Galactic Patrol (11 page)

Now high in air, the three allies traversed in a matter of minutes the same distance that had cost them so much time and strife the day before. Over the monster-infested forest they sped, over the deceptively peaceful green lushness of the jungle, to slant down toward Worsel's thought proof tent. Inside that refuge they snapped off their thought screens and Kinnison yawned prodigiously.

"Working days and nights both is all right for a while, but it gets monotonous in time. Since this seems to be the only really safe spot on the planet, I suggest that we take a day or so off and catch up on our eats and sleeps."

They slept and ate, slept and ate again.

"The next thing on the program," Kinnison announced then, “Is to clean out that den of Overlords. Then Worsel will be free to help us get going about our own business.”

"You speak lightly indeed of the impossible," Worsel, all glum despondency, reproved him. "I have already -explained why the task is, and must remain, beyond our power."

"Yes, but you don’t quite grasp the possibilities of the stuff we've got now to work with,' the Tellurian replied. "Listen, you could never do anything because you couldn't see through or work through your thought screens. Neither we nor you could, even now, enslave a Delgonian and make him lead us to the cavern, because the Overlords would know all about it 'way ahead of time and the slave would lead us anywhere else except to the cavern. However, one of us can cut his screen and surrender, possibly keeping just enough screen up to keep the enemy from possessing his mind fully enough to learn that the other two are coming along. The big question is-which of us is to surrender?"

"That is already decided," Worsel made instant reply.

"I am the logical-in fact, the only one-to do it. Not only would they think it perfectly natural that they should overpower me, but also I am the only one of us three sufficiently able to control his thoughts as to keep from them the knowledge that I am being accompanied. Furthermore, you both know that it would not be good for your minds, unaccustomed as they are to the practice, to surrender their control voluntarily to an enemy."

"I'll say it wouldn't!" Kinnison agreed, feelingly. "I might do it if I had to, but I wouldn't like it and I don't think Pd ever quite get over it. I hate to put such a horrible job off onto you, Worsel, but you're undoubtedly the best equipped to handle it-and even you may have your hands full.”

"Yes . . ." the Velantian said, thoughtfully. "While the undertaking is no longer an absolute impossibility, it is difficult . . . very. In any event you will probably have to beam me yourselves if we succeed in reaching the cavern . . . . The Overlords will see to that.

If so, do it without regret-know that I expect it and am well content to die in that fashion.

Any one of my fellows would be only too glad to be in my place, meaning what it does to all Velantia. Know also that I have already reported what is to occur, and that your welcome to Velantia is assured, whether or not I accompany you there."

"I don't think I'll have to kill you, Worsel," Kinnison replied, slowly, picturing in detail exactly what that steel hard reptilian body would be capable of doing when, unshackled, its directing mind was completely taken over by an utterly soulless and conscienceless Overlord. "If you can't keep from going off the deep end, of course you'll get tough and I know you're mighty bard to handle. However, as I told you back there, I think I can beam you unconscious without-killing you. I may have to burn off a few scales, but I'll try not to do any damage that can't be repaired."

"If you can so stop me it will be wonderful indeed. Are we ready?"

They were ready. Worsel opened the door and in a moment was hurtling through the air, his giant wings arrowing him along at a pace no winged creature of Earth could even approach. And, following him easily at a little distance, floated the two Patrolmen upon their inertialess drives.

During that long flight scarcely a thought was exchanged, even between Kinnison and vanBuskirk. To direct a thought at the Velantian was of course out of the question.

All lines of communication with him had been cut, and furthermore his mind, able as it was, was being taxed to the ultimate cell in doing what he had set out to do. And the two Patrolmen were reluctant to converse with each other, even upon their tight-beams, radios, or sounders, for fear that some slight leakage of thought-energy might reveal their presence to the ever watchful Overlords. If this opportunity were lost, they knew, another chance to wipe out that hellish horde might never present itself.

Land was traversed, and sea, but finally a stupendous range of mountains reared before them and Worsel, folding back his tireless wings, shot downward in a screaming, full weight dive. In his line of flight Kinnison saw the mouth of a cave, a darker spot of blackness in the black rock of the mountain's side. Upon the ledged approach there lay a Delgonian-a guard or lookout, of course.

