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

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СКАЧАТЬ think I'd be standing here talking to you?"

      * * * * *

      First Lensman Samms sat in his private quarters and thought.

      Lensman Dronvire of Rigel Four stood behind him and helped him think.

      Port Admiral Kinnison, with all his force and drive, began a comprehensive program of investigation, consolidation, expansion, redesigning, and rebuilding.

      Virgilia Samms went to a party practically every night. She danced, she flirted, she talked. How she talked! Meaningless small talk for the most part—but interspersed with artless questions and comments which, while they perhaps did not put her partner of the moment completely at ease, nevertheless did not quite excite suspicion.

      Conway Costigan, Lens under sleeve, undisguised but inconspicuous, rode the ether-lanes; observing minutely and reporting fully.

      Jack Kinnison piloted and navigated and computed for his friend and boat-mate:

      Mason Northrop; who, completely surrounded by breadboard hookups of new and ever-more-fantastic complexity, listened and looked; listened and tuned; listened and rebuilt; listened and—finally—took bearings and bearings and bearings with his ultra-sensitive loops.

      DalNalten and Knobos, with dozens of able helpers, combed the records of three worlds in a search which produced as a by-product a monumental "who's who" of crime.

      Skilled technicians fed millions of cards, stack by stack, into the most versatile and most accomplished machines known to the statisticians of the age.

      And Dr. Nels Bergenholm, abandoning temporarily his regular line of work, devoted his peculiar talents to a highly abstruse research in the closely allied field of organic chemistry.

      The walls of Virgil Samms' quarters became covered with charts, diagrams, and figures. Tabulations and condensations piled up on his desk and overflowed into baskets upon the floor. Until:

      "Lensman Olmstead, of Alphacent, sir," his secretary announced.

      "Good! Send him in, please."

      The stranger entered. The two men, after staring intently at each other for half a minute, smiled and shook hands vigorously. Except for the fact that the newcomer's hair was brown, they were practically identical!

      "I'm certainly glad to see you, George. Bergenholm passed you, of course?"

      "Yes. He says that he can match your hair to mine, even the individual white ones. And he has made me a wig-maker's dream of a wig."

      "Married?" Samms' mind leaped ahead to possible complications.

      "Widower, same as you. And...."

      "Just a minute—going over this once will be enough." He Lensed call after call. Lensmen in various parts of space became en rapport with him and thus with each other.

      "Lensmen—especially you, Rod—George Olmstead is here, and his brother Ray is available. I am going to work."

      "I still don't like it!" Kinnison protested. "It's too dangerous. I told the Universe I was going to keep you covered, and I meant it!"

      "That's what makes it perfectly safe. That is, if Bergenholm is sure that the duplication is close enough ..."

      "I am sure." Bergenholm's deeply resonant pseudo-voice left no doubt at all in any one of the linked minds. "The substitution will not be detected."

      "... and that nobody knows, George, or even suspects, that you got your Lens."

      "I am sure of that." Olmstead laughed quietly. "Also, nobody except us and your secretary knows that I am here. For a good many years I have made a specialty of that sort of thing. Photos, fingerprints, and so on have all been taken care of."

      "Good. I simply can not work efficiently here," Samms expressed what all knew to be the simple truth. "Dronvire is a much better analyst-synthesist than I am; as soon as any significant correlation is possible he will know it. We have learned that the Towne-Morgan crowd, Mackenzie Power, Ossmen Industries, and Interstellar Spaceways are all tied in together, and that thionite is involved, but we have not been able to get any further. There is a slight correlation—barely significant—between deaths from thionite and the arrival in the Solarian System of certain Spaceways liners. The fact that certain officials of the Earth-Screen Service have been and are spending considerably more than they earn sets up a slight but definite probability that they are allowing space-ships or boats from space-ships to land illegally. These smugglers carry contraband, which may or may not be thionite. In short, we lack fundamental data in every department, and it is high time for me to begin doing my share in getting it."

      "I don't check you, Virge." None of the Kinnisons ever did give up without a struggle. "Olmstead is a mighty smooth worker, and you are our prime coordinator. Why not let him keep up the counter-espionage—do the job you were figuring on doing yourself—and you stay here and boss it?"

      "I have thought of that, a great deal, and have...."

      "Because Olmstead can not do it," a hitherto silent mind cut in, decisively. "I, Rularion of North Polar Jupiter, say so. There are psychological factors involved. The ability to separate and to evaluate the constituent elements of a complex situation; the ability to make correct decisions without hesitation; as well as many others not as susceptible to concise statement, but which collectively could be called power of mind. How say you, Bergenholm of Tellus? For I have perceived in you a mind approximating in some respects the philosophical and psychological depth of my own." This outrageously egotistical declaration was, to the Jovian, a simple statement of an equally simple truth, and Bergenholm accepted it as such.

      "I agree. Olmstead probably could not succeed."

      "Well, then, can Samms?" Kinnison demanded.

      "Who knows?" came Bergenholm's mental shrug, and simultaneously:

      "Nobody knows whether I can or not, but I am going to try," and Samms ended—almost—the argument by asking Bergenholm and a couple of other Lensmen to come into his office and by taking off his Lens.

      "And that's another thing I don't like." Kinnison offered one last objection. "Without your Lens, anything can happen to you."

      "Oh, I won't have to be without it very long. And besides, Virgilia isn't the only one in the Samms family who can work better—sometimes—without a Lens."

      The Lensmen came in and, in a surprisingly short time, went out. A few minutes later, two Lensmen strolled out of Samms' inner office into the outer one.

      "Good-bye, George," the red-headed man said aloud, "and good luck."

      "Same to you, Chief," and the brown-haired one strode out.

      Norma the secretary was a smart girl, and observant. In her position, she had to be. Her eyes followed the man out, then scanned the Lensman from toe to crown.

      "I've never seen anything like it, Mr. Samms," she remarked then. "Except for the difference in coloring, and a sort of ... well, stoopiness ... he could be your identical twin. You two must have had a common ancestor—or several—not too far back, didn't you?"

      "We certainly did. Quadruple second cousins, you СКАЧАТЬ