As far as his instruments could tell—and he had given Aldebaran I a more thorough going over, by far, than any ordinary surveying ship would have given it—there was no base of any kind upon or within the planet. Yet heknewthat a base was there. So what? So—maybe—Helmuth's base might be inside the galaxy after all, protected from detection in the same way, probably by solid miles of iron or of iron ore. A second line upon that base had now become imperative. But they were approaching the system fast; he had better get ready.
He belted on his personal equipment, including a nullifier, then inspected his armor, checking its supplies and apparatus carefully before he hooked it ready to his hand. Glancing into the plate, he noted with approval that his chaser was functioning perfectly. Pursued and pursuer were now both well inside the solar system of Aldebaran; and, as slowed the pirate, so slowed the speedster.
Finally, the leader went inert in preparation for his spiral. But Kinnison was no longer following. Before he went inert he flashed down to within fifty thousand miles of the planet's forbidding surface. He then cut his Bergenholm, threw the speedster into an almost circular orbit, well away from the landing orbit selected by the pirate, cut off all his power, and drifted. He stayed in the speedster, observing and computing, until he had so exactly defined its path that he could find it unerringly at any future instant. Then he went into the air lock, stepped out into space, and, waiting only to be sure that the portal had snapped shut behind him, set his course toward the pirate's spiral.
Inert now, his progress was so slow as to seem imperceptible, but he had plenty of time. And it was only relatively that his speed was low. He was actually hurtling through space at the rate of well over two thousand miles an hour, and his powerful little driver was increasing that speed constantly by an acceleration of two Earth gravities.
Soon the vessel crept up, beneath him now, and Kinnison, increasing his drive to five gravities, shot toward it in a long, slanting dive. This was the most ticklish minute of the trip, but the Lensman had assumed correctly that the officers of the badly undermanned ship would be looking ahead of them and down, not backward and up. They were, and he made his approach unseen. The approach itself, the boarding of an inert space ship at its frightful landing-spiral velocity, was elementary to any competent space man—simplicity itself. There was not even a flare to bother him or to reveal him to sight, as the braking jets were now doing all the work. Matching course and velocity ever more closely, he crept up—flung his magnet—pulled up, hand over hand—opened the emergency inlet lock—and there he was.
Matching course and velocity, he crept up—flung his magnet, pulled up, hand over hand——
Matching course and velocity, he crept up—flung his magnet, pulled up, hand over hand——
Matching course and velocity, he crept up—flung his magnet, pulled up, hand over hand——
Unconcernedly, he made his way along the sternway and into the now deserted quarters of the fighters. There he lay down in a hammock, snapped the acceleration straps, and shot his spy ray into the control room. And there, in the pirate captain's own visiplate, he observed the rugged and torn topography of the terrain below, as the pilot fought his ship down, mile by mile.
Tough going, this, Kinnison reflected, and the bird was doing a nice job, even if he was taking it the hard way, bringing her down straight on her nose instead of taking one more spiral around the planet and then sliding in on her under jets, which were designed and placed specifically for such work. But taking it the hard way he was, and his vessel was bucking, kicking, bouncing, and spinning on the terrific blast from her braking jets. Down she came, fast; and it was only after she was actually inside one of those stupendous craters, well below the level of its rim, that the pilot flattened her out and assumed normal landing position.
They were still going too fast, Kinnison thought. But the pirate pilot knew what he was doing. Five miles the vessel dropped, straight down that Titanic shaft, before the bottom was reached. The shaft's wall was studded with windows; in front of the craft loomed the outer gate of a gigantic air lock. It opened; the ship was trundled inside, landing cradle and all, and the massive gate closed behind it. This was the pirates' base, and Kinnison was inside it!
"Men, attention!" The pirate commander snapped then. "This air is deadly poison, so put on your armor and be sure your tanks are full. They have rooms for us, having good air, but don't open your suits a crack until I tell you to. Assemble! All of you that are not here in this control room in five minutes will stay on board and take your own chances!"
Kinnison decided instantly to assemble with the crew. He could do nothing in the ship, and it would be inspected, of course. He had plenty of air, but space armor all looked alike, and his Lens would warn him in time of any unfriendly or suspicious thought. He had better go. If they called a roll——But he would cross that bridge when he came to it.
No roll was called; in fact, the captain paid no attention at all to his men. They could come along or not, just as they pleased. But since to stay in the ship meant death, every man was prompt. At the expiration of the five minutes the captain strode away, followed by the crowd. Through a doorway, left turn, and the captain was met by a creature whose shape Kinnison could not make out. A pause, a straggling forward, then a right turn.
Kinnison decided that he would not take that turn. He would stay here, close to the shaft—where he could blast his way out if necessary—until he had studied the whole base thoroughly enough to map out a plan of campaign. He soon found an empty and apparently unused room, and assured himself that through its heavy, crystal-clear window he could indeed look out into the vastly cylindrical emptiness of the volcanic shaft.
