"So you didn't find anything on Nevia." Roderick Kinnison got up, deposited the inch-long butt of his cigar in an ashtray, lit another, and prowled about the room; hands jammed deep into breeches pockets. "I'm surprised. Nerado struck me as being a B.T.O.... I thought sure he'd qualify."
"So did I." Samms' tone was glum. "He's Big Time, and an Operator; but not big enough, by far. I'm--we're both--finding out that Lensman material is damned scarce stuff. There's none on Nevia, and no indication whatever that there ever will be any."
"Tough ... and you're right, of course, in your stand that we'll have to have Lensmen from as many different solar systems as possible on the Galactic Council or the thing won't work at all. So damned much jealousy--which is one reason why we're here in New York instead of out at The Hill, where we belong--we've found that out already, even in such a small and comparatively homogeneous group as our own system--the Solarian Council will not only have to be made up mostly of Lensmen, but each and every inhabited planet of Sol will have to be represented--even Pluto, I suppose, in time. And by the way, your Mr. Saunders wasn't any too pleased when you took Knobos of Mars and DalNalten of Venus away from him and made Lensmen out of them--and put them miles over his head."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that ... exactly. I convinced him ... but at that, since Saunders is not Lensman grade himself, it was a trifle difficult for him to understand the situation completely."
"You say it easy--'difficult' is not the word I would use. But back to the Lensman hunt." Kinnison scowled blackly. "I agree, as I said before, that we need non-human Lensmen, the more the better, but I don't think much of your chance of finding any. What makes you think ... Oh, I see ... but I don't know whether you're justified or not in assuming a high positive correlation between a certain kind of mental ability and technological advancement."
"No such assumption is necessary. Start anywhere you please, Rod, and take it from there; including Nevia."
"I'll start with known facts, then. Interstellar flight is new to us. We haven't spread far, or surveyed much territory. But in the eight solar systems with which we are most familiar there are seven planets--I'm not counting Valeria--which are very much like Earth in point of mass, size, climate, atmosphere, and gravity. Five of the seven did not have any intelligent life and were colonized easily and quickly. The Tellurian worlds of Procyon and Vega became friendly neighbors--thank God we learned something on Nevia--because they were already inhabited by highly advanced races: Procia by people as human as we are, Vegia by people who would be so if it weren't for their tails. Many other worlds of these systems are inhabited by more or less intelligent non-human races. Just how intelligent they are we don't know, but the Lensmen will soon find out.
"My point is that no race we have found so far has had either atomic energy or any form of space-drive. In any contact with races having space-drives we have not been the discoverers, but the discovered. Our colonies are all within twenty six light-years of Earth except Aldebaran II, which is fifty seven, but which drew a lot of people, in spite of the distance, because it was so nearly identical with Earth. On the other hand, the Nevians, from a distance of over a hundred light-years, found us ... implying an older race and a higher development ... but you just told me that they would never produce a Lensman!"
"That point stopped me, too, at first. Follow through; I want to see if you arrive at the same conclusion I did."
"Well ... I ... I ..." Kinnison thought intensely, then went on: "Of course, the Nevians were not colonizing; nor, strictly speaking, exploring. They were merely hunting for iron--a highly organized, intensively specialized operation to find a raw material they needed desperately."
"Precisely," Samms agreed.
"The Rigellians, however, were surveying, and Rigel is about four hundred and forty light-years from here. We didn't have a thing they needed or wanted. They nodded at us in passing and kept on going. I'm still on your track?"
"Dead center. And just where does that put the Palainians?"
"I see ... you may have something there, at that. Palain is so far away that nobody knows even where it is--probably thousands of light-years. Yet they have not only explored this system; they colonized Pluto long before our white race colonized America. But damn it, Virge, I don't like it--any part of it. Rigel Four you may be able to take, with your Lens ... even one of their damned automobiles, if you stay solidly en rapport with the driver. But Palain, Virge! Pluto is bad enough, but the home planet! You can't. Nobody can. It simply can't be done!"
