XIX.
"Before you go anywhere; or, rather, whether you go anywhere or not, we want to knock down that Bronsecan base of Prellin's," Haynes declared to Kinnison in no uncertain voice. "It's a Galactic scandal, the way we've been letting them thumb their noses at us. Everybody in space thinks that the Patrol has gone soft all of a sudden. When are you going to let us smack them down? Do you know what they've done now?"
"No. What?"
"Gone out of business. We've been watching then so closely that they couldn't do any queer business—goods, letters, messages, or anything—so they closed up the Bronseca branch entirely. 'Unfavorable conditions,' they said. Locked up tight—telephones disconnected, communicators cut, everything."
"Hm-m-m. In that case we'd better take 'em, I guess. No harm done, anyway, now—maybe all the better. Let Boskone think that our strategy failed and we had to fall back on brute force."
"You say it easy. You think that it'll be a push-over, don't you?"
"Sure—why not?"
"You noticed the shape of their screens?"
"Roughly cylindrical"—in surprise. "They're hiding a lot of stuff, of course, but they can't possibly—"
"I'm afraid that they can, and will. I've been checking up on the building. Ten years old. Plans and permits QX except for the fact that nobody knows whether or not the inside of the building resembles the plans in any particular."
"Klono's whiskers!" Kinnison was aghast, his mind racing. "How could that be, chief? Inspectors—builders—contractors—workmen?"
"The city inspector who had the job came into money later, retired, and nobody has seen him since. Nobody can locate a single builder or workman who saw it constructed. No competent inspector has been in it since. Cominoche is lax—all cities are, for that matter—with an outfit as big as Wembleson's, that carries its own insurance, does its own inspecting, and won't allow outside interference. Wembleson's isn't alone in that attitude—they're not all zwilniks, either."
"You think that it's really fortified, then?"
"Sure of it. That's why we ordered a gradual, but complete, evacuation of the city, beginning a couple of months ago."
"How could you?" Kinnison was growing more surprised by the minute. "The businesses—the houses—the expense!"
"Martial law—the Patrol takes over in emergencies, you know. Businesses moved, and mostly carrying on very well. People ditto—very nice temporary camps, lake and river cottages, and so on. As for expense, the Patrol pays damages. We'll pay for rebuilding the whole city if we have to—much rather that than leave that Boskonian base standing there untouched."
"What a mess! Never thought of it that way, but you're right, as usual. They wouldn't be there at all unless they thought—but they must know, chief, that they can't hold off the stuff that you can bring to bear."
"Probably betting that we won't destroy our own city to get them—if so, they're wrong. Or possibly they hung on a few days too long."
"How about the observers?" Kinnison asked. "They have four auxiliaries there, you know."
"That's strictly up to you." Haynes was unconcerned. "Smearing that base is the only thing I insist on. We'll wipe out the observers or let them observe and report, whichever you say; but that base goes—it has been there far too long already."
"Be nicer to let them alone," Kinnison decided. "We're not supposed to know anything about them. You won't have to use the primaries, will you?"
"No. It's a fairly large building, as business blocks go, but it lacks a lot of being big enough to be a first-class base. We can burn the ground out from under all its foundations with our secondaries."
He called an adjutant. "Get me Sector 19." Then, as the seamed, scarred face of an old Lensman appeared upon a plate:
"You can go to work on Cominoche now, Parker. Twelve maulers. Twenty heavy caterpillars and about fifty units of Q-type screen, remote control. Supplies and service. Have them muster all available fire-fighting apparatus. If desirable, import some—we want to save as much of the place as we can. I'll come over in theDauntless."
He glanced at Kinnison, one eye-brow raised quizzically.
"I feel as though I rate a little vacation; I think I'll go and watch this," he commented. "Got time to come along?"
"I think so. It's more or less on my way to Lundmark's Nebula."
Upon Bronseca, then, as theDauntlessripped her way through protesting space, there converged structures of the void from a dozen nearby systems; each ship emblazoned with the device of ray-emitting intertwined spirals which is the emblem of the Galactic Patrol. There came maulers; huge, ungainly flying fortresses of stupendous might. There came transports, bearing the commissariat and the service units. Vast freighters, under whose unimaginable mass the Gargantuanly braced and latticed and trussed docks yielded visibly and groaningly, crushed to a standstill and disgorged their varied cargoes.
What Haynes had so matter-of-factly referred to as "heavy" caterpillars were all of that; and the mobile screens were even heavier. Clanking and rumbling, but with their weight so evenly distributed over huge, flat treads that they sank only a foot or so into even ordinary ground, they made their ponderous way along Cominoche's deserted streets.
What thoughts seethed within the minds of the Boskonians can only be imagined. They knew that the Patrol had landed in force, but what could they do about it? At first, when the Lensmen began to infest the place, they could have fled in safety; but at that time they were too certain of their immunity to abandon their richly established position. Even now, they would not abandon it until that course became absolutely necessary.
They could have destroyed the city, true; but it was not until after the non-combatant inhabitants had unobtrusively moved out that that course suggested itself as a desirability. Now the destruction of property would be a gesture worse than meaningless; it would be a waste of energy which would all too certainly be needed—badly and soon.
