Lensman from rigel, p.5
Lensman From Rigel, page 5
Damn the Boskonians! Deucalion lived and Pyrrha died! And he would exist only to be her avenging angel.
D. D. Cloudd was filled with hatred, but it did not blind him to his task. The Boskonian ship was keeping its distance, so he casually detoured to pick up the drone he had staked out. As he did so he formulated a trap.
He broke radio silence. "Pull me in. Stay cloaked. I've got quarry to harvest." Would they understand?
They did understand, those marvelous guys on the tractor beam controls. He was whipped inside the single entry port, dragging the captive 2X2 drone behind him. "Tell the captain, steady as she goes," Cloudd tossed over his shoulder as he dashed into the munitions room, helmet under his arm, white scarf flying. He took an oversized duodec grenade off a rack, armed it, and stuck it inside his sleeve bag. If he jogged the pin loose, that section of the ship would be atomized when the rest of the munitions went. Along with him, the tractor beam boys would go, too. What the hell, they were his friends so they would all go together.
"The devil... ?" said one of the crew, seeing what he had done with the small bomb.
"I'm gonna get that rat out there," Cloudd said. "Tell the captain to stay clear. Until the obvious."
Cloudd was back on his sled and out the port before anyone could issue any restraining orders.
There was the Boskonian still there, sitting like a cat before a mouse hole, ready to pounce. There could be no doubt in their intelligence section that inside the warped spot in space before them sat a Galactic Patrol ship waiting to strike a counterblow. But they wouldn't be expecting him.
As he hurtled back out toward the pirate, he took the bomb and fixed it to one of his tractor hooks. The hook, with its tracking device, was designed to follow any evasive action of a drone, attach itself, and be a marking beacon and an easy "hook" for a slender tractor coupling. With the bomb and the tracker interlocked, Cloudd placed it back in the release rack.
He could now eyeball the enemy ship. He also spotted the drone he had been chasing, floating end-over-end with no other movement, stationary in relation to the ship. Then, as he approached it, it turned at right angles and shot away, off his screens, and out of register. The acceleration must have been tremendous. He had a preposterous idea that it was propelled by a mini-Bergenholm engine.
Real heavy, dangerous stuff was now coming up at him. As the rays passed through the protective shield they made the field luminescent. Real heavy stuff. But they weren't aimed at him! They were ten degrees to starboard. That couldn't be bad marksmanship. It had to mean something else.
Puzzled, Cloudd adjusted his viewing plate at full magnification along the trajectory, searching for a target at which they might be firing. He found it.
"By all the purple fires!" Cloudd told himself, "I'm hitting the jackpot."
Whirling crazily around, as if out of control from a malfunctioning gyrostabilizer, was a Type-50 datadrone. Type-50! Spidery, complex, cryptic! He could not spot it visually, but his electronics all identified it and displayed it under three simultaneous magnifications. It was the first one he, personally, had observed, and the graphic recordings his equipment was now making of it would be better than anything the Patrol possessed.
He turned on his transmitter and opened up his radio channel. No need for secrecy now, and comm-con should know as much as possible about what was happening.
Comm-con was automatically getting everything, practically as it was developing, but he felt the need to talk anyway. "I've uncovered the nest. It's a Spawn ship. Type-50 nearby. Drop your screen and move in. I'll do my best to keep them occupied." Planting his bomb could come later, as a last resort.
He turned on a visual signal in addition to his radio transmission, to protect himself from being unobserved and thus to be caught in his own side's fire. He had to take the chance that the Spawn ship, in the excitement, wouldn't notice his signal and use it to zero in on him for an annihilating blast.
Nowhere, in every direction near the spinning Type-50 drone, could he find what was threatening it. The potent enemy beams were certainly not after him, weaving all around the drone, as though defending it. But from what?
