Lensman 03 - Galactic Patrol by E.E. Smith

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

CHAPTER 12 - Kinnison Brings Home the Bacon

Helmuth sat at his desk, thinking, thinking with all the coldly analytical precision of which he was capable.

This Lensman was both powerful and tremendously resourceful. The cosmic- energy drive, developed by the science of a world about which the Patrol knew nothing, was Boskone’s one great item of superiority. If the Patrol could be kept in ignorance of that drive the struggle would be over in a year, the culture of the iron hand would be unchallenged throughout the galaxy. If, however, the Patrol should succeed in learning Boskone’s top secret, the war between the two cultures might well be prolonged indefinitely. This Lensman knew that secret and was still at large, of that he was all too certain. Therefore the Lensman must be destroyed. And that brought up the Lens.

What was it? A peculiar bauble indeed, impossible of duplication because of some subtlety of intra-atomic arrangement, and possessing peculiar and dire potentialities. The old belief that no one except a Lensman could wear a Lens was true- he had proved it. The Lens must account in some way for the outstanding ability of the Lensman, and it must tie in, somehow, with both Arisia and the thought-screens. The Lens was the one thing possessed by the Patrol which his own forces did not have. He must and would have it, for it was undoubtedly a powerful arm. Not to be compared, of course, with their own monopoly of cosmic energy.-but that monopoly was now threatened, and seriously. That Lensman must be destroyed.

But how? It was easy to say “Comb Trenco, inch by Inch,” but doing it would prove a Herculean task. Suppose that the Lensman should again escape, in that volume of so fantastically distorted media? He had already escaped twice, in much clearer ether than Trenco’s. However, if his information should never get back to Prime Base little harm would be done and ships had been thrown around every solar system the Lensman could reach. Not even a grain-of-dust meteorite could pass those screens without detection. So much for the Lensman. Now about getting the secret of the Lens.

Again, how? There was something upon Arisia, something connected in some way with the Lens and with thought-possibly also with those thought-screens . .

His mind Bashed back over the unorthodox manner of his acquirement of those devices-unorthodox in that he had neither stolen them nor murdered their inventor. A person had come to him with pass-words and credentials which could not be ignored, had handed him a heavily-sealed container, which, he said, had come from a planet named Ploor, had remarked casually -Thought-screen data-you’ll know when you need ‘em”, and had gone.

Whatever the Arisian was it had mental power, of that fact there could be no doubt. Out of the full sphere of space, what was the mathematical probability that the pilot of that deathship would have set by accident his course so exactly upon Grand Base? Vanishingly small. Treachery would not explain

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