Galactic Patrol (22 page)

Because they are designed for the utmost possible speed in the free condition, speedsters are extremely cranky and tricky in inert flight unless they are being handled upon their under jets, which are designed and placed specifically and only for inert flight.

Some of the ultra-fast vessels of the pirates, as will be brought out later, were also of this shape and design. E.E.S.

"But why? With tractor shears on all ships, how can they hold them?" asked Kinnison.

"Magnets !” snorted Haynes. "Plain, old-fashioned electromagnets. No pull to speak of, at a distance, of course, but with the raider running free they don't need much.

Close up-lock on-board and storm-all done !”

"Hm . . m . . m. That changes things. I've got to find a pirate ship. I was planning on following a freighter or liner out toward Alsakan, but if there aren't any to follow . . . .

I'll have to hunt around . . . . ."

“That is easily arranged. Lots of them want to go. We will let one go, with a mauler accompanying her, but well outside detector range."

"That covers everything, then, except the assignment. I can't very well ask for leave, but maybe I could be put on special assignment, reporting direct to you?"

"Something better than that," and Haynes smiled broadly, in genuine pleasure.

"Everything is fixed. Your Release has been entered in the books. Your commission as captain has been cancelled, so leave your uniform in your former quarters. Here is your credit book and here is the rest of your kit. You are now an Unattached Lensman."

The Release! The goal toward which all Lensmen strive, but which so few attain!

He was now a free agent, responsible to no one and to nothing save his own conscience.

He was no longer of Earth, nor of the Solarian System, but of the galaxy as a whole. He was no longer a tiny cog in the immense machine of the Galactic Patrol, wherever he might go, throughout the immensity of the entire Island Universe, he would
be
the Galactic Patrol!

"Yes, it's real." The older man was enjoying the youngster's stupefaction at his Release, reminding him as it did of the time, long years before, when he had won his own. "You go anywhere you please and do anything you please, for as long as you please. You take anything you want, whenever you want it, with or without giving reasons-although you will usually give a thumb-printed credit slip in return. You report if, as, when, where, how, and to whom you please – or not, as you please. You don't even get a salary any more. You help yourself to that, too, wherever you may be, as much as you want, whenever you want it."

"But, sir . . . I . . . . you . . . I mean . . . . that is . . . . ." Kinnison gulped three times before he could speak coherently. "I'm not ready, sir. Why, I'm nothing but a kid-I haven't got enough jets to swing it. Just the bare thought of it scares me into hysterics !"

"It would-it always does." Haynes was very much in earnest now, but it was a glad, proud earnestness. "You are to be as nearly absolutely free an agent as it is possible for a living, flesh-and-blood creature to be. To the man on the street that would seem to spell a condition of perfect bliss. Only a Gray Lensman knows what a frightful load it really is, but it is a load that such a Lensman is glad and proud to carry."

"Yes, sir, he would be, of course, if he . . . . .”

"That thought will bother you for a time-if it did not, you would not be here-but don't worry about it any more than you can help. All I can say is that in the opinion of those who should know, not only have you proved yourself ready for Release, but also you have earned It."

"How do they figure that out?" Kinnison demanded, hotly. "All that saved my bacon on that trip was luck-a burned-out Bergenholm-and at the time I thought it was bad luck, at that. And vanBuskirk and Worsel and the other boys and the Lord knows who else pulled me out of jam after jam. I'd like awfully well to believe that I'm ready, sir, but I'm not. I can't take credit for pure dumb luck and for other men's abilities."

"Well, cooperation is to be expected, and we like to make Gray Lensmen out of the lucky ones." Haynes laughed deeply. "It may make you feel better, though, if I tell you two more things. First, that so far you have made the best showing of any man yet graduated from Wentworth Hall. Second that we of the Court believe that you would have succeeded in that almost impossible mission without vanBuskirk, without Worsel, and without the lucky failure of the Bergenholm. In a different, and now of course unguessable fashion, but succeeded, nevertheless. Nor is this to be taken as in any sense a belittlement of the very real abilities of those others, nor a denial that luck, or chance, does exist. It is merely our recognition of the fact that you have what it takes to be an Unattached Lensman.

