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

He came to Tellus as unobtrusively as was his wont, and took an inconspicuous but very active part in Operation Mateese, now in full swing.

“Now is the time for all good men and true to come to the aid of the party, eh?” Clio Costigan giggled.

“You can play that straight across the keyboard of your electric, pet, and not with just two fingers, either. Did you hear what the boss told ’em today?”

“Yes.” The girl’s levity disappeared. “They’re so dirty, Spud⁠—I’m really afraid.”

“So am I. But we’re not too lily-fingered ourselves if we have to be, and we’re covering ’em like a blanket⁠—Kinnison and Samms both.”

“Good.”

“And in that connection, I’ll have to be out half the night again tonight. All right?”

“Of course. It’s so nice having you home at all, darling, instead of a million light-years away, that I’m practically delirious with delight.”

It was sometimes hard to tell what impish Mrs. Costigan meant by what she said. Costigan looked at her, decided she was taking him for a ride, and smacked her a couple of times where it would do the most good. He then kissed her thoroughly and left. He had very little time, these days, either to himself or for his lovely and adored wife.

For Roderick Kinnison’s campaign, which had started out rough and not too clean, became rougher and rougher, and no cleaner, as it went along. Morgan and his crew were swinging from the heels, with everything and anything they could dig up or invent, however little of truth or even of plausibility it might contain, and Rod the Rock had never held even in principle with the gentle precept of turning the other cheek. He was rather an Old Testamentarian, and he was no neophyte at dirty fighting. As a young operative, skilled in the punishing, maiming techniques of hand-to-hand rough-and-tumble combat, he had brawled successfully in most of the dives of most of the solarian planets and of most of their moons. With this background, and being a quick study, and under the masterly coaching of Virgil Samms, Nels Bergenholm, and Rularion of North Polar Jupiter, it did not take him long to learn the various gambits and ripostes of this nonphysical, but nevertheless no-holds-barred, political mayhem.

And the “boys and girls” of the Patrol worked like badgers, digging up an item here and a fact there and a bit of information somewhere else, all for the day of reckoning which was to come. They used ultra-wave scanners, spy-rays, long eyes, stool-pigeons⁠—everything they could think of to use⁠—and they could not always be blocked out or evaded.

“We’ve got it, boss⁠—now let’s use it!”

“No. Save it! Nail it down, solid! Get the facts⁠—names, dates, places, and amounts. Prove it first⁠—then save it!”

Prove it! Save it! The joint injunction was used so often that it came to be a slogan and was accepted as such. Unlike most slogans, however, it was carefully and diligently put to use. The operatives proved it and saved it, over and over, over and over again; by dint of what unsparing effort and selfless devotion only they themselves ever fully knew.

Kinnison stumped the Continent. He visited every state, all of the big cities, most of the towns, and many villages and hamlets; and always, wherever he went, a part of the show was to demonstrate to his audiences how the Lens worked.

“Look at me. You know that no two individuals are or ever can be alike. Robert Johnson is not like Fred Smith; Joe Jones is entirely different from John Brown. Look at me again. Concentrate upon whatever it is in your mind that makes me Roderick Kinnison, the individual. That will enable each of you to get into as close touch with me as though our two minds were one. I am not talking now; you are reading my mind. Since you are reading my very mind, you know exactly what I am really thinking, for better or for worse. It is impossible for my mind to lie to yours, since I can change neither the basic pattern of my personality nor my basic way of thought; nor would I if I could. Being in my mind, you know that already; you know what my basic quality is. My friends call it strength and courage; Pirate Chief Morgan and his cutthroat crew call it many other things. Be that as it may, you now know whether or not you want me for your President. I can do nothing whatever to sway your opinion, for what your minds have perceived you know to be the truth. That is the way the Lens works. It bares the depths of my mind to yours, and in return enables me to understand your thoughts.

“But it is in no sense hypnotism, as Morgan is so foolishly trying to make you believe. Morgan knows as well as the rest of us do that even the most accomplished hypnotist, with all his apparatus, can not affect a strong and definitely opposed will. He is therefore saying that each and every one of you now receiving this thought is such a spineless weakling that⁠—but you may draw your own conclusions.

“In closing, remember⁠—nail this fact down so solidly that you will never forget it⁠—a sound and healthy mind can not lie. The mouth can, and does. So does the typewriter. But the mind⁠—never! I can hide my thoughts from you, even while we are en rapport, like this⁠ ⁠… but I can not lie to you. That is why, some day, all of your highest executives will have to be Lensmen, and not politicians, diplomats, crooks and boodlers. I thank you.”

As that long, bitter, incredibly vicious campaign neared its vitriolic end tension mounted higher and ever higher: and in a room in the Samms home three young Lensmen and a red-haired girl were not at ease. All four were lean and drawn. Jack Kinnison was talking.

“… not the party, so much, but