Then, with his spy ray, he watched the pirates as they were escorted to the quarters prepared for them. Those might have been rooms of state, but it looked to Kinnison very much as though his former shipmates were being jailed ignominiously, and he was glad that he had taken leave of them. Shooting his ray here and there throughout the structure, he finally found what he was looking for: the communicator room. That room was fairly well lighted, and at what he saw there his jaw dropped in sheerest amazement.
He had expected to see men, since Aldebaran II, the only inhabited planet in the system, had been colonized from Tellus and its people were as truly human and Caucasian as those of Chicago or of Paris. But these—thesethings——He had been around quite a bit, but he had never seen nor heard of their like. They were wheels, really. When they went anywhere they rolled. Heads where hubs ought to be—eyes—arms, dozens of them, and very capable-looking hands——
"Vogenar!" a crisp thought flashed from one of the peculiar entities to another, impinging also upon Kinnison's Lens. "Some one—some outsider—is looking at me. Relieve me while I abate this intolerable nuisance."
"One of those creatures from Tellus? We will teach them very shortly that such intrusion is not to be borne for an instant."
"No, it is not one of them. The touch is similar, but the tone is entirely different. Nor could it be one of them, for not one of them is equipped with the instrument which is such a clumsy substitute for the sense of perception with which all really intelligent races are endowed in their minds. There, I will now begin to——"
Kinnison snapped on his thought-screen, but the damage had already been done.
In the violated communications room the angry observer went on: "—attune myself and trace the origin of that prying look. It has disappeared now, but its sender cannot be distant, since our walls are shielded and screened. Ah, there is a blank space which I cannot penetrate, in the seventh room of the fourth corridor. In all probability it is one of our guests, hiding now behind a thought screen." Then his orders boomed out to a corps of guards. "Take him and put him with the others!"
Kinnison had not heard the order, but he was ready for anything, and those who came to take him found that it was easier far to issue such orders than to carry them out.
"Halt!" snapped the Lensman, his Lens carrying the crackling command deep into the wheelmen's minds. "I do not wish to harm you, but come no closer!"
"You? Harm us?" came a cold, clear thought, and the creatures vanished. But not for long. They, or others like them, were back in moments, this time armed and armored for strife.
Again Kinnison found that rays were useless. The armor of the foe-mounted generators as capable as his own; and, although the air in the room soon became one intolerably glaring field of force, in which the very walls themselves began to crumble and to vaporize, neither he nor his attackers were harmed. Again, then, the Lensman had recourse to his medieval weapon, sheathing his DeLameter and wading in with his ax. Although not a VanBuskirk, he was, for an Earthman, of unusual strength, skill, and speed; and to those opposing him he was a very Hercules.
Therefore, as he struck and struck and struck again, the cell became a gorily reeking slaughter pen, its every corner high-piled with the shattered corpses of the wheelmen and its floor running with blood and slime. The last few of the attackers, unwilling to face longer that irresistible steel, wheeled away, and Kinnison thought flashingly of what he should do next.
This trip was a bust so far. He couldn't do himself a bit of good here now, and he'd better buzz off while he was still in one piece. How? The door? No. Couldn't make it. He'd run out of time quick that way. Better take out the wall. That would give those Wheelmen something else to think about, too, while he was doing his flit.
Only a fraction of a second was taken up by these thoughts; then Kinnison was at the wall. He set his DeLameter to minimum aperture and at maximum blast, to throw a cutting pencil against which no material substance could stand. Through the wall that pencil pierced—up, over, and around.
But, fast as the Lensman had acted, he was still too late. There came trundling into the room behind him, upon four low wheels, a truck, bearing a squat and monstrous mechanism. Kinnison whirled to face it. As he turned the section of the wall upon which he had been at work blew outward with a deafening crash. The ensuing rush of escaping atmosphere picked the Lensman up as though he had been a straw and hurled him out through the opening and into the shaft. In the meantime the mechanism upon the truck had begun a staccato, grinding roar, and as it roared Kinnison felt slugs ripping through his armor and tearing through his flesh, each as crushing, crunching, paralyzing a blow as though it had been inflicted by VanBuskirk's space ax.
The rush of escaping atmosphere picked the Lensman up as though he had been a straw—hurled him out——
The rush of escaping atmosphere picked the Lensman up as though he had been a straw—hurled him out——
The rush of escaping atmosphere picked the Lensman up as though he had been a straw—hurled him out——
This was the first time that Kinnison had ever been really badly wounded, and it made him sick. But, sick and numb, senses reeling at the shock to his slug-torn body, his right hand flashed to the external controller of his neutralizer. For he was falling inert. It was only ten or fifteen meters to the bottom, as he remembered it. He had mighty little time to waste if he were not to land inert. He snapped the controller. Nothing happened. Something had been shot away. His driver, too, was dead. Snapping the sleeve of his armor into its clamps he began to withdraw his arm in order to operate the internal controls, but he ran out of time. He crashed, on the top of a subsiding pile of masonry which had preceded him, but which had not yet attained a state of equilibrium, underneath a shower of similar material which rebounded from his armor in a boiler-shop clangor of noise.