"Seal it now, and buzz off!” he commanded, as Kinnison tried to say something, and, clapping him on the shoulder, he turned him around and gave him a gentle shove.

toward the door. "Clear ether, lad I"

"Same to you, sir-all of it there is. I still think that you and all the rest of the Court are cockeyed, but I'll try not to let you down," and the newly unattached Lensman blundered out. He stumbled over the threshold, bumped against a stenographer who was hurrying along the corridor, and almost barged into the jamb of the entrance door instead of going through the opening. Outside he regained his physical poise and walked on air toward his quarters, but he never could remember afterward what he did or whom he met on that long, fast hike. Over and over the one thought pounded in his brain, unattached!
Unattached ! ! UNATTACHED ! ! !

And behind him, in the Port Admiral's office, that high official sat and mused, smiling faintly with lips and eyes, staring unseeingly at the still open doorway through which Kinnison had staggered. The boy had measured up in every particular. He would be a good man. He would marry. He did not think so now, of course-in his own mind his life was consecrate-but he would. If necessary, the Patrol itself would see to it that he did. There were ways, and such stock was altogether too good not to be propagated.

And, fifteen years from now-if he lived-when he was no longer fit for the grinding, grueling life to which he now looked forward so eagerly, he would select the Earth-bound job for which he was best fitted and would become a good executive. For such were the executives of the Patrol. But this day-dreaming was getting him nowhere, fast, he shook himself and plunged again into his work.

Kinnison reached his quarters at last, realizing with a thrill that they were no longer his. He now had no quarters, no residence, no address. Wherever he might be, throughout the whole of illimitable space, there was his home. But, instead of being dismayed by the thought of the life he faced, he was filled by a fierce eagerness to be actually living it.

There was a tap at his door and an orderly entered, carrying a bulky package.

"Your Grays, sir," he announced, with a crisp salute.

“Thanks." Kinnison returned the salute as smartly, and, almost before the door had closed, he was yanking off the space-black-and-silver-and-gold gorgeousness of the uniform he wore.

Stripped bare, he made the quick, meaningful gesture he had not really expected ever to be able to make. Gray Seal. No entity has ever donned or ever will don the Gray unmoved, -nor without dedicating himself anew to that for which it stands.

The Gray-the unadorned, neutral-colored leather that was the proud garb of that branch of the Patrol to which he was thenceforth to belong. It had been tailored to his measurements, and he could not help studying with approval his reflection in the mirror.

The round, almost visorless cap, heavily and softly quilted in protection against the helmet of his armor. The heavy goggles, opaque to all radiation harmful to the eyes. The short jacket, emphasizing broad shoulders and narrow waist. The trim breeches and high boots, encasing powerful, tapering legs.

"What an outfit-what an outfit!" he breathed. "And Maybe I ain't such a bad-looking ape, at that, in these Grays.”

He did not then, and never did realize that he was wearing the plainest, drabbest, most strictly utilitarian uniform in existence, for to him, as to all others who knew it, the sheer, stark simplicity f the Unattached Lensman's plain gray leather transcended by far the gaudy trappings of the other branches of the Service. He had admired him. self boyishly, as men do, feeling a trifle ashamed in so doing, but he did not then and never did appreciate what a striking figure of a man he really was as he strode out of Quarters and down the wide avenue toward the
Britannia's
dock.

He was glad indeed that there had been no ceremony or public show connected with this, his real and only Important graduation. For as his fellows-not only his own crew, but also his friends from all over the Reservation-thronged about him, mauling and pummeling him in congratulation and acclaim, he knew that he couldn't stand much more.

If there were to be much more of it, he discovered suddenly, he would either pass out cold or cry like a baby-he didn't quite know which.

That whole howling, chanting mob clustered about him, and. considering it an honor to carry the least of his personal belongings, formed a yelling, cap-tossing escort.

