The Greatest Works of E. E. Smith. E. E. Smith

him as soon as greetings had been exchanged. “The pirates have a beam, carrying a peculiarly scrambled signal, that they can receive and decode through any ordinary kind of blanketing interference, and you’re the best man we’ve got to study their system. Some of these Velantian scientists can probably help you a lot on that—any race that can develop a screen against thought figures ought to know more than somewhat about vibration in general. We’ve got working models of the pirates’ instruments, so you can figure out their patterns and formulas. When you’ve done that, I want you and your Velantians to design something that will scramble all the pirates’ communicator beams in space, as far as you can reach. If you can fix things so they can’t talk, any more than we can, it’ll help a lot, believe me!”

      “QX, Chief, we’ll give it the works,” and the radio man called for tools, apparatus, and electricians.

      Then throughout the great airport the many Velantians and the handful of Patrolmen labored mightily, side by side, and to very good effect indeed. Slowly the port became ringed about by, and studded everywhere with, monstrous mechanisms. Everywhere there were projectors: refractory-throated demons ready to vomit forth every force known to the expert technicians of the Patrol. There were absorbers, too, backed by their bleeder resistors, air-gaps, ground-rods, and racks for discharged accumulators. There, too, were receptors and converters for the cosmic energy which was to empower many of the devices. There were, of course, atomic motor-generators by the score, and battery upon battery of gigantic accumulators. And Nelson’s high-powered scrambler was ready to go to work.

      These machines appeared crude, rough, unfinished; for neither time nor labor had been wasted upon non-essentials. But inside each one the moving parts fitted with micrometric accuracy and with hair-spring balance. All, without exception, functioned perfectly.

      At Worsel’s call, Kinnison climbed up out of a great beam-proof pit, the top of whose wall was practically composed of tractor-beam projectors. Pausing only to make sure that a sticking switch on one of the screen-dome generators had been replaced, he hurried to the heavily armored control room, where his little force of fellow Patrolmen awaited him.

      “They’re coming, boys,” he announced. “You all know what to do. There are a lot more things we could have done if we’d had more time, but as it is we’ll just go to work on them with what we’ve got,” and Kinnison, again all brisk Captain, bent over his instruments.

      In the ordinary course of events the pirate would have flashed up to the planet with spy-rays out and issuing a pre-emptory demand for the planet to show a clean bill of health or to surrender instantly such fugitives as might lately have landed upon it. But Kinnison did not—could not—wait for that. The spy-rays, he knew, would reveal the presence of his armament; and such armament most certainly did not belong to this planet. Therefore he acted first, and everything happened practically at once.

      A tracer lashed out, the pilot-ray of the rim-battery of extraordinarily powerful tractors. Under their terrific pull the inertialess ship flashed toward their center of action. At the same moment there burst into activity Nelson’s scrambler, a dome-screen against cosmic-energy intake, and a full circle of super-powered projectors.

      All these things occurred in the twinkling of an eye, and the vessel was being slowed down by the atmosphere of Velantia before her startled commander could even realize that he was being attacked. Only the automatically-reacting defensive screens saved that ship from instant destruction; but they did so save it and in seconds the pirates’ every weapon was furiously ablaze.

      In vain. The defenses of that pit could take it. They were driven by mechanisms easily able to absorb the output of any equipment mountable upon a mobile base, and to his consternation the pirate found that his cosmic-energy intake was at, and remained at, zero. He sent out call after call for help, but could not make contact with any other pirate station—ether and sub-ether alike were closed to him, his signals were blanketed completely. Nor could his drivers, even though operating at ruinous overload, move him from the geometrical center of that incandescently flaming pit, so inconceivably rigid were the tractors’ clamps upon him.

      And soon his power began to fail. His vessel, designed to operate upon cosmic-energy intake, carried only enough accumulators for stablization of power-flow, an amount ridiculously inadequate for a combat as profligate of energy as this. But strangely enough, as his defenses weakened, so lessened the power of the attack. It was no part of the Lensman’s plan to destroy this superdreadnaught of the void.

      “That was one good thing about the old Brittania,” he gritted, as he cut down step by step the power of his beams, “what power she had, nobody could block her off from!”

      Soon the stored-up energy of the battleship was exhausted and she lay there, quiescent. Then giant pressors went into action and she was lifted over the wall of the pit, to settle down in an open space beside it—open, but still under the domes of force.

      Kinnison had no needle-rays as yet, the time at his disposal having been sufficient only for the construction of the absolutely essential items of equipment. Now, while he debated with his fellows as to what part of the vessel to destroy in order to wipe out its crew, the pirates themselves ended the debate. Ports yawned in the vessel’s side and they came out fighting.

      For they were not a breed to die like rats in a trap, and they knew that to remain inside their vessel was to die whenever and however their captors willed. They knew also that die they must if they could not conquer. Their surrender, even if it should be accepted, would mean only a somewhat later death in the lethal chambers of the Law. In the open, they could at least take some of their foes with them.

      Furthermore, not being men as we know men, they had nothing in common with either human beings or Velantians. Both to them were vermin, as they themselves were to the beings manning this surprisingly impregnable fortress here in this waste corner of the galaxy. Therefore, space-hardened veterans all, they fought, with the insane ferocity and desperation of the ultimately last stand; but they did not conquer. Instead, and to the last man, they died.

      As soon as the battle was over, before the interference blanketing the pirates’ communicators was cut off, Kinnison went through the captured vessel, destroying the headquarters visiplates and every automatic sender which could transmit any kind of a message to any pirate base. Then the interference was stopped, the domes were released, and the ship was removed from the field of operations. Then, while Thorndyke and his reptilian aides—themselves now radio experts of no mean attainments—busied themselves at installing a high-powered scrambler aboard her, Kinnison and Worsel scanned space in search of more prey. Soon they found it, more distant than the first one had been—two solar systems away—and in an entirely different direction. Tracers and tractors and interference and domes of force again became the order of the day. Projectors again raved out in their incandescent might, and soon another immense cruiser of the void lay beside her sister ship. Another, and another; then for a long time space was blank.

      The Lensman then energized his ultra-receiver, pointing his antenna carefully into the galatic line to Helmuth’s base, as laid down for him by the Velantian astronomers. Again, so tight and hard was Helmuth’s beam, he had to drive his apparatus so unmercifully that the tube-noise almost drowned out the signals, but again he was rewarded by hearing faintly the voice of the pirate Director of Operations:

      “. four vessels, all within or near one of those five solar systems, have ceased communicating; each cessation being accompanied by a period of blanketing interference of a pattern never before registered. You two vessels who are receiving these orders are instructed to investigate that region with the utmost care. Go with screens out and everything on the trips, and with automatic recorders set on me here. It is not believed that the Patrol has anything to do with this, as ability has been shown transcending anything it has been known to possess. As a working hypothesis it is assumed that one of the solar systems, hitherto practically unexplored and unknown, is in reality the seat of a highly advanced race, which perhaps has taken offense at the attitude or conduct of our first ship to visit them. Therefore proceed with extreme caution, with a thorough spy-ray search at extreme range before approaching at all. If you land, use tact and diplomacy instead of the customary tactics. Find out whether our ships and crews have been destroyed,