First Lensman by E. E. Smith (books to read to get smarter .TXT) 📗

see. You will do, Olmstead, if you live. There's a test, you know."

"They told me there would be."

"Well, aren't you curious to know what it is?"

"Not particularly. You passed it, didn't you?"

"What do you mean by that crack?" Herkimer leaped to his feet; his eyes, smoldering before, now ablaze.

"Exactly what I said, no more and no less. You may read into it anything you please." Samms' voice was as cold as were his eyes. "You picked me out because of what I am. Did you think that moving upstairs would make a boot-licker out of me?"

"Not at all." Herkimer sat down and took from a drawer two small, transparent, vaguely capsule-like tubes, each containing a few particles of purple dust. "You know what this is?"

"I can guess."

"Each of these is a good, heavy jolt; about all that a strong man with a strong heart can stand. Sit down. Here is one dose. Pull the cover, stick the capsule up one nostril, squeeze the ejector, and sniff. If you can leave this other dose sitting here on the desk you will live, and thus pass the test. If you can't, you die."

Samms sat, and pulled, and squeezed, and sniffed.

His forearms hit the desk with a thud. His hands clenched themselves into fists, the tight-stretched tendons standing boldly out. His face turned white. His eyes jammed themselves shut; his jaw-muscles sprang into bands and lumps as they clamped his teeth hard together. Every voluntary muscle in his body went into a rigor as extreme as that of death itself. His heart pounded; his breathing became stertorous.

This was the dreadful "muscle-lock" so uniquely characteristic of thionite; the frenzied immobility of the ultimately passionate satisfaction of every desire.

The Galactic Patrol became for him an actuality; a force for good pervading all the worlds of all the galaxies of all the universes of all existing space-time continual. He knew what the Lens was, and why. He understood time and space. He knew the absolute beginning and the ultimate end.

He also saw things and did things over which it is best to draw a kindly veil, for every desire—mental or physical, open or sternly suppressed, noble or base—that Virgil Samms had ever had was being completely satisfied. EVERY DESIRE.

As Samms sat there, straining motionlessly upon the verge of death through sheer ecstasy, a door opened and Senator Morgan entered the room. Herkimer started, almost imperceptibly, as he turned—had there been, or not, an instantaneously-suppressed flash of guilt in those now completely clear and frank brown eyes?

"Hi, Chief; come in and sit down. Glad to see you—this is not exactly my idea of fun."

"No? When did you stop being a sadist?" The senator sat down beside his minion's desk, the fingertips of his left hand began soundlessly to drum. "You wouldn't have, by any chance, been considering the idea of...?" He paused significantly.

"What an idea." Herkimer's act—if it was an act—was flawless. "He's too good a man to waste."

"I know it, but you didn't act as though you did. I've never seen you come out such a poor second in an interview ... and it wasn't because you didn't know to start with just what kind of a tiger he was—that's why he was selected for this job. And it would have been so easy to give him just a wee bit more."

"That's preposterous, Chief, and you know it."

"Do I? However, it couldn't have been jealousy, because he isn't being considered for your job. He won't be over you, and there's plenty of room for everybody. What was the matter? Your bloodthirstiness wouldn't have taken you that far, under these circumstances. Come clean, Herkimer."

"Okay—I hate the whole damned family!" Herkimer burst out, viciously.

"I see. That adds up." Morgan's face cleared, his fingers became motionless. "You can't make the Samms wench and aren't in position to skin her alive, so you get allergic to all her relatives. That adds up, but let me tell you something." His quiet, level voice carried more of menace than most men's loudest threats. "Keep your love life out of business and keep that sadistic streak under control. Don't let anything like this happen again."

"I won't, Chief. I got off the beam—but he made me so damn mad!"

"Certainly. That's exactly what he was trying to do. Elementary. If he could make you look small it would make him look big, and he just about did. But watch now, he's coming to."

Samms' muscles relaxed. He opened his eyes groggily; then, as a wave of humiliated realization swept over his consciousness, he closed them again and shuddered. He had always thought himself pretty much of a man; how could he possibly have descended to such nauseous depths of depravity, of turpitude, of sheer moral degradation? And yet every cell of his being was shrieking its demand for more; his mind and his substance alike were permeated by an over-mastering craving to experience again the ultimate thrills which they had so tremendously, so outrageously enjoyed.

There was another good jolt lying right there on the desk in front of him, even though thionite-sniffers always saw to it that no more of the drug could be obtained without considerable physical exertion; which exertion would bring them to their senses. If he took that jolt it would kill him. What of it? What was death? What good was life, except to enjoy such thrills as he had just had and was about to have again? And besides, thionite couldn't kill him. He was a super-man; he had just proved it!

He straightened up and reached for the capsule; and that effort, small as it was, was enough to bring First Lensman Virgil Samms back under control. The craving, however, did not decrease. Rather, it increased.

Months were to pass before he could think of thionite, or even of the color purple, without a spasmodic catching of the breath and a tightening of every muscle. Years were to pass before he could forget, even partially, the theretofore unsuspected dwellers in the dark recesses of his own mind. Nevertheless, from the store of whatever it was that made him what he was, Virgil Samms drew strength. Thumb and forefinger touched the capsule, but instead of picking it up, he pushed it across the desk toward Herkimer.

