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

it would be inspected, of course. He had plenty of air, but space-armor all looked alike, and his Lens would warn him in time of any unfriendly or suspicious thought. He had better go. If they called a roll . but he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

      No roll was called; in fact, the captain paid no attention at all to his men. They would come along or not, just as they pleased. But since to stay in the ship meant death, every man was prompt. At the expiration of the five minutes the captain strode away, followed by the crowd. Through a doorway, left turn, and the captain was met by a creature whose shape Kinnison could not make out. A pause, a straggling forward, then a right turn.

      Kinnison decided that he would not take that turn. He would stay here, close to the shaft, where he could blast his way out if necessary, until he had studied the whole base thoroughly enough to map out a plan of campaign. He soon found an empty and apparently unused room, and assured himself that through its heavy, crystal-clear window he could indeed look out into the vastly cylindrical emptiness of a volcanic shaft.

      Then with his spy-ray he watched the pirates as they were escorted to the quarters prepared for them. Those might have been rooms of state, but it looked to Kinnison very much as though his former shipmates were being jailed ignominiously, and he was glad that he had taken leave of them. Shooting his ray here and there throughout the structure, he finally found what he was looking for; the communicator room. That room was fairly well lighted, and at what he saw there his jaw dropped in sheerest amazement.

      He had expected to see men, since Aldebaran II, the only inhabited planet in the system, had been colonized from Tellus and its people were as truly human and Caucasian as those of Chicago or of Paris. But there . . . these things . he had been around quite a bit, but he had never seen nor heard of their like. They were wheels, really. When they went anywhere they rolled. Heads where hubs ought to be . eyes . arms, dozens of them, and very capable-looking hands .

      “Vogenar!” a crisp thought flashed from one of the peculiar entities to another, impinging also upon Kinnison’s Lens. “Someone—some outsider—is looking at me. Relieve me while I abate this intolerable nuisance.”

      “One of those creatures from Tellus? We will teach them very shortly that such intrusion is not to be borne.”

      “No, it is not one of them. The touch is similar, but the tone is entirely different. Nor could it be one of them, for not one of them is equipped with the instrument which is such a clumsy substitute for inherent power of mind. There, I will now .”

      Kinnison snapped on his thought-screen, but the damage had already been done. In the violated Communications Room the angry observer went on:

      “. attune myself and trace the origin of that prying look. It has disappeared now, but its sender cannot be distant, since our walls are shielded and screened . Ah, there is a blank space, which I cannot penetrate, in the seventh room of the fourth corridor. In all probability it is one of our guests, hiding now behind a thought screen.” Then his orders boomed out to a corps of guards. “Take him and put him with the others!”

      Kinnison had not heard the order, but he was ready for anything, and those who came to take him found that it was much easier to issue such orders than to carry them out.

      “Halt!” snapped the Lensman, his Lens carrying the crackling command deep into the Wheelmen’s minds. “I do not wish to harm you, but come no closer!”

      “You? Harm us?” came a cold, clear thought, and the creatures vanished. But not for long. They or others like them were back in moments, this time armed and armored for strife.

      Again Kinnison found that DeLameters were useless. The armor of the foe mounted generators as capable as his own; and, although the air in the room soon became one intolerably glaring field of force, in which the very walls themselves began to crumble and to vaporize, neither he nor his attackers were harmed. Again, then, the Lensman had recourse to his mediæval weapon; sheathing his DeLameter and wading in with his axe. Although not a vanBuskirk, he was, for an Earthman, of unusual strength, skill, and speed: and to those opposing him he was a very Hercules.

      Therefore, as he struck and struck and struck again, the cell became a gorily reeking slaughter-pen, its every corner high-piled with the shattered corpses of the Wheelmen and its floor running with blood and slime. The last few of the attackers, unwilling to face longer that irresistible steel, wheeled away, and Kinnison thought flashingly of what he should do next.

      This trip was a bust so far. He couldn’t do himself a bit of good here now, and he’d better flit while he was still in one piece. How? The door? No. Couldn’t make it—he’d run out of time quick that way. His screens would stop small-arms projectiles, but they knew that as well as he did. They’d use a young cannon—or, more probably, a semi-portable. Better take out the wall. That would give them something else to think about, too, while he was doing his flit.

      Only a fraction of a second was taken up by these thoughts, then Kinnison was at the wall. He set his DeLameter to minimum aperture and at maximum blast, to throw an irresistible cutting pencil. Through the wall that pencil pierced; up, over, and around.

      But, fast as the Lensman had acted, he was still too late. There came trundling into the room behind him a low, four-wheeled truck, bearing a complex and monstrous mechanism. Kinnison whirled to face it. As he turned the section of the wall upon which he had been at work blew outward with a crash. The ensuing rush of escaping atmosphere swept the Lensman up and whisked him out through the opening and into the shaft. In the meantime the mechanism upon the truck had begun a staccato, grinding roar, and as it roared Kinnison felt slugs ripping through his armor and tearing through his flesh; each as crushing, crunching, paralyzing a blow as though it had been inflicted by vanBuskirk’s space axe.

      This was the first time Kinnison had ever been really badly wounded, and it made him sick. But, sick and numb, senses reeling at the shock of his slug-torn body, his right hand flashed to the external controller of his neutralizer. For he was falling inert. Only ten or fifteen meters to the bottom, as remembered it—he had mighty little time to waste if he were not to land inert. He snapped the controller. Nothing happened. Something had been shot away. His driver, too, was dead. Snapping the sleeve of his armor into its clamp he began to withdraw his arm in order to operate the internal controls, but he ran out of time. He crashed; on the top of a subsiding pile of masonry which had preceded him, but which had not yet attained a state of equilibrium; underneath a shower of similar material which rebounded from his armor in a boiler-shop clangor of noise.

      Well it was that that heap of masonry had not yet had time to settle into form, for in some slight measure it acted as a cushion to break the Lensman’s fall. But an inert fall of forty feet, even cushioned by sliding rocks, is in no sense a light one. Kinnison crashed. It seemed as though a thousand pile-drivers struck him at once. Surges of almost unbearable agony swept over him as bones snapped and bruised flesh gave way; and he knew dimly that a merciful tide of oblivion was reaching up to engulf his shrieking, suffering mind.

      But, foggily at first in the stunned confusion of his entire being, something stirred; that unknown and unknowable something, that indefinable ultimate quality that had made him what he was. He lived, and while a Lensman lived he did not quit. To quit was to die then and there, since he was losing air fast. He had plastic in his kit, of course, and the holes were small. He must plug those leaks, and plug them quick. His left arm, he found, he could not move at all. It must be smashed pretty badly. Every shallow breath was a searing pain—that meant a rib or two gone out. Luckily, however, he was not breathing blood, therefore his lungs must still be intact. He could move his right arm, although it seemed like a lump of clay or a limb belonging to someone else. But, mustering all his power of will, he made it move. He dragged it out of the armor’s clamped sleeve; and forced the leaden hand to slide through the welter of blood that seemed almost to fill the bulge of his armor. He found his kit-box, and, after an eternity of pain-wracked time, he compelled his sluggish hand to open it and to take out the plastic.

      Then, in a continuously crescendo throbbing of agony, he forced his maimed, crushed, and broken body to writhe and to wriggle about, so that his one sound hand could find and stop the holes through which his precious air was whistling out and away.