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Gradually and so insidiously that the Velantian’s dire warnings might as well never have been uttered, the scene changed. Or rather, the scene itself did not change, but the observers’ perception of it slowly underwent such a radical transformation that it was in no sense the same scene it had been a few minutes before; and they felt almost abjectly apologetic as they realized how unjust their previous ideas had been.

For the cavern was not a torture-chamber, as they had supposed. It was in reality a hospital, and the beings they had thought victims of brutalities unspeakable were in reality patients undergoing treatments and operations for various ills. In proof whereof the patients—who should have been dead by this time were the early ideas well-founded—were now being released from the screen-like operating theater. And not only was each one completely whole and sound in body, but he was also possessed of a mental clarity, power, and grasp undreamed-of before his hospitalization and treatment by Delgon’s super-surgeons!

Also the intruders had misunderstood completely the audience and its behavior. They were really medical students, and the beams which had seemed to be devouring rays were simply visi-beams, by means of which each student could follow, in close-up detail, each step of the operation in which he was most interested. The patients themselves were living, vocal witnesses of the visitors’ mistakenness, for each, as he made his way through the assemblage of students, was voicing his thanks for the marvelous results of his particular treatment or operation.

Kinnison now became acutely aware that he himself was in need of immediate surgical attention. His body, which he had always regarded so highly, he now perceived to be sadly inefficient; his mind was in even worse shape than his physique; and both body and mind would be improved immeasurably if he could get to the Delgonian hospital before the surgeons departed. In fact, he felt an almost irresistible urge to rush away toward that hospital; instantly, without the loss of a single precious second. And, since he had had no reason to doubt the evidence of his own senses, his conscious mind was not aroused to active opposition. However, in his—in his subconscious, or his essence, or whatever you choose to call that ultimate something of his that made him a Lensman—a “dead slow bell” began to sound.

“Release me and we’ll all go, before the surgeons leave the hospital,” came an insistent thought from Worsel. “But hurry—we haven’t much time!”

VanBuskirk, completely under the influence of the frantic compulsion, leaped toward the Velantian, only to be checked bodily by Kinnison, who was foggily trying to isolate and identify one thing about the situation that did not ring quite true.

“Just a minute, Bus—shut that door first!” he commanded.

“Never mind the door!” Worsel’s thought came in a roaring crescendo. “Release me instantly! Hurry! Hurry, or it will be too late, for all of us!”

“All this terrific rush doesn’t make any kind of sense at all,” Kinnison declared, closing his mind resolutely to the clamor of the Velantian’s thoughts. “I want to go just as badly as you do, Bus, or maybe more so—but I can’t help feeling that there’s something screwy somewhere. Anyway, remember the last thing Worsel said, and let’s shut the door before we unsnap a single chain.”

Then something clicked in the Lensman’s mind.

“Hypnotism, through Worsel!” he barked, opposition now aflame. “So gradual that it never occurred to me to build up a resistance. Holy Klono, what a fool I’ve been! Fight ’em, Bus—fight ’em! Don’t let ’em kid you any more, and pay no attention to anything Worsel sends at you!” Whirling around, he leaped toward the open door of the tent.

But as he leaped his brain was invaded by such a concentration of force that he fell flat upon the floor, physically out of control. He must not shut the door. He must release the Velantian. They must go to the Delgonian cavern. Fully aware now, however, of the source of the waves of compulsion, he threw the sum total of his mental power into an intense negation and struggled, inch-wise, toward the opening.

Upon him now, in addition to the Delgonians’ compulsion, beat at point-blank range the full power of Worsel’s mighty mind, demanding release and compliance. Also, and worse, he perceived that some powerful mentality was being exerted to make vanBuskirk kill him. One blow of the Valerian’s ponderous mace would shatter helmet and skull, and all would be over—once more the Delgonians would have triumphed. But the stubborn Dutchman, although at the very verge of surrender, was still fighting. One step forward he would take, bludgeon poised aloft, only to throw it convulsively backward. Then in spite of himself, he would go over and pick it up, again to step toward his crawling chief.

Again and again vanBuskirk repeated his futile performance while the Lensman struggled nearer and nearer the door. Finally he reached it and kicked it shut. Instantly the mental turmoil ceased and the two white and shaking Patrolmen released the limp, unconscious Velantian from his bonds.

“Wonder what we can do to help him revive?” gasped Kinnison, but his solicitude was unnecessary—the Velantian recovered consciousness as he spoke.

“Thanks to your wonderful power of resistance, I am alive, unharmed, and know more of our foes and their methods than any other of my race has ever learned,” Worsel thought, feelingly. “But it is of no value whatever unless I can send it back to Velantia. The thought-screen is carried only by the metal of these walls; and if I make an opening in the wall to think through, however small, it will now mean death. Of course the science of your Patrol has not perfected an apparatus to drive thought through such a screen?”

