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"You misunderstand me. Not alive as he is nowûbut not entirely dead. Bones
broken, yes, and eyes removed; but those minor matters are but a beginning. If
I were doing it, I should then apply several of these devices here,
successively; but none of them to the point of complete incompatibility with
life. I should inoculate the extremities of his four limbs with an organism
which growsûshall we say unpleasantly? Finally, I should extract his life
force and consume itûas you know, that material is a rarely satisfying
delicacy with usûtaking care to leave just enough to maintain a bare
existence. I should then put what is left of him aboard his ship, start it
toward the Tellurian Galaxy, and send notice to the Patrol as to its exact
course and velocity."
"But they would find him alive!" Eichmil stormed.
"Exactly. For the fullest vengeance they must, as I have said. Which is
worse, think you? To find a corpse, however dismembered, and to dispose of it
with full military honors, or to find and to have to take care of for a full
lifetime a something that has not enough intelligence even to swallow food
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placed in its mouth? Remember also that the organism will be such that they
themselves will be obliged to amputate all four of the creature's limbs to
save its life."
While thinking thus the Delgonian shot out a slender tentacle which,
slithering across the floor, flipped over the tiny switch of a small mechanism
in the center of the room. This entirely unexpected action almost stunned
Worsel. He had been debating for moments whether or not to release the Gray
Lensman's inhibitions. He would have done so instantly if he had had any
warning of what the Delgonian was about to do. Now it was too late.
"I have set up a thought-screen about the room. I do not wish to share this
tid-bit with any of my fellows, as there is not enough to divide," the monster
explained, parenthetically. "Have you any suggestion as to how my plan may be
improved?"
"No. You have shown that you understand torture better than we do."
"I should, since we Overlords have practiced it as a fine art since our
beginnings as a race. Do you wish the pleasure of breaking his bones now?"
"I do not break bones for pleasure. Since you do, you may carry out the
procedure as outlined. All I want is the assurance that he will be an
object-lesson and a warning to Star A Star of the Patrol."
"I can assure you definitely that it will be both. More, I will show you the
results when I have finished my work. Or, if you like, I would be glad to have
you stay and look onûyou will find the spectacle interesting, entertaining,
and highly instructive."
"No, thanks." Eichmil left the room and the Delgonian turned his attention
to the bound and helpless Lensman.
It is best, perhaps, to draw a kindly veil over the events of the next two
hours. Kinnison himself refuses positively to discuss it, except to say:
"I knew how to set up a nerve-block then, so I can't say that any of it
really hurt me. I wouldn't let myself feel it. But all the time I knew what he
was doing to me and it made me sick. Did you ever watch a surgeon while he was
taking out your appendix? Like that, only worse. It wasn't funny. I didn't
like it a bit. Your readers wouldn't like it, either, so you'd better lay off
that stuff entirely."
The mere fact that the Overlord had established coverage was of course
sufficient to set up in the Lensman's mind a compulsion to knock it down. He
had to break that screen! But there were no birds here; no spiders. Was there
any life at all? There was. That torture room had been used fully and often;
the muck in its drains was rich pasture for the Jarnevonian equivalent of
worms.
Selecting a big one, long and thick, Kinnison tuned down to its mental level
and probed. This took time-much, much too much time. The creature did not have
nearly the intelligence of a spider, but it did have a dim consciousness of
being, and therefore an ego of a sort. Also, when Kinnison finally got in
touch with that ego, it reacted very favorably to his suggestion of food.
"Hurry, worm! Snap it up!" and the little thing really did hurry.
Scrambling, squirming, almost leaping along the floor it hurried, in a very
grotesquerie of haste.
The Delgonian's leisurely preliminary work was done. The feast was ready.
The worm reached the generator while the Overlord was warming up the tubes of
the apparatus which was to rive away that which made the man Kinnison
everything that he was.
Curling one end of its sinuous shape around a convenient anchorage,
Kinnison's small proxy reached up and looped the other about the handle of the
switch. Then, visions of choice viands suffusing its barely existent
consciousness, it contracted convulsively. There was a snap and the mental
barrier went out of existence.
At the tiny sound the Delgonian whirledûand stopped. Worsel's gigantic
mentality had been beating ceaselessly against that screen ever since its
erection, and in the instant of its fall Kinnison again became the Gray
Lensman of old. And in the next instant both those prodigious mindsûthe two
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most powerful then known to Civilizationûhad hurled themselves against that of
the Delgonian. Bitter though the ensuing struggle was, it was brief. Nothing
short of an Arisian mind could have withstood the venomous fury, the Berserk
power, of that concerted and synchronized attack.
Brain half burned out, the Overlord wilted; and, docility itself, he
energized the communicator.
"Eichmil? The work is done. Thoroughly done and well. Do you wish to inspect
it before I put what is left of the Lensman into his ship?"
"No." Eichmil, as a high executive, was accustomed to delegating far more
important matters than that to competent underlings. "If you are satisfied, I
am."
Weirdly enough to any casual observer, the Overlord's first act was to
deposit the worm, carefully and tenderly, in a spot in which the muck was
particularly rich and toothsome. Then, picking up the hideously mangled thing
that was Kinnison's body, he encased it in its armor and, donning his own,
wriggled boldly away with his burden.
"Clear the way for me, please," he requested of Eichmil. "I go to place this
residuum within its ship and to return it to Star A Star."
"You will be able to find the speedster?"
"Certainly. He was to find it. Whatever he could have done I, working
through the cells of his brain, can likewise do."
"Can you handle him alone, Kinnison?" Worsel asked presently. "Can you hold
out to the speedster?"
"Yes to both. I can handle himûwe whittled him down to a nub. I'll lastûI'll
make myself last long enough."
"I go, then, lest they be observing with spy-rays."
To the black flyer, then, the completely subservient Delgonian carried his
physically disabled master, and carefully he put him aboard. Worsel helped
openly there, for he had screened the speedster against all forms of
intrusion. The vessel took off and the Overlord wriggled blithely back toward
the dome. He was full of the consciousness of a good job well done. He even
felt the sensation of repletion concomitant with having consumed practically
all of Kinnison's life force! "I hate to let him go!" Worsel's thought was a
growl of baffled hatred. "It gripes me to let him think that he did everything
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