The Lensman's DeLameter was already in his hand, and at sight of the guardian reptile he sighted and fired in one fast motion. But, rapid as it was, it was still too slow –

the Overlords had seen that the Velantian had companions of whom he had been able to keep them in ignorance theretofore.

Instantly Worsel's wings again began to beat, bearing him off at a wide angle, and, although the Patrolmen were insulated against his thought, the meaning of his antics wag very plain. He was telling them in every possible way that the hole below was not the cavern of the Overlords, that it was over this way, that they were to keep on following him to it. Then, as they refused to follow him, he rushed upon Kinnison in mad attack.

"Beam him down, Kim!” vanBuskirk yelled. "Don't take any chances with that bird!"

and leveled his , own DeLameter.

"Lay off, Bus !” the Lensman snapped. "I can handle him-a lot easier out here than on the ground."

And so it proved. Inertialess as he was, the buffetings of the Velantian affected him not at all, and when Worsel coiled his supple body around him and began to apply pressure, Kinnison simply expanded his thought screen to cover them both, thus releasing the mind of his temporarily inimical friend from the Overlord's grip. Instantly the Velantian became himself, snapped on his own shield, and the three continued as one their interrupted downward course.

Worsel came to a halt upon the ledge, beside the practically incinerated corpse of the lookout, knowing, unarmored as he was, that to go further meant sudden death. The armored pair, however, shot on into the gloomy passage. At first they were offered no opposition-the Overlords had had no time to muster an adequate defense. Scattering handfuls of slaves rushed them, only to be blasted out of existence as their hand weapons proved useless against the armor of the Galactic Patrol. Defenders became more numerous as the cavern itself was approached, but neither were they allowed to stay the Patrolman's progress. Finally a palely shimmering barrier of metal appeared to bar their way. Its fields of force neutralized or absorbed the blasts of the DeLameters, but its material substance offered but little resistance to a thirty-pound sledge, swung by one of the strongest men ever produced by any planet colonized by the humanity of Earth. .

Now they were in the cavern itself-the sanctum sanctorum of the Overlords of Delgon. There was the hellish torture screen, now licked clean of life. There was the audience which had been so avid, now milling about in a mob frenzy of panic. There, upon a raised balcony, were the "big shots" of this nauseous clan, now doing their utmost to marshal some force able to cope effectively with this unheard-of violation of their ages-old immunity.

A last wave of Delgonian slaves hurled themselves forward, futile projectors furiously aflame, only to disappear in the DeLameters' fans of force. The Patrolmen hated to kill those mindless slaves, but it was a nasty job that had to be done. The slaves out of the way, those ravening beams bored on into the massed Overlords.

And now Kinnison and vanBuskirk killed, if not joyously, at least relentlessly, mercilessly, and with neither sign nor sensation of compunction. For this unbelievably monstrous tribe needed killing, root and branch-not a scion or shoot of it should be allowed to survive, to continue to contaminate the civilization of the galaxy. Back and forth, to and fro, up and down swept the raging beams, playing on until in all the vast volume of that gruesome chamber nothing lived save the two grim figures in its portal.

Assured of this fact, but with DeLameters still in hand, the two destroyers retraced their way to the tunnel's mouth, where Worsel anxiously awaited them. Lines of communication again established, Kinnison informed the Velantian of all that had taken place I and the latter gradually cut down the power of his thought-screen. Soon it was at zero strength and he reported jubilantly that for the first time in untold ages, the Overlords of Delgon were off the air!

"But surely the danger isn't over yeti" protested Kinnison. "We couldn't have got them all in this one raid. Some of them must have escaped, and there must be other dens of them on this planet somewhere?"

"Possibly, possibly," the Velantian waved his tail airily -the first sign of joyousness he had shown. "But their power is broken, definitely and forever. With these new screens, and with the arms and armament which, thanks to you, we can now fabricate, the task of wiping them out completely will be comparatively simple. Now you will accompany me to Velantia, where, I assure you, the resources of the planet will be put solidly behind you in your own endeavors. I have already summoned a spaceship-in less than twelve days we will be back in Velantia and at work upon your projects. In the meantime . . . . ."

