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

safety upon perfection of technique, not upon crude and dangerous mechanical devices.

"Well, since you're all so sure of it, I'll buy it," and the waiting went on.

Under the slight urge of the light and vagrant breeze, the red boat moved slowly across the water. A somnolent, lackadaisical youth, who very evidently cared nothing about where the boat went, sat in its stern, with his left arm draped loosely across the tiller. Nor was Ossmen any more concerned. His only care, apparently, was to avoid interference with the fishermen; his under-water jaunts were long, even for a Venerian, and he entered and left the water as smoothly as only a Venerian—or a seal—could.

"However, he could have, and probably has got, a capsule spy-ray detector," Jack offered, presently. "Or, since a Venerian can swallow anything one inch smaller than a kitchen stove, he could have a whole analyzing station stashed away in his stomach. Nobody's put a beam on him yet, have you?"

Nobody had.

"It might be smart not to. Watch him with 'scopes ... and when he gets up close to the box, better pull your beams off of it. DalNalten, I don't suppose it would be quite bright for you to go swimming down there too, would it?"

"Very definitely not, which is why I am up here and dry. None of them would go near it."

They waited, and finally Ossmen's purposeless wanderings brought him over the spot on the lake's bottom which was the target of so many Tellurian eyes. He gazed at the discarded lunch-box as incuriously as he had looked at so many other sunken objects, and swam over it as casually—and only the ultra-cameras caught what he actually did. He swam serenely on.

"The box is still there," the spy-ray men reported, "but the package is gone."

"Good!" Kinnison exclaimed, "Can you 'scopists see it on him?"

"Ten to one they can't," Jack said. "He swallowed it. I expected him to swallow it box and all."

"We can't see it, sir. He must have swallowed it."

"Make sure."

"Yes, sir.... He's back on the boat now and we've shot him from all angles. He's clean—nothing outside."

"Perfect! That means he isn't figuring on slipping it to somebody else in a crowd. This will be an ordinary job of shadowing from here on in, so I'll put in the umbrella."

The detector ships were recalled. The Chicago and the various other ships of war returned to their various bases. The pleasure craft floated away. But on the other hand there were bursts of activity throughout the forest for a mile or so back from the shores of the lake. Camps were struck. Hiking parties decided that they had hiked enough and began to retrace their steps. Lithe young men, who had been doing this and that, stopped doing it and headed for the nearest trails.

For Kinnison pere had erred slightly in saying that the rest of the enterprise was to be an ordinary job of shadowing. No ordinary job would do. With the game this nearly in the bag it must be made absolutely certain that no suspicion was aroused, and yet Samms had to have facts. Sharp, hard, clear facts; facts so self-evidently facts that no intelligence above idiot grade could possibly mistake them for anything but facts.

Wherefore Ossmen the Venerian was not alone thenceforth. From lake to hotel, from hotel to car, along the road, into and in and out of train and plane, clear to an ordinary-enough-looking building in an ordinary business section of New York, he was never alone. Where the traveling population was light, the Patrol operatives were few and did not crowd the Venerian too nearly; where dense, as in a metropolitan station, they ringed him three deep.

He reached his destination, which was of course spy-ray proofed, late Sunday night. He went in, remained briefly, came out.

"Shall we spy-ray him, Virge? Follow him? Or what?"

"No spy-rays. Follow him. Cover him like a blanket. At the usual time give him the usual spy-ray going-over, but not until then. This time, make it thorough. Make certain that he hasn't got it on him, in him, or in or around his house."

"There'll be nothing doing here tonight, will there?"

"No, it would be too noticeable. So you, Fred, and Lyman, take the first trick; the rest of us will get some sleep."

When the building opened Monday morning the Lensmen were back, with dozens of others, including Knobos of Mars. There were also present or nearby literally hundreds of the shrewdest, most capable detectives of Earth.

"So this is their headquarters—one of them at least," the Martian thought, studying the trickle of people entering and leaving the building. "It is as we thought, Dal, why we could never find it, why we could never trace any wholesaler backward. None of us has ever seen any of these persons before. Complete change of personnel per operation; probably inter-planetary. Long periods of quiescence. Check?"

"Check: but we have them now."

"Just like that, huh?" Jack Kinnison jibed; and from his viewpoint his idea was the more valid, for the wholesalers were very clever operators indeed.

From the more professional viewpoint of Knobos and DalNalten, however, who had fought a steadily losing battle so long, the task was not too difficult. Their forces were beautifully organized and synchronized; they were present in such overwhelming numbers that "tails" could be changed every fifteen seconds; long before anybody, however suspicious, could begin to suspect any one shadow. Nor was it necessary for the tails to signal each other, however inconspicuously, or to indicate any suspect at change-over time. Lensed thoughts directed every move, without confusion or error.

And there were tiny cameras with tremendous, protuberant lenses, the "long eyes" capable of taking wire-sharp close ups from five hundred feet; and other devices and apparatus and equipment too numerous to mention here.

