Grand Base covered hundreds of square miles of that planet’s surface. It was equipped with all the arms and armament known to the military genius of the age; and in the exact center of that immense citadel there arose a glittering metallic dome.
The inside surface of that dome was lined with visiplates and communicators, hundreds of thousands of them. Miles of catwalks clung precariously to the inward-curving wall. Control panels and instrument boards covered the floor in banks and tiers, with only narrow runways between them. And what a personnel! There were Solarians, Crevenians, Sirians. There were Antareans, Vandemarians, Arcturians. There were representatives of scores, yes, hundreds of other solar systems of the galaxy.
But whatever their external form they were all breathers of oxygen and they were all nourished by warm, red blood. Also, they were all alike mentally. Each had won his present high place by trampling down those beneath him and by pulling down those above him in the branch to which he had first belonged of the “pirate” organization. Each was characterized by a total lack of scruple; by a coldly ruthless passion for power and place.
Kinnison had been eminently correct in his belief that Boskone’s was not a “pirate outfit” in any ordinary sense of the word, but even his ideas of its true nature fell far short indeed of the truth. It was a culture already inter-galactic in scope, but one built upon ideals diametrically opposed to those of the civilization represented by the Galactic Patrol.
It was a tyranny, an absolute monarchy, a despotism not even remotely approximated by the dictatorships of earlier ages. It had only one creed—“The end justifies the means.” Anything—literally anything at all—that produced the desired result was commendable; to fail was the only crime. The successful named their own rewards; those who failed were disciplined with an impersonal, rigid severity exactly proportional to the magnitude of their failures.
Therefore no weaklings dwelt within that fortress; and of all its cold, hard, ruthless crew far and away the coldest, hardest, and most ruthless was Helmuth, the “speaker for Boskone,” who sat at the great desk in the dome’s geometrical center. This individual was almost human in form and build, springing as he did from a planet closely approximating Earth in mass, atmosphere, and climate. Indeed, only his general, all-pervasive aura of blueness bore witness to the fact that he was not a native of Tellus.
His eyes were blue, his hair was blue, and even his skin was faintly blue beneath its coat of ultra-violet tan. His intensely dynamic personality fairly radiated blueness—not the gentle blue of an Earthly sky, not the sweetly innocuous blue of an Earthly flower; but the keenly merciless blue of a delta-ray, the cold and bitter blue of a Polar iceberg, the unyielding, inflexible blue of quenched and drawn tungsten-chromium steel.
Now a frown sat heavily upon his arrogantly patrician face as his eyes bored into the plate before him, from the base of which were issuing the words being spoken by the assistant pictured in its deep surface:
“. the fifth dove into the deepest ocean of Corvina II, in the depths of which all rays are useless. The ships which followed have not as yet reported, but they will do so as soon as they have completed their mission. No trace of the sixth has been found, and it is therefore assumed that it was destroyed .”
“Who assumes so?” demanded Helmuth, coldly. “There is no justification whatever for such an assumption. Go on!”
“The Lensman, if there is one and if he is alive, must therefore be in the fifth ship, which is about to be taken.”
“Your report is neither complete nor conclusive, and I do not at all approve of your intimation that the Lensman is simply a figment of my imagination. That it was a Lensman is the only possible logical conclusion—none other of the Patrol forces could have done what has been done. Postulating his reality, it seems to me that instead of being a bare possibility, it is highly probable that he has again escaped us, and again in one of our own vessels—this time in the one you have so conveniently assumed to have been destroyed. Have you searched the line of flight?”
“Yes, sir. Everything in space and every planet within reach of that line has been examined with care; except, of course, Velantia and Trenco.”
“Velantia is, for the time being, unimportant. The sixth ship left Velantia and did not go back there. Why Trenco?” and Helmuth pressed a series of buttons. “Ah, I see . To recapitulate, one ship, the one which in all probability is now carrying the Lensman, is still unaccounted for. Where is it? We know that it has not landed upon or near any Solarian planet, and measures are being taken to see to it that it does not land upon or near any planet of ‘Civilization.’ Now, I think, it has become necessary to comb that planet Trenco, inch by inch.”
“But sir, how .” began the anxious-eyed underling.
“When did it become necessary to draw diagrams and make blue-prints for you?” demanded Helmuth, harshly. “We have ships manned by Ordoviks and other races having the sense of perception. Find out where they are and get them there at full blast!” and he punched a button, to replace the image upon his plate by another.
“It has now become of paramount importance that we complete our knowledge of the Lens of the Patrol,” he began, without salutation or preamble. “Have you traced its origin yet?”
“I believe so, but I do not certainly know. It has proved to be a task of such difficulty .”
“If it had been an easy one I would not have made a special assignment of it to you. Go on!”
“Everything seems to point to the planet Arisia, of which I can learn nothing definite whatever except .”
“Just a moment!” Helmuth punched more buttons and listened. “Unexplored . unknown . shunned by all spacemen .
“Superstition, eh?” he snapped. “Another of those haunted planets?”
“Something more than ordinary spacemen’s superstition, sir, but just what I have not been able to discover. By combing my department I managed to make up a crew of those who either were not afraid of it or had never heard of it. That crew is now en route there.”
“Whom have we in that sector of space? I find it desirable to check your findings.”
The department head reeled off a list of names and numbers, which Helmuth considered at length.
“Gildersleeve, the Valerian,” he decided. “He is a good man, coming along fast. Aside from a firm belief in his own peculiar gods, he has shown no signs of weakness. You considered him?”
“Certainly.” The henchman, as cold as his icy chief, knew that explanations would not satisfy Helmuth, therefore he offered none. “He is raiding at the moment, but I will put you on him if you like.”
“Do so,” and upon Helmuth’s plate there appeared a deep-space scene of rapine and pillage.
The convoying Patrol cruiser had already been blasted out of existence; only a few idly drifting masses of debris remained to show that it had ever been. Needle-beams were at work, and soon the merchantman hung inert and helpless. The pirates, scorning to use the emergency inlet port, simply blasted away the entire entrance panel. Then they boarded, an armored swarm; flaming DeLameters spreading death and destruction before them.
The sailors, outnumbered as they were and over-armed, fought heroically—but uselessly. In groups and singly they fell; those who were not already dead being callously tossed out into space in slitted space-suits and with smashed drivers. Only the younger women—the stewardesses, the nurses, the one or two such among the few passengers—were taken as booty; all others shared the fate of the crew.
Then, the ship plundered from nose to after-jets and every article or thing of value trans-shipped, the raider drew off, bathed in the blue-white glare of the bombs that were destroying every trace of the merchant-ship’s existence. Then and only then did Helmuth reveal