Lensman from rigel, p.4
Lensman From Rigel, page 4
They were, indeed, completely prepared, packed and ready to go when Commander Lzbert arrived. It was an angry ship's captain who entered the apartments, practically humiliated by the junior officers. They forced him to squeeze through a partially opened door, denying his executive officer admittance, and clamped a mind-block on the seething Martian to prevent the slightest chance of a telepathic leak when Lzbert first found Tregonsee alive.
"How the purple fires of hell... ?" the commander finally burst out when unrestrained. "How the purple fires of hell could another Rigellian get on this planet without me knowing it?"
"I regret you've been deceived, Bert. And for most of the past year," Tregonsee apologized. "It's happened on every planet we've ever visited."
The four on Tregonsee's staff were being amused by the revelation, but it took an effort for Lzbert to be good-humored. He awaited the explanation rather grimly.
"Remember, Bert, what great care we take with my armored atmospheric suit which we cart around with us wherever I go? We treat that suit as if my life depends on it.
And it does. Somebody else's life depended on careful treatment of it, too."
"I did always wonder about it," Lzbert said. "It weighed twice what it should have weighed, but it never got examined through its radiation shield because of diplomatic immunity."
"It was always presumed to be empty. Oh, I know you had your suspicions, Bert--that it might have been stuffed, at the worst, with contraband goods."
"As I say, sir, I did wonder about it."
"But no one knew, except my central staff, that it carried another stand-in, another Null-Treg with me."
"So! A secret that was really a secret!"
"No one could have suspected the truth. Least of all you, Commander, who would normally have been entrusted with the deception. No one except six of us knew that there was another Rigellian here on Preeko this day." Tregonsee's telepathic thought had that dry humor which his association with Tellurians had cultivated in him. "He was male, of course. My wife would have insisted on that."
They all smiled, except for Tregonsee who couldn't and Lieutenant-Captain Buyyer who had just completed receiving a signal on the special S.I.S. channel.
"Gentlemen," Buyyer said, his youthful face gray, always a certain indication of extra bad news, "GP-Klovia-HQ reports five other hyperspacial tube attacks on five of our greatest scientists. The objective was different from the one against us. Not murder. Kidnapping!"
RIDDLE OF THE DATADRONES
D. D. Cloudd wrapped the thick fingers of his heavy gauntlets around the grips of the handle bars and slammed his boot down on the accelerator. The rocket sled jumped forward under him. His knees, clamping around the engine's combustion chamber, barely kept his rump from sliding up over the curved back of the metal saddle. The heat from the plume of fire at his back could be felt through his light armor, but there was no thunderous roar from the shredded matter disintegrating into billions of ergs in the void of space. Only the familiar caressing quiver of the machine between his legs gave him the sense of accelerating power. The stars hung unmoving in the velvet blackness as the curved bowl of the edge of the Second Galaxy stretched in front of him.
With a twist of his left wrist, the engine gimbaled and the trail of fire flickered into his view to the rear of his left side. The incandescent tips of the snapping flames threw blue-white light into the corner of the globe which was his glass-steel helmet. His black eyes, nearly invisible behind his semi-opaque radiation goggles, were weirdly changed into reddish-golden discs with tiny, contracted pupils.
"Charge!" D. D. Cloudd shouted into the small, hollow bulge in front of his nose and mouth. Through his ear pads he could faintly hear himself, his voice true and natural with no electronic enhancement, and it made him feel physically close to himself, unfettered and free. It was once more one of those rare times when his mind was cleared of its shadows, when his mood was elevated, when his soul was at peace. His machine, The Spirit, nourished him, sustained him. The Spirit was, indeed, for that moment, her spirit, fittingly memorializing the spirit of the one he mourned, Lucille.
An invisible hand suddenly grabbed them, man and machine, abruptly slowing them despite the raging, flaming power, bringing them to a complete stop.
"QX, Dee Dee!" a voice said in his ear. "The fun's over! We've got a scope-sighting at three-three-oh degrees right on our axis!"
