Life on other planets -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space warfare -- Fiction
Kinnison joined one of those "Down with Everything!" groups, not as
a leader, but as a follower. Not too sheeplike a follower, but just
inconspicuous enough to retain his invisibly average status; and from
his place of concealment in the middle of the front rank he studied the
minds of each of his fellow anarchists. He watched those minds change,
he found out who was doing the changing. When Kinnison's turn came he
was all set for trouble. He expected to battle a powerful mentality. He
would not have been overly surprised to encounter another mad Arisian,
hiding behind a zone of hypnotic compulsion. He expected anything,
in fact, except what he found--which was a very ordinary Radeligian
therapist. The guy was a clever enough operator, of course, but he
could not work against even the feeblest opposition. Hence the Gray
Lensman had no trouble at all, either in learning everything the fellow
knew or, upon leaving him, in implanting within his mind the knowledge
that he had made Sybly Whyte into exactly the type of anarchist desired.
The trouble was that the therapist didn't know a thing. This not
entirely unexpected development posed Kinnison three questions. Did
the higher-ups ever communicate with such small fry, or did they just
give them one set of orders and cut them loose? Should he stay in
this Radeligian's mind until he found out? If he was in control of
the therapist when a big shot took over, did he have jets enough to
keep from being found out? Risky business; better scout around first,
anyway. He'd do a flit.
He drove his black speedster a million miles. He covered Radelix like a
blanket, around the equator and from pole to pole. Everywhere he found
the same state of things. The planet was literally riddled with the
agitators; he found so many that he was forced to a black conclusion.
There could be no connection or communication between such numbers of
saboteurs and any higher authority. They must have been sent with one
set of do-or-die instructions--whether they did or died was immaterial.
Experimentally, Kinnison had a few of the ringleaders taken into
custody. As each was arrested another took his place.
Martial law was finally declared, but this measure succeeded only in
driving the conspirators underground. What the subversive societies
lost in numbers they more than made up in desperation and violence.
Crime raged unchecked and uncheckable, murder became an everyday
commonplace, insanity waxed rife. And Kinnison, knowing now that no
channel to important prey would be opened until the climax, watched
grimly while the rape of the planet went on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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