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First Lensman

<h2>CHAPTER 5</h2> For hours Virgil Samms sat motionless, staring almost unseeing into his plate. It was not that the view was not worth seeing—the wonder of space, the ever-changing, constantly-shifting panorama of incredibly brilliant although dimensionless points of light, against that wondrous background of mist-besprinkled black velvet, is a thing that never fails to awe even the most seasoned observer—but he had a tremendous load on his mind. He had to solve an apparently insoluble problem. How ... how ... HOW could he do what he had to do? Finally, knowing that the time of landing was approaching, he got up, unfolded his fans, and swam lightly through the air of the cabin to a hand-line, along which he drew himself into the control room. He could have made the trip in that room, of course, if he had so chosen; but, knowing that officers of space do not really like to have strangers in that sanctum, he did not intrude until it was necessary. Captain Winfield was already strapped down at his master conning plate. Pilots, navigators, and computers worked busily at their respective tasks. "I was just going to call you, First Lensman." Winfield waved a hand in the general direction of a chair near his own. "Take the Lieutenant-Captain's station, please." Then, after a few minutes: "Go inert, Mr. White." "Attention, all personnel," Lieutenant-Captain White spoke conversationally into a microphone. "Prepare for inert maneuvering, Class Three. Off." A bank of tiny red lights upon a panel turned green practically as one. White cut the Bergenholm, whereupon Virgil Samms' mass changed instantly from a weight of zero to one of five hundred and twenty five pounds—ships of war then had no space to waste upon such non-essentials as artificial gravity. Although he was braced for the change and cushioned against it, the Lensman's breath whooshed! out sharply; but, being intensely interested in what was going on, he swallowed convulsively a couple of times, gasped a few deep breaths, and fought his way back up to normalcy. The Chief Pilot was now at work, with all the virtuoso's skill of his rank and grade; one of the hall-marks of which is to make difficult tasks look easy. He played trills and runs and arpeggios—at times veritable glissades—upon keyboards and pedals, directing with micrometric precision the tremendous forces of the superdreadnaught to the task of matching the intrinsic velocity of New York Spaceport at the time of his departure to the I. V. of the surface of the planet so far below. Samms stared into his plate; first at the incredibly tiny apparent size of that incredibly hot sun, and then at the barren-looking world toward which they were dropping at such terrific speed. "It doesn't seem possible ..." he remarked, half to Winfield, half to himself, "that a sun could be that big and that hot. Rigel Four is almost two hundred times as far away from it as Earth is from Sol—something like eighteen billion miles—it doesn't look much, if any, bigger than Venus does from Luna—yet this world is hotter than the Sahara Desert." "Well, blue giants are both big and hot," the captain replied, matter-of-factly, "and their radiation, being mostly invisible, is deadly stuff. And Rigel is about the biggest in this region. There are others a lot worse, though. Doradus S, for instance, would make Rigel, here, look like a tallow candle. I'm going out there, some of these days, just to take a look at it. But that's enough of astronomical chit-chat—we're down to twenty miles of altitude and we've got your city just about stopped." The Chicago slowed gently to a halt; perched motionless upon softly hissing jets. Samms directed his visibeam downward and sent along it an exploring, questing thought. Since he had never met a Rigellian in person, he could not form the mental image or pattern necessary to become en rapport with any one individual of the race. He did know, however, the type of mind which must be possessed by the entity with whom he wished to talk, and he combed the Rigellian city until he found one. The rapport was so incomplete and imperfect as to amount almost to no contact at all, but he could, perhaps, make himself understood. "If you will excuse this possibly unpleasant and certainly unwarranted intrusion," he thought, carefully and slowly, "I would like very much to discuss with you a matter which should become of paramount importance to all the intelligent peoples of all the planets in space." "I welcome you, Tellurian." Mind fused with mind at every one of uncountable millions of points and paths. This Rigellian professor of sociology, standing at his desk, was physically a monster ... the oil-drum of a body, the four blocky legs, the multi-branchiate tentacular arms, that immobile dome of a head, the complete lack of eyes and of ears ... nevertheless Samms' mind fused with the monstrosity's as smoothly, as effortlessly, and almost as completely as it had with his own daughter's! And what a mind! The transcendent poise; the staggeringly