Galactic Patrol (28 page)

"Go ahead, son. We know you wouldn't."

"If I thought at all, I assumed that I was tackling men, since those on the ship were men, and men were the only known inhabitants of the Aldebaranian system. But when those wheelers took me so easily and so completely, it became very evident that I didn't have enough stuff. I ran like a scared pup, and I was lucky to get home at all. It wouldn't have happened if . . . . ." he paused.

"If what? Reason it out, son,' Haynes advised, pointedly. "You are wrong, dead wrong. You made no mistake, either in judgment or in execution. You have been blaming yourself for assuming that they were men. Suppose you had assumed that they were the Arisians themselves. Then what? After close scrutiny, even in the light of after-knowledge, we do not see how you could have changed the outcome." It did not occur, even to the sagacious old admiral, that Kinnison need not have gone in. Lensmen always went in.

"Well, anyway, they licked me, and that hurts," Kinnison admitted, frankly. "So I'm going back to Arisia for more training, if they'll give it to me. I may be gone quite a while, as it may take even Mentor a long time to increase the permeability of my skull enough so that an idea can filter through it in something under a century."

'Didn't Mentor tell you never to go back there?"

"No, sir." Kinnison grinned boyishly. "He must've forgot it in my case-the only slip he ever made, I guess. ,That's what gives me an out."

"Um . . . m . . . m." Haynes pondered this startling bit of information. He knew, far better than young Kinnison could, the Arisian power of mind, he did not believe that Mentor of Arisia had ever forgotten anything, however tiny or unimportant. "It has never been done . . . . they are a peculiar race, incomprehensible . . . . but not vindictive. He may refuse you, but nothing worse-that is, if you do not cross the barrier without invitation. It's a splendid idea, I think, but be very careful to strike that barrier free and at almost zero power-or else don't strike it at all."

They shook hands, and in a space of minutes the speedster was again tearing through apace. Kinnison now knew exactly what he wanted to get, and he utilized every waking hour of that long trip fn physical and mental exercise to prepare himself to take it.

Thus the time did not seem long. He crept up to the barrier at a snail's pace, stopping instantly as he touched it, and through that barrier he sent a thought.

"Kimball Kinnison of Sol Three calling Mentor of Arisia. Is it permitted that I approach your planet?" He was neither brazen nor obsequious, but was matter-of-factly asking a simple question and expecting a simple reply.

"It is permitted, Kimball Kinnison of Tellus," a slow, deep, measured voice resounded in his brain. "Neutralize your controls. You will be landed."

He did so, and the inert speedster shot forward, to come to ground in a perfect landing at a regulation spaceport. < He strode into the office, to confront the same grotesque entity who had measured him for his Lens not so long ago. Now, however, he stared straight into that entity's unblinking eyes, in silence.

"Ali, you have progressed. You realize now that vision is not always reliable. At our previous interview you took it for granted that what you saw must really exist, and did not wonder as to what our true shapes might be."

"I am wondering now, seriously," Kinnison replied, "and ,if it is permitted, I intend to stay here until I can see your v true shapes."

"This?" and the figure changed instantly into that of an old, white-bearded, scholarly gentleman.

"No. There is a vast difference -between seeing something myself and having you show it to me. I realize fully that you can make me see you as anything you choose. You could appear to me as .a perfect copy of myself, or as any other thing, person or object conceivable to my mind." .

"Ah, your development has been eminently satisfactory. It is now permissible to tell you, youth, that your present quest, not for mere information, but for real knowledge, was expected."

"Huh? How could that be? I didn't decide definitely, myself, until only a couple of weeks ago."

"It was inevitable. When we fitted your Lens we knew that you would return if you lived. As we recently informed that one known as Helmuth . . . . .”

"Helmuth! You
know, then, where . . ." Kinnison choked himself off. He would not ask for help in that-he would fight his own battles and bury his own dead. If they volunteered the information, well and good, but he would not ask it. Nor did the Arisian furnish it.