Cloudd lifted his boot off the accelerator pedal even as he felt the grasp of the tractor beam, and jerked the machine around with some stabs of retro fire. The GP comm-con ship swung into view, a speck of light a thousand miles away from him now, although he had, on his joy ride, left it only seconds before. The boys at the tractor beam controls had been riding herd on him in their usual precise manner. When he went out for one of his pleasure jaunts, they knew what he expected of them--that they would pinpoint his every movement and be ready to yank him back where he belonged. It wasn't just to protect him from the usual natural troubles and the threats of ambushing, bushwhacking Boskonians or inquisitive, short-circuiting datadrones--it was also to protect him from himself. Every so often he had rocketed out too far, in danger of becoming lost in the immensity of the void of deep space, and raising the scare of an expensive, time-consuming search by one or more ships before being found. Or maybe never found. D. D. Cloudd, everyone knew it and allowed for it, was sometimes a wild man caused by, the gossip held, some deep torment of grief.
"Thanks, guys! Three-three-oh, right on!"
There it was, the identified floating object, a datadrone barely on a trace reading on the tiny diode printout visible inside his helmet near the corner of his right eye. He couldn't yet judge its size or shape. He would have to rely on the comm-con scope.
"Fill me in, guys."
He got a torrent of audio and visual information which indicated one main fact: the datadrone was a 2X2, a small double satellite probe, cylindrically shaped and not much more than four feet long. This type of probe had been observed as large as twelve feet long, actually six separate ones joined. It was typically black, obviously a color chosen to make it as unobtrusive as possible, studded with lensed apertures in various sizes. It had no fins or rocket tubes, evidently propelled by magnetomotive or electrogravitonic forces. It bore no marks of any manufacturer. It seemed a one-piece-casting rather than an assembly. Examined by three-dimensional perception penetration by various expert Lensmen from time to time, there was no indication of who or what made them, not the slightest suggestion of their source. It had become a fast-growing enigma of space.
The only thing which mental-wave examination had determined so far was that these machines were information collectors, probes from some mysterious intelligence, drones remotely controlled by some as yet undetermined radio frequency undetectable because its medium was hyperspace. When they had first begun to appear, only within the past half year, a descriptive term had seemed to spring spontaneously into use in the lingua franca of space, to be picked up by the Patrol. The term which stuck was "datadrone."
Cloudd, however, had no doubts as to their source: Boskonia.
He had observed three types of probes since his first observation of a cylinder five months before. This small cylindrical kind was the most common. The next largest, 18 feet long and torpedo-shaped, with long, open bays in its sides, had been seen a score of times, but only once by him. The largest had been seen only one time, at a great distance, by extremely sensitive instruments; its size had been judged to be fifty yards in length, very thick, with much superstructure covering it. In no case had any life form been observed. Type-50, the largest, had disappeared even as it was spotted. Type-8, the long torpedo shape, had been scanned by several Rigellians and Posenians before each machine had dashed away to disappear at hyperlight speed. Type-2X6, its smallest unit being 2X1, had, however, been captured a half-dozen times, three times by D. D. Cloudd himself. The first time made him a minor celebrity, and the third time made him an official datadrone investigator for the Patrol.
Cloudd was an enthusiastic hunter of them not only because he believed that the drones were Boskonian-Spawn generated, but also because he was dedicated to wiping out every man and machine belonging to the scum of the spaceways known as the Spawn of the Boskone.
"Let's get at it," Cloudd told himself, talking to oneself being a habit lonely workers in space quickly cultivated. "Let's punch in my backup." His gloved fingers danced across the bank of over-sized buttons, the blinking red numbers rapidly changing as he fed the data into his onboard computer. Comm-con would be picking up the same information, showing the same displays, ready to operate him remotely, but only in an emergency. "Now, Spirit, baby, let's work together."
He manually fingered, elbowed, and toed his primary and secondary thrusters into forming a parabolic course. His first objective was to get himself between comm-con and the drone, to mask his steady approach.