Well it was that that heap of masonry had not yet had time to settle into form, for in some slight measure it acted as a cushion to break the Lensman's fall. But an inert fall of forty feet, even cushioned by rocks, is in no sense a light one. Kinnison crashed. It seemed as though a thousand pile drivers struck him at once. Surges of almost unbearable agony swept over him, as bones snapped and bruised flesh gave way. He knew dimly that a merciful tide of oblivion was reaching up to engulf his shrieking, suffering mind.
But, foggily at first in the stunned confusion of his entire being, something stirred, that unknown and unknowable something, that indefinable ultimate quality that had made him worthy of the Lens he wore. He lived, and while a Lensman lived he did not quit. To quit was to die then and there, since he was losing air fast. He had plastic in his kit, of course, and the holes were small. Hemustplug those leaks, and plug them quick.
His left arm, he found, he could not move at all. It must be smashed pretty badly. Every shallow breath was a searing pain. That meant a rib or two gone out. Luckily, however, he was not breathing blood; therefore, his lungs must still be intact. He could move his right arm, although it seemed like a lump of clay or a limb belonging to some one else.
But, mustering all his power of will, he made it move. He dragged it out of the armor's clamped sleeve, forced the leaden hand to slide through the welter of blood that seemed almost to fill the bulge of his armor. He found his kit box, and, after an eternity of pain-racked time, he compelled his sluggish hand to open it and to take out the plastic.
Then, in a continuously crescendo throbbing of agony, he forced his maimed, crushed, and broken body to writhe and to wriggle about, so that his one sound hand could find and stop the holes through which his precious air was whistling out and away. Find them he did, and quickly, and sealed them tight; but when he had plugged the last one he slumped down, spent and exhausted. He did not hurt so much, now; his suffering had mounted to such terrific heights of intolerable keenness that the nerves themselves, in outraged protest at carrying such a load, had blocked it off.
There was much more to do, but he simply could not do it without a rest. Even his iron will could not drive his tortured muscles to any further effort until after they had been allowed to recuperate a little from what they had gone through.
How much air did he have left, if any, he wondered, foggily and with an entirely detached and disinterested impersonalness. Maybe his tanks were empty. Of course, it couldn't have taken him as long to plug those leaks as it had seemed to, or he wouldn't have had any air left at all, in tanks or suit. He couldn't, however, have much left. He would look at his gauges and see.
But now he found that he could not move even his eyeballs, so deep was the coma that was enveloping him. Away off somewhere there was a billowing expanse of blackness, utterly heavenly in its deep, softly-cushioned comfort; and from that sea of peace and surcease there came reaching to embrace him huge, soft, tender arms. Why suffer, something crooned at him. It wassomuch easier to let go!
XVII.
Kinnison did not lose consciousness—quite. There was too much to do, too much thathadto be done. He had to get out of here. He had to get back to his speedster. He had, by hook or by crook, to get back to Prime Base! Therefore, grimly, doggedly, teeth tight-locked in the enhancing agony of every movement, he drew again upon those hidden, those deeply buried resources which even he had no idea he possessed. His code was simple: the code of the Lens. While a Lensman lived he did not quit. Kinnison was a Lensman. Kinnison lived. Kinnison did not quit.
He fought back that engulfing tide of blackness, wave by wave as it came. He beat down by sheer force of will those tenderly beckoning, those sweetly seducing arms of oblivion. He forced the mass of protesting putty that was his body to do whathadto be done. He thrust styptic gauze into the most copiously bleeding of his wounds. He was burned, too, he discovered then—they must have had a high-powered needle ray on that truck, as well as the rifle—but he could do nothing about burns. There simply wasn't time.
He found the power lead that had been severed by a bullet. Stripping the insulation was an almost impossible job, but it was finally accomplished, after a fashion. Bridging the gap proved to be even a worse one. Since there was no slack, the ends could not be twisted together, but had to be joined by a short piece of spare wire, which, in turn, had to be stripped and then twisted with each end of the severed lead. That task, too, he finally finished, although he was working purely by feel and half conscious withal in a wracking haze of pain.
Soldering those joints was, of course, out of the question. He was afraid even to try to insulate them with tape, lest the loosely twined strands should fall apart in the attempt. He did have some dry handkerchiefs, however, if he could reach them. He could, and did, and wrapped one carefully about the wires' bare joints. Then, apprehensively, he tried his neutralizer. Wonder of wonders, it worked! So did his driver!
In moments then he was rocketing up the shaft, and as he passed the opening out of which he had been blown, he realized with amazement that what had seemed to him like hours must have been minutes only, and few even of them. For the frantic Wheelmen were just then lifting into place the temporary shield which was to stem the mighty outrush of their atmosphere. Wonderingly, Kinnison looked at his air gauges. He had enough—if he hurried.
And hurry he did. Hecouldhurry, since there was practically no atmosphere to impede his flight. Up the five-mile-deep shaft he shot and out into space. His chronometer, built to withstand even severer shocks than that of his fall, told him where his speedster was to be found, and in a matter of minutes he found her. Against her side he flashed in inertialess collision. He forced his rebellious right arm into the sleeve of his armor and fumbled at the lock. It yielded. The port swung open. He was inside his own ship.
