Z lensman, p.3
Z-Lensman, page 3
When the pirates broke into ,their station with an ease no ordinary pirates should have displayed, they had been prepared to go into hiding in their strong boxes. But what happened sent them, instead, hurrying directly into space.
They had immediately sensed the presence of a high-level Boskonian force planning to capture, not their bodies, but their minds: The dynamikos struck all the life forces in and around the station, killing all the humanoids by burning out their brains.
Bovreck had been too quick to be harmed, slipping his mind into the other dimension for as long as he could hold it there. Ymkzex, zooming away from 'the station, had been pursued by the evil spirit, probably because of his greater vulnerability, not being a Lensman as Bovreck was.
Bovreck worried that Ymkzex might be caught and thus cause the great harm about which Angzex had vaguely forewarned. Bovreck, therefore, recognizing the danger not as "23x 4y pirates," as sent to Angzex-who did not acknowledge it-but as "lx ly Eich-plus," went in pursuit of Ymkzex. Before going, he left the message on the board for any Patrolman or good citizen. If Ymkzex were caught and remained alive, he would have to be rescued and rehabilitated, or killed.
Killing was the more secure way. And that certainly applied to Bovreck as well.
Bovreck went on his search, blinded by incoherent mental images jamming his Lens-enhanced telepathic powers and unable to reach any other Lens. His sustaining hope was that Angzex, young and vital and talented and as far above an ordinary Lensman as an ordinary Lensman was above an ordinary Palainian, would soon arrive at the laboratory and come to his assistance and join in rescuing Ymkzex.
At last a Lensing mind touched him, just strong enough to reach him and not beyond. To his disappointment, it was not Angzex. It was that Tellurian Lensman, Armstrong, who was coming in from distant Tellus on the specific suggestion of Angzex for research on lungless, nonbreathing, deep-space intelligent races. An A-Lensman could be more harmful than helpful in the current situation, why hadn't his orders been canceled? Did Angzex actually want a human at the lab for another reason? Bovreck considered this new idea and decided it was the truth. Angzex wanted an A-Lensman for some unrevealed reason; it had to do with the ripening menace that tellurian? now sensed---could the enemy be a renegade Tellurian? The Boskonian leaders were always described as devils in monstrous shapes, emotionally unbalanced, lustful, and greedy--did that not describe the fiery blooded, tox-oxygenated, ugly beasts that were human?
Bovreck sped back to the station, on his guard.
A quick glimpse into Armstrong's mind, done within the bounds of Lensman probity, calmed his fears. The Tellurian was an academic innocent, stuffed with knowledge but bereft of experience with violence. With part of his Palainian mind, Bovreck began poking away at the earthman, learning about him, looking for something that might help, seeking some clue to youngAngzex's intentions. With the other part of his mind, he stood guard, waiting for old-Ymkzex and waiting for some further move by the Boskonian presence.
Armstrong did not know that it was he who was being interviewed and examined.
To him, it seemed that. it was the Palainian who provided all the self-revealing talk.
The expert racial psychologist would have been very disconcerted and self-conscious if he had known the truth.
"Danger is almost upon us-do you wish it to come more quickly," Colonel Bovreck had said. How could such an appalling being remain so calm with danger close by?
What had he meant by "unlimited time" when time was obviously running out?
Armstrong recognized the paradoxical complexity of Bovreck's thinking. Time, though relative, was still being wasted by this creature who talked endlessly. "No, sir," Armstrong said flatly, "I don't want danger to come more quickly."
"In your terminology," Bovreck said, " I am not a 'sir.' You are a male, I can call you sir,' but I am not like you.
"Sorry," Armstrong said, taken aback. "Ma'am-or miss?"
"Neither, really. For an expert, you are an ignoramus." Armstrong felt foolish and unaccustomedly resentful. This inhuman monster's character was a frustrating mixture of order and chaos. The blunt truthfulness but propensity for indirection was quite irritating to experience. Armstrong was a proficient psychologist who, in this real-life situation, was making ridiculous blunders. The explanation was inescapable: this Palainian, or, for that matter, any Palainian, had a physical semblance and bizarre personality such as to disorient any humanoid, even one who was supposed to repress allsubjec-tive reactions.
