Galactic Patrol (23 page)

"I suppose you are wondering what this is all about," he began. "I'll make it as short as I can. I asked you in here because this is the only convenient place in which I
know
that what we say will not be overheard. There are lots of spyrays around here, whether you know it or not. The
Prometheus is
to be allowed to go to Alsakan, because that is where pirates seem to be most numerous, and we do not want to waste time hunting all over space to find one. Your vessel was selected, Mr. Matthews, for three reasons, and in spite of the attempts you have been making to obtain special privileges, not because of them. First, because there is no necessary or semi-necessary freight waiting for clearance into that region. Second, because we do not want your firm to fail.

We do not know of any other large shipping line in such a shaky position as yours, nor of any firm anywhere to which one single cargo would make such an immense financial difference."

"You are certainly right there, Lensman!” Matthews agreed, whole-heartedly. "It means bankruptcy on the one hand and a fortune on the other."

"Here's what is to happen. The ship and the mauler blast off on schedule, fourteen minutes from now. They get about to Valeria, when they are both recalled-urgent orders for the mauler to go on rescue work. The mauler comes back, but your captain will, in all probability, keep on going, saying that he started out for Alsakan and that's where he's going . . . . .”

"But he wouldn't-he wouldn't
dare !"
gasped the shipowner.

"Sure he would," Kinnison insisted, cheerfully enough. "That is the third good reason your vessel is being allowed to set out, because it certainly will be attacked. You didn't know it until now, but your captain and over half of your crew are pirates themselves, and are going to . . . . .”

"What? Pirates!” Matthews bellowed. "I'll go down there and. . . .”

"You'll do nothing whatever, Mr. Matthews, except watch things, and you will do that from here. The situation is under control."

"But my ship! My cargo!” the shipper wailed. "We'll be ruined if they . . . . .”

"Let me finish, please," the Lensman interrupted. "As soon as the mauler turns back it is practically certain that your captain will send out a message, letting the pirates know that he is easy prey. Within a minute after sending that message, he dies. So does every other pirate aboard. Your ship lands on Valeria and takes on a crew of space fighting wildcats, headed by Peter vanBuskirk. Then it goes on toward Alsakan, and when the pirates board that ship, after its prearranged half-hearted resistance and easy surrender, they are going to think that all hell's out for noon. Especially since the mauler, back from her `rescue work, will be tagging along, not too far away."

"Then my ship will really go to Alsakan, and back, safely?" Matthews was almost dazed. Matters were entirely out of his hands, and things had moved so rapidly that he hardly knew what to think. "But if my own crews are pirates, some of them may . . . . .

but I can of course get police protection if necessary."

"Unless something entirely unforeseen happens, the
Prometheus will
make the round trip in safety, cargoes and all-under mauler escort all the way. You will of course have to take the other matter up with your local police."

"When is the attack to take place, sir?" asked the base commander.

"That's what the mauler skipper wanted to know when I told him what was ahead of him," Kinnison grinned. "He wanted to sneak up a little closer about that time. I'd like to know, myself, but unfortunately that will have to be decided by the pirates after they get the signal. It will be on the way out, though, because the cargo she has aboard now is a lot more valuable to Boskone than a load of Alsakanite cigarettes would be."

"But do you think you can take the pirate ship that way?" asked the commander, dubiously.

"No, but we will cut down his personnel to such an extent that he will have to head back for his base."

"And that's what you want-the base. I see."

He did not see-quite-but the Lensman did not enlighten him further.

There was a brilliant double flare as freighter and mauler lifted into the air, and Kinnison showed the shipowner out.

"Hadn't I better be going, too?" asked the commander. "Those orders, you know."

"A couple of minutes yet. I have another message for you-official. Matthews won't need a police escort long – if any. When that ship is attacked it is to be the signal for cleaning out every pirate in Greater New York-the worst pirate hot-bed on Tellus. Neither you nor your force will be in on it directly, but you might pass the word around, so that our own men will be informed ahead of the Telenews outfits."

"Good ! That has needed doing for a long time."

"Yes, but you know it takes a long time to line up every man in such a big organization. They want to get them all, without getting any innocent bystanders."