"You are right," the sage remarked, imperturbably. "For proper development it is essential that you secure that information for yourself." Then he continued his previous thought.

"As we told Helmuth recently, we have given your civilization an instrumentality-the Lens-by virtue of which it should be able to make itself secure throughout the galaxy.

Having given it, we could do nothing more of real or permanent benefit until you Lensmen yourselves began to understand the true relationship between mind and Lens. That understanding has been inevitable, for long we have known that in time a certain few of your minds would become strong enough to discover that theretofore unknown relationship. As soon as any mind made that discovery it would of course return to Arisia, the source of the Lens, for additional instruction, which, equally of course, that mind could not have borne previously.

"Decade by decade your minds have become stronger. Finally you came to be fitted with a Lens. Your mind, while pitifully undeveloped, had a latent capacity and a power that made your return here certain. There are several others who will, return.

Indeed, it has become a topic of discussion among us as to whether you or one other would be the first advanced student."

"Who is that other, if I may ask?"

"Your friend, Worsel the Velantian."

"He's got a real mind-'way, 'way ahead of mine," the Lensman stated, as a matter of self-evident fact.

"In some ways, yes. In other and highly important characteristics, no."

"Huh?" Kinnison exclaimed. "In what possible way have I got it over him?"

"I am not certain that I can explain it exactly in thoughts which you can understand.

Broadly speaking, his mind is the better trained, the more fully developed. It is of more grasp and reach, and of vastly greater present power. It is more controllable, more responsive, more adaptable than is yours-now. But your mind, while undeveloped, is of considerable greater capacity than his, and of greater and more varied latent capabilities. Above all, you have a driving force, a will to do, an undefeatable mental urge that no one of his race will ever be able to develop. Since I predicted that you would be the first to return, I am naturally gratified that you have developed in accordance with that prediction."

"Well, I have been more or less under pressure, and I got quite a few lucky breaks. But at that, ft seemed to me that I was progressing backward instead of forward."

"It is ever thus with the really competent. Prepare yourself !"

He launched a mental bolt, at the impact of which Kinnison's mind literally turned inside out in a wildly gyrating spiral vortex of dizzyingly confused images.

"Resists" came the harsh command.

"Resist! How-?" demanded the writhing, sweating Lensman. "You might as well tell a fly to resist an inert spaceship !"

"Use your will-your force-your adaptability. Shift your mind to meet mine at every point. Apart from these fundamentals neither I nor anyone else can tell you how, each mind must find its own medium and develop its own technique. But this is a very mild treatment indeed, one conditioned to your present strength. I will increase it gradually in severity, but rest assured that I will at no time raise it to the point of permanent damage.

Constructive exercises will come later, the first step must be to build up your resistance.

Therefore resist!''

The force, .which had not slackened for an instant, waxed slowly to the very verge of intolerability, and grimly, doggedly, the Lensman fought it. Teeth locked, muscles straining, fingers digging savagely into the hard leather upholstery of his chair he fought it, mustering his every ultimate resource to the task . . . . .

Suddenly the torture ceased and the Lensman slumped down, a mental and physical wreck. He was white, trembling, sweating, shaken to the very core of his being.

He was ashamed of his weakness. He was humiliated and bitterly disappointed at the showing he had made, but from the Arisian there came a calm, encouraging thought.

"You need not feel ashamed, you should instead feel proud, for you have made a start which is almost surprising, even to me, your sponsor. This may seem to you like needless punishment, but it is not. This is the only possible way in which that which you seek may be found."

"In that case, go to it," the Lensman declared. "I can take it."

The "advanced instruction" went on, with the pupil becoming ever stronger, until he was taking without damage thrusts that would at first have slain him instantly. The bouts became shorter and shorter, requiring as they did such terrific outpourings of mental force that no human mind could stand the awful strain for more than half an hour at a time.