Thus the wholesalers were traced and their transactions with the retail peddlers were recorded. And from that point on, even Jack Kinnison had to admit that the sailing was clear. These small fry were not smart, and their customers were even less so. None had screens or detectors or other apparatus; their every transaction could be and was recorded from a distance of many miles by the ultra-instruments of the Patrol. And not only the transactions. Clearly, unmistakeably, the purchaser was followed from buying to sniffing; nor was the time intervening ever long. Thionite, then as now, was bought at retail only to use, and the whole ghastly thing went down on tape and film. The gasping, hysterical appeal; the exchange of currency for drug; the headlong rush to a place of solitude; the rigid muscle-lock and the horribly ecstatic transports; the shaken, soul-searing recovery or the entranced death. It all went on record. It was sickening to have to record such things. More than one observer did sicken in fact, and had to be relieved. But Virgil Samms had to have concrete, positive, irrefutable evidence. He got it. Any possible jury, upon seeing that evidence, would know it to be the truth; no possible jury, after seeing that evidence, could bring in any verdict other than "guilty".

Oddly enough, Jack Kinnison was the only casualty of that long and hectic day. A man—later proved to be a middle-sized potentate of the underworld—who was not even under suspicion at the time, for some reason or other got the idea that Jack was after him. The Lensman had, perhaps, allowed some part of his long eye to show; a fast and efficient long-range telephoto lens is a devilishly awkward thing to conceal. At any rate the racketeer sent out a call for help, just in case his bodyguards would not be enough, and in the meantime his personal attendants rallied enthusiastically around.

They had two objects in view; One, to pass a knife expeditiously and quietly through young Kinnison's throat from ear to ear; and: Two, to tear the long eye apart and subject a few square inches of super-sensitive emulsion to the bright light of day. And if the Big Shot had known that the photographer was not alone, that the big, hulking bruiser a few feet away was also a bull, they might have succeeded.

Two of the four hoods reached Jack just fractionally ahead of the other two; one to seize the camera, the other to swing the knife. But Jack Kinnison was fast; fast of brain and nerve and muscle. He saw them coming. In three flashing motions he bent the barrel of the telephoto into a neat arc around the side of the first man's head, ducked frantically under the fiercely-driven knife, and drove the toe of his boot into the spot upon which prize-fighters like to have their rabbit-punches land. Both of those attackers lost interest promptly. One of them lost interest permanently; for a telephoto lens in barrel is heavy, very rigid, and very, very hard.

While Battling Jack was still off balance, the other two guards arrived—but so did Mason Northrop. Mase was not quite as fast as Jack was; but, as has been pointed out, he was bigger and much stronger. When he hit a man, with either hand, that man dropped. It was the same as being on the receiving end of the blow of a twenty-pound hammer falling through a distance of ninety seven and one-half feet.

The Lensmen had of course also yelled for help, and it took only a split second for a Patrol speedster to travel from any given point to any other in the same county. It took no time at all for that speedster to fill a couple of square blocks with patterns of force through which neither bullets nor beams could be driven. Therefore the battle ended as suddenly as it began; before more thugs, with their automatics and portables, could reach the scene.

Kinnison fils cursed and damned fulminantly the edict which had forbidden arms that day, and swore that he would never get out of bed again without strapping on at least two blasters; but he had to admit finally that he had nothing to squawk about. Kinnison pere explained quite patiently—for him—that all he had got out of the little fracas was a split lip, that young Northrop's hair wasn't even mussed, and that if everybody had been packing guns some scatter-brained young damn fool like him would have started blasting and blown everything higher than up—would have spoiled Samms' whole operation maybe beyond repair. Now would he please quit bellyaching and get to hell out?

He got.

"That buttons thionite up, don't you think?" Rod Kinnison asked. "And the lawyers will have plenty of time to get the case licked into shape and lined up for trial."

"Yes and no." Samms frowned in thought. "The evidence is complete, from original producer to ultimate consumer; but our best guess is that it will take years to get the really important offenders behind bars."

"Why? I thought you were giving them altogether too much time when you scheduled the blow-off for three weeks ahead of election."

"Because the drug racket is only a small part of it. We're going to break the whole thing at once, you know, and Mateese covers a lot more ground—murder, kidnapping, bribery, corruption, misfeasance—practically everything you can think of."

"I know. What of it?"

"Jurisdiction, among other things. With the President, over half of the Congress, much of the judiciary, and practically all of the political bosses and police chiefs of the Continent under indictment at once, the legal problem becomes incredibly difficult. The Patrol's Department of Law has been working on it twenty four hours a day, and the only thing they seem sure of is a long succession of bitterly-contested points of law. There are no precedents whatever."

"Precedents be damned! They're guilty and everybody knows it. We'll change the laws so that...."

"We will not!" Samms interrupted, sharply. "We want and we will have government by law, not by men. We have had too much of that already. Speed is not of the essence; justice very definitely is."

"'Crusader' Samms, now and forever! But I'll buy it, Virge—now let's get back down to earth. Operation Zwilnik is all set. Mateese is going good. Zabriska tied into Zwilnik. That leaves Operation Boskone, which is, I suppose, still getting nowhere fast."

The First Lensman did not reply. It was, and both men knew it. The shrewdest, most capable and experienced operatives of the Patrol had hit that wall with everything they had, and had simply bounced. Low-level trials had found no point of contact, no angle of approach. Middle level, ditto. George Olmstead, working at the highest possible level, was morally certain that he had found a point of contact, but had not been able to do anything with it.

"How about calling a Council conference on it?" Kinnison asked finally. "Or Bergenholm at least? Maybe he can get one of his hunches on it."

"I have discussed it with them all, just as I have with you. No one had anything constructive to offer, except to go ahead with