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16 - Galactic Patrol by E. E. Smith · Galactic Patrol

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  Speaker 1: Chapter sixteen of Galactic Patrol by E. E. Smith. This
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. As the pirate
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  Speaker 1: fled into space, Kinnison followed, matching his quarry and course
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  Speaker 1: and speed. He then cut in the automatic controller on
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  Speaker 1: his drive, the automatic recorder on his plate, and began
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  Speaker 1: to tune in his beam tracer, only to be brought
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  Speaker 1: up short by the realization that the spy rays point
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  Speaker 1: would not stay in the pirate's control room without constant
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  Speaker 1: attention and manual adjustment. He had known that too. Even
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  Speaker 1: the most precise of automatic controllers, driven by the most
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  Speaker 1: carefully stabilized electronic currents, are prone to slip twenty feet
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  Speaker 1: or so at even such close range as ten million miles,
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  Speaker 1: especially in the bumpy ether near solar systems, and there
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  Speaker 1: was nothing to correct the slip. He had not thought
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  Speaker 1: of that before. The pilot always made those minor corrections
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  Speaker 1: as a matter of course. But now he was torn
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  Speaker 1: between two desires. He wanted to listen to the conversation
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  Speaker 1: that would ensue as soon as the pirate capt and
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  Speaker 1: got into communication with his superior officers, and especially should
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  Speaker 1: Helmuth put in his beam. He very much wanted to
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  Speaker 1: trace it and thus secure another line on the headquarters
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  Speaker 1: he was so anxious to locate. He now feared that
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  Speaker 1: he could not do both, a fear that soon was
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  Speaker 1: to prove well grounded, and wished fervently that for a
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  Speaker 1: few minutes he could be two men, or at least
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  Speaker 1: of Alantean. They had eyes and hands and separate brain compartments,
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  Speaker 1: enough so that they could do half a dozen things
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  Speaker 1: at once and do each one well. But he could not,
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  Speaker 1: But he could try. Maybe he should have brought one
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  Speaker 1: of the boys along at that Now that would wreck everything.
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  Speaker 1: Later on, he'd have to do the best he could.
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  Speaker 1: Communication was established, and the pirate captain began to make
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  Speaker 1: his report. By using one hand on the ray and
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  Speaker 1: the other on the tracer, Kinnison managed to get a
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  Speaker 1: partial line and to record scraps of the conversation. He missed, however,
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  Speaker 1: the essential part of the entire episode, that part in
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  Speaker 1: which the base commander turned the unsuccessful captain over to
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  Speaker 1: Helmuth himself. Therefore, or Kinnison was surprised, indeed at the
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  Speaker 1: disappearance of the beam he was so laboriously tracing, and
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  Speaker 1: to hear Helmuth conclude his castigation of the unlucky captain
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  Speaker 1: with not entirely your fault. We will not punish you
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  Speaker 1: at all severely this time. Report to our base on
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  Speaker 1: Al Deburh. I turn your vessel over to the base
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  Speaker 1: commander there, and do anything he tells you to do
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  Speaker 1: for thirty of the days of that planet. Frantically, Kennisson
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  Speaker 1: drew back his tracer and searched for Helmuth's beam, but
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  Speaker 1: before he could synchronize with it, the message of the
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  Speaker 1: pirate's High chief was finished and his beam was gone.