"I know it won't be easy," Samms admitted, bleakly, "but if it's got to be done, I'll do it. And I have a little information that I haven't had time to tell you yet. We discussed once before, you remember, what a job it was to get into any kind of communication with the Palainians on Pluto. You said then that nobody could understand them, and you were right--then. However, I re-ran those brain-wave tapes, wearing my Lens, and could understand them--the thoughts, that is--as well as though they had been recorded in precisionist-grade English."
"What?" Kinnison exclaimed, then fell silent. Samms remained silent. What they were thinking of Arisia's Lens cannot be expressed in words.
"Well, go on," Kinnison finally said. "Give me the rest of it--the stinger that you've been holding back."
"The messages--as messages--were clear and plain. The backgrounds, however, the connotations and implications, were not. Some of their codes and standards seem to be radically different from ours--so utterly and fantastically different that I simply cannot reconcile either their conduct or their ethics with their obviously high intelligence and their advanced state of development. However, they have at least some minds of tremendous power, and none of the peculiarities I deduced were of such a nature as to preclude Lensmanship. Therefore I am going to Pluto; and from there--I hope--to Palain Seven. If there's a Lensman there, I'll get him."
"You will, at that," Kinnison paid quiet tribute to what he, better than anyone else, knew that his friend had.
"But enough of me--how are you doing?"
"As well as can be expected at this stage of the game. The thing is developing along three main lines. First, the pirates. Since that kind of thing is more or less my own line I'm handling it myself, unless and until you find someone better qualified. I've got Jack and Costigan working on it now.
"Second; drugs, vice, and so on. I hope you find somebody to take this line over, because, frankly, I'm in over my depth and want to get out. Knobos and DalNalten are trying to find out if there's anything to the idea that there may be a planetary, or even inter-planetary, ring involved. Since Sid Fletcher isn't a Lensman I couldn't disconnect him openly from his job, but he knows a lot about the dope-vice situation and is working practically full time with the other two.
"Third; pure--or rather, decidedly impure--politics. The more I studied that subject, the clearer it became that politics would be the worst and biggest battle of the three. There are too many angles I don't know a damned thing about, such as what to do about the succession of foaming, screaming fits your friend Senator Morgan will be throwing the minute he finds out what our Galactic Patrol is going to do. So I ducked the whole political line.
"Now you know as well as I do--better, probably--that Morgan is only the Pernicious Activities Committee of the North American Senate. Multiply him by the thousands of others, all over space, who will be on our necks before the Patrol can get its space-legs, and you will see that all that stuff will have to be handled by a Lensman who, as well as being a mighty smooth operator, will have to know all the answers and will have to have plenty of guts. I've got the guts, but none of the other prime requisites. Jill hasn't, although she's got everything else. Fairchild, your Relations ace, isn't a Lensman and can never become one. So you can see quite plainly who has got to handle politics himself."
"You may be right ... but this Lensman business comes first...." Samms pondered, then brightened. "Perhaps--probably--I can find somebody on this trip--a Palainian, say--who is better qualified than any of us."
Kinnison snorted. "If you can, I'll buy you a week in any Venerian relaxerie you want to name."
"Better start saving up your credits, then, because from what I already know of the Palainian mentality such a development is distinctly more than a possibility." Samms paused, his eyes narrowing. "I don't know whether it would make Morgan and his kind more rabid or less so to have a non-Solarian entity possess authority in our affairs political--but at least it would be something new and different. But in spite of what you said about 'ducking' politics, what have you got Northrop, Jill and Fairchild doing?"
"Well, we had a couple of discussions. I couldn't give either Jill or Dick orders, of course...."
"Wouldn't, you mean," Samms corrected.
"Couldn't," Kinnison insisted. "Jill, besides being your daughter and Lensman grade, had no official connection with either the Triplanetary Service or the Solarian Patrol. And the Service, including Fairchild, is still Triplanetary; and it will have to stay Triplanetary until you have found enough Lensmen so that you can spring your twin surprises--Galactic Council and Galactic Patrol. However, Northrop and Fairchild are keeping their eyes and ears open and their mouths shut, and Jill is finding out whatever she can about drugs and so on, as well as the various political angles. They'll report to you--facts, deductions, guesses, and recommendations--whenever you say the word."
"Nice work, Rod. Thanks. I think I'll call Jill now, before I go--wonder where she is? ... but I wonder ... with the Lens perhaps telephones are superfluous? I'll try it."
