"The important thing, as I gather it, is timing."
"Absolutely. To the minute, since I won't be able to communicate, once I get inside their thought–screens. How long will it take to assemble our stuff and put it in, that cluster?"
"Seven weeks—eight at the outside."
"Plus two for allowances. QX―at exactly hour 20, ten weeks from today, let every projector of every vessel you can possibly get there cut loose on that base with everything they can pour in. There's a detailed drawing in here somewhere…here—twenty–six main objectives, you See. Blast them all, simultaneously to the second. If they all go down, the rest will be possible—if not, it'll be just too bad. Then work along these lines here, straight from those twenty–six stations to the dome, blasting everything as you go. Make it last exactly fifteen minutes, not a minute more or less. If, by fifteen minutes after twenty, the main dome hasn't surrendered by cutting its screen, blast that, too, if' you can—it'll take a lot of blasting, I'm afraid. From then on you and the fivestar admirals will have to do whatever is appropriate to the occasion."
"Your plan doesn't cover that, apparently. Where will you be—how will you be fixed—if the main dome does mot cut its screens?"
"I'll be dead, and you'll be just starting the damndest war that this galaxy ever saw."
23: Tregonsee Turns Zwilnik
While servicing and checking the speedster required only a couple of hours, Kinnison did not leave Earth for almost two days. He' had requisitioned much special equipment, the construction of one item of which—a suit of armor such as had never been seen before—caused almost all of the delay. When it was ready the greatly interested Port Admiral accompanied the young Lensman out to the steel–lined, sand–filled concrete dugout, in which the suit had already been mounted upon a remote–controlled dummy. Fifty feet from that dummy there was a heavy, water–cooled machine rifle, with its armored crew standing by. As the two approached the crew leaped to attention.
"As you were," Haynes instructed, and.
"You checked those cartridges against those I brought in from Aldebaran I?" asked Kinnison of the officer in charge, as, accompanied by the Port Admiral, he crouched down behind the shields of the control panel.
"Yes, Sir. These are twenty–five percent over, as you specified."
"QX—commence firing!" Then, as the weapon clamored out its stuttering, barking roar, Kinnison made the dummy stoop, turn, bend, twist and dodge, so as to bring its every plate joint, and member, into that hail of steel. The uproar stopped.
"One thousand rounds, sir," the officer reported.
"No holes—no dents—not a scratch or a scar," Kinnison reported, after a minute examination, and got into the thing. "Now give me two thousand rounds, unless I tell you to stop. Shoot!"
Again the machine rifle burst into its ear–shattering song of hate, and, strong as Kinnison was and powerfully braced by the blast of his drivers, he could not stand against the awful force of those bullets. Over he went, backward, and the firing ceased.
"Keep it up!" he snapped. "Think there going to quit shooting at me because I fall down?"
"But you had had nineteen hundred!" protested the officer.
"Keep on pecking until you run out of ammunition or until I tell you to stop," ordered Kinnison. "I've got to learn how to handle this thing under fire," and the storm of metal' again began to crash against the reverberating shell of steel.
It hurled the Lensman down, rolled him over and over, slammed him against the back–stop. Again and again he struggled upright, only to be hurled again to ground as the riflemen, really playing the game now, swung their leaden hail from part to part of the armor, and varied their attack from steady fire to short but savage bursts. But finally, in spite of .everything the gun crew could do, Kinnison learned his controls.
Then, drivers flaring, he faced that howling, chattering muzzle and strode straight into the stream of smoke– and flame–enshrouded steel. Now the air was literally full of metal. Bullets and fragments of bullets whined and shrieked in mad abandon as they ricocheted in all directions off that armor. Sand and bits of concrete flew hither and yon, filling the atmosphere of the dugout. The rifle yammered at maximum, with its sweating crew laboring mightily to keep its voracious maw full–fed. But, in spite of everything, Kinnison held his line and advanced. He was barely six feet from that yelling, steelvomiting muzzle when the firing again ceased.
"Twenty thousand, sir," the officer reported, crisply. "We'll have to change barrels before we can give you any more."
'That's enough!" snapped Haynes. "Come out of there" Out Kinnison came. He removed heavy ear–plugs, swallowed four times blinked and grimaced. Finally he spoke.
"It works perfectly, sir, except for the noise. "It's a good thing I've got a Lens—in spite of the plugs I won't be able to hear anything for three days!"
"How about the springs and shock–absorbers? Are you bruised anywhere? You took some real bumps."
"Perfect—not a bruise. Let's look her over."
Every inch of that armor's surface was now marked by blurs, where the metal of the bullets had rubbed itself off upon the shining alloy, but that surface was neither scratched, scored, nor dented.
"QX, boys—thanks," Kinnison dismissed the riflemen. They probably wondered how any man could see out through a helmet built up of inches–thick laminated alloys, with neither window nor port through which to look, but if so, they, made no mention of their curiosity. They, too, were Patrolmen.
"Is that thing an armor or a personal tank?" asked Haynes. "I aged ten years while that was going on, but at that I'm glad you insisted on testing it. You can get away with anything now."
"It's much better technique to learn things among friends than enemies," Kinnison laughed. "It's heavy, of course—pretty close to a ton. I won't be walking around in it, though, I'll be flying it. Well, sir, since everything's all set, I think I'd better fly it over to the speedster and start flitting, don't you? I don't know exactly how much time I'm going to need on Trench."
"Might as well," the Port Admiral agreed, as casually, and Kinnison was gone.
"What a man!" Haynes stared after the monstrous figure until it vanished in the distance, then strolled slowly toward his office, thinking as he went.
Nurse MacDougall had been highly irked and incensed at Kinnison's casual departure, without idle conversation or formal leave–takings. Not so Haynes. That seasoned campaigner knew that Gray Lensmen—especially young Gray Lensmen—were prone to get that way. He knew, as she would one day learn, that Kinnison was no longer of Earth.
He was now only of the galaxy, not of any one tiny dust–grain of it. He was of the Patrol. He was the Patrol, and he was taking his new responsibilities very seriously indeed. In his fierce zeal to drive his campaign through to a successful end he would use man or woman, singly or in groups, ships, even Prime Base itself, exactly as he had used them. as pawns, as mere tools, as means to an end. And, having used them, he would leave them as unconcernedly and as unceremoniously as he would drop pliers and spanner, and with no more realization that he had violated any of the nicer amenities of life as it is lived!
And as he strolled along and thought, the Port Admiral smiled quietly to himself. He knew, as Kinnison would learn in time, that the universe was vast, that time was long, and that the Scheme of Things, comprising the whole of eternity and the Cosmic All, was a something incomprehensibly immense indeed, with which cryptic thought the space–hardened veteran sat down at his desk and resumed his interrupted labors.
But Kinnison had not yet attained Haynes' philosophic viewpoint, any more than he had his age, and to him the trip to Trench seemed positively interminable. Eager as he was to put his plan of campaign to the test, he found that mental urgings, or even audible invective, would not make the speedster go any faster than the already incomprehensible top speed of her drivers' maximum blast. Nor did pacing up and down the little control room help very much. Physical exercise he had to perform, but it did not satisfy him. Mental exercise was impossible, he could think of nothing except Helmuth's base.