“So did we, when it was used on us,” Kinnison grinned and went on to explain the origin of the primary. “We will give you the formulæ and also the working hook-up—including the protective devices, because they’re mighty dangerous without plenty of force-backing—of the primaries, in exchange for some lessons in power-plant design.”
“Such an exchange of knowledge would be helpful indeed,” Wise agreed.
“The Boskonians know nothing whatever of this beam, and we do not want them to learn of it,” Kinnison cautioned. “Therefore I have two suggestions to make.
“First, that you try everything else before you use this primary beam. Second, that you don’t use it even then unless you can wipe out, as nearly simultaneously as we did out there, every Boskonian who may be able to report back to his base as to what really happened. Fair enough?”
“Eminently so. We agree without reservation—it is to our interest as much as yours that such a secret be kept from Boskone.”
“QX, Fellows, let’s go back to the ship for a couple of minutes.” Then, aboard the Dauntless: “Tregonsee, you and your crew want to stay with the planet, to show the Medonians what to do and to help them along generally, as well as to learn about their power system. Thorndyke, you and your gang, and probably Lensman Hotchkiss, had better study these things too—you’ll know what you want as soon as they show you the hook-up. Worsel, I’d like to have you stay with the ship. You’re in command of her until further orders. Keep her here for say a week or ten days, until the planet is well out of the galaxy. Then, if Hotchkiss and Thorndyke haven’t got all the dope they want, leave them here to ride back with Tregonsee on the planet and drill the Dauntless for Tellus. Keep yourself more or less disengaged for a while, and sort of keep tuned to me. I may not need an ultra-long-range communicator, but you never can tell.”
“Why such comprehensive orders, Kim?” asked Hotchkiss. “Who ever heard of a commander abandoning his expedition? Aren’t you sticking around?”
“Nope—got to do a flit. Think maybe I’m getting an idea. Break out my speedster, will you, Allerdyce?” and the Gray Lensman was gone.
CHAPTER 5
DESSA DESPLAINES, ZWILNIK
Kinnison’s speedster shot away and made an undetectable, uneventful voyage back to Prime Base.
“Why the foliage?” the Port Admiral asked, almost at sight, for the Gray Lensman was wearing a more-than-half-grown beard.
“I may need to be Chester Q. Fordyce for a while. If I don’t, I can shave it off quick. If I do, a real beard is a lot better than an imitation,” and he plunged into his subject.
“Very fine work, son, very fine indeed,” Haynes congratulated the younger man at the conclusion of his report. “We shall begin at once, and be ready to rush things through when the technicians bring back the necessary data from Medon. But there’s one more thing I want to ask you. How come you placed those spotting-screens so exactly? The beam practically dead-centered them. You claimed it was surmise and suspicion before it happened, but you must have had a much firmer foundation than any kind of a mere hunch. What was it?”
“Deduction, based upon an unproved, but logical, cosmogonic theory—but you probably know more about that stuff than I do.”
“Highly improbable. I read just a smattering now and then of the doings of the astronomers and astrophysicists. I didn’t know that that was one of your specialties, either.”
“It isn’t, but I had to do a little cramming. We’ll have to go back quite a while to make it clear. You know, of course, that a long time ago, before even inter-planetary ships were developed, the belief was general that not more than about four planetary solar systems could be in existence at any one time in the whole galaxy?”
“Yes, in my youth I was exposed to Wellington’s Theory. The theory itself is still good, isn’t it?”
“Eminently so—every other theory was wrecked by the hard facts of angular momentum and filament energies. But you know already what I’m going to say.”
“No, just let’s say that a bit of light is beginning to dawn. Go ahead.”
“QX. Well, when it was discovered that there were millions of times as many planets in the galaxy as could be accounted for by a Wellington Incident occurring once in two times ten to the tenth years of so, some way had to be figured out to increase, millionfold, the number of such occurrences. Manifestly, the random motion of the stars within the galaxy could not account for it. Neither could the vibration or oscillation of the globular clusters through the galaxy. The meeting of two galaxies—the passage of them completely through each other, edgewise—would account for it very nicely. It would also account for the fact that the solar systems on one side of the galaxy tend to be somewhat older than the ones on the opposite side. Question, find the galaxy. It was van der Schleiss, I believe, who found it. Lundmark’s Nebula. It is edge on to us, with a receding velocity of thirty one hundred and sixteen kilometers per second—the exact velocity which, corrected for gravitational decrement, will put Lundmark’s Nebula right here at the time when, according to our best geophysicists and geochemists, old Earth was being born. If that theory was correct, Lundmark’s Nebula should also be full of planets. Four expeditions went out to check the theory, and none of them came back. We know why, now—Boskone got them. We got back, because of you, and only you.”
“Holy Klono!” the old man breathed, paying no attention to the tribute. “It checks—how it checks!”
“To nineteen decimals.”
“But still it doesn’t explain why you set your traps on that line.”
“Sure it does. How many galaxies are there in the Universe, do you suppose, that are full of planets?”
“Why, all of them, I suppose—or no, not so many perhaps . I don’t know—I don’t remember having read anything on that question.”
“No, and you probably won’t. Only loose-screwed space detectives, like me, and crackpot science-fiction writers, like Wacky Williamson, have noodles vacuous enough to harbor such thin ideas. But, according to our admittedly highly tenuous reasoning, there are only two such galaxies—Lundmark’s nebula and ours.”
“Huh? Why?” demanded Haynes.
“Because galactic coalescences don’t occur much, if any, oftener than Wellingtons within a galaxy do,” Kinnison asserted. “True, they are closer together in space, relative to their actual linear dimensions, than are stars; but on the other hand their relative motions are slower—that is, a star will traverse the average interstellar distance much quicker than a galaxy will the inter-galactic one—so that the whole thing evens up. As nearly as Wacky and I could figure it, two galaxies will collide deeply enough to produce a significant number of planetary solar systems on an average of once in just about one point eight times ten to the tenth years. Pick up your slide rule and check me on it, if you like.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” the old Lensman murmured, absently. “But any galaxy probably has at least a couple of solar systems all the time—but I see your point. The probability is overwhelmingly great that Boskone would be in a galaxy having hundreds of millions of planets rather than in one having only a dozen or less inhabitable worlds. But at that, they could all have lots of planets. Suppose that our wilder thinkers are right, that galaxies are grouped into Universes, which are spaced, roughly, about the same as the galaxies are. Two of them could collide, couldn’t they?”
“They could, but you’re getting ’way out of my range now. At this point the detective withdraws, leaving a clear field for you and the science-fiction imaginationeer.”
“Well, finish the thought—that I’m wackier even than he