"JILL!" he thought intensely into his Lens, forming as he did so a mental image of his gorgeous daughter as he knew her. But he found, greatly to his surprise, that neither elaboration nor emphasis was necessary.
"Ouch!" came the almost instantaneous answer, long before his thought was complete. "Don't think so hard, Dad, it hurts--I almost missed a step." Virgilia was actually there with him; inside his own mind; in closer touch with him than she had ever before been. "Back so soon? Shall we report now, or aren't you ready to go to work yet?"
"Skipping for the moment your aspersions on my present activities--not quite." Samms moderated the intensity of his thought to a conversational level. "Just wanted to check with you. Come in, Rod." In flashing thoughts he brought her up to date. "Jill, do you agree with what Rod here has just told me?"
"Yes. Fully. So do the boys."
"That settles it, then--unless, of course, I can find a more capable substitute."
"Of course--but we will believe that when we see it."
"Where are you and what are you doing?"
"Washington, D.C. European Embassy. Dancing with Herkimer Third, Senator Morgan's Number One secretary. I was going to make passes at him--in a perfectly lady-like way, of course--but it wasn't necessary. He thinks he can break down my resistance."
"Careful, Jill! That kind of stuff...."
"Is very old stuff indeed, Daddy dear. Simple. And Herkimer Third isn't really a menace; he just thinks he is. Take a look--you can, can't you, with your Lens?"
"Perhaps ... Oh, yes. I see him as well as you do." Fully en rapport with the girl as he was, so that his mind received simultaneously with hers any stimulus which she was willing to share, it seemed as though a keen, handsome, deeply tanned face bent down from a distance of inches toward his own. "But I don't like it a bit--and him even less."
"That's because you aren't a girl," Jill giggled mentally. "This is fun; and it won't hurt him a bit, except maybe for a slightly bruised vanity, when I don't fall down flat at his feet. And I'm learning a lot that he hasn't any suspicion he's giving away."
"Knowing you, I believe that. But don't ... that is ... well, be very careful not to get your fingers burned. The job isn't worth it--yet."
"Don't worry, Dad." She laughed unaffectedly. "When it comes to playboys like this one, I've got millions and skillions and whillions of ohms of resistance. But here comes Senator Morgan himself, with a fat and repulsive Venerian--he's calling my boy-friend away from me, with what he thinks is an imperceptible high-sign, into a huddle--and my olfactory nerves perceive a rich and fruity aroma, as of skunk--so ... I hate to seem to be giving a Solarian Councillor the heave-ho, but if I want to read what goes on--and I certainly do--I'll have to concentrate. As soon as you get back give us a call and we'll report. Take it easy, Dad!"
"You're the one to be told that, not me. Good hunting, Jill!"
Samms, still seated calmly at his desk, reached out and pressed a button marked "GARAGE". His office was on the seventieth floor; the garage occupied level after level of sub-basement. The screen brightened; a keen young face appeared.
"Good evening, Jim. Will you please send my car up to the Wright Skyway feeder?"
"At once, sir. It will be there in seventy five seconds."
Samms cut off; and, after a brief exchange of thought with Kinnison, went out into the hall and along it to the "DOWN" shaft. There, going free, he stepped through a doorless, unguarded archway into over a thousand feet of air. Although it was long after conventional office hours the shaft was still fairly busy, but that made no difference--inertialess collisions cannot even be felt. He bulleted downward to the sixth floor, where he brought himself to an instantaneous halt.
Leaving the shaft, he joined the now thinning crowd hurrying toward the exit. A girl with meticulously plucked eyebrows and an astounding hair-do, catching sight of his Lens, took her hands out of her breeches pockets--skirts went out, as office dress, when up-and-down open-shaft velocities of a hundred or so miles per hour replaced elevators--nudged her companion, and whispered excitedly:
"Look there! Quick! I never saw one close up before, did you? That's him--himself! First Lensman Samms!"
At the Portal, the Lensman as a matter of habit held out his car-check, but such formalities were no longer necessary, or even possible. Everybody knew, or wanted to be thought of as knowing, Virgil Samms.