“No. Anyway, it seems to me that we’d better be worrying about something besides thought-screens,” Kinnison suggested. “Surely, now that they know where we are, they’ll be coming out here after us, and we haven’t got much of any defense.”

“They don’t know where we are, or care .” began the Velantian.

“Why not?” broke in vanBuskirk. “Any spy-ray capable of such scanning as you showed us—I never saw anything like it before—would certainly be as easy to trace as an out-and-out atomic blast!”

“I sent out no spy-ray or anything of the kind,” Worsel thought, carefully. “Since our science is so foreign to yours, I am not sure that I can explain satisfactorily, but I shall try to do so. First, as to what you saw. When that door is open, no barrier to thought exists. I merely broadcast a thought, placing myself en rapport with the Delgonian Overlords in their retreat. This condition established, of course I heard and saw exactly what they heard and saw—and so, equally of course, did you, since you were also en rapport with me. That is all.”

“That’s all!” echoed vanBuskirk. “What a system! You can do a thing like that, without apparatus of any kind, and yet say ‘that’s all’!”

“It is results that count,” Worsel reminded him gently. “While it is true that we have done much—this is the first time in history that any Velantian has encountered the mind of a Delgonian Overlord and lived—it is equally true that it was the will-power of you Patrolmen that made it possible; not my mentality. Also, it remains true that we cannot leave this room and live.”

“Why won’t we need weapons?” asked Kinnison, returning to his previous line of thought.

“Thought-screens are the only defense we will require,” Worsel stated positively, “for they use no weapons except their minds. By mental power alone they make us come to them; and, once there, their slaves do the rest. Of course, if my race is ever to rid the planet of them, we must employ offensive weapons of power. We have such, but we have never been able to use them. For, in order to locate the enemy, either by telepathy or by spy-ray, we must open our metallic shields—and the instant we release those screens we are lost. From those conditions there is no escape,” Worsel concluded, hopelessly.

“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Kinnison commanded. “There’s a lot of things not tried yet. For instance, from what I have seen of your generator equipment and the pattern of that screen, you don’t need a metallic conductor any more than a snake needs hips. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think we’re a bit ahead of you there. If a deVilbiss projector can handle that screen—and I think it can, with special tuning—vanBuskirk and I can fix things in an hour so that all three of us can walk out of here in perfect safety—from mental interference, at least. While we’re trying it out, tell us all the new stuff you got on them just now, and anything else that by any possibility may prove useful. And remember you said this is the first time any of you had been able to cut them off. That fact ought to make them sit up and take notice—probably they’ll stir around more than they ever did before. Come on, Bus—let’s tear into it!”

The deVilbiss projectors were rigged and tuned. Kinnison had been right—they worked. Then plan after plan was made, only to be discarded as its weaknesses were pointed out.

“Whichever way we look there are too many ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ to suit me,” Kinnison summed up the situation finally. “If we can find them, and if we can get up close to them without losing our minds to them, we could clean them out if we had some power in our accumulators. So I’d say the first thing for us to do is to get our batteries charged. We saw some cities from the air, and cities always have power. Lead us to power, Worsel—almost any kind of power—and we’ll soon have it in our guns.”

“There are cities, yes,” Worsel was not at all enthusiastic, “dwelling-places of the ordinary Delgonians; the people you saw being eaten in the cavern of the Overlords. As you saw, they resemble us Velantians to a certain extent. Since they are of a lower culture and are much weaker in life force than we are, however, the Overlords prefer us to their own slave races.

“To visit any city of Delgon is out of the question. Every inhabitant of every city is an abject slave and his brain is an open book. Whatever he sees, whatever he thinks, is communicated instantly to his master. And I now perceive that I may have misinformed you as to the Overlords’ ability to use weapons. While the situation has never arisen, it is only logical to suppose that as soon as we are seen by any Delgonian the controllers will order all the inhabitants of the city to capture us and bring us to them.”

“What a guy!” interjected vanBuskirk. “Did you ever see his top for looking at the bright side of life?”

“Only in conversation,” the Lensman replied. “When the ether gets crowded, you notice, he’s right in there, blasting away and not saying a word. But to get back to the question of power. I’ve got only a few minutes of free flight left in my battery; and with your mass, you must be just about out. Come to think of it, didn’t you land a trifle hard when we sat down here?”

“Fairly—I went into the ground up to my knees.”

“I thought so. We’ve got to get some power, and the nearest city—out of the question or not—is the best place to get it. Luckily, it isn’t far.”

