“Very probably true,” agreed Kinnison, and that was the consensus of opinion. “Therefore we want to do our scouting very quietly. But in some ways that makes it all the better. If they’re in control, they won’t be unduly suspicious.”
And thus it proved. A planet-bearing sun was soon located, and while the Dauntless was still light-years distant from it, several ships were detected. At least, the Boskonians were not using nullifiers!
Spy-rays were sent out. Tregonsee the Rigellian Lensman exerted to the full his powers of perception, and Kinnison hurled downward to the planet’s surface a mental viewpoint and communications center. That the planet was Boskonian was soon learned, but that was all. It was scarcely fortified: no trace could he find of a beam communicating with Boskone.
Solar system after solar system was found and studied, with like result. But finally, out in space, one of the screens showed activity; a beam was in operation between a vessel then upon the plates and some other station. Kinnison tapped it quickly; and, while observers were determining its direction, hardness, and power, a thought flowed smoothly into the Lensman’s brain.
“. proceed at once to relieve vessel P4K730. Eichlan, speaking for Boskone, ending message.”
“Follow that ship, Hen!” Kinnison directed, crisply. “Not too close, but don’t lose him!” He then relayed to the others the orders which had been intercepted.
“The same formula, huh?” vanBuskirk roared, and “Just another lieutenant, that sounds like, not Boskone himself.” Thorndyke added.
“Perhaps so, perhaps not.” The Gray Lensman was merely thoughtful. “It doesn’t prove a thing except that Helmuth was not Boskone, which was already fairly certain. If we can prove that there is such a being as Boskone, and that he isn’t in this galaxy . well, in that case, we’ll go somewhere else,” he concluded, with grim finality.
The chase was comparatively short, leading toward a yellowish star around which swung eight average-sized planets. Toward one of these flew the unsuspecting pirate, followed by the Patrol vessel, and it soon became apparent that there was a battle going on. One spot upon the planet’s surface, either a city or a tremendous military base, was domed over by a screen which was one blinding glare of radiance. And for miles in every direction ships of space were waging spectacularly devastating warfare.
Kinnison shot a thought down into the fortress, and with the least possible introduction or preamble, got into touch with one of its high officers. He was not surprised to learn that those people were more or less human in appearance, since the planet was quite similar to Tellus in age, climate, atmosphere, and mass.
“Yes, we are fighting Boskonia,” the answering thought came coldly clear. “We need help, and badly. Can you . ?”
“We’re detected!” Kinnison’s attention was seized by a yell from the board. “They’re all coming at us at once!”
Whether the scientists of Boskone developed the detector-nullifier before or after Helmuth’s failure to deduce the Lensman’s use of such an instrument is a nice question, and one upon which a great deal has been said. While interesting, the point is really immaterial here; the facts remaining the same—that the pirates not only had it at the time of the Patrol’s first visit to the Second Galaxy, but had used it to such good advantage that the denizens of that recalcitrant planet had been forced, in sheer desperation of self-preservation, to work out a scrambler for that nullification and to surround their world with its radiations. They could not restore perfect detection, but the condition for complete nullification was so critical that it was a comparatively simple matter to upset it sufficiently so that an image of a sort was revealed. And, at that close range, any sort of an image was enough.
The Dauntless, approaching the planet, entered the zone of scrambling and stood revealed plainly enough upon the plates of the enemy vessels. They attacked instantly and viciously; within a second after the lookout had shouted his warning the outer screens of the Patrol ship were blazing incandescent under the furious assaults of a dozen Boskonian beams.
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[2] A stimulating, although non-intoxicating beverage prepared from the fruit of a Crevenian shrub, Fayaloclastus Augustifolius Barnstead; much in favor as a ceremonial drink among those who can afford it. E.E.S.
CHAPTER 4
MEDON
For a moment all eyes were fixed apprehensively upon meters and recorders, but there was no immediate cause for alarm. The builders of the Dauntless had built well; her outer screen, the lightest of her series of four, was carrying the attackers’ load with no sign of distress.
“Strap down, everybody,” the expedition’s commander ordered then. “Inert her, Hen. Match velocity with that base,” and as Master Pilot Henry Henderson cut his Bergenholm the vessel lurched wildly aside as its intrinsic velocity was restored.
Henderson’s fingers swept over his board as rapidly and as surely as those of an organist over the banked keys of his console; producing, not chords and arpeggios of harmony, but roaring blasts of precisely-controlled power. Each key-like switch controlled one jet. Lightly and fleetingly touched, it produced a gentle urge; at sharp, full contact it yielded a mighty, solid shove; depressed still farther, so as to lock into any one of a dozen notches, it brought into being a torrent of propulsive force of any desired magnitude, which ceased only when its key-release was touched.
And Henderson was a virtuoso. Smoothly, effortlessly, but in a space of seconds the great vessel rolled over, spiralled, and swung until her landing-jets were in line and exerting five gravities of thrust. Then, equally smoothly, almost imperceptibly, the line of force was varied until the flame-enshrouded dome was stationary below them. Nobody, not even the two other Master Pilots, and least of all Henderson himself, paid any attention to the polished perfection, the consummate artistry, of the performance. That was his job. He was a Master Pilot, and one of the hallmarks of his rating was the habit of making difficult maneuvers look easy.
“Take ’em now, Chief? Can’t we, huh?” Chatway, the Chief Firing Officer, did not say those words. He did not need to. The attitude and posture of the C.F.O. and his subordinates made the thought tensely plain.
“Not yet, Chatty,” the Lensman answered the unsent thought. “We’ll have to wait until they englobe us, so we can get ’em all. It’s got to be all or none—if even one of them gets away or even has time to analyze and report on the stuff we’re going to use it’ll be just too bad.”
He then got in touch with the officer within the beleaguered base and renewed the conversation at the point at which it had been broken off.
“We can help you, I think; but to do so effectively we must have clear ether. Will you please order your ships away, out of even extreme range?”
“For how long? They can do us irreparable damage in one rotation of the planet.”
“One-twentieth of that time, at most—if we can’t do it in that time we can’t do it at all. Nor will they direct many beams at you, if any. They’ll be working on us.”
Then, as the defending ships darted away, Kinnison turned to his C.F.O.
“QX, Chatty. Open up with your secondaries. Fire at will!”
Then from projectors of a power theretofore carried only by maulers there raved out against the nearest Boskonian vessels beams of a vehemence compared to which the enemies’ own seemed weak, futile. And those were the secondaries!
As has been intimated, the Dauntless was an unusual ship.