Lensman 04 - Gray Lensman by E.E. Smith

Author:E.E. Smith [Smith, E.E.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11 - HI-JACKERS

Although Kinnison left Bronseca, abandoning that line of attack completely—thereby, it might be thought, forfeiting all the work he had theretofore done upon it—the Patrol was not idle, nor was Prellin-Wembleson of Cominoche, the Boskonian Regional Director, neglected.

Lensman after Lensman came and went, unobstrusively, but grimly determined. There came Tellurians, Venerians, Manarkans, Borovans; Lensmen of every human breed, say of whom might have been, as far as the minions of Boskone knew, the one foe whom they had such good cause to fear.

Rigellian Lensmen came also, and Posenians, and Ordoviks; representatives, in fact, of almost every available race possessing any type or kind of extra-sensory perception, came to test out their skill and cunning. Even Worsel of Velantia came, hurled for days his mighty mind against those screens, and departed.

Whether or not business went on as usual no one could say, but the Patrol was certain of three things. First, that while the Boskonians might be destroying some of their records, they were moving none away, by air, land, or tunnel; second, that there was no doubt in any zwilick mind that the Lensmen were there to stay until they won, in one way or another; and third, that Prellin’s life was not a happy one!

And while his brothers of the Lens were so efficiently pinch-hitting for him—even though they were at the same time trying to show him up and thereby win kudos for themselves—in mentally investing the Regional stronghold of Boskone, Kinnison was establishing an identity as a wandering hellion of the asteroid belts.

There would be no slips this time. He would be a meteor miner in every particular, down to the last, least detail. To this end he selected his equipment with the most exacting care. It must be thoroughly adequate and dependable, but neither new nor of such outstanding quality or amount as to cause comment.

His ship, a stubby, powerful space-tug with an oversized air-lock, was a used job—hard- used, too—some ten years old. She was battered, pitted, and scarred; but it should be noted here, perhaps parenthetically, that when the Patrol technicians finished their rebuilding she was actually as staunch as a battleship. His space-armor, Spalding drills, DeLameters, tractors and pressors, and “spee-gee” (torsion specific-gravity apparatus) were of the same grade. AH bore unmistakable evidence of years of hard use, but all were in perfect working order. In short, his outfit was exactly that which a successful meteor-miner—even such a one as he Was going to become—would be expected to own.

He cut his own hair, and his whiskers too, with ordinary shears, as was good technique.

He learned the polyglot of the trade; the language which, made up of words from each of hundreds of planetary tongues, was and is the everyday speech of human or near-human meteor miners, whereever found. By “near-human” is meant a six-place classification of AAAAAA—meaning oxygen-breathing, warm-blooded, erect, and having more or less humanoid heads, arms, and legs. For, even in meteor-mining, like runs with like. Warmblooded oxygen-breathers

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