Hence, as the Patrol's land forces ground clangorously into position the enemy made no demonstration. The mobile screens were in place, surrounding the doomed section with a wall of force to protect the rest of the city from the hellish energies so soon to be unleashed. The heavy caterpillars, mounting projectors quite comparable in size and power with the warships' own—weapons similar in purpose and function to the railway-carriage coast-defense guns of an earlier day—were likewise ready. Far back of the line, but still too close, as they were to discover later, heavily armored men crouched at their remote controls behind their shields; barriers both of hard-driven, immaterial fields of force and of solid, grounded, ultrarefrigerated walls of the most refractory materials possible of fabrication. In the sky hung the maulers, poised stolidly upon the towering pillars of flame erupting from their under jets.
Cominoche, Bronseca's capital city, witnessed then what no one there present had ever expected to see; the warfare designed for the illimitable reaches of empty space being waged in the very heart of its business district!
For Port Admiral Haynes had directed the investment of this minor stronghold almost as though it were a regulation base, and with good reason. He knew that from their coigns of vantage afar four separate Boskonian observers were looking on, charged with the responsibility of recording and reporting everything that transpired, and he wanted that report to be complete and conclusive. He wanted Boskone, whoever and wherever he might be, to know that when the Galactic Patrol started a thing, that thing it finished; that the mailed fist of civilization would not spare an enemy base simply because it was so located within one of humanity's cities that its destruction must inevitably result in severe property damage. Indeed, the chief of staff had massed there thrice the force necessary; specifically and purposely to drive that message home.
At the word of command there flamed out, almost as one, a thousand lances of energy intolerable. Masonry, brickwork, steel, glass, and chromium trim disappeared; flaring away in sparkling, hissing vapor or cascading away in brilliantly mobile streams of fiery, corrosive liquid. Disappeared, revealing the unbearably incandescent surface of the Boskonian defensive screen.
Full-driven, that barrier held, even against the titanic thrusts of the maulers above and of the heavy defense guns below. Energy rebounded in scintillating torrents, shot off in blinding streamers, released itself in bolts of lightning hurling themselves frantically to ground.
The fury of the beams rebounded in scintillating torrents, shot off in blinding streamers—
The fury of the beams rebounded in scintillating torrents, shot off in blinding streamers—
The fury of the beams rebounded in scintillating torrents, shot off in blinding streamers—
Nor was that superbly disguised citadel designed for defense alone. Knowing now that the last faint hope of continuing in business upon Bronseca was gone, and grimly determined to take full toll of the hated Patrol, the defenders in turn loosed their beams. Five of them shot out simultaneously, and five of the panels of mobile screen flamed instantly into eye-tearing violet. Then black. These were not the comparatively feeble, antiquated rays which Haynes had expected, but were the output of up-to-the-minute, first-line space artillery!
Defenses down, it took but a blink of time to lick up the caterpillars. On, then, the destroying beams tore, each in a direct line for a remote-control station. Through tremendous edifices of masonry and steel they drove, the upper floors collapsing into the cylinders of annihilation only to be consumed almost as fast as they could fall.
"All screen-control stations, back, fast!" Haynes directed crisply. "Back, dodging! Put your screens on automatic block until you get back beyond effective range. Spy-ray men! See if you can locate the enemy observers directing fire!"
But no matter how far back they went, Boskonian beams still sought them out in grimly persistent attempts to slay. Their shielding fields blazed white, their refractories wavered in the high blue as the overdriven refrigerators strove mightily to cope with the terrific load. The operators, stifling, almost roasting in their armor of proof, shook sweat from the eyes they could not reach as they drove themselves and their mechanisms on to even greater efforts; cursing luridly, fulminantly the while at carrying on a space war in the hotly reeking, the hellishly reflecting and heat-retaining environment of a metropolis!
And all around the embattled structure, within the Patrol's now partially open wall of screen, spread holocaust supreme; holocaust spreading wider and wider during each fractional split second. In an instant, it seemed, nearby buildings burst into flame. The fact that they were fireproof meant nothing whatever. The air inside them, heated in moments to a point far above the ignition temperature of organic material, fed furiously upon furniture, rugs, drapes, and whatever else had been left in place. Even without such adventitious aids the air itself, expanding tremendously, irresistibly, drove outward before it the glass of windows and the solid brickwork of walls. And as they fell, glass and brick ceased to exist as such. Falling, they fused; coalescing and again splashing apart as they descended through the inferno of annihilatory vibrations in an appalling rain which might very well have been sprinkled from the hottest middle of the central core of hell itself. And in this fantastically potent, this incredibly corrosive flood the ground itself, the metaled pavement, the sturdily immovable foundations of skyscrapers, dissolved as do lumps of sugar in boiling coffee. Dissolved, slumped down, flowed away in blindingly turbulent streams. Super-structures toppled into disintegration, each discrete particle contributing as it fell to the utterly indescribable fervency of the whole.
More and more panels of mobile screen went down. They were not designed to stand up under such heavy projectors as "Wemblesons" mounted, and the Boskonians blasted them down in order to get at the remote-control operators back of them. Swath after swath of flaming ruin was cut through the Bronsecan capital as the enemy gunners tried to follow the dodging caterpillar tractors.
"Drop down, maulers!" the commander-in-chief ordered. "Low enough so that your screens touch ground. Never mind damage—they'll blast the whole city if we don't stop those beams. Surround him!"
Down the maulers came, ringwise; mighty protective envelopes overlapping; down until the screens bit ground. Now the caterpillar and mobile-screen crews were safe; powerful as Prellin's weapons were, they could not break through those maulers' screens.
Now holocaust waxed doubly infernal. The wall was tight, the only avenue of escape of all that fiercely radiant energy straight upward; and adding to the furor were the flaring under jets—themselves destructive agents by no means to be despised!
