12: Helen Goes North
"But listen, Kim!" Clarrissa protested. "all four of you are assuming that I've deadcentered the target. I thought probably I was right, but since I couldn't find any Eich traces, I expected a lot of argument."
"No argument," Kinnison assured her. "You know how they work. They tune in on some one mind, the stronger and more vital the better. In that connection, I wonder that Helen is still around—the ones who disappeared were upper–bracket minds, weren't they?"
She thought a space. "Now that yon mention it, I believe so. Most of them, certainly." "Thought so. That clinches it, if it needed clinching. They tune in; then drag 'em in
in a straight line." "But that would be so obvious!" she objected. "It was not obvious, Clarrissa," Tregonsee observed, "until your work made it so: a task which, I would like to say here, could not have been accomplished by any other entity of Civilization."
"Thanks, Tregonsee. But they're smart enough to…you'd think they'd vary their technique, at least enough to get away from those dead straight lines."
"They probably can't," Kinnison decided. "A racial trait, bred into 'em for ages. They've always worked that way; probably can't work any other way. The Eich undoubtedly told "em to lay off those orgies, but they probably couldn't do it—the vice is too habit–forming to break, would be my guess. Anyway, we're all in agreement that it's the Overlords?"
They were.
"And there's no doubt as to what we do next?"
There was none. Two great ships, the incomparable Dauntless and the camouflaged warship which had served Kinnison–Cartiff so well, lifted themselves into the stratosphere and headed north. The Lensmen did not want to advertise their presence and there was no great hurry, therefore both vessels had their thoughtscreens out and both rode upon baffled jets.
Practically all of the crewmen of the Dauntless had seen Overlords in the substance; so far as is known they were the only human beings who had ever seen an Overlord and had lived to tell of it. Twenty two of their former fellows had seen Overlords and had died. Kinnison, Worsel, and vanBuskirk had slain Overlords in unscreened hand–to–hand combat in the fantastically incredible environment of a hyperspatial tube—that uncanny medium in which man and monster could and did occupy the same space at the same time without being able to touch each other; in which the air or pseudo–air is thick and viscous; in which the only substance common to both sets of dimensions and thus available for combat purposes is dureum—a synthetic material so treated and so saturated as to be of enormous mass and inertia.
It is easier to imagine, then, than to describe the emotion which seethed through the crew as the news flew around that the business next in order was the extirpation of a flock of Overlords.
"How about a couple or three nice duodec torpedoes. Kim, steered right down into the middle of that cavern and touched off—POWIE!—slick, don't you think?" Henderson insinuated.
"Aw, let's not, Kim!" protested vanBuskirk, who, as one of the three Overlordslayers, had been called into the control room. "This ain't going to be in a tube, Kim; it's in a cavern on a planet—made to order for axe– work. Let me and the boys put on our screens and bash their ugly damn skulls in for 'em—how about it, huh?"
"Not duodec, Hen…not yet, anyway," Kinnison decided. "As for axe–work, Bus—maybe, maybe not. Depends. We want to catch some of them alive, so as to get some information…but you and your boys will be good for that, too, so you might as well go and start getting them ready." He turned his thought to his snakish comrade–inarms.
"What do you think, Worsel, is this hide–out of theirs heavily fortified, or just hidden?"
"Hidden, I would say from what I know of them—well hidden," the Velantian replied, promptly. "Unless they have changed markedly; and, like you, I do not believe that a race so old can change that much. I could tune them in, but it might very well do more harm than good."
"Certain to, I'm afraid." Kinnison knew as well as did Worsel that a Velantian was the tastiest dish which could be served up to any Overlord. Both knew also, however, the very real mental ability of the foe; knew that the Overlords would be sure to suspect that any Velantian so temptingly present upon Lyrane II must be there specifically for the detriment of the Delgonian race; knew that they would almost certainly refuse the proffered bait. And not only would they refuse to lead Worsel to their caverns, but in all probability they would cancel even their ordinary activities, thus making it impossible to find them at all, until they had learned definitely that the hook–bearing tid–bit and its accomplices had left the Lyranian solar system entirely. "No, what we need right now is a good, strong–willed Lyranian."
"Shall we go back and grab one? It would take only a few minutes," Henderson suggested, straightening up at his board.
"Uh–uh," Kinnison demurred. "That might smell a bit on the cheesy side, too, don't you think, fellows?" and Worsel and Tregonsee agreed that such a move would be ill–advised.
"Might I offer a barely tenable suggestion?" Nadreck asked diffidently.
"I'll say you can—come in."
"Judging by the rate at which Lyranians have been vanishing of late, it would seem that we would not have to wait too long before another one comes hither under her own power. Since the despised ones will have captured her themselves, and themselves will have forced her to come to them, no suspicion will be or can be aroused."
"That's a thought, Nadreck—that is a thought!" Kinnison applauded. "Shoot us up, will you, Hen? 'Way up, and hover over the center of the spread of intersections of those lines. Put observers on every plate you've got here, and have Communications 'alert all observers aboard ship. Have half of them search the air all around as far as they can reach for an airplane in flight; have the rest comb the terrain below, both on the surface and underground, with spy– rays, for any sign of a natural or artificial cave."
"What kind of information do you think they may have, Kinnison?" asked Tregonsee the Rigellian.
"I don't know." Kinnison pondered for minutes. "Somebody—around here somewhere—has got some kind of a tie–up with some Boskonian entity or group that is fairly well up the ladder: I'm pretty sure of that. Bleeko sent ships here—one speedster, certainly, and there's no reason to suppose that it was an isolated case…"
"There is nothing to show, either, that it was not an isolated case," Tregonsee observed, quietly, "and the speedster landed, not up here near the pole, but in the populated zone. Why? To secure some of the women?" The Rigellian was not arguing against Kinnison; he was, as they all knew, helping to subject every facet of the matter to scrutiny.
"Possibly—but this is a transfer point," Kinnison pointed out. "Illona was to start out from here, remember. And those two ships…coming to meet her, or perhaps each other, or…"
"Or perhaps called there by the speedster's crew, for aid," Tregonsee completed the thought.
"One, but quite possibly not both," Nadreck suggested. "We are agreed, I think, that the probability of a Boskonian connection is sufficiently large to warrant the taking of these Overlords alive in order to read their minds?"
They were; hence the discussion then turned naturally to the question of how this none–too–easy feat was to be accomplished. The two Patrol ships had climbed and were cruising in great, slow circles; the spy–ray men and the other observers were hard at work. Before they had found anything upon or in the ground, however:
"Plane, ho!" came the report, and both vessels, with spy–ray blocks out now as well as thought–screens, plunged silently into a flatly–slanting dive. Directly over the slow Lyranian craft, high above it, they turned as one to match its course and slowed to match its pace.