Again the encroaching universe of blackness threatened, but again he fought it off. Hecould notpass out—yet! Dragging himself to the board, he laid his course upon distant Tellus, too distant by far to permit of the selection of such a tiny objective as Prime Base. He connected the automatic controls.
He was weakening fast, and knew it. But from somewhere and in some fashion hemustget strength to do whatmustbe done—and somehow he did it. He shoved his levers out to maximum blast. Hang on, Kim! Hang on for just a second more! He disconnected the spacer. He killed the detector nullifiers. Then, with the utterly last remnant of his strength he thought into his Lens.
"Haynes." The thought went out blurred, distorted, weak. "Kinnison. I'm coming—com——"
He was done—out cold, utterly spent. He had already done too much—far, far too much. He had driven that pitifully mangled body of his to its ultimately last possible movement; his wracked and tortured mind to its ultimately last possible thought. The last iota of even his tremendous reserve of vitality was consumed and he plunged, parsecs deep, into the black depths of oblivion which had so long and so unsuccessfully been trying to engulf him.
But Kimball Kinnison, gray Lensman, had done everything that hadhadto be done before he blacked out. His final thought, feeble though it was, and incomplete, did its work.
Port Admiral Haynes was seated at his desk, discussing matters of import with an officeful of executives, when that thought arrived. Hardened old space hound that he was, and survivor of many encounters and hospitalizations, he knew instantly what that thought connoted and from the depths of what dire need it had been sent.
Therefore, to the amazement of the officers in the room, he suddenly leaped to his feet, seized his microphone and snapped out orders. Orders, and still more orders. Every vessel in seven sectors, of whatever class or tonnage, was to shove its detectors out to the limit. Kinnison's speedster is out there somewhere. Find her—get her—kill her drive and drag her in here, to No. 10 landing field. Get a pilot here, fast—no, two pilots, in armor. Get them off the top of the board, too—Watson and Schermerhorn if they're anywhere within range. He then called Base Hospital.
"Lacy!" he barked at the dignified chief surgeon. "I've got a boy out that's badly hurt. He's coming in free. You know what that means. Send over a good doctor. And have you got a nurse who knows how to use a personal neutralizer and who isn't afraid to go into the net?"
"Coming myself. Yes." The doctor's voice was as crisp as the admiral's. "When do you want us?"
"As soon as they get their tractors on that speedster. You'll know when that happens."
Then, neglecting all other business, the port admiral directed in person the far-flung screen of ships searching for Kinnison's flying midget.
Eventually she was found; and Haynes, cutting off his plates, leaped to a closet in which was hanging his own armor. Unused for years, nevertheless it was kept in readiness for instant service; and now, at long last, the old space flea had a good excuse to use it again.
Armored, he strode out into the landing field across the paved way. There awaiting him were two armored figures, the two top-ranking pilots. There were the doctor and the nurse. He barely saw—or, rather, he saw without noticing—a saucy white cap atop a riot of red-bronze-auburn curls, a symmetrical young body in its spotless white. He did not notice the face at all. What he saw was that there was a neutralizer strapped snugly into the curve of her back, that it was fitted properly, and that it was not yet functioning.
For this that faced them was no ordinary job. The speedster would land free. Worse, the admiral feared—and rightly—that Kinnison would also be free, but independently, with a latent velocity different from that of his ship. They must enter the speedster, take her out into space and inert her. Kinnison must be taken out of the speedster, inerted, his velocity matched to that of the flier, and brought back aboard. Then and only then could doctor and nurse begin to work on him. Then they would have to land as fast as a landing could be made. The boy should have been in the hospital long ago.
And during all these evolutions and until their return to ground the rescuers themselves would remain inertialess. Ordinarily such visitors left the ship, inerted themselves, and came back to it inert, under their own power. But now there was no time for that. They had to get Kinnison to the hospital; and besides, the doctor and the nurse—particularly the nurse—could not be expected to be space-suit navigators. They would all take it in the net, and that was another reason for haste. For while they were gone their latent velocity would remain unchanged, while the actual velocity of their present surroundings would be changing constantly. The longer they were gone the greater would become the discrepancy. Hence the net.
The net—a leather-and-canvas sack, lined with softly padded inner-spring mattresses, anchored to ceiling and to walls and to floor through every shock-absorbing artifice of steel spring and of rubber cable that the mind of man had been able to devise. It takes something to absorb and to dissipate the kinetic energy which may reside within a human body when its latent velocity does not match exactly the actual velocity of its surroundings—that is, if that body is not to be mashed to a pulp. It takes something, also, to enable any human being to face without flinching the prospect of going into that net, especially in ignorance of exactly how much kinetic energy will have to be dissipated.
Haynes cogitated, studying the erect, supple young back, then spoke, "Maybe we'd better cancel the nurse, Lacy, or get her a suit——"
"Time is too important," the girl herself put in, crisply. "Don't worry about me, admiral; I've been in the net before."
