In he went, but he did not catch Helmuth napping. ,Even before he crashed the screens his own defensive zones burst into furiously coruscant activity, and through that flame there came tearing the metallic slugs of a high–power machine rifle.
Ha! There was a rifle, even though he had not been able to find it! Clever guy, that Helmuth! And what a break that he had taken time to learn how to hold this suit up against the trickiest kind of machine–rifle fire!
Kinnison's screens were almost those of a battleship, his armor almost, relatively, as strong. And he could hold that armor upright. Therefore through the raging beam of the semi–portable projector he plowed and straight up that torrent of raging steel he drove his way. And now from his own mighty projector, against Helmuth's armor, there raved out a beam scarcely less potent than that of a semi–portable. The Lensman's armor did not mount a water–cooled machine rifle—there was a limit to what even that powerful structure could carry—but grimly, with every faculty of his newly enlarged mind concentrated upon that thought screened, armored head behind the belching gun, Kinnison held his line and forged ahead.
Well it was that the Lensman was concentrating upon that screened head, for when the screen weakened slightly and a thought began to seep through it toward an enigmatically sparkling ball of force, Kinnison was ready. He blanketed the thought savagely, before it could take form, and attacked the screen so viciously that Helmuth had either to restore full coverage instantly or die then and there. For the Lensman had studied that ball long and earnestly. It was the one thing about the whole base that he could not understand, the one thing, therefore, of which he had been afraid.
But he was afraid of it no longer. It was operated, he now knew, by thought, and, no matter how terrific its potentialities might be, it now was and would remain perfectly harmless, for if the pirate chief softened his screen enough to emit a thought, he would never think again.
Therefore he rushed. At full blast he hurdled the rifle and crashed full against the armored figure behind it. Magnetic clamps locked and held, and, driving projectors furiously ablaze, he whirled around and forced the madly struggling Helmuth back, toward the line along which the bellowing rifle was still spewing forth a continuous storm of metal.
Helmuth's utmost efforts sufficed only to throw the Lensman out of balance, and both figures crashed to the floor. And now the madly fighting armored pair rolled over and over—straight into the line of fire.
First Kinnison, the bullets whining, shrieking off the armor of his personal battleship and crashing through or smashing ringingly against whatever happened to be in the ever–changing line or ricochet. Then Helmuth, and as the fierce– driven metal slugs tore in their multitudes through his armor and through and through his body, riddling his every vital organ, that was…THE END