Gray Lensman (6 page)

"Twice," she corrected him, "and the second time I was never so glad to be called names in my whole life."

"Now I
know I
was getting to be a space-louse."

"Uh-uh, Kim," she denied again, gently. "And you aren't a brat or a lug or a clunker, either, even though I
have
called you such. But, now that I've actually got all this stuff, what can you—what can we—do about it?"

"Perhaps . . . probably . . . I think, since I gave it to you myself, I'll let you keep it,"

Kinnison decided, slowly.

"Keep it!" she exclaimed. "Of course I'll keep it! Why, it's in my mind—I'll
have
to keep it—nobody can take
knowledge
away from anyone!"

"Oh, sure—of course," he murmured, absently. There were a lot of thing that Mac didn't know, and no good end would be served by enlightening her farther. "You see, there's a lot of stuff in my mind that I don't know much about myself, yet Since I gave you an open channel, there must have been a good reason for it, even though, consciously, I don't know myself what it was." He thought intensely for moments, then went on: "Undoubtedly the subconscious.

Probably it recognized the necessity of discussing the whole situation with someone having a fresh viewpoint, someone whose ideas can help me develop a fresh angle of attack. Haynes and I think too much alike for him to be of much help."

"You trust
me
that much?" the girl asked, dumbfounded.

"Certainly," he replied without hesitation. "I know enough about you to know that you can keep your mouth shut."

Thus unromantically did Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, acknowledge the first glimmerings of the dawning perception of a vast fact—that this nurse and he were two between whom there never would nor could exist any iota of doubt or of question.

Then they sat and talked. Not idly, as is the fashion of lovers, of the minutiae of their own romantic affairs, did these two converse, but cosmically, of the entire Universe and of the already existent conflict between the cultures of Civilization and Boskonia.

They sat there, romantically enough to all outward seeming; their privacy assured by Kinnison's Lens and by his ever-watchful sense of perception. Time after time, completely unconsciously, that sense reached out to other couples who approached; to touch and to affect their minds so insidiously that they did not know that they were being steered away from the tree in whose black moon-shadow sat the Lensman and the nurse.

Finally the long conversation came to an end and Kinnison assisted his companion to her feet. His frame was straighter, his eyes held a new and brighter light.

"By the way, Kim," she asked idly as they strolled back toward the ball-room, "who is this Klono, by whom you were swearing a while ago? Another spaceman's god, like Noshabkeming, of the Valerians?"

"Something like him, only more so," he laughed. "A combination of Noshabkeming, some of the gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans, all three of the Fates, and quite a few other things as well. I think, originally, from Corvina, but fairly wide-spread through certain sections 3Of course this was not the true explanation; but at that time only Mentor of Arisia had any idea of the real power of Clarrissa MacDougall's mind. E.E.S.

of the galaxy now. He's got so much stuff—teeth and horns, claws and whiskers, tail and everything—that he's much more satisfactory to swear by than any other space-god I know of."

"But why do men have to swear at all, Kim?" she queried, curiously. "It's so silly."

"For the same reason that women cry," he countered. "A man swears to keep from crying, a woman cries to keep from swearing. Both are sound psychology. Safety valves —means of blowing off excess pressure that would otherwise blow fuses or burn out tubes."

CHAPTER 3
DEI EX MACHINA

In the library of the port admiral's richly comfortable home, a room as heavily guarded against all forms of intrusion as was his private office, two old but active Gray Lensmen sat and grinned at each other like the two conspirators which in fact they were. One took a squat, red bottle of fayalin4 from a cabinet and filled two small glasses. The glasses clinked, rim to rim.

"Here's to love!" Haynes gave the toast.

"Ain't it grand!" Surgeon-Marshal Lacy responded.

"Down the hatch!" they chanted in unison, and action followed word.

"You aren't asking if everything stayed on the beam." This from Lacy.

"No need—I had a spy-ray on the whole performance." "You would—you're the type.

However, I would have, too, if I had a panel full of them in
my
office. . .. Well, say it, you old space-hellion!" Lacy grinned again, albeit a trifle wryly.

"Nothing to say, sawbones. You did a grand job, and you've got nothing to blow a jet about."

