In the violated communications room the angry observer went on: "—attune myself and trace the origin of that prying look. It has disappeared now, but its sender cannot be distant, since our walls are shielded and screened. Ah, there is a blank space which I cannot penetrate, in the seventh room of the fourth corridor. In all probability it is one of our guests, hiding now behind a thought screen." Then his orders boomed out to a corps of guards. "Take him and put him with the others!"
Kinnison had not heard the order, but he was ready for anything, and those who came to take him found that it was easier far to issue such orders than to carry them out.
"Halt!" snapped the Lensman, his Lens carrying the crackling command deep into the wheelmen's minds. "I do not wish to harm you, but come no closer!"
"You? Harm us?" came a cold, clear thought, and the creatures vanished. But not for long. They, or others like them, were back in moments, this time armed and armored for strife.
Again Kinnison found that rays were useless. The armor of the foe-mounted generators as capable as his own; and, although the air in the room soon became one intolerably glaring field of force, in which the very walls themselves began to crumble and to vaporize, neither he nor his attackers were harmed. Again, then, the Lensman had recourse to his medieval weapon, sheathing his DeLameter and wading in with his ax. Although not a VanBuskirk, he was, for an Earthman, of unusual strength, skill, and speed; and to those opposing him he was a very Hercules.
Therefore, as he struck and struck and struck again, the cell became a gorily reeking slaughter pen, its every corner high-piled with the shattered corpses of the wheelmen and its floor running with blood and slime. The last few of the attackers, unwilling to face longer that irresistible steel, wheeled away, and Kinnison thought flashingly of what he should do next.
This trip was a bust so far. He couldn't do himself a bit of good here now, and he'd better buzz off while he was still in one piece. How? The door? No. Couldn't make it. He'd run out of time quick that way. Better take out the wall. That would give those Wheelmen something else to think about, too, while he was doing his flit.
Only a fraction of a second was taken up by these thoughts; then Kinnison was at the wall. He set his DeLameter to minimum aperture and at maximum blast, to throw a cutting pencil against which no material substance could stand. Through the wall that pencil pierced—up, over, and around.
But, fast as the Lensman had acted, he was still too late. There came trundling into the room behind him, upon four low wheels, a truck, bearing a squat and monstrous mechanism. Kinnison whirled to face it. As he turned the section of the wall upon which he had been at work blew outward with a deafening crash. The ensuing rush of escaping atmosphere picked the Lensman up as though he had been a straw and hurled him out through the opening and into the shaft. In the meantime the mechanism upon the truck had begun a staccato, grinding roar, and as it roared Kinnison felt slugs ripping through his armor and tearing through his flesh, each as crushing, crunching, paralyzing a blow as though it had been inflicted by VanBuskirk's space ax.