Second stage Lensman Read Online Free PDF Page A

can."
         "But why didn't he stop you before you fellows smashed Boskone?" Lacy
    demanded, exasperated.
         "I hope you're right, Cris—it sounds reasonable," Kinnison said, thoughtfully.
    Then, to Lacy:
         "That's an easy one to answer, doctor. Because knowledge that comes the hard
    way is knowledge that really sticks with you. If he had drawn me a diagram before, it
    wouldn't have helped, the next time I get into a jam. This way it will. I've got to learn how
    to think, if it cracks my skull.
         "Really think," he went on, more to himself than to the other three. "To think so it
    counts."
         "Well, what are we going to do about it?" Haynes was— he had to be, to get
    where he was and to stay where he was—quick on the uptake. "Or, more specifically,
    what are you going to do and what am I going to do?"
         "What I am going to do will take a bit of mulling over," Kinnison replied, slowly.
    "Find some more leads and trace them up, is the best that occurs to me right now. Your
    job and procedure are rather clearer. You remarked out in space that Boskone knew
    that Tellus was very strongly held. That statement, of course, is no longer true."
         "Huh?" Haynes half-pulled himself up from the davenport, then sank back.
    "Why?" he demanded.
         "Because we used the negasphere—a negative-matter bomb of planetary anti-
    mass—to wipe out Jalte's planet, and because we smashed Jarnevon between two
    colliding planets," the Lensman explained, concisely. "Can the present defenses of
    Tellus cope with either one of those offensives?"
         "I'm afraid not . . . no," the Port Admiral admitted. "But . . ."
         "We can admit no 'buts', admiral," Kinnison declared, with grim finality. "Having
    used those weapons, we must assume that the Boskonian scientists—we'll have to
    keep on calling them 'Boskonians', I suppose, until we find a truer name—had recorders
    on them and have now duplicated them. Tellus must be made safe against anything we
    have ever used; against, as well, everything that, by the wildest stretch of the
    imagination, we can conceive of the enemy using."
         "You're right. . . I can see that," Haynes nodded.
         "We've been underestimating them right along," Kinnison went on. "At first we
    thought they were merely organized outlaws and pirates. Then, when it was forced upon
    us that they could match us—overmatch us in some things—we still wouldn't admit that
    they must be as large and as wide-spread as we are—galactic in scope. We know now
    that they were wider-spread than we are. Inter-galactic. They penetrated into our
    galaxy, riddled it, before we knew that theirs was inhabited or inhabitable. Right?"
          "To a hair, although I never thought of it in exactly that way before."
         "None of us have—mental cowardice. And they have the advantage," Kinnison
    continued, inexorably, "in knowing that our Prime Base is on Tellus; whereas, if
    Jarnevon was not in fact theirs, we have no idea whatever where it is. And another
    point. Was that fleet of theirs a planetary outfit?"
         "Well, Jarnevon was a big planet, and the Eich were a mighty warlike race."
         "Quibbling a bit, aren't you, chief?"
         "Uh-huh," Haynes admitted, somewhat sheepishly. "The probability is very great
    that no one planet either built or maintained that fleet."
         "And that leads us to expect what?"
         "Counter-attack. In force. Everything they can shove this way. However, they've
    got to rebuild their fleet, besides designing and building the new stuff. We'll have time
    enough, probably, if we get started right now."
         "But, after all, Jarnevon may have been their vital spot," Lacy submitted.
         "Even if that were true, which it probably isn't," the now thoroughly convinced
    Port Admiral sided in with Kinnison, "it doesn't mean a thing, Sawbones. If they should
    blow Tellus out of space it wouldn't kill the