Chapter 4

“So you didn’t find anything on Nevia.” Roderick Kinnison got up, deposited the inch-long butt of his cigar in an ashtray, lit another, and prowled about the room; hands jammed deep into breeches pockets. “I’m surprised. Nerado struck me as being a B.T.O ... I thought sure he’d qualify.”

“So did I.” Samms’ tone was glum. “He’s Big Time, and an Operator; but not big enough, by far. I’m--we’re both--finding out that Lensman material is damned scarce stuff. There’s none on Nevia, and no indication whatever that there ever will be any.”

“Tough ... and you’re right, of course, in your stand that we’ll have to have Lensmen from as many different solar systems as possible on the Galactic Council or the thing won’t work at all. So damned much jealousy--which is one reason why we’re here in New York instead of out at The Hill, where we belong--we’ve found that out already, even in such a small and comparatively homogeneous group as our own system--the Solarian Council will not only have to be made up mostly of Lensmen, but each and every inhabited planet of Sol will have to be represented--even Pluto, I suppose, in time. And by the way, your Mr. Saunders wasn’t any too pleased when you took Knobos of Mars and DalNalten of Venus away from him and made Lensmen out of them--and put them miles over his head.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that ... exactly. I convinced him ... but at that, since Saunders is not Lensman grade himself, it was a trifle difficult for him to understand the situation completely.”

“You say it easy--’difficult’ is not the word I would use. But back to the Lensman hunt.” Kinnison scowled blackly. “I agree, as I said before, that we need non-human Lensmen, the more the better, but I don’t think much of your chance of finding any. What makes you think ... Oh, I see ... but I don’t know whether you’re justified or not in assuming a high positive correlation between a certain kind of mental ability and technological advancement.”

“No such assumption is necessary. Start anywhere you please, Rod, and take it from there; including Nevia.”

“I’ll start with known facts, then. Interstellar flight is new to us. We haven’t spread far, or surveyed much territory. But in the eight solar systems with which we are most familiar there are seven planets--I’m not counting Valeria--which are very much like Earth in point of mass, size, climate, atmosphere, and gravity. Five of the seven did not have any intelligent life and were colonized easily and quickly. The Tellurian worlds of Procyon and Vega became friendly neighbors--thank God we learned something on Nevia--because they were already inhabited by highly advanced races: Procia by people as human as we are, Vegia by people who would be so if it weren’t for their tails. Many other worlds of these systems are inhabited by more or less intelligent non-human races. Just how intelligent they are we don’t know, but the Lensmen will soon find out.

“My point is that no race we have found so far has had either atomic energy or any form of space-drive. In any contact with races having space-drives we have not been the discoverers, but the discovered. Our colonies are all within twenty six light-years of Earth except Aldebaran II, which is fifty seven, but which drew a lot of people, in spite of the distance, because it was so nearly identical with Earth. On the other hand, the Nevians, from a distance of over a hundred light-years, found us ... implying an older race and a higher development ... but you just told me that they would never produce a Lensman!”

“That point stopped me, too, at first. Follow through; I want to see if you arrive at the same conclusion I did.”

“Well ... I ... I...” Kinnison thought intensely, then went on: “Of course, the Nevians were not colonizing; nor, strictly speaking, exploring. They were merely hunting for iron--a highly organized, intensively specialized operation to find a raw material they needed desperately.”

“Precisely,” Samms agreed.

“The Rigellians, however, were surveying, and Rigel is about four hundred and forty light-years from here. We didn’t have a thing they needed or wanted. They nodded at us in passing and kept on going. I’m still on your track?”

“Dead center. And just where does that put the Palainians?”

“I see ... you may have something there, at that. Palain is so far away that nobody knows even where it is--probably thousands of light-years. Yet they have not only explored this system; they colonized Pluto long before our white race colonized America. But damn it, Virge, I don’t like it--any part of it. Rigel Four you may be able to take, with your Lens ... even one of their damned automobiles, if you stay solidly en rapport with the driver. But Palain, Virge! Pluto is bad enough, but the home planet! You can’t. Nobody can. It simply can’t be done!”

