"Huh?" Haynes half–pulled himself up from the davenport, then sank back. "Why?" he demanded.
"Because we used the negasphere—a negative–matter bomb of planetary antimass—to wipe out Jalte's planet, and because we smashed Jarnevon between two colliding planets," the Lensman explained, concisely. "Can the present defenses of Tellus cope with either one of those offensives?"
"I'm afraid not…no," the Port Admiral admitted. "But…"
"We can admit no 'buts', admiral," Kinnison declared, with grim finality. "Having used those weapons, we must assume that the Boskonian scientists—we'll have to keep on calling them 'Boskonians', I suppose, until we find a truer name—had recorders on them and have now duplicated them. Tellus must be made safe against anything we have ever used; against, as well, everything that, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, we can conceive of the enemy using."
"You're right…I can see that," Haynes nodded.
"We've been underestimating them right along," Kinnison went on. "At first we thought they were merely organized outlaws and pirates. Then, when it was forced upon us that they could match us—overmatch us in some things—we still wouldn't admit that they must be as large and as wide–spread as we are—galactic in scope. We know now that they were wider–spread than we are. Inter–galactic. They penetrated into our galaxy, riddled it, before we knew that theirs was inhabited or inhabitable. Right?"
"To a hair, although I never thought of it in exactly that way before."
"None of us have—mental cowardice. And they have the advantage," Kinnison continued, inexorably, "in knowing that our Prime Base is on Tellus; whereas, if Jarnevon was not in fact theirs, we have no idea whatever where it is. And another point. Was that fleet of theirs a planetary outfit?"
"Well, Jarnevon was a big planet, and the Eich were a mighty warlike race."
"Quibbling a bit, aren't you, chief?"
"Uh–huh," Haynes admitted, somewhat sheepishly. "The probability is very great that no one planet either built or maintained that fleet."
"And that leads us to expect what?"
"Counter–attack. In force. Everything they can shove this way. However, they've got to rebuild their fleet, besides designing and building the new stuff. We'll have time enough, probably, if we get started right now."
"But, after all, Jarnevon may have been their vital spot," Lacy submitted.
"Even if that were true, which it probably isn't," the now thoroughly convinced Port Admiral sided in with Kinnison, "it doesn't mean a thing, Sawbones. If they should blow Tellus out of space it wouldn't kill the Galactic Patrol. It would hurt it, of course, but it wouldn't cripple it seriously. The other planets of Civilization could, and certainly would, go ahead with it."
"My thought exactly," from Kinnison. "I check you to the proverbial nineteen decimals."
"Well, there's a lot to do and I'd better be getting at it." Haynes and Lacy got up to go. "See you in my office when convenient?"
"I'll be there as soon as I tell Clarrissa goodbye."
At about the same time that Haynes and Lacy went to Nurse MacDougall's room, Worsel the Velantian arrowed downward through the atmosphere toward a certain flat roof. Leather wings shot out with a snap and in a blast of wind—Velantians can stand eleven Tellurian gravities—he came in his customary appalling landing and dived unconcernedly down a nearby shaft. Into a corridor, along which he wriggled blithely to the office of his old friend, Master Technician La–Verne Thorndyke.
"Verne, I have been thinking," he announced, as he coiled all but about six feet of his sinuous length into a tight spiral upon the rug and thrust out half a dozen weirdly stalked eyes.
"That's nothing new," Thorndyke countered. No human mind can sympathize with or even remotely understand the Velantian passion for solid weeks of intense, uninterrupted concentration upon a single thought. "What about this time? The whichness of the why?"
"That is the trouble with you Tellurians," Worsel grumbled. "Not only do you not know how to think, but you…"
"Hold on!" Thorndyke interrupted, unimpressed. "If you've got anything to say, old snake, why not say it? Why circumnavigate total space before you get to the point?"
"I have been thinking about thought…"
"So what?" the technician derided. "That's even worse. That's a logarithmic spiral if there ever was one."
"Thought—and Kinnison," Worsel declared, with finality.
"Kinnison? Oh—that's different. I'm interested—very much so. Go ahead."
"And his weapons. His DeLameters, you know.".
"No, I don't know, and you know I don't know. What about them?"
"They are so…so…so obvious." The Velantian finally found the exact thought he wanted. "So big, and so clumsy, and so obtrusive. So inefficient, so wasteful of power. No subtlety—no finesse."
"But that's far and away the best hand–weapon that has ever been developed!" Thorndyke protested.
"True. Nevertheless, a millionth of that power, properly applied, could be at least a million times as deadly."
"How?" The Tellurian, although shocked, was dubious.
"I have reasoned it out that thought, in any organic being, is and must be connected with one definite organic compound—this one," the Velantian explained didactically, the while there appeared within the technician's mind the space formula of an incredibly complex molecule; a formula which seemed to fill not only his mind, but the entire room as well. "You will note that it is a large molecule, one of very high molecular weight. Thus it is comparatively unstable. A vibration at the resonant frequency of any one of its component groups would break it down, and thought would therefore cease."
It took perhaps a minute for the full import of the ghastly thing to sink into Thorndyke's mind. Then, every fiber of him flinching from the idea, he began to protest.
"But he doesn't need it, Worsel. He's got a mind already that can…"
"It takes much mental force to kill," Worsel broke in equably. "By that method one can slay only a few at a time, and it is exhausting work. My proposed method would require only a minute fraction of a watt of power and scarcely any mental force at all."
"And it would kill—it would have to. That reaction could not be made reversible."
"Certainly," Worsel concurred. "I never could understand why you soft– headed, soft–hearted, soft–bodied human beings are so reluctant to kill your enemies. What good does it do merely to stun them?"
"QX—skip it" Thorndyke knew that it was hopeless to attempt to convince the utterly unhuman Worsel of the fundamental lightness of human ethics. "But nothing has ever been designed small enough to project such a wave."
"I realize that. Its design and construction will challenge your inventive ability. Its small ness is its great advantage. He could wear it in a ring, in the bracelet of his Lens; or, since it will be actuated, controlled, and directed by thought, even imbedded surgically beneath his skin."
"How about backfires?" Thorndyke actually shuddered. "Projection… shielding…"
"Details—mere details," Worsel assured him, with an airy flip of his scimitared tail.
"That's nothing to be running around loose," the man argued. "Nobody could tell what killed them, could they?"
"Probably not." Worsel pondered briefly. "No. Certainly not. The substance must decompose in the instant of death, from any cause. And it would not be 'loose', as you think; it should not become known, even. You would make only the one, of course."
"Oh. You don't want one, then?"
"Certainly not. What do I need of such a thing? Kinnison only—and only for his protection."
"Kim can handle it…but he's the only being this side of Arisia that I'd trust with one…QX, give me the dope on the frequency, wave–form, and so on, and I'll see what I can do."