Galactic Patrol (27 page)

"Maybe it does to you, but not to me," and Haynes took up the "conventional"

photograph a stereoscope in full, true color, an almost living duplicate of the girl in question. Her thick, heavy hair was not red, but was a vividly intense and brilliant auburn, a coppery bronze, flashed with red and gold. Her eyes . . . . . bronze was all that he could think of, with flecks of topaz and of tawny gold. Her skin, too, was faintly bronze, glowing with even more than healthy youth's normal measure of sparkling vitality. Not only was she beautiful, the Port Admiral decided, in the words of the surgeon, she

"classified."

"Hm . . . . m. Dimples, too," Haynes muttered. "Worse even than I thought-she's a menace to civilization," and he went on to read the documents. "Family . . . . . hm.

History . . . . experiences . . . reactions and characteristics . . . . behavior patterns . . . .

psychology . . . . mentality . . . .”

"She'll do, Lacy," he advised the surgeon finally. "Keep her on with him . . . . .”

"Do!” Lacy snorted. "It isn't a question of whether
she
rates. Look at that hair-those eyes. Pure Samms. A man to match her would have to be one in a hundred thousand million. With that skeleton, though, he is."

"Of course he is. You don't seem to realize, you myopic old appendix-snatcher, that
he's
pure
Kinnison!"

"Ah . . . so maybe we could . . . . but he won't be falling for anybody yet, since he's just been unattached. He'll be bullet-proof for quite a while. You ought to know that young, Lensmen-especially young Gray Lensmen-can't see anything but their jobs, for a couple of years, anyway."

"His skeleton tells you that, too, huh?" Haynes grunted, skeptically. "Ordinarily, yes, but you never can tell, especially in hospitals . . .

"More of your layman's misinformation!" Lacy snapped. "Contrary to popular belief, romance does not thrive in hospitals, except, of course, among the staff. Patients oftentimes think that they fall in love with nurses, but it takes two people to make one romance. Nurses do not fall in love with patients, because a man is never at his best under hospitalization. In fact, the better a man is, the poorer a showing he is apt to make."

"And, as I forget who said, a long time ago, `no generalization is true, not even this one'," retorted the Port Admiral. "When it does hit him it will hit hard, and we'll take no chances. How about the black-haired one?"

"Well, I just told you that MacDougall has the only perfect skeleton I ever saw in a woman. Brownies is very good, too, of course, but . . . .”

"But not good enough to rate Lensman's Mate, eh?" Haynes completed the thought. "Then take her out. Pick the best skeletons you've got for this job, and see that no others come anywhere near him. Transfer them to some other hospital-to some other floor of this one, at least. Any woman that he ever falls for will fall for him, in spite of your ideas as to the one-wayness of hospital romance, and I don't want him to have such a good chance of making a dive at something that doesn't rate up. Am I right or wrong, and for how much?"

"Well, I haven't had time yet to really study his skeleton, but . . . . .”

"Better take a week off and study it. I've studied a lot of people in the last sixty-five years, and I'll match my experience against your knowledge of bones, any time. Not saying that he will fall this trip, you understand-just playing safe."

Kinnison came to-or, rather, to say that he came half-to would be a more accurate statement-with a yell directed at the blurrily-seen figure in white which he knew must be a nurse.

"Nurse!" Then, as a searing stab of pain shot through him at the effort, he went on, thinking at the figure in white through his Lens.

"My speedster! I must have landed her free! Get the spaceport . . . . .”

"There, there, Lensman," a low, rich voice crooned, and a red head bent over him.

"The speedster has been taken care of. Everything Is on the green, go to sleep and rest'

"Never mind your ship," the unctuous voice went on. "It was landed and put away . . . .”

"Listen, dumbbell!" snapped the patient, speaking aloud now, in spite of the pain, the better to drive home his meaning. "Don't try to soothe met What do you think I am, delirious? Get this and get it straight I said I landed that speedster
free.
If you don't know what that means, tell somebody that does. Get the spaceport-get Haynes get . . .

. .”

"We got them, Lensman, long ago.' Although her voice was still creamily, sweetly sofa, an angry color burned into the nurse's face. "I said everything is on zero. Your speedster was inserted, how else could you be here, inert? I helped do it myself, so
I
know
she's inert'

"QX." The patient relapsed instantly into unconsciousness and the nurse turned to an interne standing by – wherever that nurse was, at least one doctor could almost always be found.