“I know it won’t be easy,” Samms admitted, bleakly, “but if it’s got to be done, I’ll do it. And I have a little information that I haven’t had time to tell you yet. We discussed once before, you remember, what a job it was to get into any kind of communication with the Palainians on Pluto. You said then that nobody could understand them, and you were right--then. However, I re-ran those brain-wave tapes, wearing my Lens, and could understand them--the thoughts, that is--as well as though they had been recorded in precisionist-grade English.”

“What?“ Kinnison exclaimed, then fell silent. Samms remained silent. What they were thinking of Arisia’s Lens cannot be expressed in words.

“Well, go on,” Kinnison finally said. “Give me the rest of it--the stinger that you’ve been holding back.”

“The messages--as messages--were clear and plain. The backgrounds, however, the connotations and implications, were not. Some of their codes and standards seem to be radically different from ours--so utterly and fantastically different that I simply cannot reconcile either their conduct or their ethics with their obviously high intelligence and their advanced state of development. However, they have at least some minds of tremendous power, and none of the peculiarities I deduced were of such a nature as to preclude Lensmanship. Therefore I am going to Pluto; and from there--I hope--to Palain Seven. If there’s a Lensman there, I’ll get him.”

“You will, at that,” Kinnison paid quiet tribute to what he, better than anyone else, knew that his friend had.

“But enough of me--how are you doing?”

“As well as can be expected at this stage of the game. The thing is developing along three main lines. First, the pirates. Since that kind of thing is more or less my own line I’m handling it myself, unless and until you find someone better qualified. I’ve got Jack and Costigan working on it now.

“Second; drugs, vice, and so on. I hope you find somebody to take this line over, because, frankly, I’m in over my depth and want to get out. Knobos and DalNalten are trying to find out if there’s anything to the idea that there may be a planetary, or even inter-planetary, ring involved. Since Sid Fletcher isn’t a Lensman I couldn’t disconnect him openly from his job, but he knows a lot about the dope-vice situation and is working practically full time with the other two.

“Third; pure--or rather, decidedly impure--politics. The more I studied that subject, the clearer it became that politics would be the worst and biggest battle of the three. There are too many angles I don’t know a damned thing about, such as what to do about the succession of foaming, screaming fits your friend Senator Morgan will be throwing the minute he finds out what our Galactic Patrol is going to do. So I ducked the whole political line.

“Now you know as well as I do--better, probably--that Morgan is only the Pernicious Activities Committee of the North American Senate. Multiply him by the thousands of others, all over space, who will be on our necks before the Patrol can get its space-legs, and you will see that all that stuff will have to be handled by a Lensman who, as well as being a mighty smooth operator, will have to know all the answers and will have to have plenty of guts. I’ve got the guts, but none of the other prime requisites. Jill hasn’t, although she’s got everything else. Fairchild, your Relations ace, isn’t a Lensman and can never become one. So you can see quite plainly who has got to handle politics himself.”

“You may be right ... but this Lensman business comes first...” Samms pondered, then brightened. “Perhaps--probably--I can find somebody on this trip--a Palainian, say--who is better qualified than any of us.”

Kinnison snorted. “If you can, I’ll buy you a week in any Venerian relaxerie you want to name.”

“Better start saving up your credits, then, because from what I already know of the Palainian mentality such a development is distinctly more than a possibility.” Samms paused, his eyes narrowing. “I don’t know whether it would make Morgan and his kind more rabid or less so to have a non-Solarian entity possess authority in our affairs political--but at least it would be something new and different. But in spite of what you said about ‘ducking’ politics, what have you got Northrop, Jill and Fairchild doing?”

“Well, we had a couple of discussions. I couldn’t give either Jill or Dick orders, of course...”

“Wouldn’t, you mean,” Samms corrected.

“Couldn’t,” Kinnison insisted. “Jill, besides being your daughter and Lensman grade, had no official connection with either the Triplanetary Service or the Solarian Patrol. And the Service, including Fairchild, is still Triplanetary; and it will have to stay Triplanetary until you have found enough Lensmen so that you can spring your twin surprises--Galactic Council and Galactic Patrol. However, Northrop and Fairchild are keeping their eyes and ears open and their mouths shut, and Jill is finding out whatever she can about drugs and so on, as well as the various political angles. They’ll report to you--facts, deductions, guesses, and recommendations--whenever you say the word.”

