"You're coming back, Kinnison," the Port Admiral had replied gravely. "That is why I am sending these men and this stuff along—to be as sure as I possibly can that you do get back."
Now they were out in intergalactic space, and the Gray Lensman, lying flat upon his back with his eyes closed, sent his sense of perception out beyond the confining iron walls and let it roam the void. This was better than a visiplate; with no material barriers or limitations he was feasting upon a spectacle scarcely to be pictured in the most untrammeled imaginings of man. There were no planets, no suns, no stars, no meteorites, no particles of cosmic débris. All nearby space was empty, with an indescribable perfection of emptiness at the very thought of which the mind quailed in uncomprehending horror. And, accentuating that emptiness, at such mind-searing distances as to be dwarfed into buttons, and yet, because of their intrinsic massiveness, starkly apparent in their three-dimensional relationships, there hung poised and motionlessly stately the component galaxies of a universe.
Behind the flying vessel the First Galaxy was a tiny, brightly shining lens, so far away that such minutiae as individual solar systems were invisible, so distant that even the gigantic masses of its accompanying globular star clusters were merged indistinguishably into its sharply lenticular shape. In front of her, to right and to left of her, above and beneath her were other galaxies, never explored by man or by any other beings subscribing to the code of Galactic Civilization. Some, edge on, were thin, waferlike. Others appeared as full disks, showing faintly or boldly the prodigious, mathematically inexplicable spiral arms by virtue of whose obscure functioning they had come into being. Between these two extremes there was every possible variant in angular displacement.
Utterly incomprehensible although the speed of the space-flyer was, yet those galaxies remained relatively motionless, hour after hour. What distances! What magnificence! What grandeur! What awful, what poignantly solemn calm!
Despite the fact that Kinnison had gone out there expecting to behold that very scene, he felt awed to insignificance by the overwhelming, the cosmic immensity of the spectacle. What business had he, a sub-electronic midge from an ultra-microscopic planet, venturing out into macro-cosmic space, a demesne comprehensible only to the omniscient and omnipotent Creator?
He got up, shaking off the futile mood. This wouldn't get him to the first check station, and he had a job to do. And, after all, wasn't man as big as space? Could he have come out here, otherwise? He was. Yes, man was bigger even than space. Man, by his very envisionment of macro-cosmic space, had already mastered it.
Besides, the Boskonians, whoever they might be, had certainly mastered it; he was now certain that they were operating upon an intergalactic scale. Even after leaving Tellus he had hoped and had really expected that his line would lead to a stronghold in some star cluster belonging to his own Galaxy, so distant from it, or perhaps so small, as to have escaped the notice of the chartmakers; but such was not the case. No possible error in either the determination or the following of that line placed it anywhere near any such cluster. It led straight to and only to Lundmark's Nebula; and that Galaxy was, therefore, his present destination.
Man was certainly as good as the pirates; probably better, on the basis of past performance. Of all the races of the Galaxy, man had always taken the initiative, had always been the leader and commander. And, with the exception of the Arisians, man had the best brain in the Galaxy.
The thought of that eminently philosophical race gave Kinnison pause. His Arisian sponsor had told him that by virtue of the Lens the Patrol should be able to make Civilization secure throughout the Galaxy. Just what did that mean—that it could not go outside? Or did even the Arisians suspect that Boskonia was in fact intergalactic? Probably. The mentor had said that, given any one definite fact, a really competent mind could envisage the entire Universe; even though he had added carefully that his own mind was not a really competent one.