And when the sheer mental power of the Overlords, unthinkably great as it was and operative withal in a fashion utterly incomprehensible to us of Civilization, was combined with the ingenuity, resourcefulness, and drive, as well as with the scientific ability of the Eich, the results would in any case have been portentous indeed.
In this case they were more than portentous, and worse. Those prodigious intellects, fanned into fierce activity by fiery blasts of hatred, produced a thing incredible.
15: Overlords of Delgon
Before his ship was serviced for the flight into the unknown Kinnison changed his mind. He was vaguely troubled about the trip. It was nothing as definite as a "hunch"; hunches are, the Gray Lensman knew, the results of the operation of an extra–sensory perception possessed by all of us in greater or lesser degree. It was probably not an obscure warning to his super–sense from an other, more pervasive dimension. It was, he thought, a repercussion of the doubt in Xylpic's mind that the fading out of the men's bodies had been due to simple invisibility.
"I think I'd better go alone, chief," he informed the Port Admiral one day.
"I'm not quite as sure as I was as to just what they've got."
"What difference does that make?" Haynes demanded.
"Lives," was the terse reply.
"Your life is what I'm thinking about You'll be safer with the big ship, you can't deny that."
"We–ll, perhaps. But I don't want…"
"What you want is immaterial."
"How about a compromise? I'll take Worsel and van–Buskirk. When the Overlords hypnotized him that time it made Bus so mad that he's been taking treatments from Worsel. Nobody can hypnotize him now, Worsel says, not even an Overlord."
"No compromise. I can't order you to take the Dauntless, since your authority is transcendent. You can take anything you like. I can, however, and shall, order the Dauntless to ride your tail wherever you go."
"QX, I'll have to take her then." Kinnison's voice grew somber. "But suppose half the crew don't get back…and that I do?"
"Isn't that what happened on the Brittania?"
"No," came flat answer. "We were all taking the same chance then—it was the luck of the draw. This is different."
"How different?"
"I've got better equipment than they have…I'd be a murderer, cold."
"Not at all, no more than then. You had better equipment then, too, you know, although not as much of it. Every commander of men has that same feeling when he sends men to death. But put yourself in my place. Would you send one of your best men, or let him go, alone on a highly dangerous mission when more men or ships would improve his chances? Answer that, honestly."
"Probably I wouldn't," Kinnison admitted, reluctantly.
"QX. Take all the precautions you can—but I don't have to tell you that. I know you will."
Therefore it was the Dauntless in which Kinnison set out a day or two later. With him were Worsel and vanBuskirk, as well as the vessel's full operating crew of Tellurians. As they approached the region of space in which Xylpic's vessel had been attacked every man in the crew got his armor in readiness for instant use, checked his sidearms, and took his emergency battle–station. Kinnison turned then to Worsel.
"How d'you feel, fellow old snake?" he asked.
"Scared," the Velantian replied, sending a rippling surge of power the full length of the thirty–foot–long cable of supple, leather–hard flesh that was his body. "Scared to the tip of my tail. Not that they can treat me as they did before—we three, at least, are safe from their minds—but at what they will do. Whatever it is to be, it will not be what we expect. They certainly will not do the obvious."
"That's what's clogging my jets," the Lensman agreed. "As a girl told me once, I'm getting the screaming meamies."
"That's what you mugs get for being so brainy," vanBuskirk put in. With a flick of his massive wrist he brought his thirty–pound space–axe to the "ready" as lightly as though it were a Tellurian dress saber. "Bring on your Overlords—squish! Just like that!" and a whistling sweep of his atrocious weapon was illustration enough.
"May be something in that, too, Bus," he laughed. Then, to the Velantian, "About time to tune in on 'em, I guess."
He was in no doubt whatever as to Worsel's ability to reach them. He knew that that incredibly powerful mind, without Lens or advanced Arisian instruction, had been able to cover eleven solar systems: he knew that, with his present ability, Worsel could cover half of space!
Although every fiber of his being shrieked protest against contact with the hereditary foe of his race, the Velantian put his mind en rapport with the Overlords and sent out his thought. He listened for seconds, motionless, then glided across the room to the thought–screened pilot and hissed directions. The pilot altered his course sharply and gave her the gun.
"I'll take her over now," Worsel said, presently. "It'll look better that way—more as though they had us all under control."
He cut the Bergenholm, then set everything on zero—the ship hung, inert and practically motionless, in space. Simultaneously twenty unscreened men— volunteers—dashed toward the main airlock, overcome by some intense emotion.
"Now! Screens on! Scramblers!" Kinnison yelled; and at his words a thought– screen enclosed the ship; high–powered scramblers, within whose fields no invisibility apparatus could hold, burst into action. There the vessel was, right beside the Dauntless, a Boskonian in every line and member! "Fire!"
But even as she appeared, before a firing–stud could be pressed, the enemy craft almost disappeared again; or rather, she did not really appear at all, except as the veriest wraith of what a good, solid ship of space–alloy ought to be. She was a ghost–ship, as unsubstantial as fog. Misty, tenuous, immaterial; the shadow of a shadow. A dream–ship, built of the gossamer of dreams, manned by figments of horror recruited from sheerest nightmare. Not invisibility this time, Kinnison knew with a profound shock. Something else— something entirely different—something utterly incomprehensible. Xylpic had said it as nearly as it could be put into understandable words—the Boskonian ship was leaving, although it was standing still! It was monstrous—it couldn't be done!
Then, at a range of only feet instead of the usual "point–blank" range of hundreds of miles, the tremendous secondaries of the Dauntless cut loose. At such a ridiculous range as that?—why, the screens themselves kept anything further away from them than that ship was—they couldn't miss. Nor did they; but neither did they hit. Those ravening beams went through and through the tenuous fabrication which should have been a vessel, but they struck nothing whatever. They went past—entirely harmlessly past—both the ship itself and the wraithlike but unforgettable figures which Kinnison recognized at a glance as Overlords of Delgon. His heart sank with a thud. He knew when he had had enough; and this was altogether too much.
"Go free!" he rasped. "Give 'er the oof!"
Energy poured into and through the great Bergenholm, but nothing happened; ship and contents remained inert. Not exactly inert, either, for the men were beginning to feel a new and unique sensation.
Energy raved from the driving jets, but still nothing happened. There was none of the thrust, none of the reaction of an inert start; there was none of the lashing, quivering awareness of speed which affects every mind, however hardened to free flight, in the instant of change from rest to a motion many times faster than that of light.
"Armor! Thought–screen! Emergency stations all!" Since they could not run away from whatever it was that was coming, they would face it
And something was happening now, there was no doubt of that. Kinnison had been seasick and airsick and spacesick. Also, since cadets must learn to be able to do without artificial gravity, pseudo–inertia, and those other refinements which make space–liners so comfortable, he had known the nausea and the queasily terrifying endless–fall sensations of weightlessness, as well as the even worse outrages to the sensibilities incident to inertialessness in its crudest, most basic applications. He thought that he was familiar with all the untoward sensations of every mode of travel known to science. This, however, was something entirely new.