"Smith, E E Doc - Lensman 4 - Gray Lensman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

explosions. Downward the effect was, if possible, even more catastrophic, since conditions there
approximated closely the oft-argued meeting between the irresistible force and the immovable
object. The planet was to all intents and purposes immovable, the duodec to the same degree
irresistible. The result was that the entire planet was momentarily blown apart. A vast chasm was
blasted deep into its interior, and, gravity temporarily overcome, stupendous cracks and fissures
began to yawn. Then, as the pressure decreased, the core-stuff of the planet became molten and
began to wreak its volcanic havoc. Gravity, once more master of the situation, took hold. The
cracks and chasms closed, extruding uncounted cubic miles of fiery lava and metal. The entire
world shivered and shuddered in a Gargantuan cosmic ague.
The explosion blew itself out. The hot gases and vapors cooled. The steam condensed.
The volcanic dust disappeared. There lay the planet; but changed—hideously and awfully
changed. Where Grand Base had been there remained nothing whatever to indicate that anything
wrought by man had ever been there. Mountains were leveled, valleys were filled. Continents
and oceans had shifted, and were still shifting; visibly. Earthquakes, volcanoes, and other
seismic disturbances, instead of decreasing, were increasing in violence, minute by minute.
Helmuth's planet was and would for years remain a barren and uninhabitable world.
"Well!" Haynes, who had been holding his breath unconsciously, released it in an almost
explosive sigh. "That is inescapably and incontrovertibly that. I was going to use that base, but it
looks as though we'll have to get along without it."
Without comment Kinnison turned to the gamma-zeta observers. "Any traces?" he asked.
It developed that three of the fields had shown activity. Not merely traces or flashes, but
solid punctures showing the presence of a hard, tight beam. And those three punctures were in
the same line; a line running straight out into inter-galactic space.
Kinnison took careful readings on the line, then stood motionless. Feet wide apart, hands
jammed into pockets, head slightly bent, eyes distant, he stood there unmoving; thinking with all
the power of his brain.
"I want to ask three questions," the old Commandant of Cadets interrupted his cogitations
finally. "Was Helmuth Boskone, or not? Have we got them licked, or not? What do we do next,
besides mopping up those eighteen supermaulers?"
"To all three the answer is 'I don't know.' " Kinnison's face was stern and hard. "You
know as much about the whole thing as I do—I haven't held back anything I even suspect. I
didn't tell you that Helmuth was Boskone; I said that everyone in any position to judge, including
myself, was as sure of it as one could be about anything that couldn't be proved. The presence of
this communicator line, and the other stuff I've told you about, makes me think he wasn't.
However, we don't actually know any more than we did before. It is no more certain now that
Helmuth was not Boskone than it was before that he was. The second question ties in with the
first, and so does the third—but I see they've started to mop up."
While von Hohendorff and Kinnison had been talking, Haynes had issued orders and the
Grand Fleet, divided roughly and with difficulty into eighteen parts, went raggedly outward to
surround the eighteen outlying fortresses. But, and surprisingly enough to the Patrol forces, the
reduction of those hulking monsters was to prove no easy task.
The Boskonians had witnessed the destruction of Helmuth's Grand Base. Their master
plates were dead. Try as they would, they could get in touch with no one with authority to give
them orders, with no one to whom they could report their present plight. Nor could they escape:
the slowest mauler in the Patrol Fleet could have caught any one of them in five minutes.
To surrender was not even thought of—better far to die a clean death in the blazing
holocaust of space-battle than to be thrown ignominiously into the lethal chambers of the Patrol.
There was not, there could not be, any question of pardon or of sentence to any mere
imprisonment, for the strife between Civilization and Boskonia in no respect resembled the wars
between two fundamentally similar and friendly nations which small, green Terra knew so