The Greatest Works of E. E. Smith. E. E. Smith

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      “We have you. Cut off all power and lock all controls in neutral. Do nothing more until I instruct you to come out.”

      Kinnison obeyed; and, released from all duty, the visitors stared in fascinated incredulity into the visiplate. For that at which they stared was and must forever remain impossible of duplication upon Earth, and only in imagination can it be even faintly pictured. Imagine all the fantastic and monstrous creatures of a delirium-tremens vision incarnate and actual. Imagine them being hurled through the air, borne by a dust-laden gale more severe than any the great American dust-bowl or Africa’s Sahara Desert ever endured. Imagine this scene as being viewed, not in an ordinary, solid distorting mirror, but in one whose falsely reflecting contours were changing constantly, with no logical or intelligible rhythm, into new and ever more grotesque warps. If imagination has been equal to the task, the resultant is what the visitors tried to see.

      At first they could make nothing whatever of it. Upon nearer approach, however, the ghastly distortion grew less and the flatly level expanse took on a semblance of rigidity. Directly beneath them they made out something that looked like an immense, flat blister upon the otherwise featureless terrain. Toward this blister their ship was drawn.

      A port opened, dwarfed in apparent size to a mere window by the immensity of the structure one of whose entrances it was. Through this port the vast bulk of the space-ship was wafted upon the landing-bars, and behind it the mighty bronze-and-steel gates clanged shut. The lock was pumped to a vacuum, there was a hiss of entering air, a spray of vaporous liquid bathed every inch of the vessel’s surface, and Kinnison felt again the calm thought of Tregonsee, the Rigellian Lensman:

      “You may now open your air-lock and emerge. If I have read aright our atmosphere is sufficiently like your own in oxygen content so that you will suffer no ill effects from it. It may be well, however, to wear your armor until you have become accustomed to its considerably greater density.”

      “That’ll be a relief!” growled vanBuskirk’s deep bass, when his chief had transmitted the thought. “I’ve been breathing this thin stuff so long I’m getting light-headed.”

      “That’s gratitude!” Thorndyke retorted. “We’ve been running our air so heavy that all the rest of us are thick-headed now. If the air in this space-port is any heavier than what we’ve been having, I’m going to wear armor as long as we stay here!”

      Kinnison opened the air-lock, found the atmosphere of the space-port satisfactory, and stepped out; to be greeted cordially by Tregonsee the Lensman.

      This—this apparition was at least erect, which was something. His body was the size and shape of an oil-drum. Beneath this massive cylinder of a body were four short, blocky legs upon which he waddled about with surprising speed. Midway up the body, above each leg, there sprouted out a ten-foot-long, writhing, boneless, tentacular arm, which toward the extremity branched out into dozens of lesser tentacles, ranging in size from hair-like tendrils up to mighty fingers two inches or more in diameter. Tregonsee’s head was merely a neckless, immobile, bulging dome in the center of the flat upper surface of his body—a dome bearing neither eyes nor ears, but only four equally-spaced toothless mouths and four single, flaring nostrils.

      But Kinnison felt no qualm of repugnance at Tregonsee’s monstrous appearance, for embedded in the leathery flesh of one arm was the Lens. Here, the Lensman knew, was in every essential a MAN—and probably a super-man.

      “Welcome to Trenco, Kinnison of Tellus,” Tregonsee was saying. “While we are near neighbors in space, I have never happened to visit your planet. I have encountered Tellurians here, of course, but they were not of a type to be received as guests.”

      “No, a zwilnik is not a high type of Tellurian,” Kinnison agreed. “I have often wished that I could have your sense of perception, if only for a day. It must be wonderful indeed to be able to perceive a thing as a whole, inside and out, instead of having vision stopped at its surface, as is ours. And to be independent of light or darkness, never to be lost or in need of instruments; to know definitely where you are in relation to every other object or thing around you—that, I think, is the most marvelous sense in the Universe.”

      “Just as I have wished for sight and hearing, those two remarkable and to us entirely unexplainable senses. I have dreamed, I have studied volumes, on color and sound. Color in art and in nature; sound in music and in the voices of loved ones; but they remain meaningless symbols upon a printed page. However, such thoughts are vain. In all probability neither of us would enjoy the other’s equipment if he had it, and this interchange is of no material assistance to you.”

      In flashing thoughts Kinnison then communicated to the other Lensman everything that had transpired since he left Prime Base.

      “I perceive that your Bergenholm is of standard fourteen rating,” Tregonsee said, as the Tellurian finished his story. “We have several spares here; and, while they all have regulation Patrol mountings, it would take much less time to change mounts than to overhaul your machine.”

      “That’s so, too—I never thought of the possibility of your having spares on hand—and we’ve lost a lot of time already. How long will it take?”

      “One shift of labor to change mounts; at least eight to rebuild yours enough to be sure that it will get you home.”

      “We’ll change mounts, then, by all means. I’ll call the boys . . . .”

      “There is no need of that. We are amply equipped, and neither you humans nor the Velantians could handle our tools.” Tregonsee made no visible motion nor could Kinnison perceive a break in his thought, but while he was conversing with the Tellurian half a dozen of his blocky Rigellians had dropped whatever they had been doing and were scuttling toward the visiting ship. “Now I must leave you for a time, as I have one more trip to make this afternoon.”

      “Is there anything I can do to help you?” asked Kinnison.

      “No,” came the definite negative. “I will return in three hours, as well before sunset the wind makes it impossible to get even a ground-car into the port. I will then show you why you can be of little assistance to us.”

      Kinnison spent those three hours watching the Rigellians work upon the Bergenholm; there was no need for direction or advice. They knew what to do and they did it. Those tiny, hair-like fingers, literally hundreds of them at once, performed delicate tasks with surpassing nicety and dispatch; when it came to heavy tasks the larger digits or even whole arms wrapped themselves around the work and, with the solid bracing of the four block-like legs, exerted forces that even vanBuskirk’s giant frame could not have approached.

      As the end of the third hour neared, Kinnison watched with a spy-ray—there were no windows in Trenco space-port—the leeward groundway of the structure. In spite of the weird antics of Trenco’s sun—gyrating, jumping, appearing and disappearing—he knew that it was going down. Soon he saw the ground-car coming in, scuttling crabwise, nose into the wind but actually moving backward and sidewise. Although the “seeing” was very poor, at this close range the distortion was minimized and he could see that, like its parent craft, the ground-car was a blister. Its edges actually touched the ground all around, sloping upward and over the top in such a smooth reverse curve that the harder the wind blew the more firmly was the vehicle pressed downward.

      The ground-flap came up just enough to clear the car’s top and the tiny craft crept up. But before the landing-bars could seize her the ground-car struck an eddy from the flap—an eddy in a medium which, although gaseous, was at that velocity practically solid. Earth blasted away in torrents from the leading edge, the car leaped bodily into the air and was flung away, end СКАЧАТЬ