Lensman from rigel, p.15
Lensman From Rigel, page 15
"I can't do it alone, Seena. I must have help. I must have Lensman help. Do you agree?"
"Yes, Ulie, I agree. How soon must help come? Do we have until the period after next?"
"No, no. We must act before they do; perhaps we can be prepared to stop them, then. We must act within three days."
"Impossible, Ulie! There's not one unattached or Gray Lensman here on Kresh-kree! I will have to contact my S.I.S. link, who is already waiting word from us, and have him Lens my recommendations directly through to Tregonsee. That will take at least two days!"
"To Tregonsee, Seena? Then he's not dead? Thank Klono! You told me of the rumors last week. . ."
--On The Moon of the Gods, the enemy agent caught the name, Tregonsee! Everything else had been a distant blur, like whispers covered by the hiss of a flowing stream. Yet the name of Tregonsee was a powerful word with powerful connotations and it sprang out of what was unintelligible and was recognized in his brain. More and more he concentrated to strain out the essence of this faraway dialogue--thoughts coming, he now knew, from enemies deadly to him--
"No, Ulie, Tregonsee is not dead. Word came through to me that it has been a deception. Strangely, it was my report of the rumor of his death which was the first of all the rumors in the galaxy that HQ-T had received."
"Ah, that sounds as if Kresh-kree must have been in on the plot!"
"Yes, it seems most likely. That's the very reason I was asked to trace further the source of that rumor and I did. A hired band of assassins under Eramista the Manarkan--"
--Eramista! His name! He could hear his name in that indistinct mumbling of thought waves. He listened harder, and the sweat came out upon his brow--
"--under Eramista the Manarkan struck by hyperspatial tube while T was on a visit to Preeko. T managed to kill Mando the Vegian, who came out of the tube, but Eramista then killed T. At least, that's the story. I also learned that this was one of a series of attacks aimed at other Lensmen."
"Other Lensmen, Seena? Did others die?"
"I don't know. But certain scientists were kidnapped, or nearly kidnapped, the sense is not clear. According to the underworld here on Kresh-kree, the different raiding parties were hired by the Overseer and The Council of Six. The hyperspatial tubes were obtained from an unknown enemy of the Galactic Coordinator, believed to be an Onlonian named Ish-Ingvors. Have you learned anything new there on Tanse, Ulie?"
"Nothing new, but I've confirmed my own theories. The Qu'orr are probably things growing on Tanse Moon One--the moon called The Moon of Lost Souls because none who go there can return. I certainly don't care to, even though I've found a way to go. That's why a Lensman, a special Lensman, is essential. Only one with the most developed sense of perception might be able to scan that moon. If anything, Seena, the whirlpools of mental turmoil which surround it like an aura are getting worse. T must send his best. As for Tanse Moon Two--The Moon of the Gods--I have caught the faintest thought waves from there. A raiding party, you say? Those few, faint mental waves tell me they are arrogant, over-confident and careless." There was a long, dead pause. "That is why you have been so cautious in the narrow mental beam that you are projecting, Seena. And that is why I have been so careful to do the same. We are a matched pair, aren't we, Seena?"
"Yes, Ulie, we are. No other two in the twelve digits of A's could be better matched than we are."
"Can you sense anyone reaching out for us from Moon Two? Do you think the tightness of our mental beam could be pierced?"
"Never. Not for two like us, Ulie. This is so, even though it is Eramista, who is perhaps the most accomplished of all Manarkans. It would be just like him to be arrogant, over-confident, and careless."
--Eramista heard his name again and didn't like the feeling of the name. The hair rose across the bridge of his nose, and he opened his mouth to make an outlandish, mute snarl from a throat that never had a larynx. Annoyance grew into frustration and frustration was growing into hatred--
"If anyone can succeed in harvesting the Qu'orr, Seena, it will be a wretch like that Manarkan outlaw. He has the ruthless mind to do it."
"How will he get there? By the way you have found?"
"I don't know. My way is by a spaceboat here on Tanse."
"A spaceboat? On Tanse? I don't understand!"
