneventful. So was the extinguishment of Manarka’s vortices.

When the job was done, Nadine’s mind and Cloud’s met briefly. No direct reference was made to the unpleasantness on Tominga, nor to their somewhat variant ideas concerning it. Nadine wanted to stay on. She liked the job and she liked Cloud. He was somewhat impractical and visionary, a bit too idealistic in his outlook at times; but a strong and able man and a top-bracket commander, nevertheless.

And the Manarkan, in Cloud’s mind, was not only a top-bracket medico, but also a _very_ handy hand to have around.

On the fourteenth of Sol, then, the good ship _Vortex Blaster I_ took off for Tellus, with Cloud wondering more than a little as to what was in the wind. He wasn’t the type to be unduly perturbed about being called up on the carpet _per se_; but Phil didn’t go in for mystery much—he explained things . . . He couldn’t possibly know anything about that Mingian business so soon . . . and he was going to tell him all about it anyway. . . .

There was plenty of Laboratory business that shouldn’t be relayed all over space, and this was undoubtedly some of it. Whatever it was, it’d have to keep until he got to Tellus, anyway, so he’d forget it until then.

But he didn’t.

_Chapter 10_
▂▂▂▂▂▂JANOWICK

BACK ON TELLUS, Cloud took a fast copter to the Vortex Control Laboratory, still wondering what it was all about.

“Go right in, Dr. Cloud,” Strong’s secretary told him, even before he stopped at her desk. “He’s been gnawing his nails ever since you landed.”

Cloud went in. The Lensman was not alone; a woman who had been seated beside the desk was now standing, studying him eagerly.

“Hi, Phil,” the Blaster said. “Why all the haste, and why so cryptic? I’ve been wondering if you found where I hid the body—and which body it was.”

“Hi, Storm. Nothing like that!” Strong laughed. “Doctor Janowick, Doctor Cloud—or rather, Joan, this is Storm. You know all about him that anybody does.”

They shook hands, Cloud wondering all the more, and as he wondered he studied the woman, just as she was studying him.

Janowick? _Janowick!_ He’d never heard of any female Janowick, so she couldn’t be anybody much in nucleonics. Not exactly fat, but definitely on the plump side. About a hundred and thirty-five pounds, he guessed; and about five feet two. About his own age—no, a bit younger, thirty-some, probably. Brown hair, with a few white ones showing; wide-spaced gray eyes—slightly myopic, by the looks of her pixeyish, you-be-damned spectacles. Smart and keen—all in all, a prime number.

“This is why I pulled you in, Storm,” the Lensman went on. “As you know, we’ve been combing all Civilization, trying to find somebody—anybody—with enough of the right qualities. She’s it. Head of the Department of Semantics at the Galactic Institute for Advanced Study. Doctor of Semantics, Ph.D. in cybernetics, D.Sc. in symbolic logic, and so on for half the alphabet. She is also a very good self-made telepath, and the only self-made perceiver I ever heard of. She’s very good at that, too—she can outrange a Rigellian. And besides all that, she’s a Past Grand Master at chess.”

“_Past_ Grand Master? Oh, I see—I don’t suppose it _would_ be quite _de rigueur_ for a top-bracket telepath to win all the Grand Masters’ championships. Also, in view of the perception business, I imagine all this is more than somewhat hush-hush?”

“Very much so. A few Lensmen and now you are all who are in on it. It’ll have to stay top secret until we find out whether an ordinary mind can be developed into one like yours, or whether her brain, like yours, is something out of the ordinary.”

“Yes, it’d be very bad to have billions of people screaming for a treatment that can’t be given.”

“Check. But to get back to Joan. She’s done some almost unbelievable work and we think she’ll do. You know what we’re after, of course.”

“All I’m afraid of is that you haven’t looked far enough,” the woman said, shaking her head dubiously. “You know, though, what an appalling job it was bound to be. I’ll do whatever I can.”

She did not state the problem, either. They all knew, too well, what it was. As matters then stood, the life of one man—Neal Cloud—was all that stood between Civilization and loose atomic vortices; and it was starkly unthinkable that the Galactic Patrol would leave, for a second longer than was absolutely necessary, that situation unremedied.

“I see.” Cloud broke the short silence. “Assuming that you haven’t been sitting still doing nothing while I’ve been gone, brief me.”

“Smart boy!” Strong applauded. “The first thing Joan did was to figure out that a nine-second prediction was out of the question for any computer, digital or analogue, possible to build with today’s knowledge. Asked us what we could do to cut the time and how far we could cut it. With your little bombing flitter you have to have about nine seconds because you have to build up your speed to the required initial velocity of the bomb. That could be done away with, of course, by firing the bomb out of a Q-gun or something. . . .”

“But you’d have to have a special ship, much bigger than a flitter!” Cloud protested. “And special guns . . . and the special pointers for those guns—or for the ship, if the guns were fixed-aligned—would be ver_ee_ unsimple, believe me!”

“How right you are, Buster! Other things, too, that you haven’t thought of yet, such as automatic compensation for air conditions and so on. Very much worth while, however, and all done—we’ve had a lot of people on this project. But to cut this short, the necessary ship turned out to be a scout cruiser; the minimum safe distance—assuming worst possible conditions and heaviest possible screening—is thirty two hundred meters. . . .”

“Wait a minute!” Cloud broke in. “I’ve worked closer than that!”