Traffic meant nothing whatever to that pleasantly mad crew, nor, temporarily, did regulations. Let traffic detour-let pedestrians no matter how august, cool their heels-let cars, trucks, yes, even trains, wait until they got past – let everything wait, or turn around and go back, or go some other way. Here comes Kinnison ! Kimball Kinnison ! Kimball Kinnison Gray Lensmanl Make way! And way was made, from the
Brittania's
dock clear across the base to the slip in which the Lensman's new speedster lay.

And what a ship this little speedster was! Trim, trig, streamlined to the ultimate she lay there, quiescent but surcharged with power. Almost sentient she was, this powerpacked, ultraracy little fabrication of space-Toughened alloy, instantly ready at his touch to liberate those tremendous energies which were to hurl him through the infinite reaches of the cosmic void.

None of the mob came aboard of course. They backed off, still frantically waving and throwing whatever came closest to hand, and as Kinnison touched a button and shot into the air he swallowed several times in a vain attempt to dispose of an amazing lump which had somehow appeared in his throat.

The Decoy

It so happened that for many long weeks there had been lying in New York Spaceport an urgent shipment for Alsakan, and that urgency was not merely a one-way affair. For, with the possible exception of a few packets whose owners had locked them in vaults and would not part with them at any price, there was not a single Alsakanite cigarette left on Earth!

Luxuries, then as now, soared feverishly in price with scarcity. Only the rich smoked Alsakanite cigarettes, and to those rich the price of anything they really wanted was a matter of almost complete indifference. And plenty of them wanted, and wanted badly, their Alsakanite cigarettesthere was no doubt of that. The current market report upon them was.

"Bid, one thousand credits per packet of ten. Offered, none at any price."

With that ever-climbing figure in mind, a merchant prince named Matthews had been trying to get an Alsakan-bound ship into the ether. He knew that one cargo of Alsakanite cigarettes safely landed in any Tellurian spaceport would yield more profit than could be made by his entire fleet in ten years of normal trading. Therefore he had for weeks been pulling every wire, and even every string, that he could reach, political, financial, even at times verging altogether too close for comfort upon the criminal -but without results.

For, even if he could find a crew willing to take the risk, to launch the ship without an escort would be out of the question. There would be no profit in a ship that did not return to Earth. The ship was his, to do with as he pleased, but the escorting maulers were assigned solely by the Galactic Patrol, and the Patrol would not give his ship an escort.

In answer to his first request, he had been informed that only cargoes classed as

"necessary" were being escorted at all regularly, that "semi-necessary" loads were escorted occasionally, when of a particularly useful or desirable commodity and if opportunity offered, that "luxury" loads such as his were not being escorted at all, that he would be notified if, as, and when the
Prometheus
could be given escort. Then the merchant prince began' his siege.

Politicians of high rank, local and national, sent in "requests" of varying degrees of diplomacy. Financiers first offered inducements, then threatened to "bear down," then put on all the various kinds of pressure known to their pressure-loving ilk. Pleas, demands, threats, and pressures were alike, however, futile. The Patrol could not be coaxed or bullied, cajoled, bribed, or cowed, and all further communications upon the subject, from whatever source originating were ignored.

Having exhausted his every resource of diplomacy, politics, guile, and finance, the merchant prince resigned himself to the inevitable and stopped trying to get his ship off the ground. Then New York Base received from Prime Base an open message, not even coded, which read.

"Authorize spaceship
Prometheus to
clear for Alsakan at will, escorted by Patrol ship B 42 TC 838, whose present orders are hereby cancelled. Signed, Haynes."

A demolition bomb dropped into that sub-base would not have caused greater excitement than did that message. No one could explain it-the base commander, the mauler's captain, the captain of the
Prometheus,
or the highly pleased but equally surprised Matthews-but all of them did whatever they could to expedite the departure of the freighter. She was, and had been for a long time, practically ready to sail.

As the base commander and Matthews sat in the office, shortly before the scheduled time of departure, Kinnison arrived-or, more correctly, let them know that he was there. He invited them both into the control-room of his speedster, and invitations from Gray Lensmen were accepted without question or demur.