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us. What
was on your mind?"
"I came up here-One, to tell you that we're ready to blast, Two, to
suggest that
you hit her easy at first, and Three, to ask if you know where there's any
grease-soap.
But you can cancel Two and Three. We don't want to play around with these boys
much longer-they play too rough û and I ain't going to wash up until I see
whether she
holds together or not. Blast away-and won't those guys be surprised !"
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"I'll say so-some of this stuff is NEW!"
The Lensman twirled a couple of knobs, then punched down hard upon three
buttons. As he did so the flaring plates became dark, they -were again alone
in space.
To the dumbfounded pirates it was as though their prey had slipped off into
the fourth
dimension. Their tractors gripped nothing whatever, their ravening beams bored
unimpeded through the space occupied an instant before by resisting screens,
tracers
were useless. They did not know what had happened, or how, and they could
neither
report to nor be guided by the master mind of Boskone.
For minutes Thorndyke, vanBuskirk, and Kinnison waited tensely for they
knew
not what to happen, but nothing happened and then the tension gradually
relaxed.
"What was the matter with it?" Kinnison asked, finally.
"Overloaded," was Thorndyke's terse reply.
"Overloaded-hooey I" snapped the Lensman. "How could they overload a
Bergenholm? And, even if they could, why in all the nine hells of Valeria
would they
want to?"
"They could do it easily enough, in just the way they did do it, by
banking
accumulators onto it in series-parallel. As to why, I'll let you do the
guessing. With no
load on the Bergenholm you've got full inertia, with full load you've got zero
inertia-you
can't go any further. It looks just plain dumb to me. But then, I think all
pirates are short
a few lets somewhere-if they weren't they wouldn't be pirates."
"I don't know whether you're right or not. Hope so, but afraid not.
Personally, I
don't believe these folks are pirates at all, in the ordinary sense of the
word."
"Hub? What are they, then?"
"Piracy implies similarity of cube, I would think," the Lensman said,
thoughtfully.
"Ordinary pirates are usually renegades, deficient somehow, as you suggested,
rebelling against a constituted authority which they themselves have at one
time
acknowledged and of which they are still afraid. That pattern doesn't fit into
this matrix
at all, anywhere."
"So what? Now I say 'hooey' right back at you. Anyway, why worry about
it?
"Not worrying about it exactly, but somebody has got to do something
about it, or
else . . . . . "
"I don't like to think, it makes my head ache," interrupted vanBuskirk.
"Besides,
we're getting away from the Bergenholm."
"You'll get a real headache there," laughed Ikon, "because I'll bet a
good
Tellurian beefsteak that the pirates were trying to set up a negative inertia
when they
overloaded the Bergenholm, and thinking about that state of matter is enough
to make
anybody's head ache!"
"I knew that some of the dippier Ph.D.'s in higher mechanics have been
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speculating about it," Thorndyke offered, "but it can't be done that way, can
it?"
"Nor any other way that anybody has tried yet, and if such a thing is
possible the
results may prove really startling. But you two had better shove off, you're
dead from
the neck up. The Berg's spinning like a top-as smooth as that much green
velvet. You'll
find a can of soap in my locker, I think.
"Maybe she'll hold together long enough for us to get some sleep." The
technician eyed a meter dubiously, although its needle was not wavering a
hair's
breadth from the green line. "But I'll tell the cockeyed Universe that we gave
her a jury
rigging if there ever was one. You can't depend on it for an hour until after
it's been
pulled and gone over, and that, you know as well as I do, takes a real shop,
with plenty
of equipment. If you take my advice you'll sit down somewhere while you can
and as
soon as you can. That Bergenholm is in bad shape, believe me. We can hold her
together for a while by main strength and awkwardness, but before very long
she's
going out for keeps û and when she does you don't want to find yourself fifty
years from
a machine shop instead of fifty minutes."
"I'll say not," the Lensman agreed. "But on the other hand, we don't want
those
birds jumping us the minute we land, either. Let's see, where are we? And
where are
the bases? Um . . . um . . . Sector bases are white rings, you know,
sub-sector bases
red stars . . . . . " Three heads bent over charts.
"The nearest red-star marker seems to be in System 240.16-37 " Kinnison
finally
announced. "Don't know the name of the planet-never been there . . . . . .
"Too far, interrupted Thorndyke. "We'll never make it û might as well try
direct for
Prime Base on Tellus. If you cant find a red closer than that, look for an
orange or a
yellow."
"Bases of any kind seem to be scarce around here," the Lensman commented.
"You'd think they'd be thicker. Here's a violet triangle, but that wouldn't
help us-just an
outpost . . . . . . How about this blue square? It's just about on our line to
Tellus, and I
can't see anything any better that we can possibly reach."
"That looks like our best bet," Thorndyke concurred, after a few minutes
of study.
"It's probably several breakdowns away, but maybe we can make it-sometime.
Blues
are pretty low-grade space-ports but they've got tools, anyway. What's the
name of it,
Kim-or is it only a number?"
"It's that very famous planet, Trenco," the Lensman announced, after
looking up
the reference numbers in the atlas.
"Trenco!" exclaimed Thorndyke in disgust. "The nuttiest dopiest wooziest
planet
in the galaxy-we would draw something like that to sit down. on for repairs,
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wouldn't
we? Well, I'm on plus time for sleep. Call me if we go inert before I wake up,
will you?"
"I sure will, and I'll try to figure out a way of getting down to ground
without
bringing all the pirates in space along with us."
Then Henderson came in to stand his watch, Kinnison slept, and the mighty
Bergenholm continued to bold the vessel inertialess. In fact, all the men were
thoroughly rested and refreshed before the expected breakdown came. And when
it did
come they were more or less prepared for it. The delay was not sufficiently
long to
enable the pirates to find them again, but from that point in space to the
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