Lensman from rigel, p.18
Lensman From Rigel, page 18
When they had done the job, Tregonsee began to lead them down a trail toward their destination. Cloudd found that dawn didn't penetrate the vegetation, but it did bring an increase in the heat and humidity, if that were possible. The cloak he wore was surprisingly light for its density. He asked, "What's this material made of?" and was intrigued to be told it was an alloy of high technology. "One of the gifts from the gods," Tregonsee said. "It's very valuable to the Tansers. It's a form of chain mail and has a special property by which when struck above a certain force or speed it acts like a solid surface. No spear or arrow or axe or projectile gun can penetrate it."
"So how do people get killed, then?"
"As you say, they're stupid, so they make combat mistakes."
"And about guns. There are guns, with bullets, on this planet?"
"Yes, and other weapons you'll never expect to see. Ulie tells me that the gods give away all kinds of things when the mood strikes them. And if they are overgenerous and give something which might upset things too much, they don't have to worry. Let a few weeks or a few months pass, and those items will be lost or broken and discarded as useless."
"These gods, just who are they, anyway?"
"The evidence points to Kalonians from Kresh-kree. We don't know the full story, but a group of Kalonians have established a base on Tanse Moon Two, or The Moon of the Gods. They've interfered with the culture of Tanse so that they are the gods who are worshipped and who grant the little comforts, ornaments, or manufactured items. They've supplied the sacrificial coffin which takes the victim to them. There they seem to enslave the mind of that Tanser, send him back to Tanse and from there on to Tanse Moon One, or The Moon of Lost Souls, where the slave obtains from the native Qu'orr something of some great power. It was several sacrifices ago that a victim returning from The Moon of the Gods babbled the name of Mando, Mando, Mando! It is for us to find out what is going on."
Cloudd was by now plodding wearily down the broadened trail toward a crude bamboo stockade several hundred yards ahead of him. On some of the pointed sticks were human heads, hairless, in various stages of decomposition. Tregonsee himself had been making effortless progress in a unique and fascinating way.
Tregonsee had turned himself into Cloudd's "horse." He was in a horizontal position, suspended above the ground. His tentacles hung down and were moving rhythmically, like legs, but actually he was supported by a miniature force field, the pressors working like invisible legs. The hairy armor was thrown over him, hanging within inches of the pathway, and even to Cloudd, who knew better, he looked like some shaggy beast.
"Tregonsee," Cloudd said, overcome by the absurdity of the situation. "Do you think I ought to come into camp riding on your back?" The image in Cloudd's mind was so clear and ludicrous that he burst out with a couple of barklike laughs.
"I don't believe that will be necessary," Tregonsee replied. There was a very short mental pause. "Oh," the Rigellian said. "Tellurian humor. Just like Kinnison. That's a good sign. You were a good choice for me."
In the pathetic camp, which was a patch of trampled mud, a few scraggly lean-tos, and a dying fire of logs and moss, there were different sized barbarians shuffling around when the two of them appeared. There were about a hundred, seemingly in a hundred different shapes, colors, and states of hairiness. Some of them wore the armored cloak, looking like big furry animals and small furry animals, and some of them even without any cloak at all looked that way, too. Others, in contrast, were nearly bare skin naked, but painted with thick, greasy smears of red and blue and green.
Most of their faces were all of a sameness, simian, but a sizable minority were almost decently human looking and unmistakably female. Ulie was one of them.
On one edge of the camp was a placid group of shaggy beasts milling around. Several looked like Tregonsee. In fact, Cloudd noted with a slight shock, one of them was, indeed, Tregonsee!
Cloudd began to do the obvious things. Following either his intuition or some subtle guidance by Tregonsee, he dumped his sack of scalps in front of the smallest barbarian and jumped up and down beating his chest and shouting nonsense. The chief, his bare head sticking out of his cloak, smiled, picked up the scalps, smiled some more, pointed at the biggest and most naked man, and smiled again.
"Now you must fight him, Cloudd," said a voice within his head. It was Tregonsee re-transmitting Ulie.
