First Lensman by E. E. Smith (epub e ink reader .TXT) 📕

work on the interplanetary lines,” he said finally, half sullenly. “We have secured quite a little data. The accumulating facts, however, point more and more definitely toward an utterly preposterous conclusion. Can you think of any valid reason why the exports and imports of thionite between Tellus and Mars, Mars and Venus, and Venus and Tellus, should all be exactly equal to each other?”

“What!”

“Precisely. That is why Knobos and I are not yet ready to present even a preliminary report.”

Then Jill. “I can’t prove it, any more than I could before, but I’m pretty sure that Morgan is the Boss. I have drawn every picture I can think of with Isaacson in the driver’s seat, but none of them fit?” She paused, questioningly.

“I am already reconciled to adopting that view; at least as a working hypothesis. Go ahead.”

“The fact seems to be that Morgan has always had all the left-wingers of the Nationalists under his thumb. Now he and his man Friday, Representative Flierce, are wooing all the radicals and so-called liberals on our side of both Senate and House⁠—a new technique for him⁠—and they’re offering plenty of the right kind of bait. He has the commentators guessing, but there’s no doubt whatever in my mind that he is aiming at next Election Day and our Galactic Council.”

“And you and Dronvire are sitting idly by, doing nothing, of course?”

“Of course!” Jill giggled, but sobered quickly. “He’s a smooth, smooth worker, Dad. We are organizing, of course, and putting out propaganda of our own, but there’s so pitifully little that we can actually do⁠—look and listen to this for a minute, and you’ll see what I mean.”

In her distant room Jill manipulated a reel and flipped a switch. A plate came to life, showing Morgan’s big, sweating, passionately earnest face.

“… and who are these Lensmen, anyway?” Morgan’s voice bellowed, passionate conviction in every syllable. “They are the hired minions of the classes, stabbers in the back, crooks and scoundrels, tools of ruthless wealth! They are hirelings of the interplanetary bankers, those unspeakable excrescences on the body politic who are still grinding down into the dirt, under an iron heel, the face of the common man! In the guise of democracy they are trying to set up the worst, the most outrageous tyranny that this universe has ever.⁠ ⁠…” Jill snapped the switch viciously.

“And a lot of people swallow that⁠ ⁠… that bilge!” she almost snarled. “If they had the brains of a⁠ ⁠… of even that Zabriskan fontema Mase told me about, they wouldn’t, but they do!”

“I know they do. We have known all along that he is a masterly actor; we now know that he is more than that.”

“Yes, and we’re finding out that no appeal to reason, no psychological countermeasures, will work. Dronvire and I agree that you’ll have to arrange matters so that you can do solid months of stumping yourself. Personally.”

“It may come to that, but there’s a lot of other things to do first.”

Samms broke the connection and thought. He did not consciously try to exclude the two youths, but his mind was working so fast and in such a disjointed fashion that they could catch only a few fragments. The incomprehensible vastness of space⁠—tracing⁠—detection⁠—Cavenda’s one tiny, fast moving moon⁠—back, and solidly, to detection.

“Mase,” Samms thought then, carefully. “As a specialist in such things, why is it that the detectors of the smallest scout⁠—lifeboat, even⁠—have practically the same range as those of the largest liners and battleships?”

“Noise level and hash, sir, from the atomics.”

“But can’t they be screened out?”

“Not entirely, sir, without blocking reception completely.”

“I see. Suppose, then, that all atomics aboard were to be shut down; that for the necessary heat and light we use electricity, from storage or primary batteries or from a generator driven by an internal-combustion motor or a heat-engine. Could the range of detection then be increased?”

“Tremendously, sir. My guess is that the limiting factor would then be the cosmics.”

“I hope you’re right. While you are waiting for the next signal to come in, you might work out a preliminary design for such a detector. If, as I anticipate, this Zabriska proves to be a dead end, Operation Zabriska ends here⁠—becomes a part of Zwilnik⁠—and you two will follow me at max to Tellus. You, Jack, are very badly needed on Operation Boskone. You and I, Mase, will make appropriate alterations aboard a J-class vessel of the Patrol.”

XII

Approaching Cavenda in his dead-black, converted scout-ship, Virgil Samms cut his drive, killed his atomics, and turned on his super-powered detectors. For five full detets in every direction⁠—throughout a spherical volume over ten detets in diameter⁠—space was void of ships. Some activity was apparent upon the planet dead ahead, but the First Lensman did not worry about that. The drug-runners would of course have atomics in their plants, even if there were no spaceships actually on the planet⁠—which there probably were. What he did worry about was detection. There would be plenty of detectors, probably automatic; not only ordinary sub-ethereals, but electros and radars as well.

He flashed up to within one and a quarter detets, stopped, and checked again. Space was still empty. Then, after making a series of observations, he went inert and established an intrinsic velocity which, he hoped, would be close enough. He again shut off his atomics and started the sixteen-cylinder Diesel engine which would do its best to replace them.

That best was none too good, but it would do. Besides driving the Bergenholm it could furnish enough kilodynes of thrust to produce a velocity many times greater than any attainable by inert matter. It used a lot of oxygen per minute, but it would not run for very many minutes. With her atomics out of action his ship would not register upon the plates of the long-range detectors universally used. Since she was nevertheless traveling faster than light, neither electromagnetic detector-webs nor radar could “see” her. Good enough.

Samms was not the System’s best computer, nor did he