She turned toward Haynes as she spoke, and for the first time he really saw her face. Why, she was a raving beauty—a knock-out—a seven-sector call-out——
"Here she is!" In the grip of a tractor the speedster had flashed to ground in front of the waiting five, and they hurried aboard.
They hurried, but there was no flurry, no confusion. Each knew exactly what to do, and each did it.
Out into space shot the little vessel, jerking savagely downward and sidewise as one of the pilots cut the Bergenholm. Out of the air lock flew the port admiral and the helpless, unconscious Kinnison, inertialess both and now chained together. Off they darted, in a new direction and with tremendous speed, as Haynes cut Kinnison's neutralizer. There was a mighty double flare as the drivers of both space suits struggled against that which had been the young Lensman's latent velocity.
As soon as it was safe to do so, out darted an armored figure with a space line, whose grappling end clinked into a socket of the old man's armor as the pilot rammed it home. Then, as an angler plays a fish, two husky pilots, feet wide-braced against the steel portal of the air lock and bodies sweating with effort, heaving when they could and giving line only when they must, helped the laboring drivers to overcome the difference in velocity.
Then two husky pilots played the armored figures on the steel cables as an angler plays a fish, aiding the struggling drivers to overcome the velocity.
Then two husky pilots played the armored figures on the steel cables as an angler plays a fish, aiding the struggling drivers to overcome the velocity.
Then two husky pilots played the armored figures on the steel cables as an angler plays a fish, aiding the struggling drivers to overcome the velocity.
Soon the Lensmen, young and old, were inside. Doctor and nurse went instantly to work, with the calmness and precision so characteristic of their highly skilled crafts. In a trice they had him out of his armor, out of his leather, and into a hammock, perceiving at once that except for a few pads of gauze they could do nothing for their patient until they had him upon an operating table. Meanwhile the pilots, having swung the hammocks, had been observing, computing, and conferring.
"She's got a lot of speed, admiral—most of it straight down," Watson reported. "On her landing jets it'll take two G's on a full revolution to bring her in. With both of us at the controls we can balance her down, but it'll have to be on her tail and it'll mean over five G's all the way. Which do you want?"
"Which is more important, Lacy, time or pressure?" Haynes transferred decision to the surgeon.
"Time." Lacy decided instantly. "Fight her down!" His patient had been through so much already of force and pressure that a little more would not do additional hurt, and time was most decidedly of the essence.
Starkly incandescent flares ripped and raved from driving jets and side jets. The speedster spun around viciously, only to be curbed, skillfully if savagely, at the precisely right instant. Without an orbit, without even a corkscrew or other spiral, she was going down—straight down. And not upon her under jets was this descent to be, nor upon her more powerful braking jets. Those two master pilots, Prime Base's best, were going to kill the awful inertia of the speedster by "balancing her down on her tail." Or, to translate from the jargon of space, they were going to hold the tricky, cranky little vessel upright upon the terrific blasts of her driving projectors, against the Earth's gravitation and against all other perturbing forces, while her driving force counteracted, overcame, and dissipated the full frightful measure of the kinetic energy of her mass and speed!
And balance her down they did. Haynes was afraid for a while that that intrepid pair were actually going tolandthe speedster on her tail. They didn't—quite—but they had only a scant hundred feet to spare when they nosed her over and eased her to ground on her under jets.
The crash-wagon and its crew were waiting, and as Kinnison was rushed to the hospital the others hurried to the net room. Doctor Lacy first, of course, then the nurse; and, to Haynes' approving surprise, she took it like a veteran. Hardly had the surgeon let himself out of the "cocoon" than she was in it; and hardly had the terrific surges and recoils of her own not inconsiderable one hundred and forty-five pounds of mass abated than she herself was out and sprinting across the sward toward the hospital.
Haynes went back to his office and tried to work, but he could not concentrate. He made his way back to the hospital. There he waited, and as Lacy came out of the operating room he buttonholed him.
"How about it, Lacy, will he live?" he demanded.
"Live? Of course he'll live," the surgeon replied, gruffly. "Can't tell you details yet—won't know, ourselves, for a couple of hours yet. Buzz off, Haynes. Come back at six o'clock—not a second before—and I'll tell you all about it."
Since there was no help for it the port admiral did "buzz off," but he was back promptly on the tick of the designated hour.
"How is he?" he began, without preamble. "Will he really live, or were you just giving me a shot in the arm?"
"Better than that, much better," the surgeon assured him. "Definitely so; yes. He is in much better shape than we dared hope. Must have been a very light crash indeed—nothing seriously the matter with him at all. We won't even have to amputate, from what we can see now. He should make a one-hundred-per-cent recovery, not only without artificial members, but with scarcely a scar. He couldn't have been in a space crack-up at all, or he would not have come out with so little injury."
"Fine, doc—wonderful! Now the details."
