Second stage Lensman by Edward Elmer Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

vast, calm certainty, the imperturbable poise peculiar to his long-lived, solemn
    race. Second Stage Lensmen all, graduates of Arisian advanced training; minds linked,
    basically, together into one mind by a wide-open three-way; superficially free, each to
    do his assigned third of the gigantic task.
         Smoothly, effortlessly, those three linked minds went to work at the admiral's
    signal. Orders shot out along tight beams of thought to the stolid hundreds of Rigellian
    switchboard operators, and thence along communicator beams to the pilot rooms,
    wherever stationed. Flotillas, squadrons, sub-fleets flashed smoothly toward their newly-
    assigned positions. Super-maulers moved ponderously toward theirs. The survey ships,
    their work done, vanished. They had no business anywhere near what was coming
    next. Small they were, and defenseless; a speedster's screens were as efficacious as
    so much vacuum against the forces about to be unleashed. The power houses also
    moved. Maintaining rigidly their cryptic mathematical relationships to each other and the
    sun, they went as a whole into a new one with respect to the circling rings of tightly-
    packed meteors and the invisible, non-existent mouth of the Boskonian vortex.
         Then, before Haynes' formation was nearly complete, the Boskonian fleet
    materialized. Just that—one instant space was empty; the next it was full of warships. A
    vast globe of battle-wagons, in perfect fighting formation. They were not free, but inert
    and deadly.
         Haynes swore viciously under his breath, the Lensmen pulled themselves
    together more tensely; but no additional orders were given. Everything that could
    possibly be done was already being done.
         Whether the Boskonians expected to meet a perfectly-placed fleet or whether
    they expected to emerge into empty space, to descend upon a defenseless Tellus, is
    not known or knowable. It is certain, however, that they emerged in the best possible
    formation to meet anything that could be brought to bear. It is also certain that, had the
    enemy had a Z9M9Z and a Kinnison-Worsel-Tregonsee combination scanning its
    Operations tank, the outcome might well have been otherwise than it was.
         For that ordinarily insignificant delay, that few minutes of time necessary for the
    Boskonians' orientation, was exactly that required for those two hundred smoothly-
    working Rigellians to get Civilization's shock-globe into position.
         A million beams, primaries raised to the hellish heights possible only to Medonian
    conductors and insulation, lashed out almost as one. Screens stiffened to the urge of
    every generable watt of defensive power. Bolt after bolt of quasi-solid lightning struck
    and struck and struck again. Q-type helices bored, gouged, and searingly bit Rods and
    cones, planes and shears of incredibly condensed pure force clawed, tore, and ground
    in mad abandon. Torpedo after torpedo, charged to the very skin with duodec, loosed its
    horribly detonant cargo against flinching wall-shields, in such numbers and with such
    violence as to fill all circumambient space with an atmosphere of almost planetary
    density.
         Screen after screen, wall-shield after wall-shield, in their hundreds and their
    thousands, went down. A full eighth of the Patrol's entire count of battleships was
    wrecked, riddled, blown apart, or blasted completely out of space in the paralyzingly
    cataclysmic violence of the first, seconds-long, mind-shaking, space-wracking
    encounter. Nor could it have been otherwise; for this encounter had not been at battle
    range. Not even at point-blank range; the warring monsters of the void were packed
    practically screen to screen.
         But not a man died—upon Civilization's side at least— even though practically all
    of the myriad of ships composing the inner sphere, the shock-globe, was lost. For they
    were automatics, manned by robots; what little superintendence was necessary had
    been