“Nice work, Rod. Thanks. I think I’ll call Jill now, before I go--wonder where she is? ... but I wonder ... with the Lens perhaps telephones are superfluous? I’ll try it.”

“JILL!” he thought intensely into his Lens, forming as he did so a mental image of his gorgeous daughter as he knew her. But he found, greatly to his surprise, that neither elaboration nor emphasis was necessary.

“Ouch!” came the almost instantaneous answer, long before his thought was complete. “Don’t think so hard, Dad, it hurts--I almost missed a step.” Virgilia was actually there with him; inside his own mind; in closer touch with him than she had ever before been. “Back so soon? Shall we report now, or aren’t you ready to go to work yet?”

“Skipping for the moment your aspersions on my present activities--not quite.” Samms moderated the intensity of his thought to a conversational level. “Just wanted to check with you. Come in, Rod.” In flashing thoughts he brought her up to date. “Jill, do you agree with what Rod here has just told me?”

“Yes. Fully. So do the boys.”

“That settles it, then--unless, of course, I can find a more capable substitute.”

“Of course--but we will believe that when we see it.”

“Where are you and what are you doing?”

“Washington, D.C. European Embassy. Dancing with Herkimer Third, Senator Morgan’s Number One secretary. I was going to make passes at him--in a perfectly lady-like way, of course--but it wasn’t necessary. He thinks he can break down my resistance.”

“Careful, Jill! That kind of stuff...”

“Is very old stuff indeed, Daddy dear. Simple. And Herkimer Third isn’t really a menace; he just thinks he is. Take a look--you can, can’t you, with your Lens?”

“Perhaps ... Oh, yes. I see him as well as you do.” Fully en rapport with the girl as he was, so that his mind received simultaneously with hers any stimulus which she was willing to share, it seemed as though a keen, handsome, deeply tanned face bent down from a distance of inches toward his own. “But I don’t like it a bit--and him even less.”

“That’s because you aren’t a girl,” Jill giggled mentally. “This is fun; and it won’t hurt him a bit, except maybe for a slightly bruised vanity, when I don’t fall down flat at his feet. And I’m learning a lot that he hasn’t any suspicion he’s giving away.”

“Knowing you, I believe that. But don’t ... that is ... well, be very careful not to get your fingers burned. The job isn’t worth it--yet.”

“Don’t worry, Dad.” She laughed unaffectedly. “When it comes to playboys like this one, I’ve got millions and skillions and whillions of ohms of resistance. But here comes Senator Morgan himself, with a fat and repulsive Venerian--he’s calling my boy-friend away from me, with what he thinks is an imperceptible high-sign, into a huddle--and my olfactory nerves perceive a rich and fruity aroma, as of skunk--so ... I hate to seem to be giving a Solarian Councillor the heave-ho, but if I want to read what goes on--and I certainly do--I’ll have to concentrate. As soon as you get back give us a call and we’ll report. Take it easy, Dad!”

“You’re the one to be told that, not me. Good hunting, Jill!”

Samms, still seated calmly at his desk, reached out and pressed a button marked “GARAGE”. His office was on the seventieth floor; the garage occupied level after level of sub-basement. The screen brightened; a keen young face appeared.

“Good evening, Jim. Will you please send my car up to the Wright Skyway feeder?”

“At once, sir. It will be there in seventy five seconds.”

Samms cut off; and, after a brief exchange of thought with Kinnison, went out into the hall and along it to the “DOWN” shaft. There, going free, he stepped through a doorless, unguarded archway into over a thousand feet of air. Although it was long after conventional office hours the shaft was still fairly busy, but that made no difference--inertialess collisions cannot even be felt. He bulleted downward to the sixth floor, where he brought himself to an instantaneous halt.

Leaving the shaft, he joined the now thinning crowd hurrying toward the exit. A girl with meticulously plucked eyebrows and an astounding hair-do, catching sight of his Lens, took her hands out of her breeches pockets--skirts went out, as office dress, when up-and-down open-shaft velocities of a hundred or so miles per hour replaced elevators--nudged her companion, and whispered excitedly:

“Look there! Quick! I never saw one close up before, did you? That’s him--himself! First Lensman Samms!”

At the Portal, the Lensman as a matter of habit held out his car-check, but such formalities were no longer necessary, or even possible. Everybody knew, or wanted to be thought of as knowing, Virgil Samms.