"Here's the picture." And the doctor unrolled a full-length X-ray print, showing every anatomical detail of the Lensman's interior structure. "First, just notice that skeleton. It is really remarkable. Slightly out of true here and there right now, of course, but I believe that it is going to turn out to be the second absolutely perfect male skeleton I have ever seen. That young man will go far, Haynes."
"Sure he will. Why else do you suppose we put him in gray? But I didn't come over here to be told that. Show me the damage."
"Look at the picture—see for yourself. Multiple and compound fractures, you notice, of legs and arm, and a few ribs. Scapula, of course—there. Oh, yes, there's a skull fracture, too, but it doesn't amount to much. That's all. The spine, you see, isn't injured at all."
"What d'you mean, 'that's all'? How about his wounds? I saw some of them myself, and they were not pin pricks."
"Nothing of the least importance. A few punctured wounds and a couple of incised ones, but nothing even close to a vital part. He won't need even a transfusion, since he stopped the major hemorrhages himself, shortly after he was wounded. There are a few burns, of course, but they are mostly superficial—none that will not yield quite readily to treatment."
"Mighty glad of that. He'll be here six weeks then?"
"Better call it twelve, I think—ten at least. You see, some of the fractures, especially those in the left leg, and a couple of the burns, are rather severe, as such things go. Then, too, the length of time elapsing between injury and treatment didn't do anything a bit of good."
"In two weeks he'll be wanting to get up and go places and do things; and in six he'll be tearing down your hospital, stone by stone."
"Yes." The surgeon smiled. "He is not the type to make an ideal patient; but, as I have told you before, I like to have patients that we do not like."
"And another thing. I want the files on his nurses, particularly the red-headed one."
"I suspected that you would, so I had them sent down. Here you are. Glad you noticed MacDougall—she's by way of being my favorite. Clarrissa MacDougall—Scotch, of course, with that name—twenty years old. Height, one hundred sixty-eight centimeters; weight, sixty-six kilos. Here are her pictures. Never mind the conventional photo; this X-ray is the one that counts. Man, look at that skeleton! Beautiful! The only really perfect skeleton I ever saw in a woman——"
"It isn't the skeleton I'm interested in," grunted Haynes. "It's what is outside the skeleton that my Lensman will be looking at."
"You needn't worry about MacDougall," declared the surgeon. "One good look at that picture will tell you that. She classifies. With that skeleton shehasto. She couldn't leave the beam a millimeter, even if she wanted to. Good, bad, or indifferent; male or female; physical, mental, moral, and psychological; the skeleton tells the whole story."
"Maybe it does to you, but not to me." And Haynes took up the "conventional" photograph—a stereoscope in full and absolutely true color, an almost living duplicate of the girl in question. Her thick, heavy hair was not red, but was a vividly intense and indescribable auburn, a gorgeous mass of 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-m. Worse even than I thought," he muttered. "She's a menace to civilization." And he went on to read the documents. "Family—hm-m-m. History.... Experiences.... Reactions and characteristics ... behavior ... psychology ... mentality——"
"She'll do, Lacy," he advised the surgeon finally. "Keep her on with him."
"But see here, Haynes, you suspicious old granny!" snorted the doctor. "He won't be falling for anybody yet. Why, he's just been unattached. He'll be bulletproof 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 ever 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. Brownlee 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, you old sawbones, 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 hewillfall this trip, you understand—just playing safe. Good-by, Lacy!"
XVIII.
Kinnison was dragged out of unconsciousness by the knowledge that he had landed his speedster inertialess. He 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 landed her free! Get the space port——"
"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 needles; go to sleep and rest."
"But my ship——"
"Never mind your ship," the unctuous voice went on. "It was landed and put away——"
"Listen, dumb-bell!" snapped the patient, speaking aloud now, in spite of the pain, the better to drive home his meaning. "Don't try to soothe me! What do you think I am, delirious? Get this and get it straight. I said that I landed that speedsterfree. If you don't know what that means, tell somebody that does. Get the space port—get Haynes—get——"
"We got them, Lensman, long ago." Although her voice was still creamily, sweetly soft, an angry color burned into the nurse's face. "I said everything is on zero. Your speedster was inerted; how else could you be here, inert? I helped do it myself, so Iknowthat she is inert."
"QX." The patient relapsed instantly into unconsciousness and the nurse turned to an interne standing by. (Whereverthatnurse was, at least one doctor could almost always be found.)
"Dumb-bell!" she flared. "What a sweet messhe'sgoing to be to take care of! He's 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. In fact, he was most decidedly the opposite.
Nothing that could be done would satisfy him. All doctors were fatheads, even Lacy, the man who had put him together. All nurses were dumb-bells, even—or specially?—Mac, who with almost superhuman skill, tact and patience had been holding him together. Why, even fatheads and dumb-bells, even high-grade morons, ought to know that a man needed food!
Accustomed to eating everything that 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 soft-boiled egg. If he ate eggs at all he 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 great chunks. 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 in 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, flaccidpoachedegg! 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. 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 make 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 interne.
"How's your Lensman?" he asked, in the privacy of the diet kitchen.