“You got badly burned once, too, remember; and, according to the medics, you’ve been taking some damage since. You won’t from here on. But to resume; since the muzzle velocity we can use is limited, by the danger of prematuring on impact, to nine hundred sixteen meters per second, the time from circuit-closing to detonation is something over three and a half seconds—how much over depending on atmospheric conditions. That’s absolutely the best we can do, so we gave Joan a minimum of three point six seconds of prediction to shoot at with her mechanical brains. She isn’t quite there yet, but she’s far enough along so that she has to work with you, on actual blasting, the rest of the way.”

“Why?” Cloud argued. “If she stayed on the high side there’d be no danger of scattering; only of intensification, which wouldn’t do any harm out in the badlands.”

“Too chancy.” The Lensman swept Cloud’s argument aside with a wave of his hand. “So the quicker you get moved into your new ship, the _Vortex Blaster Two_, and get your practicing done, the sooner the two of you can be on your way to Chickladoria. Flit!”

“Just as you say, chief. Here’s my report in full. Some of the stuff will jar you to the teeth; particularly Fairchild and the fact that every blow-up that has ever happened has been deliberate, not accidental.”

“Huh? _Deliberate!_ Have you blown your stack completely, Storm?”

“Uh-uh; but the proof is too long and involved to go into offhand. You’ll have to get it from the tapes and it’ll take you at least a week to check my math. Besides, you told us to flit. So come on, Joan—clear ether, Phil!”

The Blaster and his new assistant left the laboratory; and in the copter, en route to the field, Cloud wondered momentarily what it was about the Lensman’s explanation that had not rung quite true. The first sight of his new vessel’s control room, however, banished the unformed thought from his mind before it had taken any real root.

* * * * *

The transformed scout cruiser _Vortex Blaster II_ hung poised and motionless over the badlands. The optical systems and beam-antennae and receptors of dozens of instruments, many of which were only months old, were focused sharply upon the loose atomic vortex a scant two miles distant.

A few of these instruments reported only to a small and comparatively simple integrator which, after classifying and combining the incoming signals, put out as end-product the thin, black, violently-fluctuating line which was the sigma curve. Some others reported only to a massive mechanism, too heavy for any smaller vessel to carry, upon whose electronic complexities there is no need to dwell. Most of the information-gathering instruments, however, reported to both integrator and computer.

Not strapped down into a shock-absorber, but sitting easily in an ordinary pilot’s bucket, quietly but supremely intent, “Storm” Cloud concentrated upon his sigma curve; practically oblivious to everything else. Without knowing how he did it he was solving continuously the simultaneous differential equations of the calculus of warped surfaces; extrapolating the sigma curve to an ever-moving instant of time three and nine-tenths seconds—the flight-time of the bombs plus his own reaction time—ahead of the frantic pen-point of the chart.

In his flitter, where he had required a nine- or ten-second prediction, he had always seized the first acceptable match that appeared. Now, however, needing only to extrapolate to less than four seconds, his technique was entirely different. He was now matching, from instant to instant, the predicted value of the curve against one or another of the twelve bombs lying in the firing chambers of heavy guns whose muzzles ringed the cruiser’s needle-sharp nose.

And, as he had been doing ever since beginning to work with Joan and her mechanical brains, he was passing up match after match, waiting to see whether or not the current brain could deliver the goods. There had been a long succession of them—Alice, Betty, Candace, Deirdre, and so on. This one was Lulu, and it didn’t look as though she was any good, either. He waited a while longer, however; then fined down his figures and got ready to blast.

The flight-time of the bomb, under present atmospheric conditions, would be three point five nine eight seconds, plus or minus point zero zero one. His reaction time was point zero eight nine. . . .

“Storm!” Joan broke in sharply, “Can you hold up a minute.”

“Sure.”

“That reaction time. I never spotted that before. Why didn’t I?”

“I don’t know. Never thought of it. Lumped it in, you know. Separated it now, I suppose, because I’m working so slowly, to give Lulu more of a chance. Why?”

“Because I’ve _got_ to know all the odd things about you, and that isn’t merely odd; it’s superhuman.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Chickladorians average about point zero eight, and Vegians are still faster, about point zero seven. I checked up on that because they always test me three times when I renew my driver’s license and always pull a wise crack about me having a lot of cat blood in me. S’pose I could have?”

“Um . . . m . . . m. Probably not . . . I don’t know for sure, but I don’t believe that a Tellurian-Vegian cross would be possible; and even if possible, such a hybrid couldn’t very well be fertile. But the more I find out about you, my friend, the more convinced I become that you’re either a mutant or else have some ancestors who were most decidedly _not_ Tellurians. But excuse this interruption, please—go ahead.”

Cloud went. The flight time of the bomb, under present atmospheric conditions, would be three point five nine two seconds, plus or minus point zero zero two. His reaction time was point zero eight nine. In three point six eight one seconds the activity of the vortex would match bomb number eleven to within one-tenth of one percent.

His left hand flashed out, number eleven firing stud snapped down. The vessel shuddered as though struck by a trip-hammer as the precisely-weighed charge of propellant heptadetonite went off. The bomb sped truly, in both space and time. There was a detonation that jarred the planet to its core, a flare of light many times brighter than the sun at noon, a shock-wave that wrought havoc for miles.

But the scout cruiser and her occupants were unharmed. Completely inertialess, invulnerable, the vessel rode effortlessly away.

Neal Cloud glanced into his plate; turned his head.

“Out,” he said, seemingly unnecessarily. “How’d Lulu work, Joan?”