"I will call you Colonel, unless you prefer Professor." "Call me Bovreck."
"Yes, Bovreck."
" I do note that you have a problem. You are wondering how to refer to me. Do you say, 'He is certainly far more clever than I?' Or do you say, 'She is certainly more intelligent than I?' Or perhaps you should use it?' I am a Palainian 'two,' the defensive or protective sex, like a mother.' Use the female term for me, if you must. Ymkzex, in contrast is a three,' like the offensive or aggressive sex, a father,' as is Nadreck, my offspring once removed. Angzex, the absent one, who so wisely chooses not to aid me, to ignore me, is a one,' like a prenuptial catalyst as opposed to a postnuptial catalyst such as 'four.' Emmfozing-breeding, that is-is a complicated process."
"This Angzex, is he a Patrolman?" "Angzex is a Lensman."
A Lensman?" Armstrong said, scandalized. "And he refuses to help you?"
"The prime tenet of a Palainian is to ignore and be ignored. Altruism is usually not worthwhile. What Angzex has done, or will do, will nevertheless be right, proper, and consistent with being a Lensman--and a Palainian. I am humbly sorry that our ways could cost you your life. My life is unimportant. I apologize for endangering yours.
Armstrong stared at the figure of Bovreck, accepting without agitation the shifting of the pieces in and out of focus. Bovreck apologizes? Bovreck's life is unimportant?
These were absurd inconsistencies. Could any Palainian be truly understood? Could any Palainian ever be loved, even if only by one individual from a single race among the tens of thousands of humanoid races? It seemed unlikely. No wonder few humanoids knew or associated with Palainians. No wonder he, Armstrong, had never done so.
(No wonder, too, that in the near future a Palainian by the name of Nadreck would become one of the four greatest Lensman of the Civilized universe and yet remain for many, many years unknown and mysterious to Kimball Kinnison, the greatest of the great.) "Colonel-I mean, Bovreck-I am here to help you. I ask again: Aren't we wasting time?"
"Time? We have exchanged these thoughts, since we met, in a microsecond. You have been drawn in, as it were, under the influence of my metabolic extension into the hyperdimension. Time is subjective when one awaits, as we are awaiting.
Observe. When you first spoke to me, you latched your gun. Listen--"
Within his space suit, transmitted by vibrations through the fabric, Armstrong heard a sharp, low-pitched note. What was that? The recognition formed in his mind.
Bovreck was giving him the power to understand-to understand that this continuous sound was the click of his safety catch! The past and the future remained locked in the present!
Time was standing still! Or seemed to be, so fast were they thinking, passing thoughts between themselves! Incredible!
Armstrong now knew the extraordinary power of a Palainian mind. What must a truly great Palainian Lensman be capable of? Could a youthful Angzex possibly be greater than an elderly Bovreck?
"You wish to know what we are awaiting? We wait for Ymkzex. He is out there, somewhere.
I chased him, but he eluded me. Neither of us have been out, in deep space before without a three-dimensional space.suit of this space-time continuum. At least, not for the 4,980 GP seconds that have now elapsed."
"In space without armor?" Armstrong was astounded. "You seem to disbelieve. I assure you that we Palainians do need an atmosphere to breathe. Poisonous to you, of course, and -so cold that it seems a thick syrup. Nonetheless, we do breathe and cannot live in temperatures of absolute zero. That is the nature of my research. And of Ymkzex's, too. We are preparing for the day when Palain VII will have lost the envelope of gas that supports our life. Have you ever been to Palain? No, of course not. It is a barren planet. It is mostly rocky, metallic soil, so frigid that it would burn. your feet off, even through your insulated soles. The surface of Palain is a wilderness. Only the junkyards of our abandoned cities, the deserted buildings of every size and shape tumbled together, would indicate that intelligent life had lived there. That plus the pitted landing fields, with their scars and puddled pools of metallic, unnatural lava. This is all there is to see on our bleak plains, which stand shrouded in an intense darkness where nights are indistinguishable from days, where our sun seems only another feeble star in the sky."
Armstrong shuddered at the grim and desolate picture Bovreck so vividly painted in his mind with words and images.