"Don't call himmyLensman!" 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 theywouldgive 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 abratin my life. I'd like to spank him! He needs it. I'd like to know howheever got to be a Lensman, the big, cantankerous clunker! I'mgoingto spank him, too, one of these days; see if I don't!"
"Don't take it so hard, Mac," the interne 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 clogyourjets before."
"You probably never saw a patient likehimbefore, 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 the exercise."
"Not yet, Kim," 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'llneverget 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 that 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 havebrains, but you've acted like a spoiled 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, Kim, I shouldn't have blasted off that way, I know that you're bound to back-fire and to have brain storms. I would, too, if I were——"
"Cancel it, Mac," he began, awkwardly. "I don't know why I have to be such a mutt as to be crabbing at you all the time."
"QX, Lensman," she replied, entirely serene now. "I do. You are 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 pops off about it. Roll over here, now, and I'll give 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 anxietywouldblow 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 was removed, and he was discharged as fit. And he was not discharged, bitterly although he resented his "captivity," as he called it, until he reallywasfit. 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—so 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 swelled 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.
"Go ahead, son. We know you wouldn't."
"If I thought at all, I assumed that I was tackling men, since those on the ship were men, and men were the only known inhabitants of the Aldebaranian system. But when those Wheelmen took me so easily and so completely, it became very evident that I didn't have enough stuff. I ran like a scared pup, and I was lucky to get home at all. It wouldn't have happened if——" He paused.
"If what? Reason it out, son," Haynes advised, pointedly. "You are wrong, dead wrong. You made no mistake, either in judgment or in execution. You have been blaming yourself for assuming that they were men. Let us suppose that you had assumed that they were the Arisians themselves. Then what? After close scrutiny, even in the light of after-knowledge, we do not see how you could have changed the outcome." It did not occur, even to the sagacious old admiral, that Kinnison need not have gone in. Lensmen always went in.
"Well, anyway, they licked me, and that hurts," Kinnison admitted, frankly. "So I'm going back to Arisia for more training, if they'll give it to me. I may be gone quite a while, as it may take even them a long time to increase the permeability of my skull enough so that an idea can filter through it in something under a century."
"Um-m-m." Haynes pondered. "It has never been done. They are a peculiar race, incomprehensible—but not vindictive. They may refuse you, but nothing worse—that is, if you do not cross the barrier without invitation. It's a splendid idea, I think; but be very careful to strike that barrier free and at almost zero power—or else don't strike it at all."
They shook hands, and in a space of minutes the speedster was again tearing through space. Kinnison now knew exactly what he wanted to get, and he utilized every waking hour of that long trip in physical and mental exercise to prepare himself to take it. Thus the time did not seem long. He crept up to the barrier at a snail's pace, stopping instantly as he touched it, and through that barrier he sent a thought.
"Is it permitted that I approach your planet?" he asked, neither brazenly nor obsequiously. He was matter-of-factly asking a simple question and expecting a simple reply. He knew that to these beings, whatever they really were, salutations and identifications were alike superfluous. Nor was he met as Helmuth had been met.
"Ah, 'tis Kimball Kinnison, of Earth," a slow, deep, measured voice resounded in his brain. "Neutralize your controls. You will be landed."
He did so, and the inert speedster shot forward, to come to ground in a perfect landing at a regulation space port. He strode into the office, to confront the same grotesque, dragonlike entity who had measured him for his Lens not so long ago. Now, however, he stared straight into that entity's unblinking eyes, in silence.
"Ah, you have progressed. You realize now that vision is not always reliable. At our previous interview you took it for granted that what you saw must really exist, and did not wonder as to what our true shapes might be."
"I am wondering now, seriously," Kinnison replied. "And if it is permitted, I intend to stay here until I can see your true shapes."
"This?" And the figure changed instantly into that of an old, white-bearded, scholarly gentleman.
"No. There is a vast difference between seeing something myself and having you show it to me. I realize only too well that you can make me see you as anything you choose. You could appear to me as a perfect copy of myself, or as any other thing, person or object conceivable to my mind."
"Ah, you have indeed progressed. While you were expected to return, you are ahead of time by several of your years. When you approached the barrier it was supposed that you came to ask for some particular information, but now that I search your mind I perceive that what you seek is not mere information, but is indeed knowledge."
"You say that you expected me. How could you know that I was coming? I didn't decide definitely myself until only a couple of weeks ago."
"It was inevitable. When we fitted your Lens we knew that you would return if you lived. As we recently informed that one known as Helmuth——"
"Helmuth!You know, then, where——" Kinnison choked himself off. He would not ask for help in that. He would fight his own battles and bury his own dead. If they volunteered the information, well and good; but he would not ask it. Nor did the Arisian furnish it.
"You are right," the sage remarked, imperturbably. "For strong development it is essential that you secure that information for yourself."
Then he continued his previous thought: "As we told Helmuth recently, we have given your civilization an instrumentality—the Lens—by virtue of which it should be able to make itself secure throughout the galaxy. Having given it, we could do nothing more of real or permanent benefit until you Lensmen yourselves began to realize what it was that we had given you. That realization has been inevitable; from the first it has been certain that in time your minds would become strong enough to discover the theretofore unknown depths of power of your Lenses. As soon as any mind made that discovery it would, of course, return to Arisia, the source of the Lens, for additional instruction; which, equally of course, that mind could not have borne previously.