"Who's doing it-Prime Base?"

"Yes. Enough men will be thrown in here to do the whole job in an hour."

"That is good news-clear ether, Lensman!” and the base commander went back to his post.

As the airlock .toggles rammed home, sealing the exit behind the departing visitor, Kinnison eased his speedster into the air and headed for Valeria. Since the two vessels ahead of him had left atmosphere inertialess as would he, and since several hundred seconds had elapsed since their take-off, he was of course some ten thousand miles off their line as well as being uncounted millions of miles behind them. But the larger distance meant no more than the smaller, and neither of them meant anything at all to the Patrol's finest speedster. Kinnison, on easy touring blast, caught up with them in minutes. Closing up to less than one light-year, he slowed his pace to match theirs and held his distance.

Any ordinary ship would have been detected long since, but Kinnison rode no ordinary ship. His speedster was immune to all detection save electromagnetic or visual, and therefore, even at that close range-the travel of half a minute for even a slow spaceship in open space-he was safe. For electromagnetics are useless at that distance, and visual apparatus, even with subether converters, is reliable only up to a few mere thousands of miles, unless the observer knows exactly what to look for and where to look for it.

Kinnison, then, closed up and followed the
Prometheus
and her mauler escort, and as they approached the Valerian solar 'system the recall message came booming in.

Also, as had been expected, the renegade captain of the freighter sent his defiant answer and his message to the pirate high command. The mauler turned back, the merchantman kept on. Suddenly, however, she stopped, inert, and from her ports were ejected discrete bits of matter-probably the bodies of the Boskonian members of her crew. Then the
Prometheus,
again inertialess, flashed directly toward the planet Valeria.

An inertialess landing is, of course, highly irregular, and is made only when the ship is to take off again immediately. It saves all the time ordinarily lost in spiraling and deceleration, and saves the computation of a landing orbit, which is no task for an amateur computer. It is, however, dangerous. It takes power, plenty of it, to maintain the force which neutralizes the inertia of mass, and if that force fails even for an instant while a ship is upon a planet's surface, the consequences are usually highly disastrous. For in the neutralization of inertia there is no magic, no getting of something for nothing, no violation of Nature's law of the conservation of matter and energy. The instant that force becomes inoperative the ship possesses exactly the same velocity, momentum, and inertia that it possessed at the instant the force took effect. Thus, if a spaceship takes off from Earth, with its orbital velocity of about eighteen and one-half miles per second relative to the sun, goes free, dashes to Mars, lands free, and then goes inert, its original velocity, both in speed and in direction, is instantly restored, with consequences better imagined than described. Such a velocity of course
might
take the ship harmlessly into the sir, but it probably would not.

Inertialess vessels do not ordinarily load freight. They do, however, take on passengers, especially military personnel accustomed to open-space maneuvers in powered space-suits. Men and ship must go inert-separately, of course-immediately after leaving the planet, so that the men can match their intrinsic velocity to the ship's, but that takes only a very small fraction of the time required for an inert landing.

Hence the
Prometheus
landed free, and so did Kinnison. He stepped out, fully armored against Valeria's extremely heavy atmosphere, and laboring a trifle under its terrific gravitation, to be greeted cordially by
Lieutenant
vanBuskirk, whose fighting men were already streaming aboard the freighter.

"Hi, Kim!” the Dutchman called, gaily. "Everything went off like clockwork. Won't hold you up long-be blasting off in ten minutes.”

"Ho, Lefty !" the Lensman acknowledged, as cordially, but saluting the newly commissioned officer with an exaggerated formality. "Say, Bus, I've been doing some thinking. Why wouldn't it be a good idea to . . . .”

"Uh-uh, it would
not,"
denied the fighter, positively. "I know what you're going to say-that you want in on this party-but don't say it."

"But I . . . . ." Kinnison began to argue.

"Nix," the Valerian declared flatly. "You've got to stay with your speedster. No room for her inside, she's clear full of cargo and my men. You can't clamp on outside, because that would give the whole thing away. And besides, for the first and last time in my life I've got a chance to give a Gray Lensman orders. Those orders are to stay out of and away from this ship-and I'll see to it that you do, too, you little Tellurian shrimp! Boy, what a kick I get out of that!"

