The Greatest Works of E. E. Smith. E. E. Smith
to be called upon to construct.
But, on the other hand, they were well versed in the fundamental theories and operations of mathematics, and from pure mathematics to applied mechanics is but a step. Furthermore, they had brains; knew how to think logically, coherently, and effectively; and needed neither driving nor supervision—only instruction. And best of all, practically every one of the required mechanisms already existed, in miniature, within the Brittania’s lifeboat; ready at hand for their dissection, analysis, and enlargement. It was not lack of understanding which was to slow up the work; it was simply that the planet did not boast machine tools and equipment large enough or strong enough to handle the necessarily huge and heavy parts and members required.
While the construction of this heavy machinery was being rushed through, Kinnison and vanBuskirk devoted their efforts to the fabrication of an ultra-sensitive receiver, tunable to the pirates’ scrambled wave-bands. With their exactly detailed knowledge, and with the cleverest technicians and the choicest equipment of Velantia at their disposal, the set was soon completed.
Kinnison was giving its exceedingly delicate coils their final alignment when Worsel wriggled blithely into the radio laboratory.
“Hi, Kimball Kinnison of the Lens!” he called gaily. Throwing a few yards of his serpent’s body in lightning loops about a convenient pillar, he made a horizontal bar of the rest of himself and dropped one wing-tip to the floor. Then, nonchalantly upside down, he thrust out three or four eyes and curled their stalks over the Lensman’s shoulder, the better to inspect the results of the mechanics’ efforts. Gone was the morose, pessimistic, death-haunted Worsel entirely; gay, happy, carefree, and actually frolicsome—if you can imagine a thirty-foot-long, crocodile-headed, leather-winged python as being frolicsome!
“Hi, your royal snakeship!” Kinnison retorted in kind. “Still here, huh? Thought you’d be back on Delgon by this time, cleaning up the rest of that mess.”
“The equipment is not ready, but there’s no hurry about that,” the playful reptile unwrapped ten or twelve feet of tail from the pillar and waved it airily about. “Their power is broken, their race is done. You are about to try out the new receiver?”
“Yes—going out after them right now,” and Kinnison began deftly to manipulate the micrometric verniers of his dials.
Eyes fixed upon meters and gauges, he listened . listened. Increased his power and listened again. More and more power he applied to his apparatus, listening continually. Suddenly he stiffened, his hands becoming rock-still. He listened, if possible even more intently than before; and as he listened his face grew grim and granite-hard. Then the micrometers began again crawlingly to move, as though he were tracing a beam.
“Bus! Hook on the focusing beam-antenna!” he snapped. “It’s going to take every milliwatt of power we’ve got in this hook-up to tap his beam, but I think I’ve got Helmuth direct instead of through a pirate-ship relay!”
Again and again he checked the readings of his dials and of the directors of his antenna; each time noting the exact time of the Velantian day.
“There! As soon as we get some time, Worsel, I’d like to work out these figures with some of your astronomers. They’ll give me a right-line through Helmuth’s headquarters—I hope. Some day, if I’m spared, I’ll get another!”
“What kind of news did you get, chief?” asked vanBuskirk.
“Good and bad both,” replied the Lensman. “Good in that Helmuth doesn’t believe that we stayed with his ship as long as we did. He’s a suspicious devil, you know, and is pretty well convinced that we tried to run the same kind of a blazer on him that we did the other time. Since he hasn’t got enough ships on the job to work the whole line, he’s concentrating on the other end. That means that we’ve got plenty of days left yet. The bad part of it is that they’ve got four of our boats already and are bound to get more. Lord, how I wish I could call the rest of them! Some of them could certainly make it here before they got caught.”
“Might I then offer a suggestion?” asked Worsel, of a sudden diffident.
“Surely!” the Lensman replied in surprise. “Your ideas have never been any kind of poppycock. Why so bashful all at once?”
“Because this one is so . ah . so peculiarly personal, since you men regard so highly the privacy of your minds. Our two sciences, as you have already observed, are vastly different. You are far beyond us in mechanics, physics, chemistry, and the other applied sciences. We, on the other hand, have delved much deeper than you have into psychology and the other introspective studies. For that reason I know positively that the Lens you wear is capable of enormously greater things than you are at present able to make it perform. Of course I cannot use your Lens directly, since it is attuned to your own ego. However, if the idea appeals to you, I could, with your consent, occupy your mind and use your Lens to put you en rapport with your fellows. I have not volunteered the suggestion before because I know how averse your mind is to any foreign control.”
“Not necessarily to foreign control,” Kinnison corrected him. “Only to enemy control. The idea of friendly control never even occurred to me. That would be an entirely different breed of cats. Go to it!”
Kinnison relaxed his mind completely, and that of the Velantian came welling in; wave upon friendly, surging wave of benevolent power. And not only—or not precisely—power. It was more than power; it was a dynamic poignancy, a vibrant penetrance, a depth and clarity of perception that Kinnison in his most cogent moments had never dreamed a possibility. The possessor of that mind knew things, cameo-clear in microscopic detail, which the keenest minds of Earth could perceive only as chaotically indistinct masses of mental light and shade, of no recognizable pattern whatever!
“Give me the thought-pattern of him with whom you wish first to converse,” came Worsel’s thought, this time from deep within the Lensman’s own brain.
Kinnison felt a subtle thrill of uneasiness at that new and ultra-strange dual personality, but thought back steadily: “Sorry—I can’t.”
“Excuse me, I should have known that you cannot think in our patterns. Think, then, of him as a person—as an individual. That will give me, I believe, sufficient data.”
Into the Earthman’s mind there leaped a picture of Henderson, sharp and clear. He felt his Lens actually tingle and throb as a concentration of vital force such as he had never known poured through his whole being and into that almost-living creation of the Arisians; and immediately thereafter he was in full mental communication with the Master Pilot! And there, seated across the tiny mess-table of their lifeboat, was LaVerne Thorndyke, the Master Technician.
Henderson came to his feet with a yell as the telepathic message bombshelled into his brain, and it required several seconds to convince him that he was not the victim of space-insanity or suffering from any other form of hallucination. Once convinced, however, he acted—his lifeboat shot toward far Velantia at maximum blast.
Then: “Nelson! Allerdyce! Thompson! Jenkins! Uhlenhuth! Smith! Chatway! .” Kinnison called the roll.
Nelson, the specialist in communications, answered his captain’s call. So did Allerdyce, the juggling quartermaster. So did Uhlenhuth, a technician. So did those in three other boats. Two of these three were apparently well within the danger zone and might get nipped in their dash, but their crews elected without hesitation to take the chance. Four boats, it was already known, had been captured by the pirates. The others .
“Only eight boats,” Kinnison mused. “Not so good—but it could have been a lot worse—they might have got us all by this time—and maybe some of them are just out of our reach.” Then, turning to the Velantian, who had withdrawn his mind as soon as the job was done:
“Thanks, Worsel,” he said simply. “Some of those lads coming in have got plenty of just what it takes, and how we can use them!”
One by one the lifeboats made port, where their crews were welcomed briefly but feelingly before they were put to work. Nelson, one of the last pair to arrive, was particularly welcome.