CHAPTER 22
Preparing for the Test
But Kinnison was not heading for Helmuth’s base—yet. He was splitting the ether toward Aldebaran instead, as fast as his speedster could go; and she was one of the fastest things in the galaxy. He had two good reasons for going there before tackling Boskone’s Grand Base. First, to try out his skill upon non-human intellects. If he could handle the Wheelmen he was ready to take the far greater hazard. Second, he owed those wheelers something, and he did not like to call in the whole Patrol to help him pay his debts. He could, he thought, handle that base himself.
Knowing exactly where it was, he had no difficulty in finding the volcanic shaft which was its entrance. Down that shaft his sense of perception sped. He found the lookout plates and followed their power leads. Gently, carefully, he insinuated his mind into that of the Wheelman at the board; discovering, to his great relief, that that monstrosity was no more difficult to handle than had been the Radeligian observer. Mind or intellect, he found, were not affected at all by the shape of the brains concerned; quality, reach, and power were the essential factors. Therefore he let himself in and took position in the same room from which he had been driven so violently. Kinnison examined with interest the wall through which he had been blown, noting that it had been repaired so perfectly that he could scarcely find the joints which had been made.
These wheelers, the Lensman knew, had explosives; since the bullets which had torn their way through his armor and through his flesh had been propelled by that agency. Therefore, to the mind within his grasp he suggested “the place where explosives are kept?” and the thought of that mind flashed to the store-room in question. Similarly, the thought of the one who had access to that room pointed out to the Lensman the particular Wheelman he wanted. It was as easy as that, and since he took care not to look at any of the weird beings, he gave no alarm.
Kinnison withdrew his mind delicately, leaving no trace of its occupancy, and went to investigate the arsenal. There he found a few cases of machine-rifle cartridges, and that was all. Then into the mind of the munitions officer, where he discovered that the heavy bombs were kept in a distant crater, so that no damage would be done by any possible explosion.
“Not quite as simple as I thought,” Kinnison ruminated, “but there’s a way out of that, too.”
There was. It took an hour or so of time; and he had to control two Wheelmen instead of one, but he found that he could do that. When the munitions master took out a bombscow after a load of H.E., the crew had no idea that it was anything except a routine job. The only Wheelman who would have known differently, the one at the lookout board, was the other whom Kinnison had to keep under control. The scow went out, got its load, and came back. Then, while the Lensman was flying out into space, the scow dropped down the shaft. So quietly was the whole thing done that not a creature in that whole establishment knew that anything was wrong until it was too late to act—and then none of them knew anything at all. Not even the crew of the scow realized that they were dropping too fast.
Kinnison did not know what would happen if a mind—to say nothing of two of them—died while in his mental grasp, and he did not care to find out. Therefore, a fraction of a second before the crash, he jerked free and watched.
The explosion and its consequences did not look at all impressive from the Lensman’s coign of vantage. The mountain trembled a little, then subsided noticeably. From its summit there erupted an unimportant little flare of flame, some smoke, and an insignificant shower of rock and debris.
However, when the scene had cleared there was no longer any shaft leading downward from that crater; a floor of solid rock began almost at its lip. Nevertheless the Lensman explored thoroughly all the region where the stronghold had been, making sure that the clean-up had been one hundred percent effective.
Then, and only then, did he point the speedster’s streamlined nose toward star cluster AC 257-4736.
In his hidden retreat so far from the galaxy’s crowded suns and worlds, Helmuth was in no enviable or easy frame of mind. Four times he had declared that that accursed Lensman, whoever he might be, must be destroyed; and had mustered his every available force to that end; only to have his intended prey slip from his grasp as effortlessly as a droplet of mercury eludes the clutching fingers of a child.
That Lensman, with nothing except a speedster and a bomb, had taken and had studied one of Boskone’s new battleships, thus obtaining for his Patrol the secret of cosmic energy. Abandoning his own vessel, then crippled and doomed to capture or destruction, he had stolen one of the ships searching for him and in it he had calmly sailed to Velantia right through Helmuth’s screen of blockading vessels. He had in some way so fortified Velantia as to capture six Boskonian battleships. In one of those ships he had won his way back to Prime Base, with information of such immense importance that it had robbed the Boskonian organization of its then overwhelming superiority. More, he had found or had developed new items of equipment which, save for Helmuth’s own success in obtaining them, would have given the Patrol a definite and decisive superiority over Boskonia. Now both sides were equal, except for that Lensman and . the Lens.
Helmuth still quailed inwardly whenever he thought of what he had undergone at the Arisian barrier, and he had given up all thought of securing the secret of the Lens by force or from Arisia. But there must be other ways of getting it .
And just then there came in the urgent call from Boyssia II, followed by the stunningly successful revolt of the hitherto innocuous Blakeslee, culminating as it did in the destruction of Helmuth’s every Boyssian device of vision or of communication. Blue-white with fury, the Boskonian flung his net abroad to take the renegade; but as he settled back to await results a thought struck him like a blow from a fist. Blakeslee was innocuous. He never had had, did not now have and never would have, the cold nerve and the sheer, dominating power he had just shown. Toward what conclusion did that fact point?
The furious anger disappeared from Helmuth’s face as though it had been wiped therefrom with a sponge, and he became again the cold calculating mechanism of flesh and blood that he ordinarily was. This conception changed matters entirely. This was not an ordinary revolt of an ordinary subordinate. The man had done something which he could not possibly do. So what? The Lens again . again that accursed Lensman, the one who had somehow learned really to use his Lens!
“Wolmark, call every vessel at Boyssia base,” he directed crisply. “Keep on calling them until someone answers. Get whoever is in charge there now and put him on me here.”
A few minutes of silence followed, then Vice-Commander Krimsky reported in full everything that had happened and told of the threatened destruction of the base.
“You have an automatic speedster there, have you not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Turn over command to the next in line, with orders to move to the nearest base, taking with him as much equipment as is possible. Caution him to leave on time, however, for I very strongly suspect that it is now too late to do anything to prevent the destruction of the base. You, alone, take the speedster and bring away the personal files of the men who went with Blakeslee. A speedster will meet you at a point to be designated later and relieve you of the records.”
An hour passed. Two, then three.
“Wolmark! Blakeslee and the hospital ship have vanished, I presume?”
“They have.” The underling, expecting a verbal flaying, was greatly surprised at the mildness of his chief’s tone and at the studious serenity of his face.
“Come to the center.” Then, when the lieutenant was seated, “I do not suppose that you as yet realize what—or rather, who—it is that is doing this?”
“Why, Blakeslee is