"No? How would you like to have a red-headed spitfire who's scarcely dry behind the ears yet tell you to your teeth that you've got softening of the brain? That you had the mental capacity of a gnat, the intellect of a Zabriskan fontema? And to have to take it, without even heaving the insubordinate young jade into the can for about twenty-five well-earned black spots?"

"Oh, come, now, you're just blasting. It wasn't that bad!"

"Perhaps not—quite—but it was bad enough."

"She'll grow up, some day, and realize that you were foxing her six ways from the origin."

"Probably. . . . In the meantime, it's all part of the bigger job. . . . Thank God I'm not young any more. They suffer so."

"Check.
How
they suffer!"

"But you saw the ending and I didn't How did it turn out?" Lacy asked.

"Partly good, partly bad." Haynes slowly poured two more drinks and thoughtfully swirled the crimson, pungently aromatic liquid around and around in his glass before he spoke again. "Hooked—but she knows it, and I'm afraid she'll do something about it."

"She's a smart operator—I told you she was. She doesn't fox herself about anything.

Hmm. . . . A bit of separation is indicated, it would seem."

"Check. Can you send out a hospital ship somewhere, so as to get rid of her for two or three weeks?"

4A stimulating, although non-intoxicating beverage prepared from the fruit of a Crevenian shrub,
Fayaloclastus Augustifolius Barnstead;
much in favor as a ceremonial drink among those who can afford it E.E.S.

"Can do. Three weeks be enough? We can't send him anywhere, you know."

"Plenty—hell be gone in two." Then, as Lacy glanced at him questioningly, Haynes continued: "Ready for a shock? He's going to Lundmark's Nebula."

"But he
can't!
That would take years! Nobody has ever got back from there yet, and there's this new job of his. Besides, this separation is only supposed to last until you can spare him for a while!"

"If it takes very long he's coming back. The idea has always been, you know, that intergalactic matter may be so thin— one atom per liter or so—that such a flit won't take one-tenth the time supposed. We recognize the danger—he's going well heeled."

"How well?"

The very best"

"I hate to clog their jets this way, but it's got to be done. We'll give her a raise when I send her out—make her sector chief. Huh?"

"Did I hear any such words lately as spitfire, hussy, and jade, or did I dream them?"

Haynes asked, quizzically.

"She's all of them, and more—but she's one of the best nurses and one of the finest women that ever lived, too!”

"QX, Lacy, give her her raise. Of course she's good. If she wasn't, she wouldn't be in on this deal at all. In fact, they're about as fine a couple of youngsters as old Tellus ever produced."

"They are that. Man,
what
a pair of skeletons!"

*

And in the Nurses' Quarters a young woman with a wealth of red-bronze-auburn hair and tawny eyes was staring at her own reflection in a mirror.

"You half-wit, you ninny, you lug!" she stormed, bitterly if almost inaudibly, at that reflection. "You lame-brained moron, you red-headed, idiotic imbecile, you microcephalic dumbbell, you
clunker!
Of all the men in this whole cockeyed galaxy, you
would
have to make a dive at Kimball Kinnison, the one man who thinks you're just part of the furniture. At a Gray Lensman. . . ." Her expression changed and she whispered softly, "A. . . Gray. . . Lensman. He
can't
love anybody as long as he's carrying that load. They can't let themselves be human . . .

quite . . . perhaps loving
him
will be enough. . .."

She straightened up, shrugged, and smiled; but even that pitiful travesty of a smile could not long endure. Shortly it was buried in waves of pain and the girl threw herself down upon her bed.

"Oh Kim, Kim!" she sobbed. "I wish . . . why can't you . . . Oh, why did I ever have to be born!"

*

Three weeks later, far out in space, Kimball Kinnison was thinking thoughts entirely foreign to his usual pattern. He was in his bunk, smoking dreamily, staring unseeing at the metallic ceiling.

He was not thinking of Boskone.