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  Speaker 1: The Lensman sat back in thought. How Deburah practically next
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  Speaker 1: door to his own Solarian system from which he'd come
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  Speaker 1: so far. How had they possibly managed to keep concealed
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  Speaker 1: or to re establish a base so close to Soul
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  Speaker 1: through all the intensive searching that had been done. But
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  Speaker 1: they had That was the important thing anyway. He knew
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  Speaker 1: where he was going, and that helped. One other thing
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  Speaker 1: he hadn't thought of, and one that might have spoilt everything,
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  Speaker 1: was the fact that he couldn't stay awake indefinitely to
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  Speaker 1: follow the ship. He had to sleep sometime, and while
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  Speaker 1: he was asleep, his quarry was bound to escape. He
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  Speaker 1: of course had a CRX tracer, which would hold a
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  Speaker 1: ship without attention as long as it was anywhere within
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  Speaker 1: an extreme range. And it would have been a simple
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  Speaker 1: enough matter to have a photo cell relay put in
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  Speaker 1: between the plate of the CRX and the automatic controls
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  Speaker 1: of the spacer and driver, but he had not asked
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  Speaker 1: for it. Well, Luckily, he now knew where he was going,
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  Speaker 1: and the trip to al Deburan would be long enough
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  Speaker 1: for him to build a dozen such controls. He had
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  Speaker 1: all the necessary parts and plenty of tools. It would
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  Speaker 1: give him something to do to break up the monotony
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  Speaker 1: of the voyage. Therefore, following the pirate ship easily as
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  Speaker 1: it tore through space, Kinnison built his automatic chaser, as
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  Speaker 1: he called it. During each of the first four or
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  Speaker 1: five nights, he lost the vessel he was pursuing, but
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  Speaker 1: he found it without any great difficulty upon awakening. Thereafter
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  Speaker 1: he held it continuously, improving day by day the performance
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  Speaker 1: of his apparatus until it could do almost any except talk.
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  Speaker 1: After that, he devoted his time to an intensive study
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  Speaker 1: of the general problem before him. His results were highly unsatisfactory,
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  Speaker 1: for in order to solve any problem, one must have
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  Speaker 1: enough data to set it up either in actual equations
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  Speaker 1: or in logical sequences, and Kinnison found that he did
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  Speaker 1: not have enough data. He had altogether too many unknowns
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  Speaker 1: and not enough knowns. The first specific problem was that
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  Speaker 1: of getting into the pirate base. Since the searchers of
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  Speaker 1: the patrol had not found it, that base must be
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  Speaker 1: very well hidden. Indeed, and hiding anything as large as
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  Speaker 1: a base on al Deburan Ie, as he remembered, it,
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  Speaker 1: would be quiet a feat in itself. He'd been in
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  Speaker 1: that system only once, but alone in space and in
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  Speaker 1: deep space. Although he was he blushed painfully as he
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  Speaker 1: remembered what had happened to him during that visit. He
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  Speaker 1: had chased a couple of dope runners to Al Deburan two,
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  Speaker 1: and there he had encountered the most vividly, the most flawlessly,
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  Speaker 1: the most remarkably and intrigued, beingly beautiful girl he'd ever seen.
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  Speaker 1: He'd seen beautiful girls and women, of course before, and
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  Speaker 1: in plenty. He'd seen beauties amateur and professional social butterflies, dancers, actresses, models,
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  Speaker 1: and posturers, both in the flesh and in the telenews plates.
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  Speaker 1: But he had never supposed that such an utterly ravishing
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  Speaker 1: creature as she was, could exist outside of a thionite dream.
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  Speaker 1: As a timidly innocent damsel in distress. She had been perfect,
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  Speaker 1: and if she had held that pose a little longer,
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  Speaker 1: Kennison shuddered to think of what might have happened. But
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  Speaker 1: having known too many dope runners and too few patrolmen,
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  Speaker 1: she misjudged entirely, not only the cadet's sentiments but also
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  Speaker 1: his reactions. For even as she came amorously into his arms,
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  Speaker 1: he had known that there was something screwy. Women like
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  Speaker 1: that did not play that kind of a game for nothing.
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  Speaker 1: She must be mixed up with the two he'd been chasing.
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  Speaker 1: He got away from her with only a couple of scratches,
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  Speaker 1: just in time to capture her confederates as they were
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  Speaker 1: making their escape. He'd been afraid of beautiful women ever since.
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  Speaker 1: He'd like to see that Deborhanian hellcat again, just once.
