“Well, I’d better be flitting. Clear ether, fellows!” and he was gone.
CHAPTER 20
Mac Is a Bone of Contention
Out from Radelix and into deep space shot the speedster, bearing the Gray Lensman toward Boyssia II, where the Boskonian base was situated. The Patrol forces had not been able to locate it definitely, therefore it must be cleverly hidden indeed. Manned and staffed by Tellurians—and this was fairly close to the line first taken by the pilot of the pirate vessel whose crew had been so decimated by vanBuskirk and his Valerians. There couldn’t be so many Boskonian bases with Tellurian personnel, Kinnison reflected. It was well within the bounds of possibility, even of probability, that he might encounter here his former, but unsuspecting, shipmates again.
Since the Boyssian system was less than a hundred parsecs from Radelix, a couple of hours found the Lensman staring down upon another strange planet; and this one was a very Earthly world indeed. There were polar ice-caps, areas of intensely dazzling white. There was an atmosphere, deep and sweetly blue, filled for the most part with sunlight, but flecked here and there with clouds, some of which were slow-moving storms. There were continents, bearing mountains and plains, lakes and rivers. There were oceans, studded with islands great and small.
But Kinnison was no planetographer, nor had he been gone from Tellus sufficiently long so that the sight of this beautiful and home-like world aroused in him any qualm of nostalgia. He was looking for a pirate base; and, dropping his speedster as low into the night side as he dared, he began his search.
Of man or of the works of man he at first found little enough trace. All human or near-human life was apparently still in a savage state of development; and, except for a few scattered races, or rather tribes, of burrowers and of cliff- or cave-dwellers, it was still nomadic, wandering here and there without permanent habitation or structure. Animals of scores of genera and species were there in myriads, but neither was Kinnison a biologist. He wanted pirates; and, it seemed, that was the one form of life which he was not going to find!
But finally, through sheer, grim, bull-dog pertinacity, he was successful. That base was there, somewhere. He would find it, no matter how long it took. He would find it, if he had to examine the entire crust of the planet, land and water alike, kilometer by plotted cubic kilometer! He set out to do just that; and it was thus that he found the Boskonian stronghold.
It had been built directly beneath a towering range of mountains, protected from detection by mile upon mile of native copper and of iron ore.
Its entrances, invisible before, were even now not readily perceptible, camouflaged as they were by outer layers of rock which matched exactly in form, color, and texture the rocks of the cliffs in which they were placed. Once those entrances were located, the rest was easy. Again he set his speedster into a carefully-observed orbit and came to ground in his armor. Again he crept forward, furtively and skulkingly, until he could perceive again a shimmering web of force.
With minor variations his method of entry into the Boskonian base was similar to that he had used in making his way into the Patrol base upon Radelix. He was, however, working now with a surety and a precision which had then been lacking. His practise with the Patrolmen had given him knowledge and technique. His sitting in judgment, during which he had touched almost every mind in the vast assemblage, had taught him much. And above all, the grisly finale of that sitting, horribly distasteful and soul-wracking as it had been, had given him training of inestimable value; necessitating as it had the infliction of the ultimate penalty.
He knew that he might have to stay inside that base for some time, therefore he selected his hiding-place with care. He could of course blank out the knowledge of his presence in the mind of anyone chancing to discover him; but since such an interruption might come at a critical instant, he preferred to take up his residence in a secluded place. There were, of course, many vacant suites in the officers’ quarters—all bases must have accommodations for visitors—and the Lensman decided to occupy one of them. It was a simple matter to obtain a key, and, inside the bare but comfortable little room, he stripped off his armor with a sigh of relief.
Leaning back in a deeply-upholstered leather arm-chair, he closed his eyes and let his sense of perception roam throughout the great establishment. With all his newly developed power he studied it, hour after hour and day after day. When he was hungry the pirate cooks fed him, not knowing that they did so—he had lived on iron rations long enough. When he was tired he slept, with his eternally vigilant Lens on guard.
Finally he knew everything there was to be known about that stronghold and was ready to act. He did not take over the mind of the base commander, but chose instead the chief communications officer as the one most likely and most intimately to have dealings with Helmuth. For Helmuth, he who spoke for Boskone, had for many months been the Lensman’s definite objective.
But this game could not be hurried. Bases, no matter how important, did not call Grand Base except upon matters of the most dire urgency, and no such matter eventuated. Nor did Helmuth call that base, since nothing out of the ordinary was happening—to any pirates’ knowledge, that is—and his attention was more necessary elsewhere.
One day, however, there came crackling in a triumphant report—a ship working out of that base had taken noble booty indeed; no less a prize than a fully-supplied hospital ship of the Patrol itself! As the report progressed Kinnison’s heart went down into his boots and he swore bitterly to himself. How in all the nine hells of Valeria had they managed to take such a ship as that? Hadn’t she been escorted?
Nevertheless, as chief communications officer he took the report and congratulated heartily, through the ship’s radio man, its captain, its officers, and its crew.
“Mighty fine work; Helmuth himself shall hear of this,” he concluded his words of praise. “How did you do it? With one of the new maulers?”
“Yes, sir,” came the reply. “Our mauler, accompanying us just out of range, came up and engaged theirs. That left us free to take this ship. We locked on with magnets, cut our way in, and here we are.”
There they were indeed. The hospital ship was red with blood; patients, doctors, interns, officers and operating crew alike had been butchered with the horribly ruthless savagery which was the customary technique of all the agencies of Boskone. Of all that ship’s personnel only the nurses lived. They were not to be put to death—yet. In fact, and under certain conditions, they need not die at all.
They huddled together, a little knot of white-clad misery in that corpse-littered room, and even now one of them was being dragged away. She was fighting viciously, with fists and feet, with nails and teeth. No one pirate could handle her; it took two strong men to subdue that struggling fury. They hauled her upright and she threw back her head, in panting defiance. There was a cascade of red-bronze hair and Kinnison saw—Clarrissa MacDougall! And remembered that there had been some talk that they were going to put her back into space service! The Lensman decided instantly what to do.
“Stop, you swine!” he roared through his pirate mouthpiece. “Where do you think you’re going with that nurse?”
“To the captain’s cabin, sir.” The huskies stopped short in amazement as that roar filled the room, but answered the question concisely.
“Let her go!” Then, as the girl fled back to the huddled group in the corner: “Tell the captain to come out here and assemble every officer and man of the crew. I want to talk to you all at once.”
He had a minute or two in which to think, and he thought furiously, but accurately. He had to do something, but whatever he did must be done strictly according to the pirates’ own standards of ethics; if he made one slip it might be Aldebaran I all over again. He knew how to keep from making that slip, he thought. But also, and this was the hard part, he must work in something that would let those nurses know that