tremendous range and scope—the untroubled and unshakeable calm; the sublime quietude; the vast and placid certainty; the ultimate stability, unknown and forever unknowable to any human or near-human race! "Dismiss all thought of intrusion, First Lensman Samms ... I have heard of you human beings, of course, but have never considered seriously the possibility of meeting one of you mind to mind. Indeed, it was reported that none of our minds could make any except the barest and most unsatisfactory contact with any of yours they chanced to encounter. It is, I now perceive, the Lens which makes this full accord possible, and it is basically about the Lens that you are here?" "It is," and Samms went on to cover in flashing thoughts his conception of what the Galactic Patrol should be and should become. That was easy enough; but when he tried to describe in detail the qualifications necessary for Lensmanship, he began to bog down. "Force, drive, scope, of course ... range ... power ... but above all, an absolute integrity ... an ultimate incorruptibility...." He could recognize such a mind after meeting it and studying it, but as to finding it ... It might not be in any place of power or authority. His own, and Rod Kinnison's, happened to be; but Costigan's was not ... and both Knobos and DalNalten had made inconspicuousness a fine art.... "I see," the native stated, when it became clear that Samms could say no more. "It is evident, of course, that I cannot qualify; nor do I know anyone personally who can. However...." "What?" Samms demanded. "I was sure, from the feel of your mind, that you ... but with a mind of such depth and breadth, such tremendous scope and power, you must be incorruptible!" "I am," came the dry rejoinder. "We all are. No Rigellian is, or ever will be or can be, what you think of as 'corrupt' or 'corruptible'. Indeed, it is only by the narrowest, most intense concentration upon every line of your thought that I can translate your meaning into a concept possible for any of us even to understand." "Then what ... Oh, I see. I was starting at the wrong end. Naturally enough, I suppose, I looked first for the qualities rarest in my own race." "Of course. Our minds have ample scope and range; and, perhaps, sufficient power. But those qualities which you refer to as 'force' and 'drive' are fully as rare among us as absolute mental integrity is among you. What you know as 'crime' is unknown. We have no police, no government, no laws, no organized armed forces of any kind. We take, practically always, the line of least resistance. We live and let live, as your thought runs. We work together for the common good." "Well ... I don't know what I expected to find here, but certainly not this...." If Samms had never before been completely thunderstruck, completely at a loss, he was then. "You don't think, then, that there is any chance?" "I have been thinking, and there may be a chance ... a slight one, but still a chance," the Rigellian said, slowly. "For instance, that youth, so full of curiosity, who first visited your planet. Thousands of us have wondered, to ourselves and to each other, about the peculiar qualities of mind which compelled him and others to waste so much time, effort, and wealth upon a project so completely useless as exploration. Why, he had even to develop energies and engines theretofore unknown, and which can never be of any real use!" Samms was shaken by the calm finality with which the Rigellian dismissed all possibility of the usefulness of inter-stellar exploration, but stuck doggedly to his purpose. "However slight the chance, I must find and talk to this man. I suppose he is now out in deep space somewhere. Have you any idea where?" "He is now in his home city, accumulating funds and manufacturing fuel with which to continue his pointless activities. That city is named ... that is, in your English you might call it ... Suntown? Sunberg? No, it must be more specific ... Rigelsville? Rigel City?" "Rigelston, I would translate it?" Samms hazarded. "Exactly—Rigelston." The professor marked its location upon a globular mental map far more accurate and far more detailed than the globe which Captain Winfield and his lieutenant were then studying. "Thanks. Now, can you and will you get in touch with this explorer and ask him to call a meeting of his full crew and any others who might be interested in the project I have outlined?" "I can. I will. He and his kind are not quite sane, of course, as you know; but I do not believe that even they are so insane as to be willing to subject themselves to the environment of your vessel." "They will not be asked to come here. The meeting will be held in Rigelston. If necessary, I shall insist that it be held there." "You would? I perceive that you would. It is strange ... yes, fantastic ... you are quarrelsome, pugnacious, anti-social, vicious, small-bodied and small-brained; timid, nervous, and highly and senselessly excitable; unbalanced and unsane; as sheerly monstrous mentally as you are physically...." These outrageous thoughts