When he had thought at Mac, back there at that dance, he had, for the first time in his life, failed to narrow down his beam to the exact thought being sent. Why? The explanation he had given the girl was totally inadequate. For that matter, why had he been so glad to see her there? And why, at every odd moment, did visions of her keep coming into his mind—her form and features, her eyes, her lips, her startling hair? . . . She was beautiful, of course, but not nearly such a seven-sector callout as that thionite dream he had met on Aldebaran II—and his only thought of
her
was an occasional faint regret that he hadn't half-wrung her lovely neck . . . why, she wasn't really as good-looking as, and didn't have half the
je ne sais quoi
of, that blonde heiress—what was her name?—oh, yes, Forrester. . .. There was only one answer, and it jarred him to the core—he would not admit it, even to himself. He
couldn't
love anybody—it just simply was not in the cards. He had a job to do. The Patrol had spent a million credits making a Lensman out of him, and it was up to him to give them some kind of a run for their money. No Lensman had any business with a wife, especially a Gray Lensman. He couldn't sit down anywhere, and she couldn't flit with him. Besides, nine out of every ten Gray Lensmen got killed before they finished their jobs, and the one that did happen to live long enough to retire to a desk was almost always half machinery and artificial parts. . . .

No, not in seven thousand years. No woman deserved to have her life made into such a hell on earth as that would be—years of agony, of heartbreaking suspense, climaxed by untimely widowhood; or, at best, the wasting of the richest part of her life upon a husband who was half steel, rubber, and phenoline plastic. Red in particular was much too splendid a person to be let in for anything like that. . ..

But hold on—jet back! What made him think he rated any such girl? That there was even a possibility—especially in view of the way he had behaved while under her care in Base Hospital—that she would ever feel like being anything more to him than a strictly impersonal nurse? Probably not— he had Klono's own gadolinium guts to think that she would marry
him,
under any conditions, even if he made a full-power dive at her. . . .

Just the same, she might. Look at what women did fall in love with, sometimes. So he'd never make any kind of a dive at her; no, not even a pass. She was too sweet, too fine, too vital a woman to be tied to any space-louse; she deserved happiness, not heartbreak. She deserved the best there was in life, not the worst; the whole love of a whole man for a whole lifetime, not the fractions which were all that he could offer any woman. As long as he could think a straight thought he wouldn't make any motions toward spoiling her life. In fact, he hadn't better see Reddy again. He wouldn't go near any planet she was on, and if he saw her out in space he'd go somewhere else at a hundred parsecs an hour.

With a bitter imprecation Kinnison sprang out of his bunk, hurled his half-smoked cigarette at an ash-tray, and strode toward the control-room.

*

The ship he rode was of the Patrol's best. Superbly powered, for flight, defense, and offense, she was withal a complete space-laboratory and observatory; and her personnel, over and above her regular crew, was as varied as her equipment She carried ten Lensmen, a circumstance unique in the annals of space, even for such trouble-shooting battle-wagon as the
Dauntless
was; and a scientific staff which was practically a cross-section of the Tree of Knowledge. She carried Lieutenant Peter vanBuskirk and his company of Valerian wildcats; Worsel of Velantia and three score of his reptilian kinsmen; Tregonsee, the blocky Rigellian Lensman, and a dozen or so of his fellows; Master Technician La Verne Thorndyke and his crew. She carried three Master Pilots, Prime Base's best— Henderson, Schermerhorn and Watson.

The
Dauntless
was an immense vessel. She had to be, in order to carry, in addition to the men and the things requisitioned by Kinnison, the personnel and the equipment which Port Admiral Haynes had insisted upon sending with him.

"But great Klono, Chief, think of what a hole you're making in Prime Base if we don't get back!" Kinnison had protested.

"You're coming back, Kinnison," the Port Admiral had replied, gravely. "That is why I am sending these men and this stuff along—to be as sure as I possibly can that you
do
come back."

Now they were out in intergalactic space, and the Gray Lensman, closing his eyes, sent his sense of perception out beyond the confining iron walls and let it roam the void. This was better than a visiplate; with no material barriers or limitations he was feasting upon a spectacle scarcely to be pictured in the most untrammeled imaginings of man.

There were no planets, no suns, no stars; no meteorites, no particles of cosmic debris. All nearby space was empty, with an indescribable perfection of emptiness at the very thought of which the mind quailed in incomprehending horror. And, accentuating that emptiness, at such mind-searing distances as to be dwarfed into buttons, and yet, because of their intrinsic massiveness, starkly apparent in their three-dimensional relationships, there hung poised and motionlessly stately the component galaxies of a Universe.