"But my ship . . . .”

"Dumbbell” she flared. "What a sweet mess
he's
going to be to take care of I Not even conscious yet, and he's calling names and picking fights already!"

In a few days Kinnison was fully and alertly conscious. In a week most of the pain had left him, and he was beginning to chafe under restraint In ten days he was "fit to be tied," and his acquaintance with his head nurse, so inauspiciously begun, developed even more inauspiciously as time went on. For, as Haynes and Lacy had each more than anticipated, the Lensman was by no means an ideal patient.

Nothing that could be done would satisfy him. All doctors were fat-heads, even Lacy, the man who had put him together. All nurses were dumbbells, even-or especially? “Mac," who with almost superhuman skill, tact, and patience had been holding him together. Why, even fat-heads and dumbbells, even high-grade morons, ought to know that a man needed food!

Accustomed to eating everything he could reach, three or four or five times a day, he did not realize-nor did his stomach-that his now quiescent body could no longer use the five thousand or more calories that it had been wont to burn up, each twenty-four hours, in intense effort He was always hungry, and he was forever demanding food.

And food, to him, did not mean orange juice or grape juice or tomato juice or milk.

Nor did it mean weak tea and hard, dry toast and an occasional anemic soft-boiled egg.

If he ate eggs at all be wanted them fried, three or four of them, accompanied by two or three thick slices of ham.

He wanted-and demanded in no uncertain terms, argumentatively and persistently-a big, thick, rare beefsteak. He wanted baked beans, with plenty of fat pork. He wanted bread in thick slices, piled high with butter, and not this quadruply-and-unmentionably-qualified toast. He wanted roast beef, rare, in big, thick slabs. He wanted potatoes and thick brown gravy. He wanted corned beef and cabbage. He wanted pie-any kind of pie-in large, thick quarters. He wanted peas and corn and asparagus and cucumbers, and also various other-worldly staples of diet which he often and insistently mentioned by name.

But above all he wanted beefsteak. He thought about it days and dreamed about it nights. One night in particular he dreamed about it-an especially luscious porterhouse, fried in butter and smothered fn mushrooms-only to wake up, mouth watering, literally starved, to face again the weak tea, dry toast, and, horror of horrors, this time a flabby, pallid, flaccid
poached
egg! It was the last straw.

"Take it away," he said, weakly, then, when the nurse did not obey, he reached out and pushed the breakfast, tray and all, off the table. Then, as it crashed to the floor, he turned away, and, in spite of all his efforts, two hot tears forced themselves between his eyelids.

It was a particularly trying ordeal, and one requiring all of even Mac's skill, diplomacy, and forbearance, to male the recalcitrant patient eat the breakfast prescribed for him. She was finally successful, however, and as she stepped out into the corridor she met the ubiquitous interns.

"How's your Lensman?" he asked, in the privacy of the diet kitchen.

"Don't call him my Lensman!” she stormed. She was about to explode with the pent-up feelings which she of course could not vent upon such a pitiful, helpless thing as her star patient. "Beefsteak! I almost wish they
would
give him a beefsteak, and that he'd choke on it-which of course he would. He's worse than a baby. I never saw such a .

. . . such a
brat
in my life. I'd like to spank him-he needs it. I'd like to know how
he
ever got to be a Lensman, the big cantankerous clunker! I'm going to spank him, too, one of these days, see if I don't!"

"Don't take it so hard, Mac," the interns urged. He was, however, very much relieved that relations between the handsome young Lensman and the gorgeous redhead were not upon a more cordial basis. "He won't be here very long. But I never saw a patient clog
your
jets before."

"You probably never saw a patient like him before, either. I certainly hope he never gets cracked up again."

"Huh?"

"Do I have to draw you a chart?" she asked, sweetly. "Or, if he does get cracked up again, I hope they send him to some other hospital," and she flounced out.

Nurse MacDougall thought that when the Lensman could eat the meat he craved her troubles would be over, but she was mistaken. Kinnison was nervous, moody, brooding, by turns irritable, sullen, and pugnacious. Nor is it to be wondered at. He was chained to that bed, and in his mind was the gnawing consciousness that he had failed.