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  Speaker 1: He'd been just a kid then, but now, but that
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  Speaker 1: line of thought was getting him nowhere fast. It was
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  Speaker 1: al deburan one that he had better be thinking of. Barren, lifeless, desolate, airless, waterless,
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  Speaker 1: bare as his hand covered with extinct volcanoes, cratered, jagged
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  Speaker 1: and torn, to hide a base on that planet would
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  Speaker 1: take plenty of doing, and conversely, it would be correspondingly
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  Speaker 1: difficult to approach, if on the surface at all, which
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  Speaker 1: he doubted very strongly, it would be covered. In any event,
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  Speaker 1: All its approaches would be thoroughly screened and equipped with
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  Speaker 1: lookouts on the ultraviolet and on the infrared, as well
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  Speaker 1: as on the visible. His detector nullifier wouldn't help him
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  Speaker 1: much there. Those screens and lookouts were bad, very bad question.
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  Speaker 1: Could anything get into that base without setting off an alarm?
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  Speaker 1: His speedster could not even get close, that was certain.
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  Speaker 1: Could he alone? He would have to wear armor, of course,
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  Speaker 1: to hold his air and it would radiate, not necessarily
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  Speaker 1: though he could land out of range and walk without power.
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  Speaker 1: But there were still the screens and the lookouts. If
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  Speaker 1: the pirates were on their toes, it simply wasn't in
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  Speaker 1: the cards, and he had to assume that they would
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  Speaker 1: be alert. What then could pass those barriers? Prolonged consideration
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  Speaker 1: of every facet of the situation gave definite answer and
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  Speaker 1: marked out clearly the course he must take. Something admitted
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  Speaker 1: by the pirates themselves, was the only thing that could
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  Speaker 1: get in the vessel ahead of his was going in.
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  Speaker 1: Therefore he must and would enter that base within the
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  Speaker 1: pirate vessel itself. With that point decided, there remained only
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  Speaker 1: the working out of a method which proved to be
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  Speaker 1: almost ridiculously simple. And once inside the base, what should he,
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  Speaker 1: or rather, what could he do? For days he made
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  Speaker 1: and discarded plans, but finally he tossed them all out
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  Speaker 1: of his mind. So much depended on the location of
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  Speaker 1: the base and its personnel, its arrangement, its routine that
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  Speaker 1: he could develop, not even the rough draft of a
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  Speaker 1: working plan. He knew what he wanted to do, but
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  Speaker 1: he had not even the remotest idea as to how
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  Speaker 1: he could go about doing it. Of the opening that appeared,
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  Speaker 1: he'd have to choose the most feasible and fit his
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  Speaker 1: actions to whatever situation then and there obtained. So deciding,
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  Speaker 1: he shot his spi ray toward the planet and studied
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  Speaker 1: it with care. It was indeed as he had remembered it,
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  Speaker 1: or worse, bleakly, hotly arid. It had no soil whatever,
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  Speaker 1: its entire surface being composed of igneous rock, lava, and pumice.
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  Speaker 1: Stupendous ranges of mountains criss crossed and intersected each other
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  Speaker 1: at random. Each range a succession of dead volcanic peaks
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  Speaker 1: and blown off craters. Mountain side and rocky plain, crater,
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  Speaker 1: wall and valley floor alike and innumerably were pock marked
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  Speaker 1: with subcraters and with immensely yawning shell holes, as though
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  Speaker 1: the whole planet had been throughout geologic ages, the target
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  Speaker 1: of an incessant cosmic bombardment over its surface and through
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  Speaker 1: and through its volume. He drove his spi ray, finding nothing.