"Twelve days! Noshabkeming the Radiant!" vanBuskirk exploded, and Kinnison put in.

"Sure-you forget they haven't got free drive. We'd better hop over and get our lifeboat, I think. It's not so good, either way, but in our own boat we'll be open to detection less than an hour, as against twelve days in the Velantians . And the pirates may be here any minute. It's as good as certain that their ship will be stopped and searched long before it gets back to Velantia, and if we were aboard it'd be just too bad."

And, since the crew knows about us, the pirates soon will, and it'll be just too bad, anyway," vanBuskirk reasoned.

"Not at all," Interposed Worsel. `The few of my people who know of you have been instructed to seal that knowledge. I must admit, however, that I am greatly disturbed by your conceptions of these pirates of space. You see, until I met you I knew nothing more of the pirates than I did of your Patrol."

"What a world!” vanBuskirk exclaimed. "No Patrol and no pirates! But at that, life might be simpler without both of them and without the free space-drive-more like it used to be in the good old airplane days that the novelists rave about."

"Of course I could not judge as to that." The Velantian was very serious. "This in which we live seems to be an out-of-the-way section of the galaxy, or it may be that we have nothing the pirates want."

"More likely it's simply that, like the Patrol, they haven't got organized into this district yet," suggested Kinnison. "There are so many thousands of millions of solar systems in the galaxy that it will probably be thousands of years yet before the Patrol gets into them all."

"But about these pirates," Worsel went back to his point. "If they have such minds as those of the Overlords, they will be able to break the seals of cur minds. However, I gather from your thoughts that their minds are not of that strength?"

"Not so far as I know," Kinnison replied. "You folks have the most powerful brains I ever heard of, short of the Arisians. And speaking of mental power, you can hear thoughts a lot farther than I can, even with my Lens or with this pirate receiver I've got.

See if you can find out whether there are any pirates in space around here, will you?"

While the Velantian was concentrating, vanBuskirk asked.

"Why, if his mind is so strong, could the Overlords put him under so much easier than they could us `weak-minded' human beings?"

"You are confusing 'mind' with `will,' I think. Ages of submission to the Overlords made the Velantians' willpower zero, as far as the bosses were concerned. On the other hand, you and I could raise stubbornness to sell to most people. In fact, if the Overlords had succeeded in really breaking us down, back there, the chances are we'd have gone insane."

"Probably you're right-we break, but don't bend, huh?" and the Velantian was ready to report.

"I have scanned space to the nearer stars-some eleven of your light-years-and have encountered no intruding entities," he announced.

"Eleven light-years-what a range!" Kinnison exclaimed. "However, that's only a shade over two minutes for a pirate ship at full blast. But we've got to take a chance sometime, and the quicker we get started the sooner we'll get back. We'll pick you up here, Worsel. No use in you going back to your tent-we'll be back here long before you could reach it. You'll be safe enough, I think, especially with our spare DeLameters. Let's get going, Bus !”

Again they shot into the air, again they traversed the airless depths of interplanetary space. To locate the temporary tomb of their lifeboat required only a few minutes, to disinter her only a few more. Then again they braved detection in the void, Kinnison tense at his controls, vanBuskirk in strained attention listening to and staring at his unscramblers and detectors. But the ether was still blank as the lifeboat struck Delgon's atmosphere, it remained blank while the lifeboat, inert, blasted frantically to match Worsel's intrinsic velocity.

"All right, Worsel, snap it up!" Kinnison called, and went on to vanBuskirk, "Now, you big, flat-footed Valerian spacehound, I hope that spaceman's god of yours will see to it our luck holds good for just fourteen minutes more. We've had more luck already than we had any right to expect, but we can put a little more to most God-awful good use I"

"Noshabkeming
does
bring spacemen luck," insisted the giant, grimacing a peculiar salute toward a small, golden image set inside his helmet, "and the fact that you warty, runty, atheistic little space-fleas of Tellus haven't got sense enough to know it-not even enough sense to really believe in your own gods, even Klono-doesn't change matters at all."