VanBuskirk grunted. “As far as I’m concerned it might as well be on Mars, considering what’s between here and there. You can take my batteries and I’ll wait here.”

“On your emergency food, water, and air? That’s out!”

“What else, then?”

“I can spread my field to cover all three of us,” proposed Kinnison. “That will give us at least one minute of free flight—almost, if not quite, enough to clear the jungle. They have night here; and, like us, the Delgonians are night-sleepers. We start at dusk, and tonight we recharge our batteries.”

The following hour, during which the huge, hot sun dropped to the horizon, was spent in intense discussion, but no significant improvement upon the Lensman’s plan could be devised.

“It is time to go,” Worsel announced, curling out one extensile eye toward the vanishing orb. “I have recorded all my findings. Already I have lived longer and, through you, have accomplished more, than anyone has ever believed possible. I am ready to die—I should have been dead long since.”

“Living on borrowed time’s a lot better than not living at all,” Kinnison replied, with a grin. “Link up . Ready? . Go!”

He snapped his switches and the close-linked group of three shot into the air and away. As far as the eye could reach in any direction extended the sentient, ravenous growth of the jungle; but Kinnison’s eyes were not upon that fantastically inimical green carpet. His whole attention was occupied by two all-important meters and by the task of so directing their flight as to gain the greatest possible horizontal distance with the power at his command.

Fifty seconds of flashing flight, then:

“All right, Worsel, get out in front and get ready to pull!” Kinnison snapped. “Ten seconds of drive left, but I can hold us free for five seconds after my driver quits. Pull!”

Kinnison’s driver expired, its small accumulator completely exhausted; and Worsel, with his mighty wings, took up the task of propulsion. Inertialess still, with Kinnison and vanBuskirk grasping his tail, each beat a mile-long leap, he struggled on. But all too soon the battery powering the neutralizers also went dead and the three began to plummet downward at a sharper and sharper angle, in spite of the Velantian’s Herculean efforts to keep them aloft.

Some distance ahead of them the green of the jungle ended in a sharply cut line, beyond which there was a heavy growth of fairly open forest. A couple of miles of this and there was the city, their objective—so near and yet so far!

“We’ll either just make the timber or we just won’t,” Kinnison, mentally plotting the course, announced dispassionately. “Just as well if we land in the jungle, I think. It’ll break our fall, anyway—hitting solid ground inert at this speed would be bad.”

“If we land in the jungle we will never leave it,” Worsel’s thought did not slow the incredible tempo of his prodigious pinions, “but it makes little difference whether I die now or later.”

“It does to us, you pessimistic croaker!” flared Kinnison. “Forget that dying complex of yours for a minute! Remember the plan, and follow it! We’re going to strike the jungle, about ninety or a hundred meters in. If you come in with us you die at once, and the rest of our scheme is all shot to hell. So when we let go, you go ahead and land in the woods. We’ll join you there, never fear: our armor will hold long enough for us to cut our way through a hundred meters of any jungle that ever grew—even this one . Get ready, Bus . Leggo!”

They dropped. Through the lush succulence of close-packed upper leaves and tentacles they crashed; through the heavier, woodier main branches below; through to the ground. And there they fought for their lives; for those voracious plants nourished themselves not only upon the soil in which their roots were imbedded, but also upon anything organic unlucky enough to come within their reach. Flabby but tough tentacles encircled them; ghastly sucking disks, exuding a potent corrosive, slobbered wetly at their armor; knobbed and spiky bludgeons whanged against tempered steel as the monstrous organisms began dimly to realize that these particular tid-bits were encased in something far more resistant than skin, scales, or bark.

But the Lensman and his giant companion were not quiescent. They came down oriented and fighting. VanBuskirk, in the van, swung his frightful space-axe as a reaper swings his scythe—one solid, short step forward with each swing. And close behind the Valerian strode Kinnison, his own flying axe guarding the giant’s head and back. Forward they pressed, and forward—not the strongest, toughest stems of that monstrous weed could stay vanBuskirk’s Herculean strength; not the most agile of the striking tendrils and curling tentacles could gain a manacling hold in the face of Kinnison’s flashing speed in cut, thrust, and slash.

Masses of the obscene vegetation crashed down upon their heads from above, revoltingly cupped orifices sucking and smacking; and they were showered continually with floods of the opaque, corrosive sap, to the action of which even their armor was not entirely immune. But, hampered as they were and almost blinded, they struggled on; while behind them an ever-lengthening corridor of demolition marked their progress.

“Ain’t we got fun?” grunted the Dutchman, in time with his swing. “But we’re quite a team at that, chief—brains and brawn, huh?”

“Uh uh,” dissented Kinnison, his weapon flying. “Grace and poise; or, if you want to be really romantic, ham and eggs.”