Fight him! Cloudd thought to himself. The man was a giant, rippling all over with muscles! He didn't have a chance! Ulie must have known this would happen, how could she not have warned him?
"Don't worry," said the voice. "You'll do all right. Just remember you're smarter than he is."
The fight began. The big man lunged at Cloudd. Cloudd, instead of retreating, charged ahead, under the flailing arms, delivered two kidney punches, dropped on his shoulders and drove his feet upward into the giant's groin. The giant went over sideways, off balance, and Cloudd was on him in a flash, axe raised. For the tiny fraction of a second while he hesitated, the giant twisted away and upset Cloudd. Again they tumbled about. Cloudd felt more confident with every passing moment. This big man was strong and fast, but he didn't have a chance against the practiced moves of a Patrol-trained man.
"You could have killed him half a dozen times," the voice said. "Next time knock him out with the flat side of your axe, then throw the axe away and drag the man to the feet of the chief."
Cloudd tried to do as instructed, worrying not that he would not be able to flat-axe the man, but that he wouldn't be able to drag the hulk in front of the chief. Somehow he managed it.
The chief was delighted; he motioned for two other lesser giants to drag off the unconscious body and offered food and drink. Cloudd was dripping with perspiration and, although the liquid was unpleasantly sulphuric-tasting, with mental reassurance, he drank much but did not eat.
All the tribesmen came up to lay hands on him, including Ulie, and then they ignored him, doing different tasks. Ulie, through Tregonsee, reassured him that everything was fine and that they needed only to rest until the time for the sacrifice.
Two gorgeous moons rose in the night sky that evening. One was blue, The Moon of Lost Souls, the other pink, The Moon of the Gods. They threw their light down on the tribe assembled around the coffin, two grotesque shadows dancing in time with each dancing Tanser. As the time drew near for the coffin to rise into the air for its trip to the pink moon, Cloudd had a voice in his head again, saying, "We'll take no chances on your mind giving us away, Cloudd. You'll be one of those who fall into a religious trance for the next full period." As some Tansers dropped down in a self-induced fit, Cloudd felt himself slip and fall and his mind blanked out.
When he came to consciousness again, he thought only seconds had passed. The scene seemed identical.
"A day has passed, Cloudd." This time it was pure Tregonsee in his mind. "The victim is about to leave for the moon. I am about to mesmerize the whole tribe for a few minutes. I will give you time to open up the coffin, pull out the senseless victim, and crawl in there yourself. Ulie will clamp down the lid, while I put part of myself into your mind to guard you against what is certain to be a difficult mental ordeal for us both. This past day, during your sleep, I tried to penetrate the barrier around Moon One; it's no exaggeration to say that the blanket of mental turmoil guarding it is incredibly powerful and undoubtedly mind-destroying. As the coffin carries you to The Moon of Lost Souls, Ulie will dispose of the victim and I will be following you in my speedster, monitoring you every minute. Don't worry, Ulie and I have figured this out today. You'll be able to get through to the moon this way with my help, even though Ulie won't
be able to follow with me as a body. She'll be covering me, just as I'm covering you. Now, move!"
Cloudd sprang toward the coffin even as bodies began to collapse around him. In less than a minute, he was inside with the lid clamped shut. He noticed that panel lights had come on to the left and right of his face, showing many small dials, with switches and buttons running down both sides from his shoulders to his waist. Then, once more, he lost consciousness.
About 3,000 parsecs or 9,600 light years beyond Kresh-kree, partially obscured by a bilious feather of the Green Parrot Nebula, toward the edge of the Second Galaxy, a frozen star hung in space. It did not move, it did not blaze. Over its dully shining surface, fixed like a thin, spherical shell of ice, there was a strange sense of energy annihilated.
A solitary Patrol ship tangentially approached the terrible, fearful thing.
"God of Gods!" said the ship's captain. "It's a collapsing star. Our fleet is gone!"
On his ship's screens, magnified at full power, the captain saw the horrifying sight. Suspended in the star's shell, like flies stuck in some monstrous spider's web, were one, two, six, a dozen tiny spaceships. It was that ship's mother fleet, or rather the image of the fleet, caught there for eternity, the actual ships gone into the heart of the star, drawn down, stretched like putty and crushed, atoms compressed a million million times in black hole space.
