He wormed his way over to the left-hand, high-speed lane and opened up. At the edge of the skyscraper district, where Wright Skyway angles sharply downward to ground level, Samms' attention was caught and held by something off to his right—a blue-white, whistling something that hurtled upward into the air. As it ascended it slowed down; its monotone shriek became lower and lower in pitch; its light went down through the spectrum toward the red. Finally it exploded, with an earth-shaking crash; but the lightning-like flash of the detonation, instead of vanishing almost instantaneously, settled itself upon a low-hanging artificial cloud and became a picture and four words—two bearded faces and "SMITH BROS. COUGH DROPS"!
"Well, I'll be damned!" Samms spoke aloud, chagrined at having been compelled to listen to and to look at an advertisement. "I thought I had seen everything, but that is really new!"
Twenty minutes—fifty miles—later, Samms left the Skyway at a point near what had once been South Norwalk, Connecticut; an area transformed now into the level square miles of New York Spaceport.
New York Spaceport; then, and until the establishment of Prime Base, the biggest and busiest field in existence upon any planet of Civilization. For New York City, long the financial and commercial capital of the Earth, had maintained the same dominant position in the affairs of the Solar System and was holding a substantial lead over her rivals, Chicago, London, and Stalingrad, in the race for inter-stellar supremacy.
And Virgil Samms himself, because of the ever-increasing menace of piracy, had been largely responsible for the policy of basing the war-vessels of the Triplanetary Patrol upon each space-field in direct ratio to the size and importance of that field. Hence he was no stranger in New York Spaceport; in fact, master psychologist that he was, he had made it a point to know by first name practically everyone connected with it.
No sooner had he turned his Dillingham over to a smiling attendant, however, than he was accosted by a man whom he had never seen before.
"Mr. Samms?" the stranger asked.
"Yes." Samms did not energize his Lens; he had not yet developed either the inclination or the technique to probe instantaneously every entity who approached him, upon any pretext whatever, in order to find out what that entity really wanted.
"I'm Isaacson ..." the man paused, as though he had supplied a world of information.
"Yes?" Samms was receptive, but not impressed.
"Interstellar Spaceways, you know. We've been trying to see you for two weeks, but we couldn't get past your secretaries, so I decided to buttonhole you here, myself. But we're just as much alone here as we would be in either one of our offices—yes, more so. What I want to talk to you about is having our exclusive franchise extended to cover the outer planets and the colonies."
"Just a minute, Mr. Isaacson. Surely you know that I no longer have even a portfolio in the Council; that practically all of my attention is, and for some time to come will be, directed elsewhere?"
"Exactly—officially." Isaacson's tone spoke volumes. "But you're still the Boss; they'll do anything you tell them to. We couldn't try to do business with you before, of course, but in your present position there is nothing whatever to prevent you from getting into the biggest thing that will ever be. We are the biggest corporation in existence now, as you know, and we are still growing—fast. We don't do business in a small way, or with small men; so here's a check for a million credits, or I will deposit it to your account...."
"I'm not interested."
"As a binder," the other went on, as smoothly as though his sentence had not been interrupted, "with twenty-five million more to follow on the day that our franchise goes through."
"I'm still not interested."
"No ... o ... o ...?" Isaacson studied the Lensman narrowly: and Samms, Lens now wide awake, studied the entrepreneur. "Well ... I ... while I admit that we want you pretty badly, you are smart enough to know that we'll get what we want anyway, with or without you. With you, though, it will be easier and quicker, so I am authorized to offer you, besides the twenty six million credits ..." he savored the words as he uttered them: "twenty two and one-half percent of Spaceways. On today's market that is worth fifty million credits; ten years from now it will be worth fifty billion. That's my high bid; that's as high as we can possibly go."
"I'm glad to hear that—I'm still not interested," and Samms strode away, calling his friend Kinnison as he did so.
"Rod? Virgil." He told the story.
"Whew!" Kinnison whistled expressively. "They're not pikers, anyway, are they? What a sweet set-up—and you could wrap it up and hand it to them like a pound of coffee...."
"Or you could, Rod."
"Could be...." The big Lensman ruminated. "But what a hookup! Perfectly legitimate, and with plenty of precedents—and arguments, of a sort—in its favor. The outer planets. Then Alpha Centauri and Sirius and Procyon and so on. Monopoly—all the traffic will bear...."
"Slavery, you mean!" Samms stormed. "It would hold Civilization back for a thousand years!"
"Sure, but what do they care?"
"That's it ... and he said—and actually believed—that they would get it without my help.... I can't help wondering about that."
"Simple enough, Virge, when you think about it. He doesn't know yet what a Lensman is. Nobody does, you know, except Lensmen. It will take some time for that knowledge to get around...."
"And still longer for it to be believed."
"Right. But as to the chance of Interstellar Spaceways ever getting the monopoly they're working for, I didn't think I would have to remind you that it was not entirely by accident that over half of the members of the Solarian Council are Lensmen, and that any Galactic Councillor will automatically have to be a Lensman. So go right ahead with what you started, my boy, and don't give Isaacson and Company another thought. We'll bend an optic or two in that direction while you are gone."
"I was overlooking a few things, at that, I guess." Samms sighed in relief as he entered the main office of the Patrol.
The line at the receptionist's desk was fairly short, but even so, Samms was not allowed to wait. That highly decorative, but far-from-dumb blonde, breaking off in mid-sentence her business of the moment, turned on her charm as though it had been a battery of floodlights, pressed a stud on her desk, and spoke to the man before her and to the Lensman:
"Excuse me a moment, please. First Lensman Samms, sir...?"
"Yes, Miss Regan?" her communicator—"squawk-box", in every day parlance—broke in.
"First Lensman Samms is here, sir," the girl announced, and broke the circuit.
"Good evening, Sylvia. Lieutenant-Commander Wagner, please, or whoever else is handling clearances," Samms answered what he thought was to have been her question.
"Oh, no, sir; you are cleared. Commodore Clayton has been waiting for you ... here he is, now."
"Hi, Virgil!" Commodore Clayton, a big, solid man with a scarred face and a shock of iron-gray hair, whose collar bore the two silver stars which proclaimed him to be the commander-in-chief of a continental contingent of the Patrol, shook hands vigorously. "I'll zip you out. Miss Regan, call a bug, please."
"Oh, that isn't necessary, Alex!" Samms protested. "I'll pick one up outside."
"Not in any Patrol base in North America, my friend; nor, unless I am very badly mistaken, anywhere else. From now on, Lensmen have absolute priority, and the quicker everybody realizes exactly what that means, the better."
The "bug"—a vehicle something like a jeep, except more so—was waiting at the door. The two men jumped aboard.
"The Chicago—and blast!" Clayton ordered, crisply.
The driver obeyed—literally.