First Lensman, E. E. Smith [early readers TXT] 📗

Deep under The Hill, Roderick Kinnison swore fulminantly at the sheer physical impossibility of getting out of that furiously radiating mountain in a hurry. At New York Spaceport, however, Mason Northrop and Jack Kinnison not only could hurry, but did.

"Where are you, Jill?" Northrop demanded presently. "What kind of a car are you in?"

"Quite near Stanhope Circle." In communication with her friends at last, Jill regained a measure of her usual poise. "Within eight or ten blocks, I'm sure. I'm in a black Wilford sedan, last year's model. I didn't get a chance to see its license plates."

"That helps a lot!" Jack grunted, savagely. "A ten-block radius covers a hell of a lot of territory, and half the cars in town are black Wilford sedans."

"Shut up, Jack! Go ahead, Jill—tell us all you can, and keep on sending us anything that will help at all."

"I kept the right and left turns and distances straight for quite a while—about twenty blocks—that's how I know it was Stanhope Circle. I don't know how many times he went around the circle, though, or which way he went when he left it. After leaving the Circle, the traffic was very light, and here there doesn't seem to be any traffic at all. That brings us up to date. You'll know as well as I do what happens next."

With Jill, the Lensmen knew that Herkimer drove his car up to the curb and stopped—parked without backing up. He got out and hauled the girl's limp body out of the car, displacing the hood enough to free one eye. Good! Only one other car was visible; a bright yellow convertible parked across the street, about half a block ahead. There was a sign—"NO PARKING ON THIS SIDE 7 TO 10." The building toward which he was carrying her was more than three stories high, and had a number—one, four—if he would only swing her a little bit more, so that she could see the rest of it—one four-seven-nine!

"Rushton Boulevard, you think, Mase?"

"Could be. Fourteen seventy nine would be on the downtown-traffic side. Blast!"

Into the building, where two masked men locked and barred the door behind them. "And keep it locked!" Herkimer ordered. "You know what to do until I come back down."

Into an elevator, and up. Through massive double doors into a room, whose most conspicuous item of furniture was a heavy steel chair, bolted to the floor. Two masked men got up and placed themselves behind that chair.

Jill's strength was coming back fast; but not fast enough. The cloak was removed. Her ankles were tied firmly, one to each front leg of the chair. Herkimer threw four turns of rope around her torso and the chair's back, took up every inch of slack, and tied a workmanlike knot. Then, still without a word, he stood back and lighted a cigarette. The last trace of paralysis disappeared, but the girl's mad struggles, futile as they were, were not allowed to continue.

"Put a double hammerlock on her," Herkimer directed, "but be damned sure not to break anything at this stage of the game. That comes later."

Jill, more furiously angry than frightened until now, locked her teeth to keep from screaming as the pressure went on. She could not bend forward to relieve the pain; she could not move; she could only grit her teeth and glare. She was beginning to realize, however, what was actually in store; that Herkimer Herkimer Third was in fact a monster whose like she had never known.

He stepped quietly forward, gathered up a handful of fabric, and heaved. The strapless and backless garment, in no way designed to withstand such stresses, parted; squarely across at the upper strand of rope. He puffed his cigarette to a vivid coal—took it in his fingers—there was an audible hiss and a tiny stink of burning flesh as the glowing ember was extinguished in the clear, clean skin below the girl's left armpit. Jill flinched then, and shrieked desperately, but her tormentor was viciously unmoved.

"That was just to settle any doubt as to whether or not I mean business. I'm all done fooling around with you. I want to know two things. First, everything you know about the Lens; where it comes from, what it really is, and what it does besides what your press-agents advertise. Second, what really happened at the Ambassadors' Ball. Start talking. The faster you talk, the less you'll get hurt."

"You can't get away with this, Herkimer." Jill tried desperately to pull her shattered nerves together. "I'll be missed—traced...." She paused, gasping. If she told him that the Lensmen were in full and continuous communication with her—and if he believed it—he would kill her right then. She switched instantly to another track. "That double isn't good enough to fool anybody who really knows me."

"She doesn't have to be." The man grinned venomously. "Nobody who knows you will get close enough to her to tell the difference. This wasn't done on the spur of the moment, Jill; it was planned—minutely. You haven't got the chance of the proverbial celluloid dog in hell."

"Jill!" Jack Kinnison's thought stabbed in. "It isn't Rushton—fourteen seventy-nine is a two-story. What other streets could it be?"

"I don't know...." She was not in very good shape to think.

"Damnation! Got to get hold of somebody who knows the streets. Spud, grab a hacker at the Circle and I'll Lens Parker...." Jack's thought snapped off as he tuned to a local Lensman.

Jill's heart sank. She was starkly certain now that the Lensmen could not find her in time.

"Tighten up a little, Eddie. You, too, Bob."

"Stop it! Oh, God, STOP IT!" The unbearable agony relaxed a little. She watched in horrified fascination a second glowing coal approach her bare right side. "Even if I do talk you'll kill me anyway. You couldn't let me go now."

"Kill you, my pet? Not if you behave yourself. We've got a lot of planets the Patrol never heard of, and you could keep a man interested for quite a while, if you really tried. And if you beg hard enough maybe I'll let you try. However, I'd get just as much fun out of killing you as out of the other, so it's up to you. Not sudden death, of course. Little things, at first, like we've been doing. A few more touches of warmth here and there—so....