And not only failed-he had made a complete fool of himself. He had underestimated an enemy, and as a result of his own stupidity the whole Patrol had taken a setback. He was anguished and tormented. Therefore.

"Listen, Mac," he pleaded one day. `Bring me some clothes and let me. take a walk. I need exercise."

"Uh uh, Kim, not yet," she denied him gently, but with her entrancing smile in full evidence. `But pretty' quick, when that leg looks a little less like a Chinese puzzle, you and nursie go bye-bye."

"Beautiful, but dumb!” the Lensman growled. "Can't you and those cockeyed croakers realize that I’ll never get any strength back if .you keep me in bed all the rest of my life? And don't talk baby-talk at me, either. I'm well enough at least so you can wipe that professional smile off your pan and cut that soothing bedside manner of yours."

"Very well-I think so, too!” she snapped, patience at long last gone. "Somebody should tell you the truth. I always supposed that Lensmen had to have
brains,
but you've been a perfect
brat
ever since you've been here. First you wanted to eat yourself sick, and now you want to get up, with bones half-knit and burns half-healed, and undo everything that has been done for you. Why don't you snap out of it and act your age for a change?"

"I never did think nurses had much sense, and now I know they haven't." Kinnison eyed her with intense disfavor, not at all convinced. "I'm not talking about going back to work. I mean a little gentle exercise, and I know what I need."

"You'd be surprised at what you don't know," and the nurse walked out, chin in air.

In five minutes, however, she was back, her radiant smile again flashing.

"Sorry, Rim, I shouldn't have blasted off that way-I know that you're bound to backfire and to have brainstorms. I would, too, if I were . . . . ."

"Cancel it, Mac," he began, awkwardly. "I don't know why I have to be crabbing at you all the time."

"QX, Lensman," she replied, entirely serene now. "I do. You're not the type to stay in bed without it griping you, but when a man has been ground up into such hamburger as you are, he has to stay in bed whether he likes it or not,. and no matter how much he pope off about it. Roll over here, now, and I'll glue you an alcohol rub. But it won't be long now, really-pretty soon, we'll have you out in a wheel-chair . . . . .”

Thus it went for weeks. Kinnison knew his behavior was atrocious, abominable, but he simply could not help it. Every so often the accumulated pressure of his bitterness and anxiety would blow off, and, like a jungle tiger with a toothache, he would bite and claw anything or anybody within reach.

Finally, however, the last picture was studied, the last bandage removed, and he was discharged as fit. And he was not discharged, bitterly although he resented his

"captivity," se he called it, until he really
was
fit. Haynes saw to that. And Haynes had allowed only the most sketchy interviews during that long convalescence. Discharged, however, Kinnison sought him out.

"Let me talk first," Haynes instructed him at sight. "No self-reproaches, no destructive criticism. Everything constructive. Now, Kimball, I'm mighty glad to hear that you made a perfect recovery. You were in bad shape. Go ahead."

“You have just about shut my mouth by your first order." Kinnison smiled sourly as he spoke. "Two words – flat failure. No, let me add two more-as yet."

“That's the spirit!" Haynes exclaimed. "Nor do we agree with you that it was a failure. It was merely not a success far-which is an altogether different thing. Also, I may add that we had very fine reports indeed on you from the hospital."

"Huh?" Kinnison was amazed to the point of being inarticulate.

"You just about tore it down, of course, but that was only to be expected."

"But, sir, I made such a . . . .”

"Exactly. As Lacy tells me quite frequently, he likes to have patients over there that they don't like. Mull that one over for a bit-you may understand it better as you get older. The thought, however, may take some of the load off your mind."

"Well, sir, I am feeling a trifle low, but if you and the rest of them still think . . . . .”

"We do so think. Cheer up and get on with the story."

"I've been doing a lot of thinking, and before I go around sticking out my neck again I'm going to . . . .”

"You don't need to tell me, you know."

"No, sir, but I think I'd better. I'm going to Arisia to see if I can get me a few treatments for swell-head and lame-brain. I still think that I know how to use the Lens to good advantage, but I simply haven't got enough jets to do it. You see, I . . . . ." he stopped. He would not offer anything that might sound like an alibi, but his. thoughts were plain as print to the old Lensman.