"Decade by decade your minds have become stronger. Finally you came to be fitted with a Lens. Your mind, while pitifully undeveloped, had a latent capacity and a power that made your return here certain. Since your enlensment there has been one other who will return. Indeed, it has become a topic of discussion among us as to whether you or that other would be the first advanced student."
"Who is that other, if I may ask?"
"Your friend, Worsel, the Velantian."
"He's got a real mind—'way, 'way ahead of mine," the Lensman stated, as a matter of self-evident fact.
"In some ways, yes. In other and highly important characteristics, no."
"Huh?" Kinnison exclaimed. "In what possible way have I got it over him?"
"I am not certain that I can explain it exactly in thoughts which you can understand. Broadly speaking, his mind is the better trained, the more fully developed. It is of more grasp and reach, and of vastly greater present power. It is more controllable, more responsive, more adaptable than is yours—now. But your mind, while undeveloped, is of considerably greater capacity than his, and of greater and more varied latent capabilities. Above all, you have a driving force, a will to do, an undefeatable mental urge that no one of his race will be able to develop for many cycles of time to come. Since I selected you as the first to return, I am naturally gratified that you have developed so rapidly."
"Well, I have been more or less under pressure, and I got quite a few lucky breaks. But at that, it seemed to me that I was progressing backward instead of forward."
"It is ever thus with the really competent. Prepare yourself!"
He launched a mental bolt, at the impact of which Kinnison's mind literally turned inside out in a wildly gyrating spiral vortex of dizzyingly confused images.
"Resist!" came the harsh command.
"Resist! How?" demanded the writhing, sweating Lensman. "You might as well tell a fly to resist an inert space ship!"
"Use your will—your force—your adaptability. Shift your mind to meet mine at every point. Apart from these fundamentals neither I nor any one else can tell you how; each mind must find its own medium and develop its own technique. But this is a very mild treatment indeed, one conditioned to your present strength. I will increase it gradually in severity, but rest assured that I will at no time raise it to the point of permanent damage. Constructive exercises will come later; the first step must be to build up your resistance. Therefore, resist!"
The force, which had not slackened for an instant, waxed slowly to the very verge of intolerability; and grimly, doggedly, the Lensman fought it. Teeth locked, muscles straining, fingers digging savagely into the hard leather upholstery of his chair he fought it; mustering his every ultimate resource to the task——
Suddenly, the torture ceased and the Lensman slumped down, a mental and physical wreck. He was white, trembling, sweating, shaken to the very core of his being. He was ashamed of his weakness. He was humiliated and bitterly disappointed at the showing he had made; but from the Arisian there came a calm, encouraging thought.
"You need not feel ashamed; you should instead feel proud, for you have made a start which is really surprising, even to me, your sponsor. This may seem to you like needless punishment, but it is not. This is the only possible way in which that which you seek may be found."
"In that case, go to it," the Lensman declared. "I can take it."
Day after day and week after week the "advanced instruction" went on, with the pupil becoming ever stronger, until he was taking without damage thrusts that would have slain him instantly a few weeks since. The bouts became shorter and shorter, requiring as they did such terrific outpourings of mental force that not even the master could stand the awful strain for more than half an hour at a time.
And now these savage conflicts of wills and minds were interspersed with real instruction, with lessons neither painful nor unpleasant. In these the aged scientist probed gently into the youngster's mind, opening it and exposing to its owner's gaze vast caverns whose very presence he had never even suspected. Some of these storehouses were already partially or completely filled, needing only arrangement and connection. Others were nearly empty. These were catalogued and made accessible. And in all, permeating everything, was the Lens.
"Just like clearing out a clogged-up water system; with the Lens the pump that wouldn't work!" exclaimed Kinnison one day.
"More like that than you at present realize," assented the Arisian. "You have observed, of course, that I have not given you any detailed instructions nor pointed out any specific abilities of the Lens which you have not known how to use. You will have to operate the pump yourself; and you have many surprises awaiting you as to what your Lens will pump, and how. Our sole task is to prepare your mind to work with the Lens, and that task is not yet done. Let us on with it."
Eventually the time came when Kinnison could block out entirely the suggestions of his mentor, but he did not reveal that fact; nor, now blocked out, could the Arisian discern it. The Lensman gathered all his force together, concentrated it, and hurled it back at his teacher; and there ensued a struggle none the less Titanic because of its essential friendliness. The very ether seethed and boiled with the fury of the mental forces there at grips, but finally the Lensman beat down the other's screens. Then, boring deep into his eyes, he willed with all his force to see that Arisian as he really was. And instantly the scholarly old man subsided into a—abrain! There were a few appendages, of course, and other appurtenances and incidentials to nourishment, locomotion, and the like, but to all intents and purposes the Arisian was simply and solely a brain.