"Scream as much as you please. I enjoy it, and this room is sound-proof. Once more, boys, about half an inch higher this time ... up ... steady ... down. We'll have half an hour or so of this stuff"—Herkimer knew that to the quivering, sensitive, highly imaginative girl his words would be practically as punishing as the atrocious actualities themselves—"then I'll do things to your finger-nails and toe-nails, beginning with burning slivers of double-base flare powder and working up. Then your eyes—or no, I'll save them until last, so you can watch a couple of Venerian slasher-worms work on you, one on each leg, and a Martian digger on your bare belly."

Gripping her hair firmly in his left hand, he forced her head back and down; down almost to her hard-held hands. His right hand, concealing something which he had not mentioned and which was probably starkly unmentionable, approached her taut-stretched throat.

"Talk or not, just as you please." The voice was utterly callous, as chill as the death she now knew he was so willing to deal. "But listen. If you elect to talk, tell the truth. You won't lie twice. I'll count to ten. One."

Jill uttered a gurgling, strangling noise and he lifted her head a trifle.

"Can you talk now?"

"Yes."

"Two."

Helpless, immobile, scared now to a depth of terror she had never imagined it possible to feel, Jill fought her wrenched and shaken mind back from insanity's very edge; managed with a pale tongue to lick bloodless lips. Pops Kinnison always said a man could die only once, but he didn't know ... in battle, yes, perhaps ... but she had already died a dozen times—but she'd keep on dying forever before she'd say a word. But—

"Tell him, Jill!" Northrop's thought beat at her mind. He, her lover, was unashamedly frantic; as much with sheer rage as with sympathy for her physical and mental anguish. "For the nineteenth time I say tell him! We've just located you—Hancock Avenue—we'll be there in two minutes!"

"Yes, Jill, quit being a damned stubborn jackass and tell him!" Jack Kinnison's thought bit deep; but this time, strangely enough, the girl felt no repugnance at his touch. There was nothing whatever of the lover; nor of the brother, except of the fraternity of arms. She belonged. She would come out of this brawl right side up or none of them would. "Tell the goddam rat the truth!" Jack's thought drove on. "It won't make any difference—he won't live long enough to pass it on!"

"But I can't—I won't!" Jill stormed. "Why, Pops Kinnison would...."

"Not this time I wouldn't, Jill!" Samms' thought tried to come in, too, but the Port Admiral's vehemence was overwhelming. "No harm—he's doing this strictly on his own—if Morgan had had any idea he'd've killed him first. Start talking or I'll spank you to a rosy blister!"

They were to laugh, later, at the incongruity of that threat, but it did produce results.

"Nine." Herkimer grinned wolfishly, in sadistic anticipation.

"Stop it—I'll tell!" she screamed. "Stop it—take that thing away—I can't stand it—I'll tell!" She burst into racking, tearing sobs.

"Steady." Herkimer put something in his pocket, then slapped her so viciously that fingers-long marks sprang into red relief upon the chalk-white background of her cheek. "Don't crack up; I haven't started to work on you yet. What about that Lens?"

She gulped twice before she could speak. "It comes from—ulp!—Arisia. I haven't got one myself, so I don't know very much—ulp!—about it at first hand, but from what the boys tell me it must be...."

Outside the building three black forms arrowed downward. Northrop and young Kinnison stopped at the sixth level; Costigan went on down to take care of the guards.

"Bullets, not beams," the Irishman reminded his younger fellows. "We'll have to clean up the mess without leaving a trace, so don't do any more damage to the property than you absolutely have to."

Neither made any reply; they were both too busy. The two thugs standing behind the steel chair, being armed openly, went first; then Jack put a bullet through Herkimer's head. But Northrop was not content with that. He slid the pin to "full automatic" and ten more heavy slugs tore into the falling body before it struck the floor.

Three quick slashes and the girl was free.

"Jill!"

"Mase!"

Locked in each other's arms, straining together, no bystander would have believed that this was their first kiss. It was plainly—yes, quite spectacularly—evident, however, that it would not be their last.

Jack, blushing furiously, picked up the cloak and flung it at the oblivious couple.

"P-s-s-t! P-s-s-t! Jill! Wrap 'em up!" he whispered, urgently. "All the top brass in space is coming at full emergency blast—there'll be scrambled eggs all over the place any second now—Mase! Damn your thick, hard skull, snap out of it! He's always frothing at the mouth about her running around half naked and if he sees her like this—especially with you—he'll simply have a litter of lizards! You'll get a million black spots and seven hundred years in the clink! That's better—'bye now—I'll see you up at New York Spaceport."

Jack Kinnison dashed to the nearest window, threw it open, and dived headlong out of the building.

The employment office of any concern with personnel running into the hundreds of thousands is a busy place indeed, even when its plants are all on Tellus and its working conditions are as nearly ideal as such things can be made. When that firm's business is Colonial, however, and its working conditions are only a couple of degrees removed from slavery, procurement of personnel is a first-magnitude problem; the Personnel Department, like Alice in Wonderland, must run as fast as it can go in order to stay where it is. Thus the "Help Wanted" advertisements of Uranium, Incorporated covered the planet Earth with blandishment and guile; and thus for twelve hours of every day and for seven days of every week the employment offices of Uranium, Inc. were filled with men—mostly the scum of Earth.

There were, of course, exceptions; one of which strode through the motley group of waiting men and thrust a card through the "Information" wicket. He was a chunky-looking individual, appearing shorter than his actual five feet nine because of a hundred and ninety pounds of weight—even though every pound was placed exactly where it would do the most good. He looked—well, slouchy—and his mien was sullen.

"Birkenfeld—by appointment," he growled through the wicket, in a voice which could have been pleasantly deep.

The coolly efficient blonde manipulated plugs. "Mr. George W. Jones, sir, by appointment.... Thank