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sometimes. So he'd never make any kind of a dive at her; no, not even a pass.
She was too sweet, too fine, too vital a woman to be tied to any space-louse;
she deserved happiness, not heartbreak. She deserved the best there was in
life, not the worst; the whole love of a whole man for a whole lifetime, not
the fractions which were all that he could offer any woman. As long as he
could think a straight thought he wouldn't make any motions toward spoiling
her life. In fact, he hadn't better see Reddy again. He wouldn't go near any
planet she was on, and if he saw her out in space he'd go somewhere else at a
hundred parsecs an hour.
With a bitter imprecation Kinnison sprang out of his bunk, hurled his
half-smoked cigarette at an ash-tray, and strode toward the control-room.
* * *
The ship he rode was of the Patrol's best. Superbly powered, for flight,
defense, and offense, she was withal a complete space-laboratory and
observatory; and her personnel, over and above her regular crew, was as varied
as her equipment. She carried ten Lensmen, a circumstance unique in the annals
of space, even for such trouble-shooting battle-wagon as the Dauntless was;
and a scientific staff which was practically a cross-section of the Tree of
Knowledge. She carried Lieutenant Peter vanBuskirk and his company of Valerian
wildcats; Worsel of Velantia and three score of his reptilian kinsmen;
Tregonsee, the blocky Rigellian Lensman, and a dozen or so of his fellows;
Master Technician La Verne Thorndyke and his crew. She carried three Master
Pilots, Prime Base's best-Henderson, Schermerhorn and Watson.
The Dauntless was an immense vessel. She had to be, in order to carry, in
addition to the men and the things requisitioned by Kinnison, the personnel
and the equipment which Port Admiral Haynes had insisted upon sending with
him.
"But great Klono, Chief, think of what a hole you're making in Prime Base if
we don't get back!" Kinnison had protested.
"You're coming back, Kinnison," the Port Admiral had replied, gravely. "That
is why I am sending these men and this stuff alongûto be as sure as I possibly
can that you do come back."
Now they were out in inter-galactic space, and the Gray Lensman, closing his
eyes, sent his sense of perception out beyond the confining iron walls and let
it roam the void. This was better than a visiplate; with no material barriers
or limitations he was feasting upon a spectacle scarcely to be pictured in the
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most untrammeled imaginings of man.
There were no planets, no suns, no stars; no meteorites, no particles of
cosmic debris. All nearby space was empty, with an indescribable perfection of
emptiness at the very thought of which the mind quailed in incomprehending
horror. And, accentuating that emptiness, at such mind-searing distances as to
be dwarfed into buttons, and yet, because of their intrinsic massiveness,
starkly apparent in their three-dimensional relationships, there hung poised
and motionlessly stately the component galaxies of a Universe.
Behind the flying vessel the First Galaxy was a tiny, brightly-shining lens,
so far away that such minutiae as individual solar systems were invisible; so
distant that even the gigantic masses of its accompanying globular
star-clusters were merged indistinguishably into its sharply lenticular shape.
In front of her, to right and to left of her, above and beneath her were other
galaxies, never explored by man or by any other beings subscribing to the code
of Galactic Civilization. Some, edge on, were thin, wafer-like. Others
appeared as full disks, showing faintly or boldly the prodigious,
mathematically inexplicable spiral arms by virtue of whose obscure functioning
they had come into being. Between these two extremes there was every possible
variant in angular dispacement.
Utterly incomprehensible although the speed of the space-flyer was, yet
those galaxies remained relatively motionless, hour after hour. What
distances! What magnificence! What grandeur! What awful, what poignantly
solemn calm!
Despite the fact that Kinnison had gone out there expecting to behold that
very scene, he felt awed to insignificance by the overwhelming, the cosmic
immensity of the spectacle. What business had he, a sub-electronic midge from
an ultra-microscopic planet, venturing out into macro-cosmic space, a demesne
comprehensible only to the omniscient and omnipotent Creator?
He got up, shaking off the futile mood. This wouldn't get him to the first
check-station, and he had a job to do. And after all, wasn't man as big as
space? Could he have come out here, otherwise? He was. Yes, man was bigger
even than space. Man, by his very envisionment of macro-cosmic space, had
already mastered it.
Besides, the Boskonians, whoever they might be, had certainly mastered it;
he was now certain that they were operating upon an inter-galactic scale. Even
after leaving Tellus he had hoped and had really expected that his line would
lead to a stronghold in some star-cluster belonging to his own galaxy, so
distant from it or perhaps so small as to have escaped the notice of the
chart-makers; but such was not the case. No possible error in either the
determination or the following of that line placed it anywhere near any such
cluster. It led straight to and only to Lundmark's Nebula; and that galaxy
was, therefore, his present destination.
Man was certainly as good as the pirates; probably better, on the basis of
past performance. Of all the races of the galaxy, man had always taken the
initiative, had always been the leader and commander. And, with the exception
of the Arisians, man had the best brain in the galaxy.
The thought of that eminently philosophical race gave Kinnison pause. His
Arisian sponsor had told him that by virtue of the Lens the Patrol should be
able to make Civilization secure throughout the galaxy. Just what did that
meanûthat it could not go outside? Or did even the Arisians suspect that
Boskonia was in fact inter-galactic? Probably. Mentor had said that, given any
one definite fact, a really competent mind could envisage the entire Universe;
even though had added carefully that his own mind was not a really competent
one.
But this, too, was idle speculation, and it was time to receive and to
correlate some more reports. Therefore, one by one, he got in touch with
scientists and observers.
The density of matter in space, which had been lessening steadily, was now
approximately constant at one atom per four hundred cubic centimeters. Their
speed was therefore about a hundred thousand parsecs per hour; and, even
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allowing for the slowing up at both ends due to the density of the medium, the
trip should not take over ten days.
The power situation, which had been his gravest care, since it was almost
the only factor not amenable to theoretical solution, was even better than
anyone had dared hope; the cosmic energy available in space had actually been
increasing as the matter content decreasedûa fact which seemed to bear out the
contention that energy was continually being converted into matter in such
regions. It was taking much less excitation of the intake screens to produce a
given flow of power than any figure ever observed in the denser media within
the galaxy. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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