"Stall four sixty five, First Lensman, sir," the uniformed gateman told him, without even glancing at the extended disk.
"Thank you, Tom."
"This way, please, sir, First Lensman," and a youth, teeth gleaming white in a startlingly black face, strode proudly to the indicated stall and opened the vehicle's door.
"Thank you, Danny," Samms said, as appreciatively as though he did not know exactly where his ground-car was.
He got in. The door jammed itself gently shut. The runabout--a Dillingham eleven-forty--shot smoothly forward upon its two fat, soft tires. Half-way to the exit archway he was doing forty; he hit the steeply-banked curve leading into the lofty "street" at ninety. Nor was there shock or strain. Motorcycle-wise, but automatically, the "Dilly" leaned against its gyroscopes at precisely the correct angle; the huge low-pressure tires clung to the resilient synthetic of the pavement as though integral with it. Nor was there any question of conflicting traffic, for this thoroughfare, six full levels above Varick Street proper, was not, strictly speaking, a street at all. It had only one point of access, the one which Samms had used; and only one exit--it was simply and only a feeder into Wright Skyway, a limited-access superhighway.
Samms saw, without noting particularly, the maze of traffic-ways of which this feeder was only one tiny part; a maze which extended from ground-level up to a point well above even the towering buildings of New York's metropolitan district.
The way rose sharply; Samms' right foot went down a little farther; the Dillingham began to pick up speed. Moving loud-speakers sang to him and yelled and blared at him, but he did not hear them. Brilliant signs, flashing and flaring all the colors of the spectrum--sheer triumphs of the electrician's art--blazed in or flamed into arresting words and eye-catching pictures, but he did not see them. Advertising--designed by experts to sell everything from aardvarks to Martian zyzmol ("bottled ecstacy")--but the First Lensman was a seasoned big-city dweller. His mind had long since become a perfect filter, admitting to his consciousness only things which he wanted to perceive: only so can big-city life be made endurable.
Approaching the Skyway, he cut in his touring roadlights, slowed down a trifle, and insinuated his low-flyer into the stream of traffic. Those lights threw fifteen hundred watts apiece, but there was no glare--polarized lenses and wind-shields saw to that.
He wormed his way over to the left-hand, high-speed lane and opened up. At the edge of the skyscraper district, where Wright Skyway angles sharply downward to ground level, Samms' attention was caught and held by something off to his right--a blue-white, whistling something that hurtled upward into the air. As it ascended it slowed down; its monotone shriek became lower and lower in pitch; its light went down through the spectrum toward the red. Finally it exploded, with an earth-shaking crash; but the lightning-like flash of the detonation, instead of vanishing almost instantaneously, settled itself upon a low-hanging artificial cloud and became a picture and four words--two bearded faces and "SMITH BROS. COUGH DROPS"!
"Well, I'll be damned!" Samms spoke aloud, chagrined at having been compelled to listen to and to look at an advertisement. "I thought I had seen everything, but that is really new!"
Twenty minutes--fifty miles--later, Samms left the Skyway at a point near what had once been South Norwalk, Connecticut; an area transformed now into the level square miles of New York Spaceport.
New York Spaceport; then, and until the establishment of Prime Base, the biggest and busiest field in existence upon any planet of Civilization. For New York City, long the financial and commercial capital of the Earth, had maintained the same dominant position in the affairs of the Solar System and was holding a substantial lead over her rivals, Chicago, London, and Stalingrad, in the race for inter-stellar supremacy.
And Virgil Samms himself, because of the ever-increasing menace of piracy, had been largely responsible for the policy of basing the war-vessels of the Triplanetary Patrol upon each space-field in direct ratio to the size and importance of that field. Hence he was no stranger in New York Spaceport; in fact, master psychologist that he was, he had made it a point to know by first name practically everyone connected with it.
No sooner had he turned his Dillingham over to a smiling attendant, however, than he was accosted by a man whom he had never seen before.
"Mr. Samms?" the stranger asked.
"Yes." Samms did not energize his Lens; he had not yet developed either the inclination or the technique to probe instantaneously every entity who approached him, upon any pretext whatever, in order to find out what that entity really wanted.
"I'm Isaacson ..." the man paused, as though he had supplied a world of information.