Inside the screens, then, raged pure frenzy. At the line raved the maulers' prodigious lifting blasts. Out and away, down every avenue of escape, swept torrents of superheated air at whose touch anything and everything combustible burst into flame. But there could be no fire-fighting—yet. Outlying fires, along the lines of destruction previously cut, yes; but personal armor has never been designed to enable life to exist in such an environment as that near those screens then was.
"Burn out the ground under them!" came the order. "Tip them over—slag them down!"
Sharply downward angled twoscore of the beams which had been expending their energies upon Boskone's radiant defenses. Downward into the lake of lava which had once been pavement. That lake had already been seething and bubbling; emitting momently bursts of lambent flame. Now it leaped into a frenzy of its own; a transcendent fury of volatilization. High-explosive shells by the hundred dropped also into the incandescent mess, hurling the fiery stuff afar; deepening and broadening the sulphurous moat.
"Deep enough," Haynes spoke into his microphone. "Tractors and pressors as assigned—tip him over."
The intensity of the bombardment did not slacken, but from the maulers to the north there reached out pressors, from those upon the south came tractors; each a beam of terrific power, each backed by all the mass and all the driving force of a veritable flying fortress.
Slowly that which had been a building leaned from the perpendicular, its inner defensive screen still intact.
"Chief?" From his post as observer, Kinnison flashed a thought to Haynes. "Are you beginning to think any funny thoughts about that ape down there?"
"No. Are you? What?" asked the port admiral, surprised.
"Maybe I'm nuts, but it wouldn't surprise me if he'd start doing a flit pretty quick. I've got a CRX tracer on him, just in case, and it might be smart to caution Henderson to keep up on his toes."
"Your diagnosis—'nuts'—is correct, I think," came the answering thought; but the port admiral followed the suggestion, nevertheless.
And none too soon. Deliberately, grandly, the Colossus was leaning over, bowing in stately fashion toward the awful lake in which it stood. But only so far. Then there was a flash, visible even in the inferno of energies already there at war, and the already coruscant lava was hurled to all points of the compass as the full-blast drive of a superdreadnought was cut loose beneath its surface!
To the eye the thing simply and instantly disappeared; but not to the ultra-vision of the observers' plates, and especially not to the CRX tracers attached by Kinnison and by Henderson. They held, and the chief pilot, already warned, was on the trail as fast as he could punch his keys.
Through atmosphere, through stratosphere, into interplanetary space flew pursued and pursuer at ever-increasing speed. TheDauntlessovertook her proposed victim fairly easily. The Boskonian was fast, but the Patrol's new flier was the fastest thing in space. But tractors would not hold against the now universal standard equipment of shears, and the heavy secondaries served only to push the fleeing vessel along all the faster. And the dreadful primary beams could not be used—yet.
"Not yet," cautioned the admiral. "Don't get too close—wait until there's nothing detectable in space."
Finally an absolutely empty region was entered, the word to close up was given, and Prellin drank of the bitter cup which so many commanders of vessels of the Patrol had had to drain—the gallingly fatal necessity of engaging a ship which was both faster and more powerful than his own. The Boskonian tried, of course. His beams raged out at full power against the screens of the larger ship, but without effect. Three primaries lashed out as one. The fleeing vessel, structure and contents, ceased to be. TheDauntlessreturned to the torn and ravaged city.
The maulers had gone. The lumbering caterpillars—what were left of them—were clanking away; reeking, smoking hot in every plate and member. Only the firemen were left, working like Trojans with explosives, rays, water, carbon-dioxide snow, clinging and smothering chemicals; anything and everything which would isolate, absorb, or dissipate any portion of the almost incalculable heat energy so recently and so profligately released.
Fire apparatus from four planets was at work. There were pumpers, ladder trucks, hose and chemical trucks. There were men in heavily insulated armor. Vehicles and men alike were screened against the specific wave lengths of heat; and under the direction of a fire marshal in his red speedster high in air they fought methodically and efficiently the conflagration which was the aftermath of battle. They fought, and they were winning.
And then it rained. As though the heavens themselves had been outraged by what had been done, they opened and rain sluiced down in level sheets. It struck hissingly the nearby structures, but it did not touch the central area at all. Instead, it turned to steam in mid-air, and, rising or being blown aside by the tempestuous wind, it concealed the redly glaring, raw wound beneath a blanket of crimson fog.
"Well, that is that," the port admiral said slowly. His face was grim and stern. "A good job of clean-up—expensive, but worth the price. So be it to every pirate base and every zwilnik hide-out in the Galaxy! Henderson, land us at Cominoche Spaceport."
And from four other cities of the planet four Boskonian observers, each unknown to all the others, took off in four spaceships for four different destinations. Each had reported fully and accurately to Jalte everything that had transpired until the two fliers had faded into the distance. Then, highly elated—and probably, if the truth could be known, no little surprised as well—at the fact that he was still alive, each had left Bronseca at maximum blast.
The Galactic director had done all that he could, which was little enough. At the Patrol's first warlike move he had ordered a squadron of Boskone's ablest fighting craft to Prellin's aid. It was almost certainly a useless gesture, he knew as he did it. Gone were the days when pirate bases dotted the Tellurian Galaxy; only by a miracle could those ships reach the Bronsecan's line of flight in time to be of service.