Cloudd felt his space scooter lurch. His instruments confirmed that he was in the grip of a tractor beam which was fast drawing him--as well as the drone--closer to the pirate ship. If he were the pirate captain, he'd clamp a number of tractors on both himself and the drone, and whisk them away to another empty sector of space and force the Patrol ship into a cat and mouse game. By now they certainly knew of the Patrol's presence and strength and, although the Boskonians had the power to fight a more-or-less equally matched engagement, they wouldn't. They fought principally for loot, not because of fundamental rivalry.
The Patrol ship's tactical action could be only seconds away, so Cloudd seized the initiative. With only fair luck he would delay the enemy and its satellite long enough to permit their capture.
Cloudd jabbed on the power and dove straight down the tractor beam. Halfway to the ship, he launched a tractor hook at it, swerved, bending the pirate's tractor beam dangerously close to the probing destructive rays stabbing toward the drone. The pirate snapped off the tractor beam, fearful of the feedback of the two incompatible forces if they touched. Cloudd then pulled up close to the large drone, between it and the mother ship, synchronizing his own movements as nearly as possible with the erratic dancing of the drone. Any shots taken at him now would have to be delicately plotted, due to his size, if they didn't want to simply wide-spray him and thus destroy their own drone. Come on, Patrol! Hurry up!
The Boskonian captain knew what he wanted to do. The gunners widened the beam and nearly got Cloudd and The Spirit. It did clip one end of the drone in a shower of sparkling colored balls.
Out of the damaged drone came a Type-8, and then from it, like seeds puffed from a seed pod or a covey of quail flushed from a thicket, came a score of 2X1 types, scattering in all directions. There was a multitude of muzzle flashes from the ship and almost continuously, one by one, the 2Xls turned into lines of flaming Chinese firecrackers! As a climax, the Type-8 vaporized in a purplish flash!
Cloudd did a quick re-think. The drones couldn't be Boskonian after all. Now he began to see the truth. Datadrones belonged to some unknown third party. Not Boskonian, not of the Patrol. The pirates hadn't been protecting the drone, they had been trying to disable it. They weren't a mother ship attempting recovery of a wounded child, they had been trying to disable it to capture it, just as he was. And they probably thought that it was some new kind of Patrol technology. He would have to reconsider his entire datadrone program, develop an entire new approach--and he would have to isolate, if not drastically modify, his personal vendetta against the Spawn.
He launched his duodec bomb, speeding it toward contact with the hook he had already planted on the enemy ship.
One of the lethal beams barely slipped past Cloudd and struck the Type-50 as a searing white horizontal line almost centered between stem and stern, missing the painted ZZ symbol on its side. Cloudd recognized that usual, customary identification: it was proportionately larger, compared to the ones on the little 2Xls, a double Z, but with softly curving angles like a reversed set of double S's. The mark of the drones.
The searing line became a cut, and the blade of the beam went through, slicing the Type-50 into two parts, the larger section exploding in a blossoming field of released molecular particles. It was somehow strange, like nothing he had ever seen. No doubt now. The datadrone was considered unfriendly by the Boskonian. Cloudd's deduction was confirmed.
The blast should have pulverized Cloudd, too, but he was lucky. At the moment of the explosion, a tractor beam from the attacking Patrol ship enveloped him, cushioned him from the blast, and snapped him to safety, right out of the yawning jaws of a fiery hell.
The various forces knocked him into a blackout.
Some time later, when he had recovered, he found himself on the cot by the interior airlock of his own ship. The Officer of the Deck was standing over him.
"Did we get the S.O.B.?" Cloudd said, trying to push himself upright.
"The Boskone? It took off under full Bergenholm drive."
"I tried to put a tractor hook on it. Didn't it stick?"
"Yes, we spotted the hook and latched on to it. We had a tug of war for a few split seconds, but they cut away with their shears. They're gone. But I'll bet they had a real scare."
Cloudd was on his stockinged feet, right hand pressing a pad against his nose to keep the bleeding stopped, staggering toward the control deck. The ship's captain met him in the doorway. The suppressed anger marking the captain's stern face softened a bit, but Cloudd felt an unaccustomed sense of guilt for his unsanctioned recklessness. As a sort of conciliatory gesture, Cloudd threw the captain a weak but sincere salute with his left hand. Two fingers, the last two, were half missing, the result of not this but some past foolishness.
