“Twelve days! Noshabkeming the Radiant!” vanBuskirk exploded, and Kinnison put in:
“Sure—you forget they haven’t got free drive. We’d better hop over and get our lifeboat, I think. It’s not so good, either way, but in our own boat we’ll be open to detection less than an hour, as against twelve days in the Velantians’. And the pirates may be here any minute. It’s as good as certain that their ship will be stopped and searched long before it gets back to Velantia, and if we were aboard it’d be just too bad.”
“And, since the crew knows about us, the pirates soon will, and it’ll be just too bad, anyway,” vanBuskirk reasoned.
“Not at all,” interposed Worsel. “The few of my people who know of you have been instructed to seal that knowledge. I must admit, however, that I am greatly disturbed by your conceptions of these pirates of space. You see, until I met you I knew nothing more of the pirates than I did of your Patrol.”
“What a world!” vanBuskirk exclaimed. “No Patrol and no pirates! But at that, life might be simpler without both of them and without the free space-drive—more like it used to be in the good old airplane days that the novelists rave about.”
“Of course I could not judge as to that.” The Velantian was very serious. “This in which we live seems to be an out-of-the-way section of the galaxy; or it may be that we have nothing the pirates want.”
“More likely it’s simply that, like the Patrol, they haven’t got organized into this district yet,” suggested Kinnison. “There are so many thousands of millions of solar systems in the galaxy that it will probably be thousands of years yet before the Patrol gets into them all.”
“But about these pirates,” Worsel went back to his point. “If they have such minds as those of the Overlords, they will be able to break the seals of our minds. However, I gather from your thoughts that their minds are not of that strength?”
“Not so far as I know,” Kinnison replied. “You folks have the most powerful brains I ever heard of, short of the Arisians. And speaking of mental power, you can hear thoughts a lot farther than I can, even with my Lens or with this pirate receiver I’ve got. See if you can find out whether there are any pirates in space around here, will you?”
While the Velantian was concentrating, vanBuskirk asked:
“Why, if his mind is so strong, could the Overlords put him under so much easier than they could us ‘weak-minded’ human beings?”
“You are confusing ‘mind’ with ‘will,’ I think. Ages of submission to the Overlords made the Velantians’ will-power zero, as far as the bosses were concerned. On the other hand, you and I could raise stubbornness to sell to most people. In fact, if the Overlords had succeeded in really breaking us down, back there, the chances are we’d have gone insane.”
“Probably you’re right—we break, but don’t bend, huh?” and the Velantian was ready to report.
“I have scanned space to the nearer stars—some eleven of your light-years—and have encountered no intruding entities,” he announced.
“Eleven light-years—what a range!” Kinnison exclaimed. “However, that’s only a shade over two minutes for a pirate ship at full blast. But we’ve got to take a chance sometime, and the quicker we get started the sooner we’ll get back. We’ll pick you up here, Worsel. No use in you going back to your tent—we’ll be back here long before you could reach it. You’ll be safe enough, I think, especially with our spare DeLameters. Let’s get going, Bus!”
Again they shot into the air, again they traversed the airless depths of interplanetary space. To locate the temporary tomb of their lifeboat required only a few minutes, to disinter her only a few more. Then again they braved detection in the void; Kinnison tense at his controls, vanBuskirk in strained attention listening to and staring at his unscramblers and detectors. But the ether was still blank as the lifeboat struck Delgon’s atmosphere; it remained blank while the lifeboat, inert, blasted frantically to match Worsel’s intrinsic velocity.
“All right, Worsel, snap it up!” Kinnison called, and went on to vanBuskirk, “Now, you big, flat-footed Valerian spacehound, I hope that spaceman’s god of yours will see to it our luck holds good for just fourteen minutes more. We’ve had more luck already than we had any right to expect, but we can put a little more to most God-awful good use!”
“Noshabkeming does bring spacemen luck,” insisted the giant, grimacing a peculiar salute toward a small, golden image set inside his helmet, “and the fact that you warty, runty, atheistic little space-fleas of Tellus haven’t got sense enough to know it—not even enough sense to really believe in your own gods, even Klono—doesn’t change matters at all.”
“That’s tellin’ ’em, Bus!” Kinnison applauded. “But if it helps charge your batteries, go to it . Ready to blast! Lift!”
The Velantian had come aboard, the tiny air-lock was again tight, and the little vessel shot away from Delgon toward far Velantia. And still the ether remained empty as far as the detectors could reach. Nor was this fact surprising, in spite of the Lensman’s fears to the contrary; for the Patrolmen had given the pirates such an extremely long line to cover that many days must yet elapse before the minions of Boskone would get around to visit that unimportant, unexplored, and almost unknown solar system. Enroute to his home planet Worsel got in touch with the crew of the Velantian vessel already in space, ordering them to return to port post-haste and instructing them in detail what to think and how to act should they be stopped and searched by one of Boskone’s raiders. By the time these instructions had been given, Velantia loomed large beneath the flying midget. Then, with Worsel as guide, Kinnison drove over a mighty ocean upon whose opposite shore lay the great city in which Worsel lived.
“But I would like to have them welcome you as befits what you have done, and have you go to the Dome!” mourned the Velantian. “Think of it! You have done a thing which for ages the massed power of the planet has been trying vainly to accomplish, and yet you insist that I alone take credit for it!”
“I don’t insist on any such thing,” argued Kinnison, “even though it’s practically all yours, anyway. I insist only on your keeping us and the Patrol out of it, and you know as well as I do why you’ve got to do that. Tell them anything else you want to. Say that a couple of pink-haired Chickladorians helped you and then beat it back home. That planet’s far enough away so that if the pirates chase them they’ll get a real run for their money. After this blows over you can tell the truth—but not until then.
“And as for us going to the Dome for a grand hocus-pocus, that is completely and definitely OUT. We’re not going anywhere except to the biggest airport you’ve got. You’re not going to give us anything except a lot of material and a lot of highly-trained help that can keep their thoughts sealed.
“We’ve got to build a lot of heavy stuff fast; and we’ve got to get started on it just as quick as Klono and Noshabkeming will let us!”
CHAPTER 8
The Quarry Strikes Back
Worsel knew his council of scientists, as well he might; since it developed that he himself ranked high in that select circle. True to his promise, the largest airport of the planet was immediately emptied of its customary personnel, which was replaced the following morning by an entirely new group of workmen.
Nor were these replacements ordinarily laborers. They were young, keen, and highly trained; taken to a man from behind the