"What! You believe me!" the Chickladorian stared at Kinnison in amazement, an emotion very evidently shared by the Port Admiral.
"Yes," the man in gray leather asserted. "Not only that, but I have a very fair idea of what's coming next. Shoot!"
"The men walked out into space." The pink man offered this information diffidently, although positively—an oft–repeated but starkly incredible statement. "They did not float outward, sirs, they walked; and they acted as if they were breathing air, not space. And as they walked they sort of faded out; became thin, misty–like. This sounds crazy, sir," to Kinnison alone, "I thought then maybe I was cuckoo, and everybody around here thinks I am now, too. Maybe I am nuts, sir—I don't know."
"I do. You aren't." Kinnison said calmly. "Well, and here comes the worst of it, they walked around just as though they were in a ship, growing fainter all the time. Then some of them lay down and something began to skin one of them—skin him alive, sir—but there was nothing there at all. I ran, then. I got into the fastest lifeboat on the far side and gave her all the oof she'd take. That's all, sir."
"Not quite all, Xylpic, unless I'm badly mistaken. Why didn't you tell the rest of it while you were at it?"
"I didn't dare to, sir. If I'd told any more they would have known I was crazy instead of just thinking so…" He broke off sharply, his voice altering strangely as he went on: "What makes you think there was anything more, sir? Do you…?" The question trailed off into silence.
"I do. If what I think happened really did happen there was more—quite a lot more—and worse. Wasn't there?"
"I'll say there was!" The navigator almost exploded in relief. "Or rather, I think now that there was. But I can't describe any of it very well— everything was getting fainter all the time, and I thought I must be imagining most of it."
"You weren't imagining a thing…" the Lensman began, only to be interrupted by Haynes.
"Hell's jingling bells!" that worthy shouted. "If you know what it was, spill it!"
"Think I know, but not quite sure yet—got to check it. Can't get it from him—he's told everything he really knows. He didn't really see anything, it was practically invisible. Even if he had tried to describe the whole performance you. wouldn't have recognized it. Nobody could have except Worsel and I, and possibly vanBuskirk. I'll tell you the rest of what actually happened and Xylpic can tell us if it checks." His features grew taut, his voice became hard and chill. "I saw it done, once. Worse, I heard it. Saw it and heard it, clear and plain. Also, I knew what it was all about, so I can describe it a lot better than Xylpic possibly can.
"Every man of that crew was killed by torture. Some were flayed alive, as Xylpic said; then they were carved up, slowly and piecemeal. Some were stretched, pulled apart by chains and hooks, on racks. Others twisted on frames. Boiled, little by little. Picked apart, bit by bit. Gassed. Eaten away by corrosives, one molecule at a time. Pressed out flat, as though between two plates of glass. Whipped. Scourged. Beaten gradually to a pulp. Other methods, lots of them—indescribable. All slow, though, and extremely painful. Greenish– yellow light, showing the aura of each man as he died. Beams from somewhere—possibly invisible—consuming the auras. Check, Xylpic?"
"Yes, sir, it checks!" The Chickladorian exclaimed in profound relief; then added, carefully: "That is, that's the way the torture was, exactly, sir, but there was something funny, a difference, about their fading away. I can't describe what was funny about it, but it didn't seem so much that they became invisible as that they went away, sir, even though they didn't go any place."
"That's the way their system of invisibility works. Got to be—nothing else will fit into…"
"The Overlords of Delgon!" Haynes rasped, sharply. "But if that's a true picture how in all the hells of space did this Xylpic, alone of all the ship's personnel, get away clean? Tell me that!"
"Simple!" the Gray Lensman snapped back sharply. "The rest were all Radeligians—he was the only Chickladorian aboard. The Overlords simply didn't know he was there—didn't feel him at all. Chickladorians think on a wave nobody else in the galaxy uses—you must have noticed that when you felt of him with your Lens. It took me half a minute to synchronize with him.
"As for his escape, that makes sense, too. The Overlords are slow workers and when they're playing that game they really concentrate on it—they don't pay any attention to anything else. By the time they got done and were ready to take over the ship, he could be almost anywhere."
"But he says that there was no ship there—nothing at all!" Haynes protested.
"Invisibility isn't hard to understand." Kinnison countered. "We've almost got it ourselves—we undoubtedly could have it as good as that, with a little more work on it. There was a ship there, beyond question. Close. Hooked on with magnets, and with a space–tube, lock to lock.
"The only peculiar part of it, and the bad part, is something you haven't mentioned yet. What would the Overlords—if, as we must assume, some of them got away from Worsel and his crew—be doing with a ship? They never had any space– ships that I ever knew anything about, nor any other mechanical devices requiring any advanced engineering skill. Also, and most important, they never did and never could invent or develop such an invisibility apparatus as that."
Kinnison fell silent; and while he frowned in thought Haynes dismissed the Chickladorian, with orders that his every want be supplied.
"What do you deduce from those facts?" the Port Admiral presently asked.
"Plenty," the Gray Lensman said, darkly. "I smell a rat. In fact, it stinks to high Heaven. Boskone."
"You may be right," Haynes conceded. It was hopeless, he knew, for him to try to keep up with this man's mental processes. "But why, and above all, how?"
"'Why' is easy. They both owe us a lot, and want to pay us in full. Both hate us to hell and back. 'How' is immaterial. One found the other, some way. They're together, just as sure as hell's a man–trap, and that's what matters. It's bad. Very, very bad, believe me."
"Orders?" asked Haynes. He was a big man; big enough to ask instructions from anyone who knew more than he did—big enough to make no bones of such asking.
"One does not give orders to the Port Admiral," Kinnison mimicked him lightly, but meaningly. "One may request, perhaps, or suggest, but…"
"Skip it! I'll take a club to you yet, you young hellion! You said you'd take orders from me. QX—I'll take 'em from you. What are they?"
"No orders yet, I don't think…" Kinnison ruminated. "No…not until after we investigate. I'll have to have Worsel and vanBuskirk; we're the only three who have had experience. We'll take the Dauntless, I think—it'll be safe enough. Thought–screens will stop the Overlords cold, and a scrambler will take care of the invisibility business."
"Safe enough, then, you think, to let traffic resume, if they're all protected with screens?"
"I wouldn't say so. They've got Boskonian superdreadnoughts now to use if they want to, and that's something else to think about. Another week or so won't hurt much—better wait until we see what we can see. I've been wrong once or twice before, too, and I may be again."
He was. Although his words were conservative enough, he was certain in his own mind that he knew all the answers. But how wrong he was—how terribly, now tragically wrong! For even his mentality had not as yet envisaged the incredible actuality; his deductions and perceptions fell far, far short of the appalling truth!
14: Eich and Overlord
The fashion in which the Overlords of Delgon had come under the aegis of Boskone, while obscure for a time, was in reality quite simple and logical; for upon distant Jarnevon the Eich had profited signally from Eichlan's disastrous raid upon Arisia. Not exactly in the sense suggested by Eukonidor the Arisian Watchman, it is true, but profited nevertheless. They had learned that thought, hitherto considered only a valuable adjunct to achievement, was actually an achievement in itself; that it could be used as a weapon of surpassing power.