“Rack and ruin will be more like it if we don’t break out before this confounded goo eats through our armor. But we’re making it—the stuff’s thinning out and I think I can see trees up ahead.”

“It is well if you can,” came a cold, clear thought from Worsel, “for I am sorely beset. Hasten or I perish!”

At that thought the two Patrolmen forged ahead in a burst of even more furious activity. Crashing through the thinning barriers of the jungle’s edge, they wiped their lenses partially clear, glanced quickly about, and saw the Velantian. That worthy was “sorely beset” indeed. Six animals—huge, reptilian, but lithe and active—had him down. So helplessly immobile was Worsel that he could scarcely move his tail, and the monsters were already beginning to gnaw at his scaly, armored hide.

“I’ll put a stop to that, Worsel!” called Kinnison; referring to the fact, well known to all us moderns, that any real animal, no matter how savage, can be controlled by any wearer of the Lens. For, no matter how low in the scale of intelligence the animal is, the Lensman can get in touch with whatever mind the creature has, and reason with it.

But these monstrosities, as Kinnison learned immediately, were not really animals. Even though of animal form and mobility, they were purely vegetable in motivation and behavior, reacting only to the stimuli of food and of reproduction. Weirdly and completely inimical to all other forms of created life, they were so utterly noisome, so completely alien that the full power of mind and Lens failed entirely to gain rapport.

Upon that confusedly writhing heap the Patrolmen flung themselves, terrible axes destructively a-swing. In turn they were attacked viciously, but this battle was not long to endure. VanBuskirk’s first terrific blow knocked one adversary away, almost spinning end over end. Kinnison took out one, the Dutchman another, and the remaining three were no match at all for the humiliated and furiously raging Velantian. But it was not until the monstrosities had been gruesomely carved and torn apart, literally to bits, that they ceased their insensately voracious attacks.

“They took me by surprise,” explained Worsel, unnecessarily, as the three made their way through the night toward their goal, “and six of them at once were too much for me. I tried to hold their minds, but apparently they have none.”

“How about the Overlords?” asked Kinnison. “Suppose they have received any of our thoughts? Bus and I may have done some unguarded radiating.”

“No,” Worsel made positive reply. “The thought-screen batteries, while small and of very little actual power, have a very long service-life. Now let us go over again the next steps of our plan of action.”

Since no more untoward events marred their progress toward the Delgonian city, they soon reached it. It was for the most part dark and quiet, its somber buildings merely blacker blobs against a background of black. Here and there, however, were to be seen automotive vehicles moving about, and the three invaders crouched against a convenient wall, waiting for one to come along the “street” in which they were. Eventually one did.

As it passed them Worsel sprang into headlong, gliding flight, Kinnison’s heavy knife in one gnarled fist. And as he sailed he struck—lethally. Before that luckless Delgonian’s brain could radiate a single thought it was in no condition to function at all; for the head containing it was bouncing in the gutter. Worsel backed the peculiar conveyance along the curb and his two companions leaped into it, lying flat upon its floor and covering themselves from sight as best they could.

Worsel, familiar with things Delgonian and looking enough like a native of the planet to pass a casual inspection in the dark, drove the car. Streets and thoroughfares he traversed at reckless speed, finally drawing up before a long, low building; entirely dark. He scanned his surrounding with care, in every direction. Not a creature was in sight.

“All is clear, friends,” he thought, and the three adventurers sprang to the building’s entrance. The door—it had a door, of sorts—was locked, but vanBuskirk’s axe made short work of that difficulty. Inside, they braced the wrecked door against intrusion, then Worsel led the way into the unlighted interior. Soon he flashed his lamp about him and stepped upon a black, peculiarly-marked tile set into the floor, whereupon a harsh, white light illuminated the room.

“Cut it, before somebody takes alarm!” snapped Kinnison.

“No danger of that,” replied the Velantian. “There are no windows in any of these rooms; no light can be seen from outside. This is the control room of the city’s power plant. If you can convert any of this power to your uses, help yourselves to it. In this building is also a Delgonian arsenal. Whether or not anything in it can be of service to you is of course for you to say. I am now at your disposal.”

Kinnison had been studying the panels and instruments. Now he and vanBuskirk tore open their armor—they had already learned that the atmosphere of Delgon, while not as wholesome for them as that in their suits, would for a time at least support human life—and wrought diligently with pliers, screw-drivers, and other tools of the electrician. Soon their exhausted batteries were upon the floor beneath the instrument panel, absorbing greedily the electrical fluid from the bus-bars of the Delgonians.

“Now, while they’re getting filled up, let’s see what these people use for guns. Lead on, Worsel!”