"You, Armstrong, were to help me test my theories. It would hardly 'be startling for me or Ymkzex to survive in space without space suits. But if a Tellurian were to do so, a ground-gripping Tellurian, at that, then such a demonstration would be remarkable and prove the theories."
"Use me? Me? In space without a suit?"
"Without any clothes whatsoever. Which would be a stiff test indeed, as Palainians don't wear clothes."
" I would be mad to let you use me in such a way!" "I would expect to be able to convince you to do it voluntarily. Think of the pleasure of such a success for you. I would make every effort to see that you didn't die.
"Thank you very much," Armstrong said, hoping that his sarcasm would not be lost on Bovreck. "I am not particularly brave, nor am I particularly foolhardy. I would not have volunteered. Nor could I have accepted any orders to do so."
" I knew this from the very beginning," Bovreck said, "but I -thought I would try such a request anyhow. No, you would not have gone out in space, but your assistance would still have been most valuable. I stress this. Most essential. Angzex the Young One.insisted that a human being is needed. He has a special role for you, I am certain."
"I was promised sealed orders."
'There are no sealed orders. Angzex commands." Armstrong suddenly was scorched by a torrent of intense emotion that poured through him. He was startled, half frightened. In the course of the conversation between him and Bovreck, they had drifted farther down the passageway and into the interior of the ship. The blackness was absolute beyond the circle of light from his headlamp. The shadows accentuated the distorted image of the Palainian and showed only the dull gray shapes of the ship's skeletal structure. The limits of the room could not be accurately gauged, but it felt oppressively small. The absence of gravity left him uncertain as to where the floor and doorways were. As for the shifting reflections of Bovreck, they showed eerie deformations in which top could not be distinguished. from bottom.
What was that horrible feeling? "Prepare!" Bovreck said. "He's coming!"
"Who?" Armstrong was really afraid of this unknown. "Prepare for what?"
"Ymkzex." Bovreck seemed to be pointing with tentacles. "Ymkzex? Are you hurt?
The creature with me is the Lensman Armstrong. Ymkzex! What is wrong?"
Armstrong twisted his head in all directions, casting his light around, looking for old-Ymkzex. Optically he saw nothing, while Bovreck, with his eyeless senses, seemed to perceive something nearby-in another room? Outside? Armstrong attempted to compensate for his handicap by using his Lens to pick up mental images or auras of living matter. In part he succeeded. There was a lifeform in the center of the ship.
Human! And now another, stronger force, growing around the human, "bright" enough and "loud" enough to create the falsehood of seeing and hearing--Ymkzex, his intuition told him.
This was Ymkzex, the other old Palainian.
"Fight it, Ymkzex! Resist! Draw on -me for strength!" Old-Bovreck sounded frenzied-and hopeless.
To Armstrong, the human mental and physical radiation seemed suddenly to be submerged by the Ymkzex domination and become something exceedingly more powerful, and distinctively and strangely 'alien. Even the background clicking of the nuclear pile was obliterated. How could a human be there?
"Get back to the freighter!" This a loud mental command in his head. Was this from Bovreck? Or from someone else? "Get back to the freighter immediately!" It most definitely was another mentality giving orders!
"Is that you, Angzex?" Bovreck blasted out. "Where are you? Is Ymkzex all right?"
"Ymkzex is lost to us. I almost brought him back safely to you, but he's slipped into ...." The crackling interference, Armstrong instantly knew, was deliberate censorship.
"Slipped into"
what? He was also conscious now of the two different screening sensations he had first.
experienced at the moment he had attempted to Lens Bovreck and Ymkzex.
Armstrong could read the sources now. The blanketing was coming from Ymkzex. As for the square hole of emptiness into which his Lensed thoughts bad sunk to be annihilated--it was one of the crates he had carried from Dingwall!
His body passed through the freighter's cargo door quicker than he could believe, even with all maneuverjets blowing from his suit. Bovreck was right behind him.
Armstrong looked back and his lamplight showed the familiar out-of-focus figure of the Palainian just coming through the door--and instantaneously, faster than his light beam moved, the figure was now on the other side of him, standing in front of an open crate.
Bovreck? No!
There were two figures! Two Palainians? Ymkzex had jumped through space? Or was it another? Angzex? "Angzex?" Bovreck seemed to be echoing Armstrong's puzzlement.
