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

the reduction of the fortresses took longer than had the destruction of the fleet. But their receptors could no longer draw power from the sun or from any other heavenly body, and their other sources of power were comparatively weak. Therefore their defenses also failed under that incessant assault. Course after course their screens went down, and with the last ones went every structure. The maulers’ beams went through metal and masonry as effortlessly as steel-jacketed bullets go through butter, and bored on, deep into the planet’s bed-rock, before their frightful force was spent.

      Then around and around they spiralled until nothing whatever was left of the Boskonian works; until only a seething, white-hot lake of molten lava in the midst of the satellite’s frigid waste was all that remained to show that anything had ever been built there.

      Surrender had not been thought of. Quarter or clemency had not been asked or offered. Victory of itself was not enough. This was, and of stern necessity had to be, a war of utter, complete, and merciless extinction.

      CHAPTER 14

      Unattached

       Table of Contents

      The enemy stronghold so insultingly close to Prime Base having been obliterated, Regional Fleets, in loose formations, began to scour the various Galactic Regions. For a few weeks game was plentiful enough. Hundreds of raiding vessels were overtaken and held by the Patrol cruisers, then blasted to vapor by the maulers.

      Many Boskonian bases were also reduced. The locations of most of these had long been known to the Intelligence Service, others were detected or discovered by the fast-flying cruisers themselves. Marauding vessels revealed the sites of others by succeeding in reaching them before being overtaken by the cruisers. Others were found by the tracers and loops of the Signal Corps.

      Very few of these bases were hidden or in any way difficult of access, and most of them fell before the blasts of a single mauler. But if one mauler was not enough, others were summoned until it did fall. One fortress, a hitherto unknown and surprisingly strong Secor Base, required the concentration of every mauler of Tellus, but they were brought up and the fortress fell. As had been said, this was a war of extinction and every pirate base that was found was wiped out.

      But one day a cruiser found a base which had not even a spy-ray shield up, and a cursory inspection showed it to be completely empty. Machinery, equipment, stores, and personnel had all been evacuated. Suspicious, the Patrol vessels stood off and beamed it from afar, but there were no untoward occurrences. The structures simply slumped down into lava, and that was all.

      Every base discovered thereafter was in the same condition, and at the same time the ships of Boskone, formerly so plentiful, disappeared utterly from space. Day after day the cruisers sped hither and thither throughout the vast reaches of the void, at the peak of their unimaginably high pace, without finding a trace of any Boskonian vessel. More remarkable still, and for the first time in years, the ether was absolutely free from Boskonian interference.

      Following an impulse, Kinnison asked and received permission to take his ship on scouting duty. At maximum blast he drove toward the Velantian system, to the point at which he had picked up Helmuth’s communication line. Along that line he drove for days, halting only when well outside the galaxy. Ahead of him there was nothing reachable except a few star-clusters. Behind him there extended the immensity of the galactic lens in all its splendor, but Captain Kinnison had no eye for astronomical beauty that day.

      He held the Brittania there for an hour, while he mulled over in his mind what the apparent facts could mean. He knew that he had covered the line, from its point of determination out beyond the galaxy’s edge. He knew that his detectors, operating as they had been in clear and undistorted ether, could not possibly have missed a thing as large as Helmuth’s base must be, if it had been anywhere near that line; that their effective range was immensely greater than the largest possible error in the determination or the following of the line. There were, he concluded, four possible explanations, and only four.

      First, Helmuth’s base might also have been evacuated. This was unthinkable. From what he himself knew of Helmuth that base would be as nearly impregnable as anything could be made, and it was no more apt to be vacated than was Prime Base of the Patrol. Second, it might be subterranean; buried under enough metal-bearing rock to ground out all radiation. This possibility was just as unlikely as the first. Third, Helmuth might already have the device he himself wanted so badly, and upon which Hotchkiss and the other experts had been at work so long, a detector nullifier. This was possible, distinctly so. Possible enough, at least, to warrant filing the idea for future consideration. Fourth, that base might not be in the galaxy at all, but in that star-cluster out there straight ahead of him, or possibly in one even farther away. That idea seemed the best of the four. It would necessitate ultra-powerful communicators, of course, but Helmuth could very well have them. It squared up in other ways—its pattern fitted into the matrix very nicely.

      But if that base were out there . it could stay there—for a while . a battle-cruiser just wasn’t enough ship for that job. Too much opposition out there, and not—enough—ship . Or too much ship? But he wasn’t ready, yet, anyway. He needed, and would get, another line on Helmuth’s base. Therefore, shrugging his shoulders, he whirled his vessel about and set out to rejoin the fleet.

      While a full day short of junction, Kinnison was called to his plate, to see upon its lambent surface the visage of Port Admiral Haynes.

      “Did you find out anything on your trip?” he asked.

      “Nothing definite, sir. Just a couple of things to think about, is all. But I can say that I don’t like this at all—I don’t like anything about it or any part of it.”

      “No more do I,” agreed the admiral. “It looks very much as though your forecast of a stalemate might be about to eventuate. Where are you headed for now?”

      “Back to the Fleet.”

      “Don’t do it. Stay on scouting duty for a while longer. And, unless something more interesting turns up, report back here to me—we have something that may interest you. The boys have been .”

      The admiral’s picture was broken up into flashes of blinding light and his words became a meaningless, jumbled roar of noise. A distress call had begun to come in, only to be blotted out by a flood of Boskonian static interference, of which the ether had for so long been clear. The young Lensman used his Lens.

      “Excuse me, sir, while I see what this is all about?”

      “Certainly, son.”

      “Got its center located?” Kinnison yelped at his communications officer. “They’re close—right in our laps!”

      “Yes, sir!” and the radio man snapped out numbers.

      “Blast!” the captain commanded, unnecessarily; for the alert pilot had already set the course and was kicking in full-blast drive. “If that baby is what I think it is, all hell’s out for noon.”

      Toward the center of disturbance the Brittania flashed, emitting now a scream of peculiarly patterned interference which was not only a scrambler of all un-Lensed communication throughout that whole part of the galaxy, but also an imperative call for any mauler within range. So close had the cruiser been to the scene of depredation that for her to reach it required only minutes.

      There lay the merchantman and her Boskonian assailant. Emboldened by the cessation of piratical activities, some shipping concern had sent out a freighter, loaded probably with highly “urgent” cargo; and this was the result. The marauder, inert now, had gripped her with his tractors and was beaming her into submission. She was resisting, but feebly now; it was apparent that her screens were failing. Her crew must soon open ports in token of surrender or roast to a man; and they would probably prefer to roast.

      Thus the situation obtaining in one instant. The next instant it was changed; the Boskonian discovering suddenly that his beams, instead of boring through the weak defenses of the freighter, were not even