The Greatest Works of E. E. Smith. E. E. Smith
bits of concrete flew hither and yon, filling the atmosphere of the dugout. The rifle yammered at maximum, with its sweating crew laboring mightily to keep its voracious maw full-fed. But, in spite of everything, Kinnison held his line and advanced. He was barely six feet from that yelling, steel-vomiting muzzle when the firing again ceased.
“Twenty thousand, sir,” the officer reported, crisply. “We’ll have to change barrels before we can give you any more.”
“That’s enough!” snapped Haynes. “Come out of there!”
Out Kinnison came. He removed heavy ear-plugs, swallowed four times, blinked and grimaced. Finally he spoke.
“It works perfectly, sir, except for the noise. ’Sa good thing I’ve got a Lens—in spite of the plugs I won’t be able to hear anything for three days!”
“How about the springs and shock-absorbers? Are you bruised anywhere? You took some real bumps.”
“Perfect—not a bruise. Let’s look her over.”
Every inch of that armor’s surface was now marked by blurs, where the metal of the bullets had rubbed itself off upon the shining alloy, but that surface was neither scratched, scored, nor dented.
“QX, boys—thanks,” Kinnison dismissed the riflemen. They probably wondered how any man could see out through a helmet built up of inches-thick laminated alloys, with neither window nor port through which to look; but if so, they made no mention of their curiosity. They, too, were Patrolmen.
“Is that thing an armor or a personal tank?” asked Haynes. “I aged ten years while that was going on; but at that I’m glad you insisted on testing it. You can get away with anything now.”
“It’s much better technique to learn things among friends than enemies,” Kinnison laughed. “It’s heavy, of course—pretty close to a ton. I won’t be walking around in it, though; I’ll be flying it. Well, sir, since everything’s all set, I think I’d better fly it over to the speedster and start flitting, don’t you? I don’t know exactly how much time I’m going to need on Trenco.”
“Might as well,” the Port Admiral agreed, as casually, and Kinnison was gone.
“What a man!” Haynes stared after the monstrous figure until it vanished in the distance, then strolled slowly toward his office, thinking as he went.
Nurse MacDougall had been highly irked and incensed at Kinnison’s casual departure, without idle conversation or formal leave-takings. Not so Haynes. That seasoned campaigner knew that Gray Lensmen—especially young Gray Lensmen—were prone to get that way. He knew, as she would one day learn, that Kinnison was no longer of Earth.
He was now only of the galaxy, not of any one tiny dust-grain of it. He was of the Patrol. He was the Patrol, and he was taking his new responsibilities very seriously indeed. In his fierce zeal to drive his campaign through to a successful end he would use man or woman, singly or in groups; ships; even Prime Base itself; exactly as he had used them: as pawns, as mere tools, as means to an end. And, having used them, he would leave them as unconcernedly and as unceremoniously as he would drop pliers and spanner, and with no more realization that he had violated any of the nicer amenities of life as it is lived!
And as he strolled along and thought, the Port Admiral smiled quietly to himself. He knew, as Kinnison would learn in time, that the universe was vast, that time was long, and that the Scheme of Things, comprising the whole of eternity and the Cosmic All, was a something incomprehensibly immense indeed: with which cryptic thought the space-hardened veteran sat down at his desk and resumed his interrupted labors.
But Kinnison had not yet attained Haynes’ philosophic viewpoint, any more than he had his age, and to him the trip to Trenco seemed positively interminable. Eager as he was to put his plan of campaign to the test, he found that mental urgings, or even audible invective, would not make the speedster go any faster than the already incomprehensible top speed of her drivers’ maximum blast. Nor did pacing up and down the little control room help very much. Physical exercise he had to perform, but it did not satisfy him. Mental exercise was impossible; he could think of nothing except Helmuth’s base.
Eventually, however, he approached Trenco and located without difficulty the Patrol’s space-port. Fortunately, it was then at about eleven o’clock, so that he did not have to wait long to land. He drove downward inert, sending ahead of him a thought:
“Lensman of Trenco Space-port—Tregonsee or his relief? Lensman Kinnison of Sol III asking permission to land.”
“It is Tregonsee,” came back the thought. “Welcome, Kinnison. You are on the correct line. You have, then, perfected an apparatus to see truly in this distorting medium?”
“I didn’t perfect it—it was given to me.”
The landing-bars lashed out, seized the speedster, and eased her down into the lock; and, as soon as she had been disinfected, Kinnison went into consultation with Tregonsee. The Rigellian was a highly important factor in the Tellurian’s scheme; and, since he was also a Lensman, he was to be trusted implicitly. Therefore Kinnison told him briefly what occurred and what he had it in mind to do, concluding:
“So you see, I need about fifty kilograms of thionite. Not fifty milligrams, or even grams, but fifty kilograms; and, since there probably isn’t that much of the stuff loose in the whole galaxy, I came over here to ask you to make it for me.”
Just like that. Calmly asking a Lensman whose duty it was to kill any being even attempting to gather a single Treconian plant, to make for him more of the prohibited drug than was ordinarily processed throughout the galaxy during a Solarian month! It would be just such an errand were one to walk into the Treasury Department at Washington and inform the Chief of the Narcotics Bureau, quite nonchalantly, that he had dropped in to pick up ten tons of heroin! But Tregonsee did not flinch or question—he was not even surprised. This was a Gray Lensman.
“That should not be too difficult,” Tregonsee replied, after a moment’s study. “We have several thionite processing units, confiscated from zwilnik outfits and not yet sent in; and all of us are of course familiar with the technique of extracting and purifying the drug.”
He issued orders and shortly Trenco Space-port presented the astounding spectacle of a full crew of the Galactic Patrol devoting its every energy to the whole-hearted breaking of the one law it was supposed most rigidly, and without fear or favor, to enforce!
It was a little after noon, the calmest hour of Trenco’s day. The wind had died to “nothing”; which, on the planet, meant that a strong man could stand against it; could even, if he were agile as well as strong, walk about in it. Therefore Kinnison donned his light armor and was soon busily harvesting broad-leaf, which, he had been informed, was the richest source of thionite.
He had been working for only a few minutes when a flat came crawling up to him; and, after ascertaining that his armor was not good to eat, drew off and observed him intently. Here was another opportunity for practice and in a flash the Lensman availed himself of it. Having practiced for hours upon the minds of various Earthly animals, he entered this mind easily enough, finding that the trenco was considerably more intelligent than a dog. So much so, in fact, that the race had already developed a fairly comprehensive language. Therefore it did not take long for the Lensman to learn to use his subject’s peculiar limbs and other members, and soon the flat was working as though he were in the business for himself. And, since he was ideally adapted to his wildly raging Trenconian environment, he actually accomplished more than all the rest of the force combined.
“It’s a dirty trick I’m playing on you, Spike,” Kinnison told his helper after a while. “Come on into the receiving room and I’ll see if I can square it with you.”
Since food was the only logical tender, Kinnison brought out from his speedster a small can of salmon, a package of cheese, a bar of chocolate, a few lumps of sugar, and a potato, offering them to the Trenconian in order. The salmon and cheese were both highly acceptable fare. The morsel of chocolate was a delightfully surprising delicacy. The lump of sugar, however, was what