What could he do? What could he do? Endlessly, as the miles and light-years reeled off behind his hurtling racer, this question reiterated itself; and when his home planet loomed close it was still unanswered.
Since Wolmark believed implicitly his statement that it would be poor technique to oppose his return, the planet’s screens went down at Helmuth’s signal. His first act was to call all the department heads to the center, for an extremely important council of war. There he told them everything that had happened, calmly and concisely, concluding:
“They are aloof, disinterested, unpartisan to a degree I find it impossible to understand. They disapprove of us on purely philosophical grounds, but they will take no active part against us as long as we stay away from their solar system. Therefore we cannot obtain knowledge of the Lens by direct action, but there are other methods which shall be worked out in due course.
“The Arisians do approve of the Patrol, and have helped them to the extent of giving them the Lens. There, however, they stop. If the Lensmen do not know how to use their Lenses efficiently—and I gather that they do not—we ‘shall be allowed to conquer and to flourish for a time.’ We will conquer, and we will see to it that the time of our flourishing will be a long one indeed.
“The whole situation, then, boils down to this: our cosmic energy against the Lens of the Patrol. Ours is the much more powerful arm, but our only hope of immediate success lies in keeping the Patrol in ignorance of our cosmic-energy receptors and converters. One Lensman already has that knowledge. Therefore, gentlemen, it is very clear that the death of that Lensman has now become absolutely imperative. We must find him, if it means the abandonment of our every other enterprise throughout this galaxy. Give me a full report upon the screening of the planets upon which the Lensman may try to land.”
“It is done, sir,” came quick reply. “They are completely blockaded. Ships are spaced so closely that even the electromagnetic detectors have a five hundred percent overlap. Visual detectors have at least two hundred fifty percent overlap. Nothing as large as one millimeter in any dimension can get through without detection and observation.”
“And how about the search of Trenco?”
“Results are still negative. One of our ships, with papers all in order, visited Trenco space-port openly. No one was there except the regular force of Rigellians. Our captain was in no position to be too inquisitive, but the missing ship was certainly not in the port and he gathered that he was the first visitor they had had in a month. We learned on Rigel IV that Tregonsee, the Lensman on duty on Trenco, has been there for a month and will not be relieved for another month. He was the only Lensman there. We are of course carrying on the search of the rest of the planet. About half the personnel of each vessel to land has been lost, but they started with double crews and replacements are being sent.”
“The Lensman Tregonsee’s story may or may not be true,” Helmuth mused. “It makes little difference. It would be impossible to hide that ship in Trenco space-port from even a casual inspection, and if the ship is not there the Lensman is not. He may be in hiding elsewhere on the planet, but I doubt it. Continue to search nevertheless. There are many things he may have done . I will have to consider them, one by one.”
But Helmuth had very little time to consider what Kinnison might have done, for the Lensman had left Trenco long since. Because of the flare-baffles upon his driving projectors his pace was slow; but to compensate for this condition the distance to be covered was not too long. Therefore, even as Helmuth was cogitating upon what next to do, the Lensman and his crew were approaching the far-flung screen of Boskonian war-vessels investing the entire Solarian System.
To approach that screen undetected was a physical impossibility, and before Kinnison realized that he was in a danger zone six tractors had flicked out, had seized his ship, and had jerked it up to combat range. But the Lensman was ready for anything, and again everything happened at once.
Warnings screamed into the distant pirate base and Helmuth, tense at his desk, took personal charge of his mighty fleet. On the field of action Kinnison’s screens flamed out in stubborn defense, tractors snapped under his slashing shears, the baffles disappeared in an incandescent flare as he shot maximum blast into his drive, and space again became suffused with the output of his now ultra-powered multiplex scramblers.
And through that murk the Lensman directed a thought, with the full power of mind and Lens.
“Port Admiral Haynes—Prime Base! Port Admiral Haynes—Prime Base! Urgent! Kinnison calling from the direction of Sirius—urgent!” he sent out the fiercely-driven message.
It so happened that at Prime Base it was deep night, and Port Admiral Haynes was sound asleep; but, trigger-nerved old space-cat that he was, he came instantly and fully awake. Scarcely had an eye flicked open than his answer had been hurled back:
“Haynes acknowledging—send it, Kinnison!”
“Coming in, in a pirate ship. All the pirates in space are on our necks, but we’re coming in, in spite of hell and high water! Don’t send up any ships to help us down—they could blast you out of space in a second, but they can’t stop us. Get ready—it won’t be long now!”
Then, after the Port Admiral had sounded the emergency alarm, Kinnison went on:
“Our ship carries no markings, but there’s only one of us and you’ll know which one it is—we’ll be doing the dodging. They’d be crazy to follow us down into atmosphere, with all the stuff you’ve got, but they act crazy enough to do almost anything. If they do follow us down, get ready to give ’em hell—here we are!”
Pursued and pursuers had touched the outermost fringe of the stratosphere; and, slowed down to optical visibility by even that highly rarified atmosphere, the battle raged in incandescent splendor. One ship was spinning, twisting, looping, gyrating, jumping and darting hither and thither—performing every weird maneuver that the fertile and agile minds of the Patrolmen could improvise—to shake off the horde of attackers.
The pirates, on the other hand, were desperately determined that, whatever the cost, THE Lensman should not land. Tractors would not hold and the inertialess ship could not be rammed. Therefore their strategy was that which had worked so successfully four times before in similar case—to englobe the ship completely and thus beam her down. And while attempting this englobement they so massed their forces as to drive the Lensman’s vessel as far as possible away from the grim and tremendously powerful fortifications of Prime Base, almost directly below them.
But the four ships which the pirates had recaptured had been manned by Velantians; whereas in this one Kinnison the Lensman and Henderson the Master Pilot were calling upon their every resource of instantaneous nervous reaction, of brilliant brain and of lightning hand to avoid that fatal trap. And avoid it they did, by series after series of fantastic maneuvers never set down in any manual of space-combat.
Powerful as were the weapons of Prime Base, in that thick atmosphere their effective range was less than fifty miles. Therefore the gunners, idle at their controls, and the officers of the superdreadnaughts, chained by definite orders to the ground, fumed and swore as, powerless to help their battling fellows, they stood by and watched in their plates the furious engagement so high overhead.
But slowly, so slowly, Kinnison won his way downward, keeping as close over Base as he could without being englobed, and finally he managed to get within range of the gigantic projectors of the Patrol. Only the heaviest of the fixed-mount guns could reach that mad whirlpool of ships, but each one of them raved out against the same spot at precisely the same instant. In the inferno which that spot instantly became, not even a full-driven wall-shield could endure, and a vast hole yawned where pirate ships had been. The beams flicked off, and, timed by his Lens, Kinnison shot his ship through that hole before it could be closed and arrowed downward at maximum blast.
Ship after ship of the pirate horde followed