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  Speaker 1: He bored into its substance with his detectors and his tracers,
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  Speaker 1: with results completely negative. Of course, closer up his electromagnetics
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  Speaker 1: would report iron, plenty of it, but that information would
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  Speaker 1: also be meaningless. Practically all planets had iron cores as
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  Speaker 1: far as his instruments could tell, and he'd given aldbrain
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  Speaker 1: Ie a more thorough going over by far than any
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  Speaker 1: ordinary surveying ship would have given it. There was no
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  Speaker 1: base of any kind upon or within the planet, yet
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  Speaker 1: he knew that a base was there, So what so
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  Speaker 1: maybe Helmuth's base might be inside the galaxy after all,
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  Speaker 1: protected from detection in the same way, probably by solid
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  Speaker 1: miles of iron or of iron ore. A second line
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  Speaker 1: upon that base had now become imperative, but they were
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  Speaker 1: approaching the system fast. He had better get ready. He
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  Speaker 1: belted on his personal equipment, including a nullifier, than inspected
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  Speaker 1: his armor, checking its supplies and apparatus carefully before he
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  Speaker 1: hooked it ready to his hand. Glancing into the plate,
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  Speaker 1: he noted with a pro rouval that his chaser was
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  Speaker 1: functioning perfectly. Pursued and Pursuer were now both well inside
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  Speaker 1: the solar system of Aldebaran, and as slowed the pirate,
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  Speaker 1: so slowed the speedster. Finally, the leader went inert in
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  Speaker 1: preparation for its spiral, but Kinnison was no longer following.
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  Speaker 1: Before he went inert, he flashed down to within fifty
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  Speaker 1: thousand miles of the planet's forbidding surface. He then cut
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  Speaker 1: his Bergenholme, threw the speedster into an almost circular orbit,
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  Speaker 1: well away from the landing orbit selected by the pirate,
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  Speaker 1: cut off all his power, and drifted. He stayed in
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  Speaker 1: the speedster, observing and computing until he had so exactly
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  Speaker 1: defined its path that he could find it unerringly at
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  Speaker 1: any future instant. Then he went into the airlock, stepped
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  Speaker 1: out into space, and waiting only to be sure that
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  Speaker 1: the portal had snap shut behind him, set his course
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  Speaker 1: toward the pirate's spiral inert. Now, his progress was so
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  Speaker 1: slow as to seem imperceptible, but he had plenty of time,
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  Speaker 1: and it was only relatively that his speed was low.
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  Speaker 1: He was actually hurtling through space at the rate of
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  Speaker 1: well over two thousand miles an hour, and his powerful
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  Speaker 1: little driver was increasing that speed constantly by an acceleration
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  Speaker 1: of two earth gravities. Soon the vessel crept up beneath
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  Speaker 1: him now, and Kinnison, increasing his drive to five gravities,
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  Speaker 1: shot toward it in a long, slanting dive. This was
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  Speaker 1: the most ticklish minute of the trip. But the lensman
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  Speaker 1: had assumed correctly that the officers of the badly under
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  Speaker 1: manned ship would be looking ahead of them and down,
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  Speaker 1: not backwards and up. They were, and he made his
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  Speaker 1: approach unseen. The approach itself, the boarding of an inert
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  Speaker 1: spaceship at its frightful landing spiral velocity, was elementary to
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  Speaker 1: any competent spaceman. Simplicity itself. There was not even a
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  Speaker 1: flare to bother him or to reveal him to sight,
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  Speaker 1: as the braking jets were now doing all the work,
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  Speaker 1: matching coarse and velocity even more closely. He crept up,
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  Speaker 1: flung his magnet, pulled up hand over hand, opened to
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  Speaker 1: the emergency inlet lock, and there he was unconcernedly. He
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  Speaker 1: made his way along the stern way and into the
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  Speaker 1: now deserted quarters of the fighters. There he lay down
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  Speaker 1: in a hammock, snapped the acceleration straps, and shot his
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  Speaker 1: spy ray into the control room. And there in the
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  Speaker 1: captain's own visiplate, he observed the rugged and torn topography
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  Speaker 1: of the terrain below as the pilot fought his ship
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  Speaker 1: down mile by mile. Tough going this, Kinnison reflected, and
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  Speaker 1: the bird was doing a nice job, even if he
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  Speaker 1: was taking it the hard way, bringing her down straight
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  Speaker 1: on her nose instead of taking one more spiral around
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  Speaker 1: the planet and then sliding in on her under jets
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  Speaker 1: which was designed and placed specifically for such work. But
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  Speaker 1: taking it the hard way he was, and his vessel
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  Speaker 1: was bucking, kicking, bouncing and spinning on the terrific blast
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  Speaker 1: from her breaking jets down. She came fast, and it
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  Speaker 1: was only after she was actually inside one of those
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  Speaker 1: stupendous craters well below the level of its rim that
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  Speaker 1: the pilot flattened her out and assumed normal landing position.