"Yes?" Samms was receptive, but not impressed.
"Interstellar Spaceways, you know. We've been trying to see you for two weeks, but we couldn't get past your secretaries, so I decided to buttonhole you here, myself. But we're just as much alone here as we would be in either one of our offices--yes, more so. What I want to talk to you about is having our exclusive franchise extended to cover the outer planets and the colonies."
"Just a minute, Mr. Isaacson. Surely you know that I no longer have even a portfolio in the Council; that practically all of my attention is, and for some time to come will be, directed elsewhere?"
"Exactly--officially." Isaacson's tone spoke volumes. "But you're still the Boss; they'll do anything you tell them to. We couldn't try to do business with you before, of course, but in your present position there is nothing whatever to prevent you from getting into the biggest thing that will ever be. We are the biggest corporation in existence now, as you know, and we are still growing--fast. We don't do business in a small way, or with small men; so here's a check for a million credits, or I will deposit it to your account...."
"I'm not interested."
"As a binder," the other went on, as smoothly as though his sentence had not been interrupted, "with twenty-five million more to follow on the day that our franchise goes through."
"I'm still not interested."
"No ... o ... o ...?" Isaacson studied the Lensman narrowly: and Samms, Lens now wide awake, studied the entrepreneur. "Well ... I ... while I admit that we want you pretty badly, you are smart enough to know that we'll get what we want anyway, with or without you. With you, though, it will be easier and quicker, so I am authorized to offer you, besides the twenty six million credits ..." he savored the words as he uttered them: "twenty two and one-half percent of Spaceways. On today's market that is worth fifty million credits; ten years from now it will be worth fifty billion. That's my high bid; that's as high as we can possibly go."
"I'm glad to hear that--I'm still not interested," and Samms strode away, calling his friend Kinnison as he did so.
"Rod? Virgil." He told the story.
"Whew!" Kinnison whistled expressively. "They're not pikers, anyway, are they? What a sweet set-up--and you could wrap it up and hand it to them like a pound of coffee...."
"Or you could, Rod."
"Could be...." The big Lensman ruminated. "But what a hookup! Perfectly legitimate, and with plenty of precedents--and arguments, of a sort--in its favor. The outer planets. Then Alpha Centauri and Sirius and Procyon and so on. Monopoly--all the traffic will bear...."
"Slavery, you mean!" Samms stormed. "It would hold Civilization back for a thousand years!"
"Sure, but what do they care?"
"That's it ... and he said--and actually believed--that they would get it without my help.... I can't help wondering about that."
"Simple enough, Virge, when you think about it. He doesn't know yet what a Lensman is. Nobody does, you know, except Lensmen. It will take some time for that knowledge to get around...."
"And still longer for it to be believed."
"Right. But as to the chance of Interstellar Spaceways ever getting the monopoly they're working for, I didn't think I would have to remind you that it was not entirely by accident that over half of the members of the Solarian Council are Lensmen, and that any Galactic Councillor will automatically have to be a Lensman. So go right ahead with what you started, my boy, and don't give Isaacson and Company another thought. We'll bend an optic or two in that direction while you are gone."
"I was overlooking a few things, at that, I guess." Samms sighed in relief as he entered the main office of the Patrol.
The line at the receptionist's desk was fairly short, but even so, Samms was not allowed to wait. That highly decorative, but far-from-dumb blonde, breaking off in mid-sentence her business of the moment, turned on her charm as though it had been a battery of floodlights, pressed a stud on her desk, and spoke to the man before her and to the Lensman:
"Excuse me a moment, please. First Lensman Samms, sir...?"
"Yes, Miss Regan?" her communicator--"squawk-box", in every day parlance--broke in.
"First Lensman Samms is here, sir," the girl announced, and broke the circuit.
"Good evening, Sylvia. Lieutenant-Commander Wagner, please, or whoever else is handling clearances," Samms answered what he thought was to have been her question.
"Oh, no, sir; you are cleared. Commodore Clayton has been waiting for you ... here he is, now."