Nor could they. The howl of interfering vibrations which was smothering Prellin's communicator beam snapped off into silence while the would-be rescuers were many hours away. For minutes, then, Jalte sat immersed in thought at his great desk in the Center, his normally bluish face turning a sickly green, before he called the planet Jarnevon to report to Eichmil, his chief.
"There is, however, a bright side to the affair," he concluded. "Prellin's records were destroyed with him. Also, there are two facts—that the Patrol had to use such force as practically to destroy the city of Cominoche, and that our four observers escaped unmolested—which furnish conclusive proof that the vaunted Lensman failed completely to penetrate with his mental powers the defenses we have been using against him."
"Not conclusive proof," Eichmil rebuked him harshly. "Not proof at all, in any sense—scarcely a probability. Indeed, the display of force may very well mean that he has already attained his objective. He may have allowed the observers to escape, to lull our suspicions. You yourself are probably the next in line. How certain are you that your own base has not already been invaded?"
"Absolutely certain, sir." Jalte's face, however, turned a shade greener at the thought.
"You use the term 'absolutely' very loosely—but I hope that you are right. Use all the men and all the equipment we have sent you to make sure that it remains impenetrable."
XX.
In their nonmagnetic, practically invisible speedster, Kinnison and Worsel entered the terra incognita of the Second Galaxy and approached the solar system of the Eich, slowing down to a crawl as they did so. They knew as much concerning dread Jarnevon, the planet which was their goal, as did Jalte, from whom the knowledge had been acquired; but that was all too little.
They knew that it was the fifth planet out from the Sun and that it was bitterly cold. It had an atmosphere, but one containing no oxygen; one poisonous to oxygen-breathers. It had no rotation—or rather, its day coincided with its year—and its people dwelt upon its eternally dark hemisphere. If they had eyes, a point upon which there was doubt, they did not operate upon the frequencies ordinarily referred to as "visible" light. In fact, about the Eich as persons or identities they knew next to nothing. Jalte had seen them, but either he did not perceive them clearly or else his mind could not retain their true likeness; his only picture of the Eichlan physique being a confusedly horrible blur.
"I'm scared, Worsel," Kinnison declared. "Scared purple, and the closer we come the more scared I get."
And he was scared. He was afraid as he had never before been, in all his short life. He had been in dangerous situations before, certainly; not only that, he had been wounded almost unto death. In those instances, however, peril had come upon him suddenly. He had reacted to it automatically, having had little if any time to think about it beforehand.
Never before had he gone into a place in which he knew in advance that the advantage was all upon the other side; from which his chance of getting out alive was so terrifyingly small. It was worse, much worse, than going into that vortex. There, while the road was strange, the enemy was known to be one whom he had conquered before; and furthermore, he had had theDauntless, its eager young crew, and the scientific self-abnegation of old Cardynge to back him. Here he had the speedster and Worsel—and Worsel was just as scared as he was.
The pit of his stomach felt cold, his bones seemed bits of rubber tubing. Nevertheless, the two Lensmen were going in. That was their job. They had to go in, even though they knew that the foe was at least their equal mentally, was overwhelmingly their superior physically, and was upon his own ground.
"So am I," Worsel admitted. "I'm scared to the tip of my tail. I have one advantage over you, however—I've been that way before." He was referring to the time when he had gone to Delgon, abysmally certain that he would not return. Nor would he have returned save for Kinnison and Van Buskirk. "What is fated, happens. Shall we prepare?"
They had spent many hours in discussion of what could be done, and in the end had decided that the only possible preparation was to make sure that if Kinnison failed, his failure would not bring disaster to the Patrol.
"Might as well. Come in; my mind's wide open."
The Velantian insinuated his mind into Kinnison's and the Earthman slumped down, unconscious. Then for many minutes Worsel wrought within the plastic brain. Finally:
"Thirty seconds after you leave me these inhibitions will become operative. When I release them your memory and your knowledge will be exactly as they were before I began to operate," he thought, slowly, intensely, clearly. "Until that time you know nothing whatever of any of these matters. No mental search, however profound; no truth drug, however potent; no probing, even of the subconscious, will or can discover them. They do not exist. They never have existed. They shall not exist until I so allow. These other matters have been, are, and shall be the facts until that instant. Kimball Kinnison, awaken!"
The Tellurian came to, not knowing that he had been out. Nothing had occurred; for him no time whatever had elapsed. He could not perceive even that his mind had been touched.
"Sure it's done, Worsel? I can't find a thing!" Kinnison, who had himself operated upon so many minds as tracelessly, could scarcely believe that his own had been tampered with.
"It is done. If you could detect any trace of the work it would have been poor work, and wasted."
The speedster dropped as nearly as the Lensmen dared toward Jarnevon's tremendous primary base. They did not know whether they were being observed or not. For all they knew, these incomprehensible beings might be able to see or to sense them as plainly as though their ship were painted with radium and were landing openly, with searchlights ablaze and with bells a-clang. Muscles tense, ready to hurl their tiny flier away at the slightest alarm, they wafted downward.
Through the screens they dropped. Power off, even to the gravity pads; thought, even, blanketed to zero. Nothing happened. They landed. They disembarked. Foot by foot they made their cautious way forward.
In essence the plan was simplicity itself. Worsel would accompany Kinnison until both were within the thought-screens of the dome. Then the Tellurian would get, some way or other, the information the Patrol had to have, and the Velantian would get it back to Prime Base. If the Gray Lensman could go, too, well and good. After all, there was no real reason to think that he couldn't—he was merely playing safe, on general principles. If, however, worst came to worst, well—
They arrived.
