Children of the Lens (23 page)

After entry, his first care was to send out spotting devices which would give warning in case Kandron should return unexpectedly soon. Then, working in the service-spaces behind instrument-boards and panels, in junction boxes, and in various other out-of-the-way places, he cut into lead after lead, ran wire after wire, and installed item after item of apparatus and equipment upon which he had been at work for weeks. He finished his work undisturbed. He checked and rechecked the circuits, making absolutely certain that every major one of the vessel's controlling leads ran to or through at least one of the things he had just installed. With painstaking nicety he obliterated every visible sign of his visit. He departed as carefully as he had come; restoring to full efficiency as he went each one of Kandron's burglar-alarms.

Kandron returned, entered his ship as usual, stored his flitter, and extended a tentacular member toward the row of switches on his panel.

"Don't touch anything, Kandron," he was advised by a thought as cold and as deadly as any one of his own; and upon the Onlonian equivalent of a visiplate there appeared the one likeness which he least expected and least desired to perceive.

"Nadreck of Palain VII—Star A Star—THE Lensman!" The Onlonian was physically and emotionally incapable of gasping, but the idea is appropriate. "You have, then, wired and mined this ship."

There was a subdued clicking of relays. The Bergenholm came up to speed, the speedster spun about and darted away under a couple of kilodynes of drive.

"I am Nadreck of Palain VII, yes. One of the group of Lensmen whose collective activities you have ascribed to Star A Star and the Lensman. Your ship is, as you have deduced, mined. The only reason you did not die as you entered it is that I wish to be really certain, and not merely statistically so, that it is Kandron of Onlo, not someone, else, who dies."

"That unutterable fool!" Kandron quivered in helpless rage. "Oh, that I had taken the time and killed you myself!"

"If you had done your own work, the techniques I used here could not have been employed, and you might have been in no danger at the present moment," Nadreck admitted, equably enough. "My powers are small, my intellect feeble, and what might have been has no present bearing. I am inclined, however, to question the validity of your conclusions, due to the known fact that you have been directing a campaign against me for over twenty years without success; whereas I have succeeded against you in less than half a year… My analysis is now complete. You may now touch any control you please. By the way, you do not deny that you are Kandron of Onlo, do you?"

Neither of those monstrous beings mentioned or even thought of mercy. In neither of their languages was there any word for or concept of such a thing.

"That would be idle. You know my pattern as well as I know yours… I cannot understand how you got through that…"

"It is not necessary that you should. Do you wish to close one of those switches or shall I?"

Kandron had been thinking for minutes, studying every aspect of his predicament. Knowing Nadreck, he knew just how desperate the situation was. There was, however, one very small chance—just one. The way he had come was clear. That was the only clear way. Wherefore, to gain an extra instant of time, he reached out toward a switch; but even while he was reaching he put every ounce of his tremendous strength into a leap which hurled him across the room toward his flitter.

No luck. One of Nadreck's minor tentacles was already Curled around a switch, tensed and ready. Kandron was still in air when a relay snapped shut and four canisters of duodec detonated as one. Duodecaplylatomate, that frightful detonant whose violence is exceeded only by that of nuclear disintegration!

There was an appalling flash of viciously white light, which expanded in milliseconds into an enormous globe of incandescent gas. Cooling and darkening as it expanded rapidly, into the near-vacuum of interplanetary space, the gases and vapors soon became invisible. Through and throughout the entire volume of volatilization Nadreck drove analyzers and detectors, until he knew positively that no particle of material substance larger in diameter than five microns remained of either Kandron or his space-ship. He then called the Gray Lensman.

"Kinnison? Nadreck of Palain VII calling, to report that my assignment has been completed. I have destroyed Kandron of Onlo."

"Good! Fine business, ace! What kind of a picture did you get? He must have known something about the higher echelons—or did he? Was he just another dead end?"

"I did not go into that."

"Huh? Why not?" Kinnison demanded, exasperation in every line of his thought.