He soon straightened out into a direct advance. The drone was invisible to his eye, and with neither a sense of perception nor a Lens, he had to rely on his own self-generated information or what was being fed from his mother ship. A quick glance at a dial, a peek at his interior printout, reassured him that the tractor boys still had a feather-light touch on him. He would need that if he could lasso the drone.
The thing hung steady in his viewing plate, although they were now matched with intrinsic velocities of several miles per second. The time had come to make his move. He snapped on his targeting device and slammed down on his foot accelerator, relaxing his grip on his rotatable handles so as not to interfere with the tiny retro corrections of the automatic targeting. His machine leapt forward at an almost unbelievable rate of acceleration. Because he was now locked in an empathetic inertia field with the machine, he suffered only a jolting snap, rather than being left unsaddled and alone in empty space with a riderless machine tearing off into infinity.
At the moment of his charge, Cloudd triggered a tractor beam directly forward in his line of flight. He was picking up speed so fast within milliseconds that the beam itself was barely moving faster than his machine. So quickly that he couldn't see it or even catch a reading, but sensed by his mind from past experience, the drone took evasive action. It was now heading off almost at right angles to his course. The tractor beam, however, had scored its hit. Cloudd preferred to draw an analogy with the old time American West: he had roped his ferocious steer. In actuality, however, it was much more like hooking a fish with an elastic line. The drone moved this way and that, stretching the tractor beam, but always, after a brief surge, losing distance.
Then the drone did the trick of a desperate fish. It headed back like an arrow toward The Spirit. If it didn't snap the beam, Cloudd knew it would be more than happy to collide with him, pulverizing them both at such high speeds. Now it was his turn, manually with all his skill and nudged on by his tactically prepared, thoroughly programmed computer, to dodge and squirm for his own life without letting go. He enjoyed the dangerous game. Nowadays these were the moments when he really felt most alive, when he was so close to death. Two assistants had lost the deadly game within the past month. They had been vaporized into a cloud of smashed molecules. He had had no more volunteers, so now he had this fun all to himself.
Another quick jab of his finger, anticipating his computer by another millisecond, and Cloudd had blanketed the drone with an electromagnetic field, and killed its power. The mysterious force which drove it simply ceased to be, kicking back no side effects. There was no dial flickering before or after. That it was an outside force, beamed into the drone or possibly sucked into it, was easily demonstrated by the way it was suffocated and subdued.
He tethered the four-foot long, dull black cylinder to his machine and then looked around. The comm-con ship, of course, was not in sight, nor was it registering on any of his instruments. How far the quick but violent conflict had carried them couldn't be judged. He could pick the information out of his computer, probably, and because his friends knew he was out here, in effect lost, they would be actively searching for him, too. It wouldn't be like the time he had joyously ridden so far away, without being monitored, that he had nearly run out of oxygen before he had been found. Now he had a powerful radio for emergencies, but it was really limited to extreme, severe situations, because it was also an invitation for a Boskonian, outlaw or otherwise, to get to him first. He hoped never to use it; it would be an invitation to ignominious death--or worse. Even with that radio, he was no longer foolish. He was always tracked now, especially when he was just out skylarking.
He waited patiently for seven or eight minutes, but then could no longer patiently bear the suspense. He put a tractor beam hook on the drone, with a several-frequencies beacon attached, and left it, to begin a wide, 50,000 mile sweep.
Unexpectedly, one chance in a million, perhaps, his instruments picked up another sighting. It was another Type-2X. The readout indicated a 2X4, perhaps the missing section to be linked up with the captured 2X2.
This time Cloudd had no comm-con backup. It was up to him on his own to trap this one. He made his decision within a split second of spotting it, and once more, but without circling, clamped down on his accelerator and headed straight for it. At the same time he broke his self-imposed communications silence by dispatching a pre-taped message: "Drone two by four. In pursuit." It wasn't a call for help. It was actually meant to be a message for the record--possibly from beyond the grave.