"Now remember, Worsel, no matter what happens to me, or around me, you stay out. Don't come in after me. Help me all you can with your mind, but not otherwise. Take everything I get, and at the first sign of danger you flit back to the speedster and give her the oof, whether I'm around or not. Check?"
"Check," Worsel agreed, quietly. Kinnison's was the harder part. Not because he was the leader, but because he was the better qualified. They both knew it. The Patrol came first. It was bigger, vastly more important than any being or any group of beings in it.
The man strode away and in thirty seconds underwent a weird and striking mental transformation. Three quarters of his knowledge disappeared so completely that he had no inkling that he had ever had it. A new name, a new personality were his, so completely and indisputably his that he had no faint glimmering of a recollection that he had ever been otherwise.
He was wearing his Lens. It could do no possible harm, since it was almost inconceivable that the Eich could be made to believe that any ordinary agent could have penetrated so far, and the fact should not be revealed to the foe that any Lensman could work without his Lens. That would explain far too much of what had already happened. Furthermore, it was a necessity in the only really convincing rôle which Kinnison could play in the event of his capture.
He would not think into that base until he was far enough away from Worsel so that the Velantian's hiding place, if it were not already known, would not be revealed. He did not then know that such a being as Worsel existed; he did not think into the stronghold simply because he was not yet close enough to work efficiently.
Closer he crept. Closer. There were pits beneath the pavement, he observed, big enough to hold a speedster. Traps. He avoided them. There were various mechanisms within the blank walls he skirted. More traps. He avoided them. Photo-cells, trigger beams, invisible rays, networks. He avoided them all. Close enough.
Delicately he sent out a mental probe, and almost in the instant of its sending, cables of steel came whipping from afar. He perceived them as they came, but he was unable to dodge them all. His projectors flamed briefly, only to be sheared away. The cables wrapped about his limbs, binding him fast. Helpless, he was carried through the atmosphere, into the dome, through an air lock into a chamber housing much grimly unmistakable apparatus. And in the council room, where the nine of Boskone and one armored Delgonian Overlord held meeting, a communicator buzzed and snarled.
At the first faint touch of Kim's mind, the Eich reacted. Tentacles like steel whips lashed out to bind and hold him, to drag him into the frowning fortress—
At the first faint touch of Kim's mind, the Eich reacted. Tentacles like steel whips lashed out to bind and hold him, to drag him into the frowning fortress—
At the first faint touch of Kim's mind, the Eich reacted. Tentacles like steel whips lashed out to bind and hold him, to drag him into the frowning fortress—
"Ah!" exclaimed Eichmil. "Our visitor has arrived and is awaiting us in the Delgonian hall of question. Shall we meet again, there?"
They did so; they of the Eich armored against the poisonous oxygen, the Overlord naked. All wore screens.
"Earthling, we are glad indeed to see you here," the First of Boskone welcomed the prisoner. "For a long time we have been anxious indeed—"
"I don't see how that can be," the Lensman blurted. "I just graduated. My first big assignment, and I have failed," he ended bitterly.
A start of surprise swept around the circle. Could this be?
"He is lying," Eichmil decided. "You of Delgon, take him out of his armor." The Overlord did so, the Tellurian's struggles meaningless to the reptile's superhuman strength. "Release your screen and see whether or not you can make him tell the truth."
After all, the man might not be lying. The fact that he could understand a strange language meant nothing at all. All Lensmen could.
"But in case heshouldbe the one we seek—" The Overlord hesitated.
"We will see to it that no harm comes to you—"
"We cannot," the Ninth—the psychologist—broke in. "Before any screen is released I suggest that we question him verbally, under the influence of the drug which renders it impossible for any warm-blooded oxygen breather to tell anything except the complete truth."
The suggestion, so eminently sensible, was adopted forthwith.
"Are you the Lensman who has made it possible for the Patrol to drive us out of the Tellurian Galaxy?" came the sharp demand.
"No," was the flat and surprising reply.
"Who are you, then?"
"Philip Morgan, class of—"
"Oh, this will take forever!" snapped the Ninth. "Let me question him. Can you control minds at a distance and without previous treatment?"
"If they are not too strong, yes. All of us specialists in psychology can do that."
"Go to work upon him, Overlord!"
The now fully reassured Delgonian snapped off his screen and a battle of wills ensued which made the subether boil. For Kinnison, although he no longer knew what the truth was, still possessed a large part of his mental power, and the Delgonian's mind, as has already been made clear, was a capable one indeed.
"Desist!" came the command. "Earthman, what happened?"
"Nothing," Kinnison replied truthfully. "Each of us could resist the other; neither could penetrate or control."
"Ah!" and nine Boskonian screens snapped off. Since the Lensman could not master one Delgonian, he would not be a menace to the massed minds of the nine of Boskone, and the questioning need not wait upon the slowness of speech. Thoughts beat into Kinnison's brain from all sides.
This power of mind was relatively new, yes. He did not know what it was. He went to Arisia, fell asleep, and woke up with it. A refinement, he thought, of hypnotism. Only advanced students in psychology could do it. He knew nothing except by hearsay of the oldBrittania—he was a cadet then. He had never heard of Blakeslee, or of anything unusual concerning any one hospital ship. He did not know who had scouted Helmuth's base, or put the thionite into it. He had no idea who it was who had killed Helmuth. As far as he knew, nothing had ever been done about any Boskonian spies in Patrol bases. He had never happened to hear of the planet Medon, or of anyone named Bominger, or Madame Desplaines, or Prellin. He was entirely ignorant of any unusual weapons of offense—he was a psychologist, not an engineer or a physicist. No, he was not unusually adept with DeLameters—
"Hold on!" Eichmil commanded. "Stop questioning him, everybody! Now, Lensman, instead of telling us what you do not know, give us positive information, in your own way. How do you work? I am beginning to suspect that the man we really want is a director, not an operator."
