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

jets to do it. You see, I .” he stopped. He would not offer anything that might sound like an alibi: but his thoughts were plain as print to the old Lensman.

      “Go ahead, son. We know you wouldn’t.”

      “If I thought at all, I assumed that I was tackling men, since those on the ship were men, and men were the only known inhabitants of the Aldebaranian system. But when those wheelers took me so easily and so completely, it became very evident that I didn’t have enough stuff. I ran like a scared pup, and I was lucky to get home at all. It wouldn’t have happened if .” he paused.

      “If what? Reason it out, son,” Haynes advised, pointedly. “You are wrong, dead wrong. You made no mistake, either in judgment or in execution. You have been blaming yourself for assuming that they were men. Suppose you had assumed that they were the Arisians themselves. Then what? After close scrutiny, even in the light of after-knowledge, we do not see how you could have changed the outcome.” It did not occur, even to the sagacious old admiral, that Kinnison need not have gone in. Lensmen always went in.

      “Well, anyway, they licked me, and that hurts,” Kinnison admitted, frankly. “So I’m going back to Arisia for more training, if they’ll give it to me. I may be gone quite a while, as it may take even Mentor a long time to increase the permeability of my skull enough so that an idea can filter through it in something under a century.”

      “Didn’t Mentor tell you never to go back there?”

      “No, sir.” Kinnison grinned boyishly. “He must’ve forgot it in my case—the only slip he ever made, I guess. That’s what gives me an out.”

      “Um . . . m . . . m.” Haynes pondered this startling bit of information. He knew, far better than young Kinnison could, the Arisian power of mind: he did not believe that Mentor of Arisia had ever forgotten anything, however tiny or unimportant. “It has never been done . they are a peculiar race; incomprehensible . but not vindictive. He may refuse you, but nothing worse—that is, if you do not cross the barrier without invitation. It’s a splendid idea, I think; but be very careful to strike that barrier free and at almost zero power—or else don’t strike it at all.”

      They shook hands, and in a space of minutes the speedster was again tearing through space. Kinnison now knew exactly what he wanted to get, and he utilized every waking hour of that long trip in physical and mental exercise to prepare himself to take it. Thus the time did not seem long. He crept up to the barrier at a snail’s pace, stopping instantly as he touched it, and through that barrier he sent a thought.

      “Kimball Kinnison of Sol Three calling Mentor of Arisia. Is it permitted that I approach your planet?” He was neither brazen nor obsequious, but was matter-of-factly asking a simple question and expecting a simple reply.

      “It is permitted, Kimball Kinnison of Tellus,” a slow, deep, measured voice resounded in his brain. “Neutralize your controls. You will be landed.”

      He did so, and the inert speedster shot forward, to come to ground in a perfect landing at a regulation space-port. He strode into the office, to confront the same grotesque entity who had measured him for his Lens not so long ago. Now, however, he stared straight into that entity’s unblinking eyes, in silence.

      “Ah, you have progressed. You realize now that vision is not always reliable. At our previous interview you took it for granted that what you saw must really exist, and did not wonder as to what our true shapes might be.”

      “I am wondering now, seriously,” Kinnison replied, “and if it is permitted, I intend to stay here until I can see your true shapes.”

      “This?” and the figure changed instantly into that of an old, white-bearded, scholarly gentleman.

      “No. There is a vast difference between seeing something myself and having you show it to me. I realize fully that you can make me see you as anything you choose. You could appear to me as a perfect copy of myself, or as any other thing, person or object conceivable to my mind.”

      “Ah; your development has been eminently satisfactory. It is now permissible to tell you, youth, that your present quest, not for mere information, but for real knowledge, was expected.”

      “Huh? How could that be? I didn’t decide definitely, myself, until only a couple of weeks ago.”

      “It was inevitable. When we fitted your Lens we knew that you would return if you lived. As we recently informed that one known as Helmuth .”

      “Helmuth! You know, then, where .” Kinnison choked himself off. He would not ask for help in that—he would fight his own battles and bury his own dead. If they volunteered the information, well and good; but he would not ask it. Nor did the Arisian furnish it.

      “You are right,” the sage remarked, imperturbably. “For proper development it is essential that you secure that information for yourself.” Then he continued his previous thought:

      “As we told Helmuth recently, we have given your civilization an instrumentality—the Lens—by virtue of which it should be able to make itself secure throughout the galaxy. Having given it, we could do nothing more of real or permanent benefit until you Lensmen yourselves began to understand the true relationship between mind and Lens. That understanding has been inevitable; for long we have known that in time a certain few of your minds would become strong enough to discover that theretofore unknown relationship. As soon as any mind made that discovery it would of course return to Arisia, the source of the Lens, for additional instruction; which, equally of course, that mind could not have borne previously.

      “Decade by decade your minds have become stronger. Finally you came to be fitted with a Lens. Your mind, while pitifully undeveloped, had a latent capacity and a power that made your return here certain. There are several others who will return. Indeed, it has become a topic of discussion among us as to whether you or one other would be the first advanced student.”

      “Who is that other, if I may ask?”

      “Your friend, Worsel the Velantian.”

      “He’s got a real mind—way, way ahead of mine,” the Lensman stated, as a matter of self-evident fact.

      “In some ways, yes. In other and highly important characteristics, no.”

      “Huh?” Kinnison exclaimed. “In what possible way have I got it over him?”

      “I am not certain that I can explain it exactly in thoughts which you can understand. Broadly speaking, his mind is the better trained, the more fully developed. It is of more grasp and reach, and of vastly greater present power. It is more controllable, more responsive, more adaptable than is yours—now. But your mind, while undeveloped, is of considerable greater capacity than his, and of greater and more varied latent capabilities. Above all, you have a driving force, a will to do, an undefeatable mental urge that no one of his race will ever be able to develop. Since I predicted that you would be the first to return, I am naturally gratified that you have developed in accordance with that prediction.”

      “Well, I have been more or less under pressure, and I got quite a few lucky breaks. But at that, it seemed to me that I was progressing backward instead of forward.”

      “It is ever thus with the really competent. Prepare yourself!”

      He launched a mental bolt, at the impact of which Kinnison’s mind literally turned inside out in a wildly gyrating spiral vortex of dizzyingly confused images.

      “Resist!” came the harsh command.

      “Resist! How?” demanded the writhing, sweating Lensman. “You might as well tell a fly to resist an inert space-ship!”

      “Use your will—your force—your adaptability. Shift your mind to meet mine at every point. Apart from these fundamentals neither I nor anyone else can tell you how; each mind must find its own medium and develop its own technique. But this is a very mild treatment indeed; one conditioned to your present strength. I will increase it gradually in severity, but rest assured that I will at no time raise it to the point of permanent damage.