"Angzex? But no.-...You're not Angzex!" Bovreck was confused and distressed.
"And yet, you seem to be, you really are Angzex, aren't you?"
"I am the'... c-r-a-c-k-l-e... Stand ready! Ymkzex is... c-r-a-c-k-l-e...
Armstrong! Defend yourself! The doorway!"
All at once the cargo room, the doorway, and the passageway into the space laboratory were brightly lighted, as if by magnesium flares. Coming out of passageway and into the cargo hold was a wild-eyed humanoid, teeth bared in a snarl, face flushed, sputa flecking his mouth and nostrils. It was the navigator Val-d'or, a baleful puppet appearing to Armstrong as a maniac. Val-d'or had a knife in his left hand and an atomizing automatic pistol in his right.
Handguns seemed to appear in profusion among the many appendages of Angzex and Bovreck. Streaks of fire passed around Armstrong and into--and through-the chest of Val-d'or, but the pirate did not fall. Vald'or's own shots had the remarkable accuracy of a superlative marksman. Two or three in succession struck the Lens of Bovreck in the brief moments that the disc appeared. Expanding rings of stinging colors flew from Bovreck's Lens, and the ether was filled with a screeching cry, "Die, Lensman!" followed by a soul-shaking mental thunderbolt that burst within Bovreck's mind and killed him.
Bovreck's protection had been neutralized by the bullets from Val-d'or, but Armstrong knew from the wisdom that flooded around him that the cry and the thunderbolt had come from a furtive someone else who was greater than an Eich.
Within Armstrong's brain a voice was saying, "Lensman! Only you can strike down the other human with your mind. You have the racial insight to destroy him. Do so!
Destroy him!"
Armstrong's DeLameter had been in his hand, scoring on Val-d'or's body without effect.
Now Armstrong brought up his right hand and pressed his Lens to his forehead, concentrating. Val-d'or was intent on shooting Angzex's Lens and, being no Lensman himself, with no support from his invisible ally, was not prepared for the massive mental blow from Armstrong. He fell to the deck, his gun still firing, erratically now, as his fingers kept working the buttons even in death. But the last careful shot from the pirate had hit Armstrong in the center of his forehead, passing completely through his brain.
The Tellurian Lensman tumbled over backward, stretching out on the deck that was now slippery with fluids from the living, the dead, and the machinery. He faced his death with complete satisfaction and-heard, more clearly than ever, the mental turmoil that bubbled around him. As he died he had, temporarily, a sense of perception. He saw the third Palainian come into the room. This was Ymkzex.
Ymkzex looked no different from his offspring Angzex. His warped persona, however, was radically unlike Bovreck's, in no way cowardly or retiring. He, too, was bristling with weapons, firing rapidly and accurately. The fissile, nuclide bullets struck Angzex's exposed Lens as Ymkzex screamed, "I have you now, Angzex!" and hurled his mental thunderbolt. The bullets, however, simply plunged through the Lens without effect and the thunderbolt was halted in midflight by Angzex's unyielding screen.
"You face more than Angzex," said the other mind, as calm and blunt as Bovreck had been. "Angzex is dead. This is merely Angzex's body. A stronger mind fights you now.
"I thought so!" Ymkzex did not slacken his futile assaults. "But you are just another Lensman from a different world. I will destroy you, too!"
In the far side of the cargo room, which was no longer lighted, not even by Armstrong's inoperative lamp, the position of one Palainian was marked by a glowing Lens that appeared and disappeared with the pulsing of. the simulation of Angzex's metabolism. On the other side, dimly outlined by the distant galaxy beyond the open port, floated the other Palainian, Ymkzex. To them, however, the absence of light meant nothing, for to them there was no such thing as darkness.
"I am more than what you think I am. Give up Ymkzex's body and go back to Eddore."
"You mention Eddore! Who are you to mention Eddore?"
"Does that worry you, Eddorian?"
"I am not worried because I possess a body with which to strike at you. You are only a phantom. Also, I possess all the knowledge from the zex-line and I know the family psychic secrets. You have the weaker position. Success for you is impossible. I tell you, instead, that unless you run away from me, you will be snuffed out like a flame."
