Life on other planets -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space warfare -- Fiction
Through the insect's compound eyes the room and all its contents were
weirdly distorted, but the Lensman could make them out well enough to
direct her efforts. She crawled along the ceiling and dropped upon a
silken rope to Jalte's belt. She could not pull the plug of the power
pack--it loomed before her eyes, a gigantic metal pillar as immovable
as the Rock of Gibraltar--therefore she scampered on and began to
explore the mazes of the set itself. She could not see the thing as a
whole, it was far too immense a structure for that; so Kinnison, to
whom the device was no larger than a hand, directed her to the first
grid lead.
A tiny thing, thread-thin in gross; yet to the insect it was an
ordinary cable of stranded soft-metal wire. Her powerful mandibles
pried loose one of the component strands and with very little effort
pulled it away from its fellows beneath the head of a binding screw.
The strand bent easily, and as it touched the metal of the chassis the
thought-screen vanished.
Instantly Kinnison insinuated his mind into Jalte's and began to dig
for knowledge. Eichmil was his chief--Kinnison knew that already. His
office was in the Second Galaxy, on the planet Jarnevon. Jalte had been
there--co-ordinates so and so, courses such and such--Eichmil reported
to Boskone--
The Lensman stiffened. Here was the first positive evidence he had
found that his deductions were correct--or even that there really _was_
such an entity as Boskone! He bored anew.
Boskone was not a single entity, but a council--probably of the Eich,
the natives of Jarnevon--weird impressions of coldly intellectual
reptilian monstrosities, horrific, indescribable--Eichmil must know
exactly who and where Boskone was. Jalte did not.
Kinnison finished his research and abandoned the Kalonian's mind
as insidiously as he had entered it. The spider opened the short,
restoring the screen to usefulness. Then, before he did anything else,
the Lensman directed his small ally to a whole family of young grubs
just under the cover of his manhole. Lensmen paid their debts, even to
spiders.
Then, with a profound sigh of relief, he dropped down into the sewer.
The submarine journey to the river was made without incident, as was
the flight to his speedster. Night fell, and through its blackness
there darted the even blacker shape which was the Lensman's little
ship. Out into intergalactic space she flashed, and homeward. And as
she flew the Tellurian scowled.
He had gained much, but not enough by far. He had hoped to get all the
data on Boskone, so that he could storm Headquarters in the van of
Civilization's armada, invincible in its newly-devised might.
No soap. Before he could do that he would have to scout Jarnevon--in
the Second Galaxy--alone. Alone? Better not. Better take the flying
snake along. Good old dragon. That was a mighty long flit to be doing
alone, and one with some mightily high-powered opposition at the other
end of it.
XIX.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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