This was a more productive line. Lensmen, hundreds of them, each worked upon a definite assignment. None of them had ever seen or ever would see the man who issued orders. He had not even a name, but was a symbol—Star A Star. They received orders through their Lenses, wherever they might be in space. They reported back to him in the same way. Yes, Star A Star knew what was going on in that room. He was reporting constantly—
A knife descended viciously. Blood spurted. The stump was dressed, roughly but effectively. They did not wish their victim to bleed to death when he died, and he was not to die in any fashion—yet.
And in the instant that Kinnison's Lens went dead, Worsel, from his safely distant nook, reached out direct to the mind of his friend, thereby putting his own life in jeopardy. He knew that there was an Overlord in that room, and the grue of a thousand helplessly sacrificed generations of forebears swept his sinuous length at the thought, despite his inward certainty of the new powers of his mind. He knew that of all the entities in the Universe, the Delgonians were most sensitive to the thought vibrations of Velantians. Nevertheless, he did it.
He narrowed the beam down to the smallest possible coverage, employed a frequency as far as possible from that ordinarily used by the Overlords, and continued to observe. It was risky, but it was necessary. It was beginning to appear as though the Earthman might not be able to escape, and he must not die in vain.
"Can you communicate now?" In the ghastly chamber the relentless questioning went on.
"I cannot communicate."
"It is well. In one way I would not be averse to letting your Star A Star know what happens when one of his minions dares to spy upon the Council of Boskone itself, but the information is as yet a trifle premature. Later, he shall learn—"
Kinnison did not consciously thrill at that thought. He did not know that the news was going beyond his brain; that he had achieved his goal. Worsel, however, did; and Worsel thrilled for him. The Gray Lensman had finished his job; all that was left to do was to destroy this world and the power of Boskone would be broken. Kinnison could die, now, content.
But no thought of leaving entered Worsel's mind. He would, of course, stand by as long as there remained the slightest shred of hope, or until some development threatened his ability to leave the planet with his priceless information. And the pitiless inquisition went on.
Star A Star had sent him to investigate their planet, to discover whether or not there was any connection between it and the zwilnik organization. He had come alone, in a speedster. No, he could not tell them even approximately where the speedster was. It was so dark, and he had come such a long distance on foot. In an hour or so, though, it would start sending out a thought signal which he could detect—
"But you must have some ideas about this Star A Star!" This director was the man they wanted so desperately to get. They believed implicitly in this figment of a Lensman director. Fitting in so perfectly with their own ideas of efficient organization, it was more convincing by far than the actual truth would have been. They knew now that he would be hard to find. They did not now insist upon facts; they wanted every possible crumb of surmise. "You must have wondered who and where Star A Star is? You must have tried to trace him?"
Yes, he had tried, but the problem could not be solved. The Lens was non-directional, and the signals came in at practically the same strength, anywhere in the Galaxy. They were, however, very much fainter out here. That might be taken to indicate that Star A Star's office was in a star cluster, well out in either the zenith or the nadir direction—
The victim sucked dry, eight of the Council departed, leaving Eichmil and the Overlord with the Lensman.
"What you have in mind to do, Eichmil, is childish. Your basic idea is excellent, but your technique is pitifully inadequate."
"What could be worse?" Eichmil demanded. "I am going to dig out his eyes, smash his bones, flay him alive, roast him, cut him up into a dozen pieces, and send him back to his Star A Star with a warning that every creature he sends into this Galaxy will be treated the same way. What wouldyoudo?"
"You of the Eich lack finesse," the Delgonian sighed. "You have no subtlety, no conception of the nicer possibilities of torture, either of an individual or of a race. For instance, to punish Star A Star adequately this man must be returned to him alive, not dead."
"Impossible! He dies—here!"
"You misunderstand me. Not alive as he is now—but 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 grows—shall we say—unpleasantly? Finally, I should extract his life force and consume it—as you know, that essence is a rarely satisfying delicacy with us—taking care to leave just enough to maintain a bare existence. I would 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 himalive!" 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 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 surprised Worsel. He had been debating for minutes 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 titbit with any of my fellows, as there is not enough to divide," the monster explained, parenthetically. "Have you any suggestions 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 co-operating with me in the work?"
"I do not torture for pleasure. Since you do, you may carry out the procedure as outlined. All I require is the assurance that he will be a warning and an object lesson to Star A Star of the Galactic Patrol."
"I can assure you definitely that he will be both. More, I will show you the results when I have finished with him. Or, if you like, I would be glad to have you stay and look on—you will find the spectacle interesting, entertaining and highly instructive."
"No, thanks—that is, not if you are sure that you can handle him alone."
"Handle him! This pitiful weakling?" The Overlord snorted contemptuously. "I could handle seven like him. He is on the verge of fainting already. Observe, please, his reaction to the fungus-culture injections."
Four times the Delgonian rammed the needle home; and, true to prediction, Kinnison's body went limp in its shackles.
