Kinnison, even before inerting his ship preparatory to landing, called his commander.
"Did any of the other boys beat us in, Sir?" he asked.
"No, sir," came the curt response. Congratulations, felicitations, and celebration would come later, Haynes was now the Port Admiral receiving an official report.
'Then, Sir, I have the honor to report that the expedition has succeeded,' and he could not help adding informally, youthfully exultant at the success of his first real mission, "We've brought home the bacon!"
13: Maulers Afloat
A powerful fleet had been sent to rescue those of the Britannia's crew who might have managed to stay out of the clutches of the pirates. The wildly enthusiastic celebration inside Prime Base was over. Outside the force–walls of the Reservation, however, it was just beginning. The specialists and the Velantians were in the thick of it. No one on Earth knew anything about Velantia, and those highly intelligent reptilian beings knew just as little of Tellus. Nevertheless, simply because they had aided the Patrolmen, the visitors were practically given the keys to the planet, and they were enjoying the experience tremendously.
"We want Kinnison—we want Kinnison!" the festive crowd, led by Universal Telenews men, had been yelling, and finally the Lensman came out. But after one pose before a lens and a few words into a microphone, he pleaded, "There's my call, nowurgent!" and fled back inside Reservation. Then the milling tide of celebrants rolled back toward the city, taking with it every Patrolman who could get leave.
Engineers and designers were swarming through and over the pirate ship Kinnison had driven home, each armed with a sheaf of blue–prints already prepared from the long–cherished data–spool, each directing a corps of mechanics in dismantling some mechanism of the great space–rover. To this hive of bustling activity it was that Kinnison had been called. He stood there, answering as best he could the multitude of questions being fired at him from all sides, until he was rescued by no less a personage than Port Admiral Haynes.
"You gentlemen can get your information from the data sheets better than you can from Kinnison," he remarked with a smile, "and I want to take his report without any more delay."
Hand under arm, the old Lensman led the young one away, but once inside his private office he summoned neither secretary—nor recorder. Instead, he pushed the buttons which set up a complete–coverage shield and spoke.
"Now, son, open up. Out with it—everything that you have been holding back ever since you landed. I got your signal."
"Well, yes, I have been holding back," Kinnison admitted. "I haven't got enough jets to be sticking my neck out in fast company, even if it were something to be discussed in public, which it isn't. I'm glad you could give me this time so quick. I want to go over an idea with you, and with no one else. It may be as cockeyed as Trenco's ether—you're to be the sole judge of that— but you'll know I mean well, no matter how goofy it is."
"That certainly is not an overstatement," Haynes replied, dryly. "Go ahead."
"The great peculiarity of space combat is that we fly free, but fight inert," Kinnison began, apparently irrelevantly, but choosing his phraseology with care. To force an engagement one ship locks to the other first with tracers, then with tractors, and goes inert. Thus, relative speed determines the ability to force or to avoid engagement, but it is relative power that determines the outcome. Heretofore the pirates —"And by the way, we are belittling our opponents and building up a disastrous overconfidence in ourselves by calling them pirates. They are not—they can't be. Boskonia must be more than a race or a system—it is very probably a galaxy–wide culture. It is an absolute despotism, holding its authority by means of a rigid system of rewards and punishments. In our eyes it is fundamentally wrong, but it works— how it works ! It is organized just as we are, and is apparently as strong in bases, vessels, and personnel.
"Boskonia has had the better of us, both in speed—except for the Britannia's momentary advantage—and in power. That advantage is now lost to them. We will have, then, two immense powers, each galactic in scope, each tremendously powerful in arms, equipment, and personnel, each having exactly the same weapons and defenses, and each determined to wipe out the other. A stalemate is inevitable, an absolute deadlock, a sheerly destructive war of attrition which will go on for centuries and which must end in the annihilation of both Boskonia and civilization."
"But our new projectors and screens!" protested the older man. "They give us an overwhelming advantage. We can force or avoid engagement, as we please. You know the plan to crush them—you helped to develop it."
"Yes, I know the plan. I also know that we will not crush them. So do you. We both know that our advantage will be only temporary." The young Lensman, unimpressed, was in deadly earnest.
The Admiral did not reply for a time. Deep down, he himself had felt the doubt, but neither he nor any other of his school had ever mentioned the thing that Kinnison had now so baldly put into words. He knew that whatever one side had, of weapon or armor or equipment, would sooner or later become the property of the other, as was witnessed by the desperate venture which Kinnison himself had so recently and so successfully concluded. He knew that the devices installed in the vessels captured upon Velantia had been destroyed before falling into the hands of the enemy, but he also knew that with entire fleets so equipped the new arms could not be kept secret indefinitely. Therefore he finally replied.
"That may be true." He paused, then went on like the indomitable veteran that he was. "But we have the advantage now and we'll drive it while we've got it. After all, we nay be able to hold it long enough."
"I've just thought of one more thing that would help—communication," Kinnison did not argue the previous point, but went ahead. "It seems to be impossible to drive any kind of a communicator beam through the double interference…
"Seems to be!" barked Haynes. "It is impossible! Nothing but a thought…."
"That's it exactly—thought!" interrupted Kinnison in turn. "The Velantians can do things with a lens that nobody would believe possible. Why not examine some of them for Lensmen? I'm sure that Worsel could pass, and probably many others. They can drive thoughts through anything except their own thought–screens—and what communicators they would make!"
"That idea has distinct possibilities and will be followed up. However, it is not what you wanted to discuss. Go ahead."
"QX." Kinnison went into Lens–to–Lens communication.
"I want some kind of a shield or screen that will neutralize or nullify a detector. I asked Hotchkiss, the communications expert, about it—under seal. He said it had never been investigated, even as an academic problem in research, but that it was theoretically possible."
"This room is shielded, you know.' Baynes was surprised at the use of the Lenses. "Is it that important?"
"I don't know. As I said before, I may be cockeyed, but if my idea is any good at all that nullifier is the most important thing in the universe, and if word of it gets out it may be useless. You see, sir, over the long route, the only really permanent advantage that we have over Boskonia, the one thing they can't get, is the Lens. There must be some way to use it. If that nullifier is possible, and if we can keep it secret for a while, I believe I've found it. At least, I want to try something. It may not work—probably it won't, it's a mighty slim chance—but if it does, we may be able to wipe out Boskonia in a few months instead of carrying on forever a war of attrition. First, I want to go…"