were sent as casually and as impersonally as though the sender were discussing the weather. He paused, then went on: "And yet, to further such a completely visionary project, you are eager to subject yourself to conditions whose counterparts I could not force myself, under any circumstances whatever, to meet. It may be ... it must be true that there is an extension of the principle of working together for the common good which my mind, for lack of pertinent data, has not been able to grasp. I am now en rapport with Dronvire the explorer." "Ask him, please, not to identify himself to me. I do not want to go into that meeting with any preconceived ideas." "A balanced thought," the Rigellian approved. "Someone will be at the airport to point out to you the already desolated area in which the space-ship of the explorers makes its so-frightful landings; Dronvire will ask someone to meet you at the airport and bring you to the place of meeting." The telepathic line snapped and Samms turned a white and sweating face to the Chicago's captain. "God, what a strain! Don't ever try telepathy unless you positively have to—especially not with such an outlandishly different race as these Rigellians are!" "Don't worry; I won't." Winfield's words were not at all sympathetic, but his tone was. "You looked as though somebody was beating your brains out with a spiked club. Where next, First Lensman?" Samms marked the location of Rigelston upon the vessel's chart, then donned ear-plugs and a special, radiation-proof suit of armor, equipped with refrigerators and with extra-thick blocks of lead glass to protect the eyes. The airport, an extremely busy one well outside the city proper, was located easily enough, as was the spot upon which the Tellurian ship was to land. Lightly, slowly, she settled downward, her jets raving out against a gravity fully twice that of her native Earth. Those blasts, however, added little or nothing to the destruction already accomplished by the craft then lying there—a torpedo-shaped cruiser having perhaps one-twentieth of the Chicago's mass and bulk. The superdreadnaught landed, sinking into the hard, dry ground to a depth of some ten or fifteen feet before she stopped. Samms, en rapport with the entity who was to be his escort, made a flashing survey of the mind so intimately in contact with his own. No use. This one was not and never could become Lensman material. He climbed heavily down the ladder. This double-normal gravity made the going a bit difficult, but he could stand that a lot better than some of the other things he was going to have to take. The Rigellian equivalent of an automobile was there, waiting for him, its door invitingly open. Samms had known—in general—what to expect. The two-wheeled chassis was more or less similar to that of his own Dillingham. The body was a narrow torpedo of steel, bluntly pointed at both ends, and without windows. Two features, however, were both unexpected and unpleasant—the hard, tough steel of which that body was forged was an inch and a half thick, instead of one-sixteenth; and even that extraordinarily armored body was dented and scarred and marred, especially about the fore and rear quarters, as deeply and as badly and as casually as are the fenders of an Earthly jalopy! The Lensman climbed, not easily or joyously, into that grimly forbidding black interior. Black? It was so black that the port-hole-like doorway seemed to admit no light at all. It was blacker than a witch's cat in a coal cellar at midnight! Samms flinched; then, stiffening, thought at the driver. "My contact with you seems to have slipped. I'm afraid that I will have to cling to you rather more tightly than may be either polite or comfortable. Deprived of sight, and without your sense of perception, I am practically helpless." "Come in, Lensman, by all means. I offered to maintain full engagement, but it seemed to me that you declined it; quite possibly the misunderstanding was due to our unfamiliarity with each others' customary mode of thought. Relax, please, and come in ... there! Better?" "Infinitely better. Thanks." And it was. The darkness vanished; through the unexplainable perceptive sense of the Rigellian he could "see" everything—he had a practically perfect three-dimensional view of the entire circumambient sphere. He could see both the inside and the outside of the ground car he was in and of the immense space-ship in which he had come to Rigel IV. He could see the bearings and the wrist-pins of the internal-combustion engine of the car, the interior structure of the welds that held the steel plates together, the busy airport outside, and even deep into the ground. He could see and study in detail the deepest-buried, most heavily shielded parts of the atomic engines of the Chicago. But he was wasting time. He could also plainly see a deeply-cushioned chair, designed to fit a human body, welded to a stanchion and equipped with half a dozen padded restraining straps. He sat down quickly; strapped himself in. "Ready?" "Ready." The door banged shut with a clangor which