"Ah, yes; a weak race, physically—very weak," Eichmil observed, as he left the room; and the Overlord, alone with his victim, cast off the chains in order to stretch the Lensman out upon one of the sinister machines so close at hand.
But Kinnison had not fainted. He had not allowed himself to feel the hurt of the knife, of the needle, nor of the injected fluid. Never before had he been more coldly, intently alert than in this, the climactic minute of his life. The full of his powers he did not have, perhaps, yet even now he was better equipped, mentally and physically, than the Kinnison of even a short year ago, able to establish a nerve block that would permit full and unshaken concentration on every move of offense and defense he might make, whatever frightful toll of pain and injury the inhumanly powerful, semireptilian Delgonian might inflict in the struggle that the Lensman now proposed. Thus, upon the first instant of opportunity, he exploded into action with a violence which took even the trigger-nerved Overlord entirely by surprise.
In practically one motion he rolled, ducked, gathered himself together and launched a kick behind which there was the driving force of every ounce of his powerful body and the concentrated urge of every cell of his brain. It struck its mark squarely—the hard toe of the Lensman's heavy boot crashed squarely against the Overlord's plated neck at the exact base of the skull. That kick would have pulped any human or near-human head—it would have slain a horse—it staggered momentarily even the reptilianly armored monstrosity which was the Delgonian.
Kinnison went leaping across the room toward a rack of implements and weapons, only to be buried in mid-course beneath a hurtling avalanche of fury. For a moment man and monster stood poised, almost en tableau, then they crashed to the floor together—talons and fingers clawing, gouging at eyes; wings, feet, hard-gnarled hands, scimitared tail, balled fist, boots and teeth wreaking every ultimate possibility of damage. Against the frightfully armed and naturally armored body of the Delgonian, human physical weapons and human strength were near useless; but, insulated against the agony of snapping bones and bludgeon blows of the mighty tail by that hard-held nerve block, the Lensman's furiously active mind had a goal—a vaguely understood goal—toward which he directed the deadly struggle he could not control or hope to win—
Upon and over the thought-screen generator rolled the madly warring pair, and as the delicate mechanism disintegrated it ceased to function.
Worsel's prodigious mentality had been beating ceaselessly against that screen ever since its erection, and in the very instant of its fall Kinnison became again the Gray Lensman of old. And in the next instant both of those mighty minds—the two most powerful then known to civilization—had hurled themselves against that of the Delgonian. Bitter though the ensuing struggle was, it was brief. Nothing short of an Arisian mentality could have withstood the venomous intensity, 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."
"So soon?"
"Yes. I was hungry—and, as I intimated, Tellurians are much too weak to furnish any real sport. Do you wish to inspect what is left of the Lensman?" This question was safe enough; Worsel knew exactly how Kinnison had fared during his whirlwind bodily encounter with the frightfully armed, heavily armored engine of destruction which was the Delgonian.
"No." Eichmil, as a high executive, was accustomed to delegating far more important matters to competent underlings. "If you say that it is well done, that is sufficient."
"Clear the way for me, then, please," the Overlord requested. Then, picking up the hideously mangled thing that was Kinnison's body, he incased it in its armor and, donning his own, wriggled boldly away with his burden. "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 until you reach the boat?"
"Yes, to both. I can handle him—we softened him down plenty. I will last—I'll make myself last, long enough."
"I go, then, lest they be observing with spy rays."
To the black flier the completely subservient Delgonian then bore his physically disabled master, and carefully he put him aboard. Worsel helped openly there, for he had put out screens 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 much vital force!
"I hate to let him go!" Worsel's thought was a growl of baffled fury. "It gripes me to the tail to let him think that he has done everything he set out to do; that he will never even know how he got those bruises and contusions. I wanted—I still want—to tear him apart for what he has done to you, my friend."
"Thanks, old snake." Kinnison's thought came faintly. "Just temporary. He's living on borrowed time. He'll get his. You've got everything under control, haven't you?"
"On the green. Why?"
"Because I can't hold this nerve block any longer.... It hurts.... I'm sick.... I think I'm going to—"
He fainted. More, he plunged parsecs deep into the blackest depths of oblivion as outraged nature took the toll she had been so long denied.
Worsel hurled a call to Earth, then turned to his maimed and horribly broken companion. He applied splints to the shattered limbs, he dressed and bandaged the hideous wounds and the raw sockets which had once held eyes, he ministered to the raging, burning thirst. Whenever Kinnison's mind wearied he held for him the nerve block, the priceless anodyne without which the Gray Lensman must have died from sheerest agony.
"Why not allow me, friend, to relieve you of all consciousness until help arrives?" the Velantian asked pityingly.
"Can you do it without killing me?"
"If you so allow, yes. If you offer any resistance, I do not believe that any mind in the Universe could."
"I won't resist you. Come in," and Kinnison's suffering ended.
But kindly Worsel could do nothing about the fantastically atrocious growths which were transforming the Earthman's legs and arms into monstrosities out of nightmare.
He could only wait—wait for the skilled assistance which he knew must be so long in coming.
XXI.
When Worsel's hard-driven call impinged upon the port admiral's lens, Haynes dropped everything to take the report himself. Characteristically Worsel sent first and Haynes first recorded a complete statement of the successful mission to Jarnevon. Last came personalities, the tale of Kinnison's ordeal and of his present plight.
"Are they following you in force, or can't you tell?"
"Nothing has been detectable, and at the time of our departure there had been no suggestion of any such action," Worsel replied carefully.