Cloudd came barreling in on his machine like an old-fashioned kamikaze pilot. If his judgment was right, if his reaction time was perfect, he would just miss it and net it in a blanket of force and tractor beams. If he didn't, well, he would be joining Lucille and so it wouldn't be all that bad.
The drone was up to the challenge. It took off like a frightened rabbit pursued by a bloodthirsty hound. At first it zigged and zagged without shaking its pursuer. Then it went into an undeviating line at maximum acceleration, beginning to draw away from the helpless Cloudd, who was pounding the sides of his machine with his knees and urging it on as if it were a living thing.
"By Klono's Curse!" Cloudd yelled to himself at what he suddenly saw. "I've pierced the veil!"
Registering on his target viewplate was the background symbol of a spaceship. It was unmistakably Boskonian! The drone was heading for it like a terrorized rabbit for its hole in the ground. And there were more of the little cylinders in the vicinity.
"Drones are Spawn!" he growled. "I knew it! I knew it!"
Behind his mental turmoil and the passion of his feelings, D. D. Cloudd's remarkable mind was ticking over faster than his computer. He would follow the drone in, hoping to mask his own tiny mass with the alarms sent up by the probe's own movements. Then he'd call for a duodec bomb to be torpedoed out at him from comm-con, and he'd deftly steer it into the Boskone's tubes and outrace the cataclysmic explosion.
Barely one-half minute had passed from the moment he had observed the ship, made his decision, and attempted to ride in under the cover of the drone. In barely one-half minute, the ship's lookout or its periphery screen or both had spotted him. They must have been exceptionally effective, although perhaps they had been on the alert for another reason, maybe the drone itself. Anyhow, he had been observed. There were missiles coming up at him, his own plates showed. A set of ten blazing balls in a line came out of the forward turret, another set followed from the rear turret.
A rapid run-down by his computer didn't identify the weapon. They were photon-encased warheads, and the brilliant white lights radiating from the series of them were now searing his sight. They were moving much slower than the speed of light. Now his computer identified the bullets: radiant energy on the outside, capable of burning out standard circuitry, with an interior of Sonic-P radiation, capable of paralyzing the respiratory system of a human. A souped-up P-gun! He was startled, not because P-weaponry had been outlawed, though Boskonians still used it, but because he had been identified as a human being. The time had been fantastically short for the enemy to have observed him, classified him as a life form, and identified him as human. They must have thought him to be an easy victim and his strange machine worth capturing undamaged.
Without a moment's hesitation, Cloudd broke off his tracking action on the drone. He turned tail and ran.
Was it that moment's hesitation so many years ago, when he should have turned tail and run, which caused the tragedy then? Was it his foolhardy bravery or just plain obstinacy that had caused Lucille's death?
He looked at his screens. The pirate ship was following him, but slowly. They obviously were tracking him, curious as to where he had come from and where he was going, appearing such a pathetically tiny figure on a tiny machine in the middle of nowhere. Well, they were in for a shocking surprise. When the comm-con ship dropped its cloak of invisibility, the cat that was trailing the mouse would come face to face with an unfriendly dog.
No, he wasn't being cowardly now. His instant decision was based on attack, not retreat. He could lead the Boskonian and its brood of drones to destruction. God Klono, how he hated Boskone and its Spawn!
That day when Lucille died--if he hadn't turned to snap at the pirate's heels, she would still be alive. Probably, that is. When the liner had been attacked she had been lacerated by the blast, burned within her lungs by the inhaled radiation, partially paralyzed by the Vee-Two gas. Vee-Two gas! On innocent civilians--women and children. The swine! The damned swine!
He had swung the lifeboat around to impress in his mind the shape and markings of that Boskonian murder-ship. He had wanted to remember it well, in the greatest detail. If he hadn't turned back, even for those brief seconds, they would never have rayed his craft and left them for dead. He had been lucky. A month floating in space and then rescue, the sole survivor. Lucky? Not really, when it was his whole future life in her that he watched draining away--death coming within days of salvation. Poor Lucille. The wife that would never be, always to remain just his betrothed.