burst through space-suit and ear-plugs with all the violence of a nearby thunderclap. And that was merely the beginning. The engine started—an internal-combustion engine of well over a thousand horsepower, designed for maximum efficiency by engineers in whose lexicon there were no counterparts of any English words relating to noise, or even to sound. The car took off; with an acceleration which drove the Tellurian backward, deep into the cushions. The scream of tortured tires and the crescendo bellowing of the engine combined to form an uproar which, amplified by and reverberating within the resonant shell of metal, threatened to addle the very brain inside the Lensman's skull. "You suffer!" the driver exclaimed, in high concern. "They cautioned me to start and stop gently, to drive slowly and carefully, to bump softly. They told me you are frail and fragile, a fact which I perceived for myself and which has caused me to drive with the utmost possible care and restraint. Is the fault mine? Have I been too rough?" "Not at all. It isn't that. It's the ungodly noise." Then, realizing that the Rigellian could have no conception of his meaning, he continued quickly: "The vibrations in the atmosphere, from sixteen cycles per second up to about nine or ten thousand." He explained what a second was. "My nervous system is very sensitive to those vibrations. But I expected them and shielded myself against them as adequately as I could. Nothing can be done about them. Go ahead." "Atmospheric vibrations? Atmospheric vibrations? Atmospheric vibrations?" The driver marveled, and concentrated upon this entirely new concept while he— 1. Swung around a steel-sheathed concrete pillar at a speed of at least sixty miles per hour, grazing it so closely that he removed one layer of protective coating from the metal. 2. Braked so savagely to miss a wildly careening truck that the restraining straps almost cut Samms' body, space-suit and all, into slices. 3. Darted into a hole in the traffic so narrow that only tiny fractions of inches separated his hurtling Juggernaut from an enormous steel column on one side and another speeding vehicle on the other. 4. Executed a double-right-angle reverse curve, thus missing by hair's breadths two vehicles traveling in the opposite direction and one in his own. 5. As a grand climax to this spectacular exhibition of insane driving, he plunged at full speed into a traffic artery which seemed so full already that it could not hold even one more car. But it could—just barely could. However, instead of near misses or grazing hits, this time there were bumps, dents—little ones, nothing at all, really, only an inch or so deep—and an utterly hellish concatenation and concentration of noise. "I fail completely to understand what effect such vibrations could have," the Rigellian announced finally, sublimely unconscious that anything at all out of the ordinary had occurred. For him, nothing had. "But surely they cannot be of any use?" "On this world, I am afraid not. No," Samms admitted, wearily. "Here, too, apparently, as everywhere, the big cities are choking themselves to death with their own traffic." "Yes. We build and build, but never have roads enough." "What are those mounds along the streets?" For some time Samms had been conscious of those long, low, apparently opaque structures; attracted to them because they were the only non-transparent objects within range of the Rigellian's mind. "Or is it something I should not mention?" "What? Oh, those? By no means." One of the nearby mounds lost its opacity. It was filled with swirling, gyrating bands and streamers of energy so vivid and so solid as to resemble fabric; with wildly hurtling objects of indescribable shapes and contours; with brilliantly flashing symbols which Samms found, greatly to his surprise, made sense—not through the Rigellian's mind, but through his own Lens: "EAT TEEGMEE'S FOOD!" "Advertising!" Samms' thought was a snort. "Advertising. You do not perceive yours, either, as you drive?" This was the first bond to be established between two of the most highly advanced races of the First Galaxy! The frightful drive continued; the noise grew worse and worse. Imagine, if you can, a city of fifteen millions of people, throughout whose entire length, breadth, height, and depth no attempt whatever had ever been made to abate any noise, however violent or piercing! If your imagination has been sufficiently vivid and if you have worked understandingly enough, the product may approximate what First Lensman Samms was forced to listen to that day. Through ever-thickening traffic, climbing to higher and ever higher roadways between towering windowless walls of steel, the massive Rigellian automobile barged and banged its way. Finally it stopped, a thousand feet or so above the ground, beside a building which was still under construction. The heavy door clanged open. They got out. And then—it chanced to be daylight at the time—Samms saw a tangle of fighting, screaming colors whose like no entity possessing the sense of sight had ever before