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

Dad. He started out with bare fists, and now he’s wading into ’em with spiked brass knuckles.”

“You can play that across the board,” Costigan agreed.

“He’s really giving ’em hell,” Northrop said, admiringly.

“Did you boys listen in on his Casper speech last night?”

They hadn’t; they had been too busy.

“I could give it to you on your Lenses, but I couldn’t reproduce the tone⁠—the exquisite way he lifted large pieces of hide and rubbed salt into the raw places. When he gets excited you know he can’t help but use voice, too, so I got some of it on a record. He starts out on voice, nice and easy, as usual; then goes onto his Lens without talking; then starts yelling as well as thinking. Listen:”

“You ought to have a Lensman president. You may not believe that any Lensman is, and as a matter of fact must be incorruptible. That is my belief, as you can feel for yourselves, but I cannot prove it to you. Only time can do that. It is a self-evident fact, however, which you can feel for yourselves, that a Lensman president could not lie to you except by word of mouth or in writing. You could demand from him at any time a Lensed statement upon any subject. Upon some matters of state he could and should refuse to answer; but not upon any question involving moral turpitude. If he answered, you would know the truth. If he refused to answer, you would know why and could initiate impeachment proceedings then and there.

“In the past there have been presidents who used that high office for low purposes; whose very memory reeks of malfeasance and corruption. One was impeached, others should have been. Witherspoon never should have been elected. Witherspoon should have been impeached the day after he was inaugurated. Witherspoon should be impeached now. We know, and at the Grand Rally at New York Spaceport three weeks from tonight we are going to prove, that Witherspoon is simply a minor cogwheel in the Morgan-Towne-Isaacson machine, ‘playing footsie’ at command with whatever group happens to be the highest bidder at the moment, irrespective of North America’s or the System’s good. Witherspoon is a gangster, a cheat, and a God damn liar, but he is of very little actual importance; merely a boodling nincompoop. Morgan is the real boss and the real menace, the Operating Engineer of the lowest-down, lousiest, filthiest, rottenest, most corrupt machine of murderers, extortionists, bribe-takers, panderers, perjurers, and other pimples on the body politic that has ever disgraced any so-called civilized government. Good night.”

“Wow!” Jack Kinnison yelped. “That’s high, even for him!”

“Just a minute, Jack,” Jill cautioned. “The other side, too. Listen to this choice bit from Senator Morgan.”

“It is not exactly hypnotism, but something infinitely worse; something that steals away your very minds; that makes anyone listening believe that white is yellow, red, purple, or pea-green. Until our scientists have checked this menace, until we have every wearer of that cursed Lens behind steel bars, I advise you in all earnestness not to listen to them at all. If you do listen your minds will surely be insidiously decomposed and broken; you will surely end your days gibbering in a padded cell.

“And murders? Murders! The feeble remnants of the gangs which our government has all but wiped out may perhaps commit a murder or so per year; the perpetrators of which are caught, tried, and punished. But how many of your sons and daughters has Roderick Kinnison murdered, either personally or through his uniformed slaves? Think! Read the record! Then make him explain, if he can; but do not listen to his lying, mind-destroying Lens.

“Democracy? Bah! What does ‘Rod the Rock’ Kinnison⁠—the hardest, most vicious tyrant, the most relentless and pitiless martinet ever known to any Armed Force in the long history of our world⁠—know of democracy? Nothing! He understands only force. All who oppose him in anything, however small, or who seek to reason with him, die without record or trace; and if he is not arrested, tried, and executed, all such will continue, tracelessly and without any pretense of trial, to die.

“But at bottom, even though he is not intelligent enough to realize it, he is merely one more in the long parade of tools of ruthless and predatory wealth, the monied powers. They, my friends, never sleep; they have only one God, one tenet, one creed⁠—the almighty credit. That is what they are after, and note how craftily, how stealthily, they have done and are doing their grabbing. Where is your representation upon that so-called Galactic Council? How did this criminal, this vicious, this outrageously unconstitutional, this irresponsible, uncontrollable, and dictatorial monstrosity come into being? How and when did you give this bloated colossus the right to establish its own currency⁠—to have the immeasurable effrontery to debar the solidest currency in the universe, the credit of North America, from interplanetary and interstellar commerce? Their aim is clear; they intend to tax you into slavery and death. Do not forget for one instant, my friends, that the power to tax is the power to destroy. The power to tax is the power to destroy. Our forefathers fought and bled and died to establish the principle that taxation without rep.⁠ ⁠…”

“And so on, for one solid hour!” Jill snarled, as she snapped the switch viciously. “How do you like them potatoes?”

“Hell’s⁠—Blazing⁠—Pinnacles!” This from Jack, silent for seconds, and:

“Rugged stuff⁠ ⁠… very, very rugged,” from Northrop. “No wonder you look sort of pooped, Spud. Being Chief Bodyguard must have developed recently into quite a chore.”

“You ain’t just snapping your choppers, bub,” was Costigan’s grimly flippant reply. “I’ve yelled for help⁠—in force.”

“So have I, and I’m going to yell again, right now,” Jack declared. “I don’t know whether Dad is going to kill Morgan or not⁠—and don’t give a damn⁠—but if Morgan isn’t going all out to kill Dad it’s because they’ve forgotten how to make bombs.”

He Lensed a call to Bergenholm.

“Yes, Jack?⁠ ⁠… I will refer