"Because it was not included in the project," Nadreck explained, patiently. "You already know that one must concentrate in order to work efficiently. To secure the requisite minimum of information it was necessary to steer his thoughts into one, and only one, set of channels. There were some foreign side-bands, of course, and it may be that some of them touched upon this new subject which you have now, too late, introduced… no, there were no such."

"Damnation!" Kinnison exploded; then by main strength shut himself up. "QX, ace; skip it. But listen, my spiny and murderous friend. Get this—engrave it in big type right on the top-side inside of your thick skull—what we want is INFORMATION, not mere liquidation. Next time you get hold of such a big shot as Kandron must have been, don't kill him until either: first, you get some leads as to who or what the real head of the outfit is; or, second, you make sure that he doesn't know. Then kill him all you want to, but FIND OUT WHAT HE KNOWS FIRST. Have I made myself clear this time?"

"You have, and as coordinator your instructions should and will govern. I point out, however, that the introduction of a multiplicity of objectives into a problem not only destroys its unity, but also increases markedly both the time necessary for, and the actual personal danger involved in, its solution."

"So what?" Kinnison countered, as evenly as he could. "That way, we may be able to get the answer some day. Your way, we never will. But the thing's done—there's no use yapping and yowling about it now. Have you any ideas as to what you should do next?"

"No. Whatever you wish, that I shall try to do."

"I'll check with the others." He did so, receiving no helpful ideas until he consulted his wife.

"Hi, Kim, my dear!" came Clarrissa's buoyant thought; and, after a brief but intense greeting: "Glad you called. Nothing definite enough yet to report to you officially, but there are indications that Lyrane IX may be an important…"

"Nine?" Kinnison interrupted. "Not Eight again?"

"Nine," she confirmed. "A new item. So I may be doing a flit over there one of these days."

"Uh-uh," he denied. "Lyrane Nine would be none of your business. Stay away from it."

"Says who?" she demanded. "We went into this once before, Kim, about you telling me what I could and couldn't do."

"Yeah, and I came out second best." Kinnison grinned. "But now, as coordinator, I make suggestions to even Second-Stage Lensmen, and they follow them—or else. I therefore suggest officially that you stay away from Lyrane IX on the grounds that since it is colder than a Palainian's heart, it is definitely not your problem, but Nadreck's. And I'm adding this—if you don't behave yourself I'll come over there and administer appropriate physical suasion."

"Come on over—that'd be fun!" Clarrissa giggled, then sobered quickly. "But seriously, you win, I guess—this time. You'll keep me informed?"

"I'll do that. Clear ether, Cris!" and he turned back to the Palainian.

"…so you see this is your problem. Go to it, little chum."

"I go, Kinnison."

Chapter Eighteen

Camilla Kinnison, Detector

For hours Camilla and Tregonsee wrestled separately and fruitlessly with the problem of the elusive "X". Then, after she had studied the Rigellian's mind in a fashion which he could neither detect nor employ, Camilla broke the mental silence.

"Uncle Trig, my conclusions frighten me. Can you conceive of the possibility that it was contact with my mind, not yours, that made 'X' run away?"

"That is the only tenable conclusion. I know the power of my own mind, but I have never been able to guess at the capabilities of yours. I fear that I, at least, underestimated our opponent."

"I know I did, and I was terribly wrong. I shouldn't have tried to fool you, either, even a little bit. There are some things about me that I just can't show to most people, but you are different—you're such a wonderful person!"

"Thanks, Camilla, for your trust." Understandingly, he did not go on to say that he would keep on being worthy of it. "I accept the fact that you five, being children of two Second-Stage Lensmen, are basically beyond my comprehension. There are indications that you do not as yet thoroughly understand yourself. You have, however, decided upon a course of action."

"Oh—I'm so relieved! Yes, I have. But before we go into that, I haven't been able to solve the problem of 'X'. More, I have proved that I cannot solve it without more data. Therefore, you can't either. Check?"

"I had not reached that conclusion, but I accept your statement as truth."

