He went out into the shop. "Take over, Sport," he told his gangster protege. "I'm going up to the palace to see Menjo Bleeko. If I'm not back in two hours, and if your grapevine reports that Bleeko is out of the picture, what I've left in the store here is yours until I come back and take it away from you."
"I'll take care of it, Boss—thanks," and the Lensman knew that in true Lonabarian gratitude the youth was already, mentally, slipping a long, keen knife between his ribs.
Without a qualm, but with every sense stretched to the limit and in instant readiness for any eventuality, Kinnison took a cab to the palace arid entered its heavilyguarded portals. He was sure that they would not cut him down before he got to Bleeko's room—that room would surely be the one chosen for the execution. Nevertheless, he took no chances. He was supremely ready to slay instantly every guard within range of his sense of perception at the first sign of inimical activity. Long before he came to them, he made sure that the beams which were set to search him for concealed weapons were really search–beams and not lethal vibrations.
And as he passed those beams each one of them reported him clean. Rings, of course; a stick–pin, and various other items of adornment. But Cartiff, the great jeweler, would be expected to wear very large and exceedingly costly gems. And the beam has never been projected which could penetrate those Worsel– designed, Thorndyke–built walls of force; to show that any one of those flamboyant gems was not precisely what it appeared to be.
Searched, combed minutely, millimeter by cubic millimeter, Kinnison was escorted by a heavily–armed quartette of Bleeko's personal guards into His Supremacy's private study. All four bowed as he entered—but they strode in behind him, then shut and locked the door.
"You fool!" Bleeko gloated from behind his massive desk. His face flamed with sadistic joy and anticipation. "You trusting, greedy fool! I have you exactly where I want you now. How easy! How simple! This entire building is screened and shielded—by my screens and shields. Your friends and accomplices, whoever or wherever they are, can neither see you nor know what is to happen to you. If your ship attempts your rescue it will be blasted out of the ether. I will, personally, gouge out your eyes, tear off your nails, strip your hide from your quivering carcass…" Bleeko was now, in his raging exaltation, fairly frothing at the mouth.
"That would be a good trick if you could do h," Kinnison remarked, coldly. "But the real fact is that you haven't even tried to use that pint of blue mush that you call a brain. Do you think me an utter idiot? I put on an apt and you fell for it…"
"Seize him, guards! Silence his yammering—tear out his tongue!" His Supremacy shrieked, leaping out of his chair as though possessed.
The guards tried manfully, but before they could touch him—before any one of them could take one full step—they dropped. Without being touched by material object or visible beam, without their proposed victim having moved a muscle, they died and fell. Died instantly, in their tracks; died completely, effortlessly, painlessly, with every molecule of the all–important compound without which life cannot even momentarily exist shattered instantaneously into its degradation products; died not knowing even that they died.
Bleeko was shaken, but he was not beaten. Needle–ray men, sharpshooters all, were stationed behind those walls. Gone now the dictator's intent to torture his victim to death. Slaying him out of hand would have to suffice. He flashed a signal to the concealed marksmen, but that order too went unobeyed. For Kinnison had perceived the hidden gunmen long since, and before any of them could align his sights or press his firing stud each one of them ceased to live. The zwilnik then flipped on his communicator and gobbled orders. Uselessly; for death sped ahead. Before any mind at any switchboard could grasp the meaning of the signal, it could no longer, think.
"You fiend from hell!" Bleeko screamed, in mad panic now, and wrenched open a drawer in order to seize a weapon of his own. Too late. The Lensman had already leaped, and as he landed he struck—not gently. Lonabar's tyrant collapsed upon the thick–piled rug in a writhing, gasping heap; but he was not unconscious. To suit Kinnison's purpose he could not be unconscious; he had to be in. full possession of his mind.
The Lensmen crooked one brawny arm around the zwilnik's neck in an unbreakable strangle–hold and flipped off his thought–screen. Physical struggles were of no avaiclass="underline" the attacker knew exactly what to do to certain nerves and ganglia to paralyze all such activity. Mental resistance was equally futile against the overwhelmingly superior power of the Tellurian's mind. Then, his subject quietly passive, Kinnison tuned in and began his search for information. Began it—and swore soulfully. This couldn't be so…it didn't make any kind of sense…but there it was.
The ape simply didn't know a thing about any ramification whatever of the vast culture to which Civilization was opposed. He knew all about Lonabar and the rest of the domain which he had ruled with such an iron hand. He knew much—altogether too much—about humanity and Civilization, and plainly to be read in his mind were the methods by which he had obtained those knowledges and the brutally efficient precautions he had taken to make sure that Civilization would not in turn learn of him.
Kinnison scowled blackly. His deductions simply couldn't be that far off… and besides, it wasn't reasonable that this guy was the top or that he had done all that work on his own account…He pondered deeply, staring unseeing at Bleeko's placid face; and as he pondered, some of the jigsaw blocks of the puzzle began to click into a pattern.
Then, ultra–carefully, with the utmost nicety of which he was capable, he again fitted his mind to that of the dictator and began to trace, one at a time, the lines of memory. Searching, probing, coursing backward and forward along those deeply–buried time–tracks, until at last he found the breaks and the scars. For, as he had told Illona, a radical mind–operation cannot be performed without leaving marks. It is true that upon cold, unfriendly Jarnevon, after Worsel had so operated upon Kinnison's mind, Kinnison himself could not perceive that any work had been done. But that, be it remembered, was before any actual change had occurred; before the compulsion had been applied. The false memories supplied by Worse] were still latent, non–existent; the true memory chains, complete and intact, were still in place.
The lug's brain had been operated upon, Kinnison now knew, and by an expert. What the compulsion was, what combination of thought–stimuli it was that would restore those now non–existent knowledges, Kinnison had utterly no means of finding out. Bleeko himself, even subconsciously, did not know. It was, it had to be, something external, a thought–pattern impressed upon Bleeko's mind by the Boskonian higher–up whenever he wanted to use him; and to waste time in trying to solve that problem would be the sheerest folly. Nor could he discover how that compulsion had been or could be applied. If he got his orders from the Boskonian high command direct, there would have to be an inter–galactic communicator; and it would in all probability be right here, in Bleeko's private rooms. No force–ball, or anything else that could take its place, was to be found. Therefore Bleeko was, probably, merely another Regional Director, and took orders from someone here in the First Galaxy.
Lyrane? The possibility jarred Kinnison. No real probability pointed that way yet, however; it was simply a possibility, born of his own anxiety. He couldn't worry about it—yet.