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  Speaker 1: They were still going too fast, Kinnison thought, but the
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  Speaker 1: pirate pilot knew what he was doing. Five miles the
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  Speaker 1: vessel dropped straight down that Titanic shaft before the bottom
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  Speaker 1: was reached. The shaft's wall was studded with windows. In
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  Speaker 1: front of the craft loomed the outer gate of a
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  Speaker 1: gigantic air lock. It opened, the ship was trundled inside
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  Speaker 1: landing cradle and all, and the massive gate closed behind it.
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  Speaker 1: This was the pirate's base, and Kinnison was inside it.
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  Speaker 1: Men attention, the pirate commander snapped, Then this air is
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  Speaker 1: deadly poisoned, so put on your armor. Be sure your
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  Speaker 1: tanks are full. They have rooms for us having good air.
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  Speaker 1: But don't open your suits a crack until I tell
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  Speaker 1: you to assemble. All of you that are not here
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  Speaker 1: in this control room in five minutes, will stay on
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  Speaker 1: board and take your own chances. Kinnison decided instantly to
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  Speaker 1: assemble with the crew. He could do nothing in the
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  Speaker 1: ship and it would be inspected. Of course, he had
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  Speaker 1: plenty of air, but space armor all looked alike, and
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  Speaker 1: his lens would warn him in time of any unfriendly
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  Speaker 1: or suspicious thought. He'd better go if they called a roll, though,
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  Speaker 1: but he'd crossed that bridge when he came to it.
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  Speaker 1: No roll was called. In fact, the captain paid no
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  Speaker 1: attention at all to his men. They could come along
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  Speaker 1: or not, just as they pleased, but since to stay
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  Speaker 1: in the ship meant death, every man was prompt. At
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  Speaker 1: the expiration of the five minutes, the captain strode away,
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  Speaker 1: followed by the crowd through a doorway. Left turn, and
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  Speaker 1: the captain was met by a creature whose shape Kinnison
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  Speaker 1: could not make out. A pause, a straggling forward, and
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  Speaker 1: then a right turn. Kinnison decided that he would not
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  Speaker 1: take that turn. He would stay here, close to the shaft,
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  Speaker 1: where he could blast his way out if necessary, until
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  Speaker 1: he had studied the whole base thoroughly enough to map
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  Speaker 1: out a plan of campaign. He soon found an empty
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  Speaker 1: and apparently unused room and assured himself that through its heavy,
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  Speaker 1: crystal clear window he could indeed look out into the
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: vastly cylindrical emptiness of the volcanic shaft. Then, with his
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  Speaker 1: spy ray, he watched the pirates as they were escorted
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  Speaker 1: to the quarters prepared for them. Those might have been
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  Speaker 1: rooms of state, but it looked to Kinnison very much
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  Speaker 1: as though his former shipmates were being jailed ignominiously, and
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  Speaker 1: he was glad that he'd taken leave of them. Shooting
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  Speaker 1: his ray here and there throughout the structure, he finally
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  Speaker 1: found what he was looking for, the communicator room. That
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  Speaker 1: room was fairly well lighted, and at what he saw there,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: his jaw dropped in sheerest amazement. He'd expected to see men,
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  Speaker 1: since Aldeboran, too, the only inhabited planet in the system,
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  Speaker 1: had been colonized from Tellus, and his people were as
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  Speaker 1: truly human and Caucasian as those of Chicago or of Paris.
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  Speaker 1: But these these things, he had been around quite a bit,
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  Speaker 1: but he had never even seen or heard of their like.
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  Speaker 1: They were wheels really when they went anywhere, they rolled
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  Speaker 1: heads where hubs ought to be, eyes, arms, dozens of them,
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  Speaker 1: and very capable looking hands. Vogannard, A crisp thought flashed
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  Speaker 1: from one of the peculiar entities to another, impinging also
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  Speaker 1: upon Kinnison's lens. Someone, some outsider is looking at me.
