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

to the prize boob of a class of half-wits. As long as nobody on the planet knew that there was any such thing as space-travel, or suspected that they were not the only form of intelligent life in the universe, it was all right. No such concept as being planet-bound could exist. They had all the room there was. But after they met us, and digested all the implications, they would develop the collywobbles no end. This, of course, is an extreme simplification of the way the old coot poured it into me; but he came through with the solution, so I took it like a little man.”

“What was the solution?”

“It’s a shame you were too busy to come in on it. You’ll see when we land.”

But Virgil Samms was quick on the uptake. Even before they landed, he understood. When the speedster slowed down for atmosphere he saw blazoned upon the clouds a welter of one many-times repeated signal; as they came to ground he saw that the same set of symbols was repeated, not only upon every available cloud, but also upon airships, captive balloons, streamers, roofs and sides of buildings⁠—even, in multicolored rocks and flowerbeds, upon the ground itself.

“Twenty Haress,” Samms translated, and frowned in thought. “A date of the Bennettan year. Would it by any chance happen to coincide with our Tellurian November fourteenth of this present year?”

“Bright boy!” Kinnison applauded. “I thought you’d get it, but not so fast. Yes⁠—election day.”

“I see. They know what is going on, then?”

“Everything that counts. They know what we stand to win⁠—and lose. They’ve named it Liberation Day, and everything on the planet is building up to it in a grand crescendo. I was a little afraid of it at first, but if the screens are really tight it won’t make any difference how many people know it, and if they aren’t the beans would all be spilled anyway. And it really works⁠—I get a bigger thrill every time I come here.”

“I can see where it might work.”

Bennett was a fully Tellurian world in mass, in atmosphere and in climate; her native peoples were human to the limit of classification, both physically and mentally. And First Lensman Samms, as he toured it with his friend, found a world aflame with a zeal and an ardor unknown to blasé Earth since the days of the Crusades. The Patrol’s cleverest and shrewdest psychologists, by merely sticking to the truth, had done a marvelous job.

Bennett knew that it was the Arsenal and the Navy Yard of Civilization, and it was proud of it. Its factories were humming as they had never hummed before; every industry, every business, every farm was operating at one hundred percent of capacity. Bennett was dotted and spattered with spaceports already built, and hundreds more were being rushed to completion. The already staggering number of ships of war operating out of those ports was being augmented every hour by more and ever more ultra-modern, ultra-fast, ultra-powerful shapes.

It was an honor to help build those ships; it was a still greater one to help man them. Competitive examinations were being held constantly, nor were all or even most of the applicants native Bennettans.

Samms did not have to ask where these young people were coming from. He knew. From all the planets of Civilization, attracted by carefully-worded advertisements of good jobs at high pay on new and highly secret projects on newly discovered planets. There were hundreds of such ads. Most were probably the Patrol’s, and led here; many were of Spaceways, Uranium Incorporated, and other mercantile firms. The possibility that some of them might lead to what was now being called Boskonia had been tested thoroughly, but with uniformly negative results. Lensmen had applied by scores for those non-Patrol jobs and had found them bona-fide. The conclusion was unavoidable⁠—Boskone was doing its recruiting on planets unknown to any wearer of Arisia’s Lens. On the other hand, more than a trickle of Boskonians were applying for Patrol jobs, but Samms was almost certain that none had been accepted. The final screening was done by Lensmen, and in such matters Lensmen did not make many or serious mistakes.

Bennett had been informed of the First Lensman’s arrival, and Kinnison had been guilty of a gross understatement indeed in telling Samms that he would not be regarded as a stranger. Wherever Samms went he was met by wildly enthusiastic crowds. He had to make speeches, each of which was climaxed by a tremendous roar of “To Liberation Day!”

“No Lensman material here, you say, Rod?” Samms asked, after the first city-shaking demonstration was over. One of his prime concerns, throughout his life, was this. “With all this enthusiasm? Sure?”

“We haven’t found any good enough to refer to you yet. However, in a few years, when the younger generation gets a little older, there certainly will be.”

“Check.” The tour of inspection and acquaintance was finished, the two Lensmen started back to Earth.

“Well, my skeptical and pessimistic friend, was I lying, or not?” Kinnison asked, as soon as the speedster’s ports were sealed. “Can they match that or not?”

“You weren’t⁠—and I don’t believe they can. I have never seen anything like it. Autocracies have parades and cheers and demonstrations, of course, but they have always been forced⁠—artificial. Those were spontaneous.”

“Not only that, but the enthusiasm will carry through. We’ll be piping hot and ready to go. But about this stumping⁠—you said I’d better start as soon as we get back?”

“Within a few days, I’d say.”

“I wouldn’t wonder, so let’s use this time in working out a plan of campaign. My idea is to start out like this.⁠ ⁠…”

XVIII

Conway Costigan, leaving behind him scores of clues, all highly misleading, severed his connection with Uranium, Inc. as soon as he dared after Operation Zwilnik had been brought to a successful close. The technical operation, that is; the legal battles in which it figured so largely were to run on for enough years to