And when that observer went on duty his first act was to let Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, into Boskone’s Grand Base! Low and fast Kinnison flew, while the observer so placed his body as to shield from any chance passer-by the all too revealing surface of his visiplate. In a few minutes the Lensman reached a portal of the dome itself. That door also opened—and closed behind him. He released the mind of the observer and watched briefly. Nothing happened. All was still well!
Then, in every barracks save one, using whatever came to hand in the way of dog or other unshielded animal, Kinnison wrought briefly but effectively. He did not slay by mental force—he did not have enough of that to spare—but the mere turn of an inconspicuous valve would do just as well. Some of those now idle men would probably live to answer Helmuth’s call to extra duty, but not too many—nor would those who obeyed that summons live long thereafter.
Down stairway after stairway he dove, down to the compartment in which was housed the great air-purifier. Now let them come! Even if they had a spy-ray on him now it would be too late to do them a bit of good. And now, by Klono’s golden gills, that fleet had better be out there, getting ready to blast!
It was. From all over the galaxy Grand Fleet had come; every Patrol base had been stripped of almost everything mobile that could throw a beam. Every vessel carried either a Lensman or some other highly trusted officer; and each such officer had two detector nullifiers—one upon his person, the other in his locker—either of which would protect his whole ship from detection.
In long lines, singly and at intervals, those untold thousands of ships had crept between the vessels guarding Grand Base. Nor were the outpost crews to blame. They had been on duty for months, and not even an asteroid had relieved the monotony. Nothing had happened or would. They watched their plates steadily enough—and, if they did nothing more, why should they have? And what could they have done? How could they suspect that such a thing as a detector nullifier had been invented?
The Patrol’s Grand Fleet, then, was already massing over its primary objectives, each vessel in a rigidly assigned position. The pilots, captains, and navigators were chatting among themselves; jerkily and in low tones, as though even to raise their voices might reveal prematurely to the enemy the concentration of the Patrol forces. The firing officers were already at their boards, eyeing hungrily the small switches which they could not throw for so many long minutes yet.
And far below, beside the pirates’ air-purifier, Kinnison released the locking toggles of his armor and leaped out. To burn a hole in the primary duct took only a second. To drop into that duct his container of thionite; to drench that container with the reagent which would in sixty seconds dissolve completely the container’s substance without affecting either its contents or the metal of the duct; to slap a flexible adhesive patch over the hole in the duct; and to leap back into his armor: all these things required only a trifle over one minute. Eleven minutes to go—QX.
In the nearest barracks, even while the Lensman was arrowing up the stairways, a dog again deprived a sleeping man of his thought-screen. That man, however, instead of going to work, took up a pair of pliers and proceeded to cut the battery leads of every sleeper in the barracks; severing them so closely that no connection could be made without removing the armor.
As those leads were severed men woke up and dashed into the dome. Along catwalk after catwalk they raced, and apparently that was all they were doing. But each runner, as he passed a man on duty, flicked a battery plug out of its socket; and that observer, at Kinnison’s command, opened the face-plate of his armor and breathed deeply of the now drug-laden atmosphere.
Thionite, as has been intimated, is perhaps the worst of all known habit-forming drugs. In almost infinitesimal doses it gives rise to a state in which the victim seems actually to experience the gratification of his every desire, whatever that desire may be. The larger the dose, the more intense the sensation, until—and very quickly—the dosage is reached at which he passes into an ecstasy so unbearable that death ensues forthwith.
Thus there was no alarm, no outcry, no warning. Each observer sat or stood entranced, holding exactly the pose he had been in at the instant of opening his face-plate. But now, instead of paying attention to his duty, he was plunging deeper and deeper into the paroxysmally ecstatic profundity of a thionite debauch from which there was to be no awakening. Therefore half of that mighty dome was unmanned before Helmuth even realized that anything out of order was going on.
As soon as he realized that something was amiss, however, he sounded the “all hands on duty” alarm and rapped out instructions to the officers in the barracks. But the cloud of death had arrived there first, and to his consternation not one-quarter of those officers responded. Quite a number of men did get into the dome, but every one of them collapsed before reaching the catwalks. And three-fourths of his working force died before he located Kinnison’s speeding messengers.
“Blast them down!” Helmuth shrieked, pointing, gesticulating madly.
Blast whom down? The minions of the Lensmen were themselves blasting away now, right and left, shouting contradictory but supposedly authoritative orders.
“Blast those men not on duty!” Helmuth’s raging voice now filled the dome. “You, at board 479! Blast that man on catwalk 28, at board 495!”
With such detailed instructions, Kinnison’s agents one by one ceased to be. But as one was beamed down another took his place, and soon every one of the few remaining living pirates in the dome was blasting indiscriminately at every other one. And then, to cap the Saturnalian climax, came the zero second.
* * * * *
The Galactic Patrol’s Grand Fleet had assembled. Every cruiser, every battleship, every mauler hung poised above its assigned target. Every vessel was stripped for action. Every accumulator cell was full to its ultimate watt, every generator and every arm was tuned and peaked to its highest attainable efficiency. Every firing officer upon every ship sat tensely at his board; his hand hovering near, but not touching, his firing key; his eyes fixed glaringly upon the second-hand of his precisely synchronized timer; his ears scarcely hearing the droning, soothing voice of Port Admiral Haynes.
For the Old Man had insisted upon giving the firing order himself, and he now sat at the master timer, speaking into the master microphone. Beside him sat von Hohendorff, the grand old Commandant of Cadets. Both of these veterans had thought long since that they were done with space-war forever, but only an order of the full Galactic Council could have kept either of them at home. They were grimly determined that they were going to be in at the death, even though they were not at all certain whose death it was to be. If it should turn out that it was to be Helmuth’s, well and good—everything would be on the green. If, on the other hand, young Kinnison had to go, they would in all probability have to go, too—and so be it.
“Now, remember, boys, keep your hands off of these keys until I give you the word,” Haynes’ soothing voice droned on, giving no hint of the terrific strain he himself was under. “I’ll give you lots of warning . . . . I am going to count the last five seconds for you. I know that you all want to shoot the first bolt, but remember that I personally will strangle any and every one of you who beats my signal by a thousandth of a second. It won’t be long now, the second hand is starting around on its last lap . . . . Keep your hands off of those keys . . . . keep away from them, I tell you, or I’ll smack you down . . . . fifteen seconds yet . . . . stay away, boys, let ’em alone . . . . going to start counting now.” His voice dropped lower and lower. “Five—four—three—two—one—FIRE!” he yelled.
Perhaps some of the boys did beat the gun a trifle; but not many, or much. To all intents and purposes it was one simultaneous blast of destruction that flashed down from a hundred thousand projectors, each delivering the maximum blast of which it was capable. There was no thought now of service life of equipment or of holding anything back for a later effort. They had to hold that blast for only fifteen