"Hi, Virgil!" Commodore Clayton, a big, solid man with a scarred face and a shock of iron-gray hair, whose collar bore the two silver stars which proclaimed him to be the commander-in-chief of a continental contingent of the Patrol, shook hands vigorously. "I'll zip you out. Miss Regan, call a bug, please."
"Oh, that isn't necessary, Alex!" Samms protested. "I'll pick one up outside."
"Not in any Patrol base in North America, my friend; nor, unless I am very badly mistaken, anywhere else. From now on, Lensmen have absolute priority, and the quicker everybody realizes exactly what that means, the better."
The "bug"--a vehicle something like a jeep, except more so--was waiting at the door. The two men jumped aboard.
"The Chicago--and blast!" Clayton ordered, crisply.
The driver obeyed--literally. Gravel flew from beneath skidding tires as the highly maneuverable little ground-car took off. A screaming turn into the deservedly famous Avenue of Oaks. Along the Avenue. Through the Gate, the guards saluting smartly as the bug raced past them. Past the barracks. Past the airport hangars and strips. Out into the space-field, the scarred and blackened area devoted solely to the widely-spaced docks of the tremendous vessels which plied the vacuous reaches of inter-planetary and inter-stellar space. Spacedocks were, and are, huge and sprawling structures; built of concrete and steel and asbestos and ultra-stubborn refractory and insulation and vacuum-breaks; fully air-conditioned and having refrigeration equipment of thousands of tons per hour of ice; designed not only to expedite servicing, unloading, and loading, but also to protect materials and personnel from the raving, searing blasts of take-off and of landing.
A space-dock is a squat and monstrous cylinder, into whose hollow top the lowermost one-third of a space-ship's bulk fits as snugly as does a baseball into the "pocket" of a veteran fielder's long-seasoned glove. And the tremendous distances between those docks minimize the apparent size, both of the structures themselves and of the vessels surmounting them. Thus, from a distance, the Chicago looked little enough, and harmless enough; but as the bug flashed under the overhanging bulk and the driver braked savagely to a stop at one of the dock's entrances, Samms could scarcely keep from flinching. That featureless, gray, smoothly curving wall of alloy steel loomed so incredibly high above them--extended so terrifyingly far outward beyond its visible means of support! It must be on the very verge of crashing!
Samms stared deliberately at the mass of metal towering above him, then smiled--not without effort--at his companion.
"You'd think, Alex, that a man would get over being afraid that a ship was going to fall on him, but I haven't--yet."
"No, and you probably never will. I never have, and I'm one of the old hands. Some claim not to mind it--but not in front of a lie detector. That's why they had to make the passenger docks bigger than the liners--too many passengers fainted and had to be carried aboard on stretchers--or cancelled passage entirely. However, scaring hell out of them on the ground had one big advantage; they felt so safe inside that they didn't get the colly-wobbles so bad when they went free."
"Well, I've got over that, anyway. Good-bye, Alex; and thanks."
Samms entered the dock, shot smoothly upward, followed an escorting officer to the captain's own cabin, and settled himself into a cushioned chair facing an ultra-wave view-plate. A face appeared upon his communicator screen and spoke.
"Winfield to First Lensman Samms--you will be ready to blast off at twenty one hundred?"
"Samms to Captain Winfield," the Lensman replied. "I will be ready."
Sirens yelled briefly; a noise which Samms knew was purely a formality. Clearance had been issued; Station PIXNY was filling the air with warnings. Personnel and material close enough to the Chicago's dock to be affected by the blast were under cover and safe.
The blast went on; the plate showed, instead of a view of the space-field, a blaze of blue-white light. The war-ship was inertialess, it is true; but so terrific were the forces released that incandescent gases, furiously driven, washed the dock and everything for hundreds of yards around it.
The plate cleared. Through the lower, denser layers of atmosphere the Chicago bored in seconds; then, as the air grew thinner and thinner, she rushed upward faster and faster. The terrain below became concave ... then convex. Being completely without inertia, the ship's velocity was at every instant that at which the friction of the medium through which she blasted her way equaled precisely the force of her driving thrust.
Wherefore, out in open space, the Earth a fast-shrinking tiny ball and Sol himself growing smaller, paler, and weaker at a startling rate, the Chicago's speed attained an almost constant value; a value starkly impossible for the human mind to grasp.