"The spaceboat, hard to believe, I know, is the sacred coffin used in the sacrifices. It's used to carry the victims to and from the moons by remote control. I'll explain that all later to you, Seena. Anyhow, I have used that spaceboat often in the past few weeks. I steal it at night and return it before
dawn. I've surveyed much of this part of the planet. The jungle is impossible to penetrate very far on foot. I tried twice to fly to Tanse Moon One, but the strange effect which the Tansers call the Turmoil of Lost Souls was a real mental force which threatened my sanity. That's why I stress that the highest caliber of Lensman is needed. Perhaps--I know it's too much to hope for, but--perhaps, a Second Stage Lensman might come."
"I will try for the best. There may not be enough time to get any kind of Lensman. How will the Lensman--even a Patrolman or two of Lensman caliber--get to Tanse to meet you? The Kalonians on Moon Two will be on the watch for outsiders. We do not have the Lens. How will you guide them in under the inward eye of Eramista and his band?"
"I will use the spaceboat. I'll fly in it to a planetoid I've marked on the far side of Moon Two's orbit, putting Tanse between us. There I will rendezvous with the Lensmen, who will have to come in under a cloak of invisibility. I'll do that tomorrow night. If they do not meet me there tomorrow night, I will fly to the same place the following night. That second night will be the eve of the sacrifice, so our margin for successful action will be very small indeed. From there I'll steer them back to Tanse. I want them present at the sacrifice because it is then that I think they can penetrate the Turmoil of Lost Souls. They can follow with their sense of perception the sacred coffin carrying the victim to the moon of the Qu'orr."
"Sounds workable. I will try to get someone there by tomorrow night or the next. What are the coordinates?"
"Eye eks hyphen one point forty-two sigma. Repeat. Eye eks hyphen one point forty-two sigma. Use Tanse star chart GP-Tanse twelve. Repeat. Tanse star chart GP-Tanse twelve."
"I've got that, Ulie. Do you need any muscle? A Valerian star warrior or two?"
"Good idea. But no Valerian. Somebody Tellurian in size, at least as powerful as me. A human barbarian, preferably, to work with me in the tribe."
"Maybe Kimball Kinnison?"
--Eramista jumped as though he had been shot. Kimball Kinnison! The name came through clearly, like a bolt of electrons riding a laser beam, and stunned him. And then he
thought he felt laughter. Laughter! Women's laughter! And his fear was gone, and his burning hatred increased in him like a thermonuclear flame--
"That's the right idea, Seena! A good, husky Tellurian Lensman who's looking for a real brawl!"
"I'll get on this immediately, Ulie. You'll hear from me tomorrow evening when Tanse Moon One is low in the sky, shielded from you. One way or another, you'll get your help. And will you be ready to come in to shelter afterwards?"
"Perhaps. My work seems done now. It's up to a high-tension mind. I'll be glad. I've missed you, Seena. Remember, whatever happens, you have my love."
"And all my love goes out to you, Ulie. I will pray for you. Until tomorrow evening, then. I touch my forehead."
"I touch my forehead, loved one."
--The thought transmission ended between the tawny-white-skinned Ulie and the purple-tinted-skinned Seena, while the raiding party on Tanse Moon Two, three Manarkan renegades led by Eramista, listened. Eramista, greatest of natural telepaths, had listened well, but the stream of thoughts had been perfectly controlled. The meaning had been incomprehensible. His mental sensitivity lines had criss-crossed that stream, like a net, but he had not been able to catch a single coherent idea. "There is a telepath on the planet Tanse," he projected to his deaf-mute companions. "In two days, when we go down there, to jump off to The Moon of Lost Souls, I will find that telepath. And if he--or she--is anyone except a personal friend of mine, I will butcher that one up into little pieces."
Two Only for Tanse
Near the center of Ultra Prime base rose a low complex of black stone structures, like huge building blocks tumbled in an untidy pile. This was Headquarters, Patrol Intelligence Services--known more familiarly as HQ-T-Prime.
Deep within the pile was a conference room honeycombed with many cells. Each of these separate cubicles was capable of turning itself into an authentic environmental replication mimicking any one of a hundred or so different planets, from A. to Z in the first digit of planetary classification. Any atmosphere, any gravity, any temperature of any of the major Civilized planets, along with a lot of minor ones, could be quickly reproduced. A conferee in that conference hall could relax and feel at home.
