Takeoff! by Randall Garrett Read Free Book Online

looked affectionately at the horribly monstrous Lensman. “Concerning l’affaire Cadilax,” he began.
    “I know nothing about it, fortunately,” Woozle interrupted. “That gives you a chance to explain everything.”
    “Very well, then. As you well know, I have spent a long time searching for clues that will lead me to the top echelon of Boskonia-Boskonia, that frightful, inimical. soul-destroying, intergalactic organization which is so ineradicably opposed to all the moral values which we of Civilization hold so dear.”
    Woozle closed a few eyes. “Yes. Continue.”
    “On Leanonabar,” Ginnison continued, “I got a line through Banjo Freeko, the planetary dictator, but only after I blew up the mining industry on his planet and killed a few thousand innocent people-regretfully, of course. But I do that all the time. It revolts me, but I do it.”
    “What boots it?” Woozle asked. “You got your line, didn’t you? You humans are so squeamish.”
    “To continue,” said Ginnison. “This is the line I traced.”
    And in Woozle’s mind there appeared a three-dimensional representation of intergalactic space. Two galaxies floated there in the awesome awfulness of the unimaginable vastness of the intergalactic void.
    From Leanonabar, in the First, or Tellurian, Galaxy, a thin, hard red line ran straight through and past the Second Galaxy, out into the vast reaches of the intergalactic space beyond.
    “Isn’t that rather overdoing it?” came Woozle’s thought. “You think this line may extend beyond—?”
    Ginnison shook his head. “Not really. There’s nothing along that line for half a billion parsecs, and that’s a Seyfert Galaxy.”
    “Tough about them,” Woozle opinioned. “Let’s get back to Cadilax.”
    “Oh, yes. Well, Cadilax is clear across the Galaxy from Leanonabar, so that would give us a good baseline for our second triangulation.”
    “1 trust,” Woozle thought, “that you have a better reason than that for picking Cadilax.”
    “Certainly.” Rising from his seat, Ginnison paced across the deck of his cabin, turned, and paced back. “In the past several months, all hell has broken loose on Cadilax. The drug trade has gone up three hundred percent. Thionite, heroin, hashish, nitrolabe, cocaine, bentlam, and caffeine—all of them have increased tremendously, and Narcotics can’t find the source. The adolescents have gone wild; the boys are wearing their hair long, and the girls have given up perms. Illicit sex is rampant. They live in unstructured social groups.” He took a deep breath, and said, in a hushed voice: “There have even been demonstrations against the way the Patrol is running the Boskonian War!”
    “Madness, indeed,” Woozle agreed, “but are you certain that your information is up-to-date?”
    “Reasonably certain,” Ginnison pondered. “The latest information we have—”
    At that point, a sharp, cold, Lensed thought intruded.
    “Lensman Ginnison, greeting. I humbly request communication with you.”
    Ginnison recognized that thought. It was that of Shadrack, a poison-blooded, frigid-breathing Lensman he had known of yore.
    “Sure, little chum; what is it?”
    “I do not interrupt?” Shadrack quavered.
    “Not at all. Go ahead.”
    “I trust I do not intrude upon matters of far greater importance than that of my own meager and faulty information?”
    “Certainly not,” Ginnison reassured.
    “As is well known,” continued the soft thought, “I am a yellow-bellied, chicken-livered, jelly-gutted coward —a racial characteristic which I cannot and do not deny. Therefore, I most humbly apologize for this unwarranted intrusion upon your thoughts.”
    “No need to overdo it, little chum,” said Ginnison. “ A simple grovel will be enough.”
    “Thank you, Ginnison,” Shadrack snivelled gravely. “Then may I inquire, in my own small way, if you are aware of the existence of an entity known as Banlon of Downlo? He is, like myself, a creature