"You're a lucky barst'd, Cloudd," the captain chided him in his thick, old English accent. "'Twas a foolhardy move you made." He clapped him on the shoulder. "But a brave one, mate. We almost had ourselves a live Boskonian and one of its drones."
"My theory's wrong, cap'n," Cloudd said, ignoring the compliment. "The drones aren't Boskonian. Consider this: Judging by the size of the pirate ship, they would be as updated on activities in this remote sector of the galaxy as we are. They smashed the little drones and tried to capture the larger one, as if they thought we were controlling them."
"Bloody hell!" said the captain. "Do I surmise we have an unknown alien power in the fish stew?"
"I wish the Type-50 hadn't been destroyed," Cloudd said wistfully.
"Tell yer, Dee Dee, m'boy, things aren't as bad as you think. We've got part of it stowed aboard. And it's mor'n just a wee piece!"
Cloudd just let a big grin slowly split his face.
"Pardon me, captain," said a messenger who had just come up behind them. "Readings show something like a nova in the general direction of that Boskonian. A brilliant flare of a rather insignificant energy reading."
"About the sort of thing made by a certain exploding Boskonian ship?" the captain commented, with a wry smile. "It could be a decoy flare, off enough degrees to mislead us, if we were chasing. But then on the other hand, it could have something to do with that duodec bomb you planted, Cloudd!"
D. D. Cloudd, Patrol Technician Class Triple-A, made his smile even broader and it didn't even waver when the captain added, "About that bomb, Cloudd, I haven't made up my mind whether it's a medal for you--or a court-martial!"
"Pardon, captain, but there's also another message. It came in just before the enemy broke off the engagement. F-I-O, for information only, signed Kinnison."
"Just prior to the disengagement? The message came in the clear?"
"No, sir. Simple code."
"Well, son, I'll come up and study it."
"It's not that long, sir. It's very simple. The enemy could have decoded it before disengaging, if that's what you implied, sir. It just says, 'Hyperspacial tube attacks have been reported against individual personnel. Report any abnormal instrumental or personal readings.'"
"My staff has been so informed?"
"Yes, sir. One more thing, sir. The drone is awaiting examination by Technician Cloudd. But there has been a tragedy. One of our new technicians, a man of little experience, opened it without authorization and was killed, possibly by a burst of anti-matter. We have left everything untouched for Technician Cloudd's attention. Scanning indicates that the drone contains an Ordovik crystal."
SHELL GAME
Three abnormally large coffins sat in the center of the room. Standing at the five corners of the pentagonal lounge of the Dronvire, in formal stance but at ease, were the honor guards. On the right upper arms of their silver dress tunics were wide mourning bands of black.
Captain Frank Garner, in the ritual role of Officer of Honor, sat on a high, wheeled war room stool at the head of the oval containers. The curved sides of the plain, handcrafted metal chests were polished to a mirror finish, banners of the Galactic Patrol covering the closed lids, draped halfway from head to foot. He sat relaxed. The situation had been stabilized, the mock death of Tregonsee was now under way to provoke some revealing reaction from the hired assassins or their bosses, and the Dronvire was about ready to leave for Klovia and home. Best of all, every one of the five scientists had been recovered unharmed, released within an average of an hour or so of captivity. The reports weren't clear, but evidently all five tubes had remained in place the entire time. Perhaps the tubes had misfired, thwarting even one successful kidnapping, or perhaps they had held the men under hypnotic interrogation for days or weeks, using stretched-out multi-dimensional time. In the temporary mental absence of Tregonsee, Garner had ordered an extensive S.I.S. inquiry with a recommendation for questioning at a high level.
