First Lensman, E. E. Smith [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

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 père 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 scatterbrained 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 Bennett as you are doing. The concensus is that the Boskonians know just as much about our military affairs as we know about theirs⁠—no more.”

“It would be too much to expect them to be dumb enough to figure us as dumb enough to depend only on our visible Grand Fleet, after the warning they gave us at the Hill,” Kinnison admitted.

“Yes. What worries me most is that they had a running start.”

“Not enough to count,” the Port Admiral declared. “We can out-produce ’em and out-fight ’em.”

“Don’t be over-optimistic. You can’t deny them the possession of brains, ability, manpower and resources at least equal to ours.”

“I don’t have to.” Kinnison remained obstinately cheerful. “Morale, my boy, is what counts. Manpower and tonnage and firepower are important, of course, but morale has won every war in history. And our morale right now is higher than a cat’s back⁠—higher than any time since John Paul Jones⁠—and getting higher by the day.”

“Yes?” The question was monosyllabic but potent.

“Yes. I mean just that⁠—yes. From what we know of their system they can’t have the morale we’ve got. Anything they can do we can do more of and better. What you’ve got, Virge, is a bad case of ingrowing nerves. You’ve never been to Bennett, in spite of the number of times I’ve asked you to. I say take time right now and come along⁠—it’ll be good for what ails you. It will also be a very fine thing for Bennett and for the Patrol⁠—you’ll find yourself no stranger there.”

“You may have something there⁠ ⁠… I’ll do it.”

Port Admiral and First Lensman went to Bennett, not in the Chicago or other superdreadnaught, but in a two-man speedster. This was necessary because space-travel, as far as that planet was concerned, was a strictly one-way affair except for Lensmen. Only Lensmen could leave Bennett, under any circumstances or for any reason whatever. There was no outgoing mail, express, or freight. Even the war-vessels of the Fleet, while on practice maneuvers outside the bottle-tight envelopes surrounding the system, were so screened that no unauthorized communication could possibly be made.

“In other words,” Kinnison finished explaining, “we slapped on everything anybody could think of, including Bergenholm and Rularion; and believe me, brother, that was a lot of stuff.”

“But wouldn’t the very fact of such rigid restrictions operate against morale? It is a truism of psychology that imprisonment, like everything else, is purely relative.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told Rularion, except I used simpler and rougher language. You know how sarcastic and superior he is, even when he’s wrong?”

“How I know!”

“Well, when he’s right he’s too damned insufferable for words. You’d’ve thought he was talking