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  Speaker 1: Relieve me while I obeyed this intolerable nuisance. One of
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  Speaker 1: those creatures from tell us. We will teach them very
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  Speaker 1: shortly that such intrusion is not to be borne for
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  Speaker 1: an instant. No, it is not one of them. The
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  Speaker 1: touch is similar, but the tone is entirely different. Nor
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  Speaker 1: could it be one of them, for not one of
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  Speaker 1: them is equipped with the instrument which is such a
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  Speaker 1: clumsy substitute for the sense of perception with which all
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  Speaker 1: really intelligent races are endowed in their minds. There I
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  Speaker 1: will now begin to Kinnison snapped on his thought screen then,
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  Speaker 1: but the damage had already been done in the violated
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  Speaker 1: communications room. The angry observer went on attune myself and
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: trace the origin of that prying look. It has disappeared now,
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  Speaker 1: but its sender cannot be distant, since our walls are
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  Speaker 1: shielded and screened. Ah, there is a blank space which
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  Speaker 1: I cannot penetrate in the seventh room of the fourth Corridor.
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  Speaker 1: In all probability it is one of our guests, hiding
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  Speaker 1: now behind a thought screen. And then his orders boomed
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  Speaker 1: out to a corps of guards, take him and put
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  Speaker 1: him with the others. Kinnison had not heard the order,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: but he was ready for anything, and those who came
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  Speaker 1: to take him found that it was easier far to
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: issue such orders than to carry them out. Halt snapped
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  Speaker 1: the lensman his lens, carrying the crackling command deep into
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  Speaker 1: the wheelman's minds. I do not wish to harm you,
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  Speaker 1: but come no closer you harm us, came a cold,
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  Speaker 1: clear thought, and the creatures vanished, but not for long.
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  Speaker 1: They or others like them, were back in moments, this
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  Speaker 1: time armed and armored for strife. Again, Kinnison found that
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: rays were useless. The army of the foe mounted generators
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: as capable as his own, and although the air in
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: the room soon became one intolerably glaring field of force,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: in which the very walls themselves began to crumble into vaporize,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: neither he nor his attackers were harmed again. Then the
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Lensman had recourse to his medieval weapon, sheathing his dilameter
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: and wading in with his axe. Although not a vambuskerk,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: he was for an earth man of unusual strength, skill
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: and speed, and to those opposing him he was a
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: very Hercules. Therefore, as he struck and struck and struck again,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the cell became a gorly reeking slaughter pen It's every
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: corner piled high with the shattered corpses of the wheelman,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: and its floor running with blood and slime. The last
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: few of the attackers, unwilling to face longer that irresistible steel,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: wheeled away, and Kinnison thought flashingly of what he should
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: do next. This trip was a bust so far. He
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: couldn't do himself a bit of good here now, and
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: he'd better buzz off while he was still in one piece.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: But how the door, No, he couldn't make it. He'd
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: run out of time quick that way, better take out
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: the wall. That would give those wheelmen something else to
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: think about too. While he was doing his flit, only
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: a fraction of a second was taken up by these thoughts.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Then Kinnison was at the wall. He set his dilameter
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: to minimum aperture and maximum blast to throw a cutting
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: pencil against which no material substance could stand through the wall.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: That pencil pierced up over and around. But fast as
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: the lensman had acted, he was still too late. There
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: came trundling into the room behind him, upon four low wheels,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: a truck bearing a squat monstrous mechanism. Kinnison whirled to
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: face it. As he turned, the section of the wall
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: upon which he'd been at work blew outward with a
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: deafening crash. The ensuing rush of escaping atmosphere picked the
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: lensman up as though he'd been a straw, and hurled
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: him out through the opening and into the shaft. In
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: the meantime, the mechanism upon the truck had begun a staccato,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: grinding roar, and as it roared, Kinnison felt slugs ripping
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: through his armor, tearing through his flesh, each as crushing, crunching,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: paralyzing a blow as though it had been inflicted by
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: van buskirt space axe. This was the first time the
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Kinnison had ever been really badly wounded, and it made
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: him sick, but sick and numb senses reeling at the