Like the most austere of harsh prisons, each cell was like a windowless, sealed box. No windows were needed, so no windows were provided in the stacked cells; it was expected that senses of perception would be commonly used and the walls would simply fade away; for the primitives, full wall screens for viewing could be used.
To those who used the conference rooms, it seemed that all races were mixed together freely, each somehow comfortable in his own environment.
In each cubicle, arranged in and around one another for closest three-dimensional intimacy, were the conferees especially invited to this meeting. In the exact center, in his own box the same size as the others, there firmly stood on four thick feet the host himself, Tregonsee.
On one side, Nadreck writhed luxuriously in his frigid, poisonous simulation of Palain VII, his four-dimensional form seeming to flow out of his fully opened suit.
On another side, Worsel was draped on a Velantian resting-pole, serpentine body touching from wall to wall, flexing his wings and sniffing odors of home.
Kinnison, above, with his two scientist-mathematician friends, Sir Austin Cardynge and LaVerne Thorndyke, sat in one of the leather easy chairs in a room more like Klovia than Tellus.
In another cell, Ehht the Nevian was partially immersed in emerald green water, sometimes allowing himself to slip entirely down into the liquid which filled half his room.
John Tsien and Voddon the Manarkan, the impostor, shared the light gravity and oxygen-helium atmosphere such as each of their satellite laboratories contained.
In the final compartment, under Tellurian conditions, were Philip Strong, the Tellurian scientist-Lensman, Benson Cloudd, and Lalla Kallatra. The older Strong sat relaxed on one end of a couch and the younger Cloudd sat stiffly at the other end. Kallatra, who was the youngest of all, stood unmoving in the center of the room, frozen rigidly into a mannequin-like stance, the lights shining off the polished metal skin of her face in bright, starry points.
"So," Tregonsee was thinking, "we have heard from Kallatra that the phantom fleet is not an astral projection from beyond the grave. Worsel's concern that it could be another attack by the Eichwoor can be laid aside. Nadreck argues that it is some kind of hallucinatory effect, but cannot explain how dials and meters can be affected except by some kind of ectoplasmic manipulation which neither Kallatra nor Worsel can explain. Nadreck does not believe it is Nth or hyper dimensional. Our conclusion is that some new kind of weapon is being developed and that M.I.S. and S.I.S. now have a high priority task to find out more."
Tregonsee was strongly telepathing his thoughts, for of the dozen persons present, only six of them had Lenses. The exceptional talents of the Second Stage Lensmen made the mental exchanges easy, even for a neophyte like Cloudd. He could not project, so he had to have his thoughts pulled out of him by Tregonsee.
Cloudd found the setting weird, unable as he was to see anything with his own eyes, except in that single room with Strong and the android, Kallatra. He found the communication easy, but a bit unpleasant, having his mind picked over. As for the situation itself, he could only describe it to himself as bizarre, a feeling he manfully tried to hide. Through the minds of the others, he could intellectually perceive the entire group in a hazy way--all except for Nadreck, that is, whose compartment was an opaque frozen cloud of noxious-looking, varicolored gas-like particles through which occasionally some monstrous horror might be seen. Strong asked to sit with him because that tall, quiet man had thought him a relative of a former co-worker. Kallatra had chosen to be near him, she freely admitted, because the base psychologist had told her that Cloudd could use "some help." "My field is psychic research," the monotonic voice intoned from somewhere within her blouse, "but I also am an expert on prostheses. For obvious reasons." There was a noise which he interpreted, after a puzzled moment, as a chuckle.
Through Strong's perception, Cloudd saw a handful of Patrolmen coming into the conference room and along the connecting passageways. They didn't look ominous, but he could feel that, for some reason, they were. They were mulling around the doorway to John Tsien's compartment. Then the vision shut off as Kallatra's audible voice jarred him.