imagined. Reds, yellows, blues, greens, purples, and every variation and inter-mixture possible; laid on or splashed on or occurring naturally at perfect random, smote his eyes as violently as the all-pervading noise had been assailing his ears. He realized then that through his guide's sense of perception he had been "seeing" only in shades of gray, that to these people "visible" light differed only in wave-length from any other band of the complete electromagnetic spectrum of vibration. Strained and tense, the Lensman followed his escort along a narrow catwalk, through a wall upon which riveters and welders were busily at work, into a room practically without walls and ceiled only by story after story of huge I-beams. Yet this was the meeting-place; almost a hundred Rigellians were assembled there! And as Samms walked toward the group a craneman dropped a couple of tons of steel plate, from a height of eight or ten feet, upon the floor directly behind him. "I just about jumped right out of my armor," is the way Samms himself described his reactions; and that description is perhaps as good as any. At any rate, he went briefly out of control, and the Rigellian sent him a steadying, inquiring, wondering thought. He could no more understand the Tellurian's sensitivity than Samms could understand the fact that to these people, even the concept of physical intrusion was absolutely incomprehensible. These builders were not workmen, in the Tellurian sense. They were Rigellians, each working his few hours per week for the common good. They would be no more in contact with the meeting than would their fellows on the other side of the planet. Samms closed his eyes to the riot of clashing colors, deafened himself by main strength to the appalling clangor of sound, forced himself to concentrate every fiber of his mind upon his errand. "Please synchronize with my mind, as many of you as possible," he thought at the group as a whole, and went en rapport with mind after mind after mind. And mind after mind after mind lacked something. Some were stronger than others, had more initiative and drive and urge, but none would quite do. Until— "Thank God!" In the wave of exultant relief, of fulfillment, Samms no longer saw the colors or heard the din. "You, sir, are of Lensman grade. I perceive that you are Dronvire." "Yes, Virgil Samms, I am Dronvire; and at long last I know what it is that I have been seeking all my life. But how of these, my other friends? Are not some of them...?" "I do not know, nor is it necessary that I find out. You will select ..." Samms paused, amazed. The other Rigellians were still in the room, but mentally, he and Dronvire were completely alone. "They anticipated your thought, and, knowing that it was to be more or less personal, they left us until one of us invites them to return." "I like that, and appreciate it. You will go to Arisia. You will receive your Lens. You will return here. You will select and send to Arisia as many or as few of your fellows as you choose. These things I require you, by the Lens of Arisia, to do. Afterward—please note that this is in no sense obligatory—I would like very much to have you visit Earth and accept appointment to the Galactic Council. Will you?" "I will." Dronvire needed no time to consider his decision. The meeting was dismissed. The same entity who had been Samms' chauffeur on the in-bound trip drove him back to the Chicago, driving as "slowly" and as "carefully" as before. Nor, this time, did the punishment take such toll, even though Samms knew that each terrific lunge and lurch was adding one more bruise to the already much-too-large collection discoloring almost every square foot of his tough hide. He had succeeded, and the thrill of success had its usual analgesic effect. The Chicago's captain met him in the air-lock and helped him remove his suit. "Are you sure you're all right, Samms?" Winfield was no longer the formal captain, but a friend. "Even though you didn't call, we were beginning to wonder ... you look as though you'd been to a Valerian clambake, and I sure as hell don't like the way you're favoring those ribs and that left leg. I'll tell the boys you got back in A-prime shape, but I'll have the doctors look you over, just to make sure." Winfield made the announcement, and through his Lens Samms could plainly feel the wave of relief and pleasure that spread throughout the great ship with the news. It surprised him immensely. Who was he, that all these boys should care so much whether he lived or died? "I'm perfectly all right," Samms protested. "There's nothing at all the matter with me that twenty hours of sleep won't fix as good as new." "Maybe; but you'll go to the sick-bay first, just the same," Winfield insisted. "And I suppose you want me to blast back to Tellus?" "Right. And fast. The Ambassadors' Ball is next Tuesday evening, you know, and that's one function I can't stay away from, even with a Class A Double Prime excuse." <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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