"You would, you big, dumb Valerian ape-you always were a small-souled types"

Kinnison retorted. "Piggy-piggy . . . . Haynes, huh?"

"Uh-huh." VanBuskirk nodded. "How else could I talk so rough to you and get away with it? However, don't feel too bad-you aren't missing a thing, really. It's in the cans already, and your fun is up ahead somewhere. And by the way, Kim, congratulations. You had it coming. We’re all behind you, from here to the Magellanic Clouds and back."

"Thanks. The same to you, Bus, and many of 'em. Well, if you won't let me stow away, I'll tag along behind, I guess. Clear ether-or rather, I hope it's full of pirates by tomorrow morning.- Won't be, though, probably, don't imagine they'll move until we're almost there."

And tag along Kinnison did, through thousands and thousands of parsecs of uneventful voyage.

,Part of the time he spent in the speedster dashing hither and yon. Most of it, however, he spent in the vastly more comfortable mauler, to the armored side of which his tiny vessel clung with its magnetic clamps while he slept and ate, gossiped and read, exercised and played with the mauler's officers and crew, in deep-space comradery. It so happened, however, that when the long-awaited attack developed he was out in his speedster, and thus saw and heard everything from the beginning.

Space was filled with the old, familiar interference. The raider flashed up, locked on with magnets, and began to beam. Not heavily-scarcely enough to warm up the defensive screens-and Kinnison probed into the pirate with his spy-ray.

"Terrestrials-North Americans!” he exclaimed, half aloud, startled for an instant.

"But naturally they would be, since this is a put-up job and over half the crew were New York gangsters."

"The blighter's got his spy-ray screens up," the pilot was grumbling to his captain.

The fact that he spoke in English was immaterial to the Lensman, he would have understood equally well any other possible form of communication or of thought exchange. "What wasn't part of the plan, was it?"

If Helmuth or one of the other able minds at Grand Base had been directing that attack it would have stopped right there. The pilot had shown a flash of feeling that, with a little encouragement, might have grown into a suspicion. But the captain was not an imaginative man. Therefore.

"Nothing was said about it, either way," he replied. "Probably the mate's on duty-he isn't one of us, you know. The captain will open up. If he doesn't do it pretty quick I'll open her up myself . . . . there, the port's opening. Slide a little forward . . . hold it! Go get 'em, men!"

Men, hundreds of them, armed and armored, swarmed through the freighter's locks. But as the last man of the boarding party passed the portal something happened that was most decidedly not on the program. The outer port slammed shut and its toggles drove home!

"Blast those screens! Knock them down-get in there with a spray-ray!" barked the pirate captain. He was not one of those hardy and-valiant souls who, like Gildersleeve, led in person the attacks of his cutthroats. He emulated instead the higher Boskonian officials and directed his raids from the safety of his control-room, but, as has been intimated, he was not exactly like those officials. It was only after it was too late that he became suspicious. "I wonder if somebody could have double-crossed us? . . . .

Highjackers?"

"We'll bally soon know," the pilot growled, and even as he spoke the spy-ray got through, revealing a very shambles.

For vanBuskirk and his Valerians had not been caught napping, nor were they a crew-unarmored, partially armed, and rendered even more impotent by internal mutiny, strife, and slaughter-such as the pirates had expected to find.

Instead, the boarders met a force that was overwhelmingly superior to their own.

Not only in the strength and agility of its units, but also in that at least one semiportable projector commanded every corridor of the freighter. In the blasts of those projectors most of the pirates died instantly, not knowing what struck them.

They were the fortunate ones. The others knew what was coming and saw it as it came, for the Valerians did not even draw their DeLameters. They knew that the pirates'

armor could withstand for minutes any hand-weapon's beams, and they disdained to remount the heavy semiportables. They came in with their space-axes, and at the sight the pirates broke and ran screaming in panic fear. But they could not escape. The toggles of the exit port were socketed and locked.