"How? How?" agonized the captain. "How can it be? He knew that no Patrol ship would ever knowingly approach the event horizon so close as to risk falling within the Schwarzschild radius. To do so would be a one-way voyage to oblivion--at least in this universe. The thought of the consequences and the recognition that his friends had been somehow deceived to plunge to their deaths made the captain react violently. He personally punched the buttons to fling his tiny scout craft away from the terror that lay ahead.
The second-in-command, along with the celestial navigator, brought the captain the sector charts. Much of the area was unknown and uncharted, but all the significant and potentially dangerous objects and situations were there, clearly identified. Or they should have been. Where the black hole was forming, according to the chart, there was plotted a neutron star.
"Look," said the captain, pointing at the chart and glancing at his other two officers. "It must be that the neutron star has suddenly collapsed. We must get this information back to Ultra Prime immediately. It's a puzzle, but the greater puzzle is--how did the sector fleet, granting normal navigational readings, stumble into such a disaster?"
The captain was interrupted by a double-voiced warning from his Posenian perceiver, who was on full alert duty in the sensory room. "Captain! The collapse is complete! The star is gone! It's now a black hole! There's another star moving in its direction. The readings are---unbelievable--they're changing rapidly, even as I watch!"
The captain glanced at the rear screen, looking back to whence he had come, and saw the incredible sight of a star attenuating, stretching an arm of matter toward where the invisible black hole should be. The flaming matter of the star was forming a tiny teardrop, pointing toward the black hole, stretching out under the cataclysmic forces. With some alarm, he deduced that he could see this only because his own ship was traveling so slowly.
"God!" said the captain. "That star's being sucked in! That black hole is growing beyond any laws of nature that I know of!" He glanced at his indicators. His regular space drive was operating at full power, but the ship was not accelerating! "I'm going to throw in the Bergenholm if we slow too fast or approach zero readings. I don't know how much time we have before we leave the area, but I want every man aboard to make every possible observation and to take every possible reading!" He called to his Posenian, "Let Number Two take over from you! See if you can project back to Ultra Prime and make contact! Call on any of us who can help intensify your mind beam."
Under the stresses of the moment, time seemed to be unmeasurable--whether it was quickly or slowly, whether it was easily done or with difficulty, a mind link was forged by the Posenian and read by the captain, who was now in the Posenian's brain. The link was with Kimball Kinnison himself!
"Sir! This is Captain McBane of Scout SC-1212G. We've run into something fantastic!" McBane reported what had been observed while Kinnison's mind link grew stronger with the awesome excitement. "I'm slowly losing power! I'm ready to slip into Bergenholm drive, but I'm hanging in to give you my latest readings." The ship gave a definite lurch. It was an experience the crew had had before only with a fishing tractor beam.
"Sir! It's incredible. One star is disappearing into the black hole. And I can see another one moving in its direction. My God! There's another! And another!"
"Captain!" This was Kinnison. "Give me readings as long as you safely can. I want everything. Your Posenian is a great projector; boost him as best you can, and send through the readings, but also send through everything any of you can think of; we'll sort out the clues later!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Captain, make a judgment! Does it look to you like these stars are being manipulated? Is the black hole stationary or moving? Do you sense unnatural forces or intelligent forces at work?"
"Yes, sir! The stars are being moved around now like fireflies toward a magnetic center! There's a whole sector of space out there in motion! It's a dazzling display! It's stupefyingly beautiful! By the Klono of Klono, there're thousands of planets and stars going into that black hell! There must be billions of life forms, billions of people out there going to their deaths!"
"Captain! Keep the readings coming. Try to keep your mind under control!"
"Sir! The black hole--I think it's chasing us!"
The ship lurched again, as if it had hit a stone wall.
"Captain! You've discovered our worst fear! You've entered space the Patrol wasn't expected to be in and you've come across the Boskonian black hole weapon in operation! Keep the readings coming as long as you safely can!"
There was a void now in Kinnison's mind.
"Captain! Captain!"
There was nothing. Scout SC-1212G was gone.