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: shock to his slug torn body, his right hand flashed
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: to the external controller of his neutralizer, for he was
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: falling inert. It was only ten or fifteen meters to
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: the bottom, as he remembered it, he had mighty little
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: time to waste if he were not to land inert.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: He snapped the controller, but nothing happened. Something had been
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: shot away. His driver, too was dead, snapping the sleeve
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: of his armor into its clamps. He began to withdraw
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: his arm in order to operate the internal controls, but
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: he ran out a time. He crashed on the top
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: of a subsiding pile of masonry which had preceded him,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: but which had not yet attained a state of equilibrium,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: underneath a shower of similar material which rebounded from his
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: armor in a boiler shop clangor of noise. Well, it
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: was that that heap of masonry had not yet had
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: time to settle into form, for in some slight measure
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: it acted as a cushion to break the lensman's fall.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: But an inert fall of forty feet, even cushioned by rocks,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: is in no sense a light. One Kinnison crashed, it
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: seemed as though a thousand pile drivers str rar him
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: at once. Surges of almost unbearable agony swept over him,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: as bones snapped and bruised flesh gave way. He knew
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: dimly that a merciful tide of oblivion was reaching up
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: to engulf his shrieking, suffering mind, but foggily at first
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: in the stunned confusion of his entire being. Something stirred,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: that unknown and unknowable, something that indefinable, ultimate quality that
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: had made him worthy of the lens that he wore.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: He lived, and while a lensman lived, he did not quit.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: To quit was to die then and there since he
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: was losing air fast. He had plastic in his kit
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: of course, and the holes were small. He must plug
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: those leaks, and plug them quick. His left arm he
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: found he could not move at all. It must be
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: smashed up pretty badly. Every shallow breath was a searing
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: pain that meant a rib or two had gone out. Luckily, however,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: he was not breathing blood. Therefore his lungs must still
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: be intact. He could move his right arm, although it
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: seemed like a lump of clay or a limb belonging
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: to someone else. But mustering all his power of will,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: he made it move. He dragged it out of the
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: armour's clamped sleeve, forced the lead in hand to slide
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: through the welter of blood that seemed almost to fill
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: the bulge of his armor. He found his kit box,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: and after an eternity of pain racked time, he compelled
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: his sluggish hand to open it and to take out
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: the plastic. Then, in a continuously crescendo throbbing of agony,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: he forced his maimed, crushed, broken body to writhe and
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: to wriggle about so that his one sound hand could
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: find and stop the holes through which his precious air
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: was whistling out in a way. Find them he did,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: and quickly, and he sealed them tight. But when he
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: had plugged the last one, he slumped down, spent and exhausted.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: He did not hurt so much. Now his suffering had
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: mounted to such terrific heights of intolerable keenness that the
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: nerves themselves in outraged protest at carrier. Such a load
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: had blocked it off. There was much more to do,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: but he simply could not do it without a rest.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Even his iron will could not drive his tortured muscles
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: to any further effort until after they had been allowed
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: to recuperate a little from what they had gone through.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: How much air did he have left, if any, he wondered,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: foggily and with an entirely detached, disinterested impersonalness. Maybe his
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: tanks were empty. Of course, it couldn't have taken him
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: as long to plug those leaks as it had seemed to,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: or he wouldn't have had any air left at all
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: in tanks or suit. He couldn't, however, have much left.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: He would look at his gages and see. But now
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: he found that he could not move, even his eyeballs,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: so deep was the coma that was enveloping him. Away
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: off somewhere there was a billowing expanse of blackness, utterly
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: heavenly in its deep, softly cushioned comfort. And from that
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: sea of peace and surcease there came reaching to embrace him,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: huge soft, tender arms. Why suffer? Something crooned at him.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: It was so much easier to just let go. End
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: of Chapter sixteen