Standing in front of the Klovian Lensman was a skeletal figure in immaculate Patrol ceremonial uniform. The same kind of black band was on his arm, and the same distinctive over-the-shoulder braid identifying him as one of the staff of Tregonsee hung from his narrow shoulder. This was P'Keen, the Ordovik Lensman with the unique touch of aristocratic Manarkan blood. His breeding had given him startlingly all-white, but not albino, eyes so that the constant expanding and contracting of his black pupils against the pure whiteness made his gaze hypnotic and piercing. His stick figure was further emphasized by the vertical folds of his eyes and mouth and the vertical vents of his nostrils and ears. He was odd-looking, but he was not unhandsome. In contrast to the huge bulk of the Klovian Garner, the Ordovik P'Keen seemed a ridiculously skinny and delicate porcelain caricature of a decrepit human being. Actually, with his agility and coiled-steel-spring strength, Garner knew that the apparent fragility disguised a physical strength almost as great as his own, within the limitations of weight and mass.
"Sir," P'Keen said silently to Garner, "Commander Lzbert want to know if there are any changes to the news releases which we have prepared concerning the deaths." P'Keen, as a natural, highly gifted telepath, rarely talked aloud if he could help it. "Already one newsman is outside, waiting."
Both of them knew what that cover story was, for they had, with Tregonsee, prepared it. The three coffins supposedly contained the bodies of three Patrolmen, one of them a Lensman, who had been killed by a Boskonian bomb in Peace Square. The three were being returned home.
"QX to the commander, P'Keen," Garner said. "Now that you're here, check on the stowage of Tregonsee's atmosuit. Dronvire is ready to depart."
Garner, unable to make his own inspection, was very uneasy about that suit, the Ordovik could sense. For good reason! Meppy was in one of the coffins, while Tregonsee was being smuggled out of the palace in the suit. Once locked inside, Tregonsee was virtually helpless, so his aides had absolute responsibility for his safety.
P'Keen, in the constraining presence of the coffins, formally saluted and stiffly marched away.
When he looked, a few moments later, the locker where Tregonsee's atmosuit should have been was empty. Empty! There was no suit!
P'Keen found the idea unbelievable, impossible. With growing anxiety, he searched through the storage room, through the adjoining storage rooms, through the whole deck area. As he made his search, he gathered around him more and more crew members, until a score or more of persons were looking.
Garner caught the sense of panic, followed by the details. This was no accident, no oversight. Tregonsee had been kidnapped. Perhaps this time he really was dead.
Desperate as the situation was, Garner could not abandon the plan and leave his post. Too many spy-rays, watchers, and perceivers would be avidly watching this tableau.
When P'Keen, summoned by Garner, arrived, a complete spy-ray defense and thought screen was thrown around the room to allow their minds to freely exchange thoughts. Garner ordered the doors closed and each of the honor guard to station himself on the other side, to permit no one to enter, and then he had thrown his mind frantically at P'Keen's, seeking every bit of information.
The intensity of their concern and concentration caused them to overlook what was happening.
The ranking officer of the guard, the last to leave, had closed the last door--from the inside. Alone with the two Lensmen, he whirled and stalked back toward them.
They looked up in astonishment at him.
He had drawn his DeLameter and was aiming it unwaveringly at them!
"Gentlemen," the officer said, "you will now proceed to open the Rigellian's coffin."
When he received no response, he waved his weapon threateningly. "I can shoot you both and open it myself, if that's your wish. Now do it!"
Garner and P'Keen, instantaneously reading each other's mind, together threw a powerful, crushing bolt of mental power against the renegade Patrolman. The resistance which nullified their effort flabbergasted them.
"I am a Lensman, too," said the officer. "Now open the
coffin!" They obeyed, wondering what strange plot was afoot. Was someone else looking for Tregonsee?" When the lid went up, the officer immediately said, "That's not Tregonsee! Open the other two coffins!"
They did and each time the officer became more disturbed. Now he was enraged. Instead of talking, he was hitting their minds with his thought. "That Rigellian is not Tregonsee! What have you done with Tregonsee?"
As both P'Keen and Garner floundered around mentally, trying to throw the stranger out of their heads, fighting to keep their mental shields intact, searching themselves for the proper response, a new twist took place. At one of the doors, there was much noise, and a different shift of honor guards marched in. At the rear of the file of five there shuffled, ponderously, a Rigellian!
