Children of the lens

by E. E. Smith

XV.

Inch by inch, foot by foot, Kinnison fought his way back along the corpse-littered corridor. Under the ravening force of the attacker's beams his defensive screens flared into pyrotechnic splendor, but they did not go down. Fierce-driven metallic slugs spanged and whanged against the unyielding dureum of his armor, but that, too, held. Dureum is incredibly massive, unbelievably tough, unimaginably hard—against these qualities and against the thousands of horsepower driving that veritable tank and energizing its screens the zwilniks might just as well have been shining flashlights at him and throwing confetti. His immediate opponents could not touch him, but the Boskonians were bringing up reserves that he didn't like a little bit; mobile projectors with whose energies even his screens could not cope.

He had, however, one great advantage over his enemies. He had the sense of perception; they did not. He could see them, but they could not see him. All he had to do was to keep at least one opaque wall between them until he was securely behind the mobile screens, powered by the stupendous generators of the Dauntless, which VanBuskirk and his Valerians were so earnestly urging toward him. If a door was handy in the moment of need, he used it. If not, he went through a wall.

The Valerians were fighting furiously and were coming fast. Those two words, when applied to members of that race, mean something starkly incredible to anyone who has never seen Valerians in action. They average little less than seven feet in height; something over four hundred pounds in weight; and are muscled, boned, and sinewed against a normal gravitational force of almost three times that of Earth. VanBuskirk's weakest warrior could do, in full armor, a standing high jump of fourteen feet against one Tellurian gravity; he could handle himself and the thirty-pound monstrosity which was his space-ax with a blinding speed and a devastating efficiency literally appalling to contemplate. They are the deadliest hand-to-hand fighters ever known; and, unbelievable as it may seem to any really highly advanced intelligence, they did and still do fairly revel in that form of combat.

The Valerian tide reached the battling Gray Lensman—closed around him.

"Hi ... you little ... Tellurian ... wart!" Major Peter VanBuskirk boomed this friendly thought, a yell of pure joy, in cadence with the blows of his utterly irresistible weapon. His rhythm broke—his frightful ax was stuck. Not even dureum-inlaid armor could bar the inward course of those furiously driven beaks; but sometimes it made it fairly difficult to get them out. The giant pulled, twisted—put one red-splashed boot on the battered breastplate—bent his mighty back—heaved viciously. The weapon came free with a snap that would have broken any ordinary man's arms, but the Valerian's thought rolled smoothly on: "Ain't we got fun?"

"Ho, Bus, you big Valerian baboon!" Kinnison thought back in kind. "Thought maybe we would need you and your gang—thanks for the ride. But back, now, and fast!"

Although the Valerians did not like to retreat, after even a successful operation, they knew how to do it. Hence in a matter of minutes all the survivors—and their losses had been surprisingly small—were back inside the Dauntless.