"Put it away, bub. One whiff of that stuff will last me for life." He stared unfathomably at the secretary, then turned to Morgan and nodded. "After all, he did not say that he ever passed this or any other test. He just didn't contradict me when I said it."

With a visible effort Herkimer remained silent, but Morgan did not.

"You talk too much, Olmstead. Can you stand up yet?"

Gripping the desk with both hands, Samms heaved himself to his feet. The room was spinning and gyrating; every individual thing in it was moving in a different and impossible orbit; his already splintered skull threatened more and more violently to emulate a fragmentation bomb; black and white spots and vari-colored flashes filled his cone of vision. He wrenched one hand free, then the other—and collapsed back into the chair.

"Not yet—quite," he admitted, through stiff lips.

Although he was careful not to show it, Morgan was amazed—not that the man had collapsed, but that he had been able so soon to lift himself even an inch. "Tiger" was not the word; this Olmstead must be seven-eighths dinosaur.

"It takes a few minutes; longer for some, not so long for others," Morgan said, blandly. "But what makes you think Herkimer here never took one of the same?"

"Huh?" Again two pairs of eyes locked and held; and this time the duel was longer and more pregnant. "What do you think? How do you suppose I lived to get as old as I am now? By being dumb?"

Morgan unwrapped a Venerian cigar, settled it comfortably between his teeth, lit it, and drew three slow puffs before replying.

"Ah, a student. An analytical mind," he said, evenly, and—apparently—irrelevantly. "Let's skip Herkimer for the moment. Try your hand on me."

"Why not? From what we hear out in the field, you have always been in the upper brackets, so you probably never had to prove that you could take it or let it alone. My guess would be, though, that you could."

"The good old oil, eh?" Morgan allowed his face and voice to register a modicum, precisely metered, of contempt. "How to get along in the world; Lesson One: Butter up the Boss."

"Nice try, Senator, but I'll have to score you a clean miss." Samms, now back almost to normal, grinned companionably. "We both know that if I were still in the kindergarten I wouldn't be here now."

"I'll let that one pass—this time." Under that look and tone Morgan's underlings were wont to cringe, but this Olmstead was not the cringing type. "Don't do it again. It might not be safe."

"Oh, it would be safe enough—for today, at least. There are two factors which you are very carefully ignoring. First, I haven't accepted the job yet."

"Are you innocent enough to think you'll get out of this building alive if I don't accept you?"

"If you want to call it innocence, yes. Oh, I know you've got gunnies all over the place, but they don't mean a thing."

"No?" Morgan's voice was silkily venomous.

"No." Olmstead was completely unimpressed. "Put yourself in my place. You know I've been around a long time; and not just around my mother. I was weaned quite a number of years ago."

"I see. You don't scare worth a damn. A point. And you are testing me, just as I am testing you. Another point. I'm beginning to like you, George. I think I know what your second point is, but let's have it, just for the record."

"I'm sure you do. Any man, to be my boss, has got to be at least as good a man as I am. Otherwise I take his job away from him."

"Fair enough. By God, I do like you, Olmstead!" Morgan, his big face wreathed in smiles, got up, strode over, and shook hands vigorously; and Samms, scan as he would, could not even hazard a guess as to how much—if any—of this enthusiasm was real. "Do you want the job? And when can you go to work?"

"Yes, sir. Two hours ago, sir."

"That's fine!" Morgan boomed. Although he did not comment upon it, he noticed and understood the change in the form of address. "Without knowing what the job is or how much it pays?"

"Neither is important, sir, at the moment." Samms, who had got up easily enough to shake hands, now shook his head experimentally. Nothing rattled. Good—he was in pretty good shape already. "As to the job, I can either do it or find out why it can't be done. As to pay, I've heard you called a lot of things, but 'piker' was never one of them."

"Very well. I predict that you will go far." Morgan again shook the Lensman's hand; and again Samms could not evaluate the Senator's sincerity. "Tuesday afternoon. New York Spaceport. Space-ship Virgin Queen. Report to Captain Willoughby in the dock office at fourteen hundred hours. Stop at the cashier's office on your way out. Good-bye."

CHAPTER 9

Piracy was rife. There was no suspicion, however, nor would there be for many years, that there was anything of very large purpose about the business. Murgatroyd was simply a Captain Kidd of space; and even if he were actually connected with Galactic Spaceways, that fact would not be surprising. Such relationships had always existed; the most ferocious and dreaded pirates of the ancient world worked in full partnership with the First Families of that world.

Virgil Samms was thinking of pirates and of piracy when he left Senator Morgan's office. He was still thinking of them while he was reporting to Roderick Kinnison. Hence:

"But that's enough about this stuff and me, Rod. Bring me up to date on Operation Boskone."

"Branching out no end. Your guess was right that Spaceways' losses to pirates are probably phony. But it wasn't the known attacks—that is, those cases in which the ship was found, later, with some or most of the personnel alive—that gave us the real information. They were all pretty much alike. But when we studied the total disappearances we really hit the jack-pot."

"That doesn't sound just right, but I'm listening."

"You'd better, since it goes farther than even you suspected. It was no trouble at all to get the passenger lists and the names of the crews of the independent ships that were lost without a trace. Their relatives and friends—we concentrated mostly on wives—could be located, except for the usual few who moved around so much that they got lost. Spacemen average young, you know, and their wives are still younger. Well, these young women got jobs, most of them remarried, and so on. In short, normal."

"And in the case of Spaceways, not