"I can fix those fingers of yours," she said. Perhaps because the voice wasn't human, he felt insulted and irritated by her presumptuousness. She grasped his left hand in her surprisingly flexible, human-appearing metal fingers, and peered at the two stumps critically. "The prostheses will look, feel, work like real ones. They'll be flesh-colored, of course, not like mine." There had been and still was no expression on her death-mask face, and there was no compassion in her mechanical voice. Cloudd, tactfully trying to keep the thought out of his mind, forced himself to believe that this thing should be treated like a woman and not like a machine. After all, her mental waves were seductive and beguiling when he could feel her thoughts. But when she spoke, her inflectionless mechanical sounds grated on his nerves. Perhaps if he were a Lensman he wouldn't find her appearance repugnant and her touch repulsive. "It's so very simple," she continued. "Each finger, done in my shop, will be an efficient digit, hardly noticeable as other than the real thing." When he failed to answer, his mind black with annoyance, his thoughts desperately screened, she mistook his reaction. "Of course, if you feel funny about wearing them, there's the expensive Phillips regenerative treatment." He told her thanks, but no thanks.
For one very brief moment Strong's mind swirled through his and then withdrew. Cloudd had a sense of some utterly revolting action or procedure taking place before his unseeing eyes and uncomprehending brain.
The moment, perhaps several moments, passed, and Kallatra was speaking to him again in a robot's voice. "Worsel told me that you have found a very unusual Ordovik crystal. I would like to examine it. It may be significant in my work. Will you show it to me later?" He had replied, "Of course," but he hoped it could be avoided. She made him too uncomfortable.
He had a sudden impression that John Tsien had collapsed and that a group of Patrolmen were carrying his stiff body out of his tiny room. The vision should have been alarming to Cloudd, but his instincts did not respond that way.
"You know, I'll do your fingers for free."
Outwardly keeping control, he fought to keep his irritation from escaping. Damnation! If she was what women were like from being Lensmen, aggressively asserting themselves, then he would be happy to be a male chauvinist. Why was her hard mind preserved while Lucille's tender mind was lost? His unreasoning resentment against her, stimulated by such slight things, he introspectively recognized. This was his loneliness for Lucille working its way out of his system because of that oh-so-clever-base psychiatrist. The doctor had read within his private heart about the white scarf, Lucille's, which he wrapped around his neck, like a knight of old, when on his missions. Damnation! The old do-gooder was right! Childishness! He had pledged to Kinnison that "D.D." Cloudd was another person put away in the past. He had to work on that. So, as for Lalla Kallatra--well, he was sure she must be a good person and a fine Lensman, but he'd rather try to relate to Nadreck than to her.
The vision came again. Tsien was at the entrance to Nadreck's room, stretched out on the floor, and some writhing amorphous limbs were coming out of the door--through the door--wrapping around Tsien's head--going into his head! Cloudd, with great effort, vigorously shaking his own head, managed to dispel the vision.
Cloudd was now suddenly conscious of having missed part of the discussion, having missed also some outré melodrama. Something had happened, was happening, in or about hyper space. Voddon the Manarkan was having his brains picked--actually having his brains picked! The five scientists who had been involved in the hyperspatial tube attacks were present: Cardynge, the experienced expert specializing in hyperspatial mathematics; Tsien, top man on gravitational fields and black holes; Ehht the amphibious Nevian, whose lifetime ambition was to invent matter transmission; Voddon the Manarkan, who was not well-known but had been considered valuable enough to be a potential victim; and Philip Strong, who actually knew Dr. Neal Cloud, both specialists on the atomic vortex phenomena.
Cloudd was now aware that Tregonsee had just reviewed the situation concerning the hyperspatial tube attacks.
"You're right," Tregonsee was saying, evidently agreeing with Cardynge. "That's the reason you were all attacked."
What reason? was the startled thought Cloudd had. The answer came from Strong's lightly attentive mind: "It's agreed that the five scientists were attacked to be neither killed nor kidnapped. There was a temporary abduction during which they had their minds scanned quickly but thoroughly, all their knowledge secured, and then the raiders left with some kind of recording out of their brains."
You mean, Cloudd thought, we were supposed to be deceived? To believe in bungled plans for assassination or kidnapping? But actually a successful plan to steal minds? Clever!
"Yes," said Strong. "A clever success. The L2s just finished close-scanning us all, the victims. We have the scars on our synapses which only they could notice. John Tsien was found with an Ordovik crystal in his head and--" "What?"