"One of those uncommon powers of mine, to which you referred a while ago, is a wide range of perception, from large masses down to extremely tiny components. Another, or perhaps a part of the same one, is that, after resolving and analyzing these fine details, I can build up a logical and coherent whole by processes of interpolation and extrapolation."

"I can believe that such things would be possible to such a mind as yours must be. Go on."

"Well, that is how I know that I underestimated Mr. 'X'. Whoever or whatever he is, I am completely unable to resolve the structure of his thought. I gave you all I got of it. Look at it again, please—hard. What can you make of it now?"

"It is exactly the same as it was before; a fragment of a simple and plain introductory thought to an audience. That is all."

"That's all I can see, too, and that's what surprises me so." The hitherto imperturbable and serene Camilla got up and began to pace the floor. "That thought is apparently absolutely solid; and since that is a definitely impossible condition, the truth is that its structure is so fine that I cannot resolve it into its component units. This shows that I am not nearly as competent as I thought I was. When you and dad and the others reached that point, you each went to Arisia. I've decided to do the same thing."

"That decision seems eminently sound."

"Thanks, Uncle Trig—that was what I hoped you'd say. I've never been there, you know, and the idea scared me a little. Clear ether!"

There is no need to go into detail as to Camilla's bout with Mentor. Her mind, like Karen's, had had to mature of itself before any treatment could be really effective; but, once mature, she took as much in one session as Kathryn had taken in all her many. She had not suggested that the Rigellian accompany her to Arisia; they both knew that he had already received all he could take. Upon her return she greeted him casually as though she had been gone only a matter of hours.

"What Mentor did to me, Uncle Trig, shouldn't have been done to a Delgonian catlat. It doesn't show too much, though, I hope—does it?"

"Not at all." He scanned her narrowly, both physically and mentally. "I can perceive no change in gross. In fine, however, you have changed. You have developed."

"Yes, more than I would have believed possible. I can't do much with my present very poor transcription of that thought, since the all-important fine detail is missing. We'll have to intercept another one. I'll get it all, this time."

"But you did something with this one, I am sure. There must have been some developable features—a sort of latent-image effect?"

"A little. Practically infinitesimal compared to what was really there. Physically, his classification to four places is TUUV; quite a bit like the Nevians, you notice. His home planet is big, and practically covered with liquid. No real cities, just groups of half-submerged, temporary structures. Mentality very high, but we knew that already. Normally, he thinks upon a very short wave, so short that he was then working at the very bottom of his range. His sun is a fairly hot main-sequence star, of spectral class somewhere around F, and it's probably more or less variable, because there was quite a distinct implication of change. But that's normal enough, isn't it?"

Within the limits imposed by the amount and kind of data available, Camilla's observations and analyses had been perfect, her reconstruction flawless. She did not then have any idea, however, that "X" was in fact a spring-form Plooran. More, she did not even know that such a planet as Ploor existed, except for Mentor's one mention of it.

"Of course. Peoples of planets of variable suns think that such suns are the only kind fit to have planets. You cannot reconstruct the nature of the change?"

"No. Worse, I can't find even a hint of where his planet is in space—but then, I probably couldn't, anyway, even with a whole, fresh thought to study."

"Probably not. 'Rigel Four' would be an utterly meaningless thought to anyone ignorant of Rigel; and, except when making a conscious effort, as in directing strangers, I never think of its location in terms of galactic coordinates. I suppose that the location of a home planet is always taken for granted. That would seem to leave us just about where we were before in our search for 'X', except for your implied ability to intercept another of his thoughts, almost at will. Explain, please."

"Not my ability—ours." Camilla smiled, confidently. "I couldn't do it alone, neither could you, but between us it won't be too difficult. You, with your utterly calm, utterly unshakable certainty, can drive a thought to any corner of the universe. You can fix and hold it steady on any indicated atom. I can't do that, or anything like it, but with my present ability to detect and to analyze I'm not afraid of missing 'X' if we can come within parsecs of him. So my idea is a sort of piggy-back hunting trip; you to take me for a ride, mentally, very much as Worsel takes Con, physically. That would work, don't you think?"