thionite.
“Excellent,” the cold thought returned. “There will be more coming. End communication.”
By main force and awkwardness, Ginnison held Gauntluth’s mind in thrall. He now had his second line to the Boskonian base, but Gauntluth, although taken by surprise at first, was now fighting Ginnison’s mental control with every mega-erg of his hard Kalonian mind.
“Think you can succeed, even now?” sneered the still-rigid Kalonian mentally. And, with a tremendous effort of will, he moved a pinkie a fraction of a millimeter to cover a photocell. Every alarm in the building went off.
Ginnison’s mind clamped down instantly to paralyze the hapless zwilnik. [See above.] With a mirthless smile on his face, Ginnison said: “I permitted that as a gesture of futility. You did not, as I suggested, contemplate a hamburger.”
“Bah!” came Gauntluth’s thought. “That childishness?”
“Not childishness,” said the Lensman coldly. “A hamburger is so constructed that most of the meat is hidden by the bun. My resources are far greater than those which appear around the edge.”
Then Ginnison invaded Gauntluth’s mind and took every iota of relevant information therein, following which, he hurled a bolt of mental energy calculated to slay any living thing. Perforce, Gauntluth ceased to be a living thing.
Meanwhile, from a hidden and shielded barracks in a subbasement of the Queen Ardis came a full squadron of armed and armored space-thugs, swarming up stairways and elevators to reach the late Gauntluth’s suite. Closer, and, at this point in space and time, far more dangerous, were the DeLameter-armed, thought-screened executives and plug-uglies who were even now battering down the doors of the suite.
Calmly and with deliberation, Ginnison flashed a thought to Woozle: “HE-E-E-ELP!”
“At speed, Ginnison,” came the reply.
Ginnison went into action. Snatching the hermetically sealed thionite container from the desk at which lay the cooling corpse of Gauntluth, he broke the seal and emptied the contents into the intake vent of the air conditioner. He had, of course, taken the precaution of putting anti-thionite plugs in his nostrils; all he had to do was to keep his mouth shut and he would be perfectly safe.
The impalpable purple powder permeated the atmosphere of the hotel. There was enough of the active principle of that deadly drug to turn on fifty million people; since the slightest overdose could kill, every person in the hotel not wearing anti-thionite plugs or space armor died in blissful ecstasy. Most of Gauntluth’s thugs were wearing one or the other, but at least the Galactic Patrol need no longer worry about interference from innocent bystanders.
With lightning speed, Ginnison grabbed a heavy-caliber, water-cooled machine rifle that just happened to be standing near Gauntluth’s desk, swiveled it to face the doors of the office, and waited.
At the same moment, a borazon-hard, bronze-berylliumsteel-prowed landing craft smashed into the side of the Hotel Queen Ardis at the fifteenth floor. Steel girders, ferroconcrete walls, and brick facing alike splattered aside as that hard-driven, specially-designed space boat, hitting its reverse jets at the last second to bring it to a dead halt, crashed into and through the bridal suite. The port slammed open and from it leaped, strode, jumped and strutted a company of Dutch Valerians in full space armor, swinging their mighty thirty-pound space axes.
No bifurcate race, wherever situate, will voluntarily face a Valerian in battle. Those mighty warriors, bred in a gravitational field three times that of Tellus, have no ruth for any of Civilization’s foes. The smallest Valerian can, in full armor, do a standing high jump of nearly fifteen feet in a field of one Tellurian gravity; he can feint, parry, lunge, swing, and duck with a speed utterly impossible for any of the lesser breeds of man. Like all jocks, they are not too bright.
Led by
“Excellent,” the cold thought returned. “There will be more coming. End communication.”
By main force and awkwardness, Ginnison held Gauntluth’s mind in thrall. He now had his second line to the Boskonian base, but Gauntluth, although taken by surprise at first, was now fighting Ginnison’s mental control with every mega-erg of his hard Kalonian mind.
“Think you can succeed, even now?” sneered the still-rigid Kalonian mentally. And, with a tremendous effort of will, he moved a pinkie a fraction of a millimeter to cover a photocell. Every alarm in the building went off.
Ginnison’s mind clamped down instantly to paralyze the hapless zwilnik. [See above.] With a mirthless smile on his face, Ginnison said: “I permitted that as a gesture of futility. You did not, as I suggested, contemplate a hamburger.”
“Bah!” came Gauntluth’s thought. “That childishness?”
“Not childishness,” said the Lensman coldly. “A hamburger is so constructed that most of the meat is hidden by the bun. My resources are far greater than those which appear around the edge.”
Then Ginnison invaded Gauntluth’s mind and took every iota of relevant information therein, following which, he hurled a bolt of mental energy calculated to slay any living thing. Perforce, Gauntluth ceased to be a living thing.
Meanwhile, from a hidden and shielded barracks in a subbasement of the Queen Ardis came a full squadron of armed and armored space-thugs, swarming up stairways and elevators to reach the late Gauntluth’s suite. Closer, and, at this point in space and time, far more dangerous, were the DeLameter-armed, thought-screened executives and plug-uglies who were even now battering down the doors of the suite.
Calmly and with deliberation, Ginnison flashed a thought to Woozle: “HE-E-E-ELP!”
“At speed, Ginnison,” came the reply.
Ginnison went into action. Snatching the hermetically sealed thionite container from the desk at which lay the cooling corpse of Gauntluth, he broke the seal and emptied the contents into the intake vent of the air conditioner. He had, of course, taken the precaution of putting anti-thionite plugs in his nostrils; all he had to do was to keep his mouth shut and he would be perfectly safe.
The impalpable purple powder permeated the atmosphere of the hotel. There was enough of the active principle of that deadly drug to turn on fifty million people; since the slightest overdose could kill, every person in the hotel not wearing anti-thionite plugs or space armor died in blissful ecstasy. Most of Gauntluth’s thugs were wearing one or the other, but at least the Galactic Patrol need no longer worry about interference from innocent bystanders.
With lightning speed, Ginnison grabbed a heavy-caliber, water-cooled machine rifle that just happened to be standing near Gauntluth’s desk, swiveled it to face the doors of the office, and waited.
At the same moment, a borazon-hard, bronze-berylliumsteel-prowed landing craft smashed into the side of the Hotel Queen Ardis at the fifteenth floor. Steel girders, ferroconcrete walls, and brick facing alike splattered aside as that hard-driven, specially-designed space boat, hitting its reverse jets at the last second to bring it to a dead halt, crashed into and through the bridal suite. The port slammed open and from it leaped, strode, jumped and strutted a company of Dutch Valerians in full space armor, swinging their mighty thirty-pound space axes.
No bifurcate race, wherever situate, will voluntarily face a Valerian in battle. Those mighty warriors, bred in a gravitational field three times that of Tellus, have no ruth for any of Civilization’s foes. The smallest Valerian can, in full armor, do a standing high jump of nearly fifteen feet in a field of one Tellurian gravity; he can feint, parry, lunge, swing, and duck with a speed utterly impossible for any of the lesser breeds of man. Like all jocks, they are not too bright.
Led by
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