The-Moon-of-Lost-Souls
Two tiny spaceships, streaking in line almost end to end and acting as though they were one, plummeted down into the thin atmosphere of Tanse Moon One, The Moon of Lost Souls. The first was the blue-green-red-marked flying coffin containing the unconscious Benson Cloudd; the second was Tregonsee's flitter, with the very much awake Second Stage Lensman from Rigel IV cradled within, steering both ships. And the tandem was in serious trouble.
Almost from the start of their journey, Tregonsee had been confronted with firm resistance. Steadily it had grown in his mind until he had now been pressed to the limits of his powers. His difficulty was really because of Cloudd. The Rigellian had thrown a protective covering over the Tellurian, which had stretched to the edge of collapse his Second Stage capabilities, as enormous as they were. Without Cloudd, he would no doubt have been able to keep himself from drowning in the turbulent seas of mental energy surrounding them. The firm rocks upon which he was fixed to keep himself from being washed away to madness or oblivion were "Two" and "Three." Fastened to them, he was secure. But even so, his companion Cloudd was in danger of being incinerated within his skull.
"Cloudd!" Tregonsee called out. "I'm slipping, but if I slip too far, I will send you back. Don't worry!"
Tregonsee meant his words, although the unconscious
Cloudd might not hear them. He wasn't certain, however, that he could save Cloudd, even now. He was, therefore, worried. Seriously worried. The unit-cluster, though life insurance for him, would not be able to save Cloudd.
"Rigellian!" came a soundless thunder vibrating through the dome of his head. "Rigellian! Hold on! Safety lies ahead. Ahead there, you can perceive it now. Build yourself another pyramid with the last whit of your strength, and there you can recover and face your task ahead."
This was the voice of Mentor the Arisian fusion.
The omnipresent and omnipotent Mentor knew the past and knew the future and knew Tregonsee would succeed. But serious setbacks were possible. On occasion, during a crisis, a touch of help was appropriate for those who wore the Lens of Arisia.
Mentor observed that his encouragement brought a burst of speed by the ships as Tregonsee, in fusion with his bristers, fought his suffocation. Mentor felt the determined, though faltering, entity from Rigel IV find his final reserves of strength. No more help was needed, if, indeed, any had actually been given. The Qu'orr had met their match in Tregonsee and his unit cluster.
Mentor knew the story of the Qu'orr and regretted that Arisia had come too late to help them:
Eons before humanity rose out of the primordial slime, when the eternal conflict between Arisians and Eddorians was first developing, there was a race of beings which prospered in a star system called Quilquid. Among the new worlds formed on the edge of the Second Galaxy emerging from the Coalescence was the fourth planet of that system of Quilquid called Quilquidor. All the happy circumstances of nature combined to make Quilquidor a triumph of successful evolution. Its glory came quickly. Before any other beings had developed brains capable of climbing the time-stretched ladder of intelligence, the Quilquidorrians had built a culture of harmony, peace and wisdom. Then, into their simple society of simple desires, fashioned as it was around their nearly attained goal of complete blissfulness, came the evil Eddorian presence.
The Eddorian lust for power was insatiable. After they had obliterated all competition within one universe, they had
searched countless others for life forms to dominate. Finally, steering their planet into the Second Galaxy, they had found millions of developing worlds offering prospects for a new Eddorian empire. In the forefront of the developing, fresh life forms were the Quilquidorrians. To them came the insidious Eddorians, turning paradise into hell, introducing them to sin. Their ambitions became wicked, lusting for conquest and pillage, and the technological gifts pressed upon them by the Eddorians gave them the tools. With nuclear fission and atomic power, they planned aggression against the stars. Then fate, not the Arisians, intervened.
The subverted Quilquidorrian intellects became demented. Crazed, they fragmented, fought among themselves, and ultimately came to a planetary war of nuclear devastation. Burrowed within the mountains, thinkers, pacifists, and cowards survived, but decimated by epidemic sicknesses which swept the planet. Abandoned callously by the Eddorians, having no present and no future, they left their stricken planet in their untested spaceships. In a pathetic exodus, they hoped to find some other world and a new beginning.