And now these savage conflicts of wills and minds were interspersed with real instruction, with lessons neither painful nor unpleasant. In these the aged scientists probed gently into the youngster's mind, opening it out and exposing to its owner's gaze vast caverns whose very presence he had never even suspected. Some of these storehouses were already partially or completely filled, needing only arrangement and connection. Others were nearly empty. These were catalogued and made accessible.

And in all, permeating everything, was the Lens.

"Just like clearing out a clogged-up water system, with the Lens the pump that couldn't work!” exclaimed Kinnison one day.

"More like that than you at present realize," assented the Arisian. "You have observed, of course, that I have not given you any detailed instructions nor pointed out any specific abilities of the Lens which you have not known how to use. You will have to operate the pump yourself, and you have many surprises awaiting you as to what your Lens will pump, and how. Our sole task is to prepare your mind to work with the Lens, and that task is not yet done. Let us on with it."

After what seemed to Kinnison like weeks the time came when he could block out Mentor's suggestions completely, nor, now blocked out. should the Arisian be able to discern that fact. The Lensman gathered all his force together, concentrated it, and hurled it back at his teacher, and there ensued a struggle none the less Titanic because of its essential friendliness. The very ether seethed and boiled with the fury of the mental forces there at grips, but finally the Lensman beat down the other's screens. Then, boring deep into his eyes, he willed with all his force to see that Arisian as he really was.

And instantly the scholarly old man subsided into a . . . . a BRAIN I There were a few appendages, of course, and appurtenances, and incidentalia to nourishment, locomotion, and the like, but to all intents and purposes the Arisian was simply and solely a brain.

Tension ended, conflict ceased, and Kinnison apologized.

"Think nothing of it," and the brain actually smiled into Kinnison s mind. "Any mind of power sufficient to neutralize the forces which I have employed is of course able to hurl no feeble bolts of its own. See to it, however, that you thrust no such force at any lesser mind, or it dies instantly."

Kinnison started to stammer a reply, but the Arisian went on.

"No, son, I knew and know that the warning is superfluous. If you were not worthy of this power and were you not able to control it properly you would not have it. You have obtained that which you sought. Go, then, with power."

"But this is only one phase, barely a beginning!” protested Kinnison.

"Ah, you realize even that? Truly, youth, you have come far, and fast. But you are not yet ready for more, and lit is a truism that the reception of forces for which a mind is not prepared will destroy that mind. Thus, when you came to me you knew exactly what you wanted. Do you know with equal certainty what more you want from us?"

"No"

'Nor will you for years, if ever. Indeed, it may well be -- that only your descendants will be ready for that for which you now so dimly grope. Again I say, young man, go with power."

Kinnison went.

Judge, Jury, and Executioner

It had taken the lensman a long time to work out in his mind exactly what it was that he had wanted from the Arisians, and from no single source had the basic idea come. Part of it had come from his own knowledge of ordinary hypnosis, part from the ability of the Overlords of Delgon to control from a distance the minds of others, part from Worsel, who, working through Kinnison's own mind, had done such surprising things with a Lens, and a great-part indeed from the Arisians themselves, who had the astounding ability literally and completely to superimpose their own mentalities upon those of others, wherever situation. Part by part and bit by bit the Tellurian Lensman had built up his plan, but he had not had the sheer power of intellect to make it work. Now he had that, and was ready to go.

Where? His first impulse was to return to Aldebaran I and to invade again the stronghold of the Wheelmen, who had routed him so ignominiously in his one encounter with them. Ordinary prudence, however, counseled against that course.

"You'd better lay off them a while, Kim, old boy," he told himself quite frankly.

"They've got a lot of jets and you don't know how to use this new stuff of yours yet.

Better pick out something easier to take!''

Ever since leaving Arisia he had been subconsciously aware of a difference in his eyesight. He was seeing things much more clearly than he had ever seen them before, more sharply and in greater detail. Now this awareness crept into his consciousness and he glanced toward his tube-lights. They were out-except for the tiny lamps and bulls-eyes of his instrument board the vessel must be in complete darkness. He remembered then with a shock that when he entered the speedster he had not turned on his lights-he could see and had not thought of them at all.