"We'll come in force, anyway, and fast. Keep him alive until we meet you," Haynes urged, and disconnected.
It was an unheard-of occurrence for the port admiral to turn over his very busy and extremely important desk to a subordinate without notice and without giving him detailed instructions, but Haynes did it now.
"Take charge of everything, Southworth!" he snapped. "I'm called away—emergency. Kinnison found Boskone—got away—hurt—I'm going after him in theDauntless. Taking the new flotilla with me. Time indefinite—probably a few weeks."
He strode toward the communicator desk. TheDauntlesswas, as always, completely serviced and ready for any emergency. Where was that fleet of her sister ships, on its shakedown cruise? He'd shake them down! They had with them the new hospital ship, too—the only Red Cross ship in space that could leg it, parsec for parsec, with theDauntless.
"Get me Navigations.... Figure best point of rendezvous for theDauntlessand Flotilla ZKD, both at full blast, en route to Lundmark's Nebula. Fifteen minutes departure. Figure approximate time of meeting with speedster, also at full blast, leaving that nebula hour nine fourteen today. Correction! Cancel speedster meeting; we can compute that more accurately later. Advise adjutant. Vice-Admiral Southworth will send order, through channels. Get me Base Hospital.... Lacy, please.... Kinnison's hurt, sawbones, bad. I'm going out after him. Coming along?"
"Yes. How about—"
"On the green. Flotilla ZKD, including your new two-hundred-million-credit hospital, is going along. Slip twelve,Dauntless, eleven and one half minutes from now. Hipe!" And the surgeon general "hiped."
Two minutes before the scheduled take-off Base Navigations called the chief navigating officer of theDauntless.
"Course to rendezvous with Flotilla ZKD latitude three fifty-four dash thirty longitude nineteen dash forty-two time approximately twelve dash seven dash twenty-six place one dash three dash oh outside arbitrary galactic rim check and repeat," rattled from the speaker without pause or punctuation. Nevertheless, the chief navigator got it, recorded it, checked and repeated it.
"Figures only approximations because of lack of exact data on variations in density of medium and on distance necessarily lost in detouring stars," the speaker chattered on. "Suggest instructing your second navigator to communicate with navigating officers Flotilla ZKD at time twelve dash oh dash oh to correct courses to compensate unavoidably erroneous assumptions in computation Base Navigations off."
"I'll say he's off—'way off!" growled the second. "What does he think I am—a complete nitwit? Pretty soon he'll be telling me that two plus two equals four point oh."
The fifteen-second warning bell sounded. Every man came to the ready at his post, and precisely upon the designated second the superdreadnought blasted off. For six miles she rose inert upon her under jets, sirens and flaring lights clearing her way. Then she went free, her needle prow slanted sharply upward, her full battery of main driving projectors burst into action, and to all intents and purposes she vanished.
The Earth fell away from her at an incredible rate, dwindling away into invisibility in less than a minute. In two minutes the Sun itself was merely a bright star, in five it had merged indistinguishably into the sharply defined, brilliantly white belt of the Milky Way.
Hour after hour, day after day, theDauntlesshurtled through space, swinging almost imperceptibly this way and that to avoid the dense ether in the neighborhood of suns through which the designated course would have led; but never leaving far or for long the direct line, almost exactly in the equatorial plane of the Galaxy, between Tellus and the place of meeting. Behind her the Milky Way clotted, condensed, gathered itself together; before her and around her the stars began rapidly to thin out. Finally there were no more stars in front of her. She had reached the "arbitrary rim" of the Galaxy, and the second navigator plugged into Communications.
"Please get me Flotilla ZDK, Flagship Navigations," he requested; and, as a clean-cut young face appeared upon his plate: "Hi, Harvey, old spacehound! Fancy meeting you out here! It's a small Universe, ain't it? Say, did that crumb back there at Base tell you, too, to be sure and start checking course before you overran the rendezvous? If he was singling me out to make that pass at, I'm going to take steps, and not through channels, either."
"Yeah, he told me the same. I thought it was funny, too—an oiler's boy would know enough to do that without being told. We figured maybe he was jittery on account of us meeting the admiral or something. What's burned out all the jets, Paul, to get the big brass hats 'way out here and all dithered up, and to pull us offa the cruise this way? Must be a hell of an important flit! You're computing the Old Man himself; you oughta know something. What's all this about a speedster that we're going to escort? Spill it—give us the dope!"
"I don't know a thing, Harvey, honest, any more than you do. They didn't put out a word. Well, we'd better be getting onto the course—'to compensate unavoidably erroneous assumptions in computation,'" he mimicked caustically. "What do you read on my lambda? Fourteen—three—oh point six—decrement—"
The conversation became a technical jargon; because of which, however, the courses of the flying spaceships changed subtly. The flotilla swung around, through a small arc of a circle of prodigious radius, decreasing by a tenth its driving force. Up to it theDauntlesscrept; through it and into the van. Then again in cone formation, but with fifty-five units instead of fifty-four, the flotilla screamed forward at maximum blast.
Well before the calculated time of meeting the speedster a Velantian Lensman who knew Worsel well put himself en rapport with him and sent a thought out far ahead of the flying squadron. It found its goal—Lensmen of that race, as has been brought out, have always been extraordinarily capable communicators—and once more the course was altered slightly. In due time Worsel reported that he could detect the fleet, and shortly thereafter:
"Worsel says to cut your drive to zero," the Velantian transmitted. "He's coming up. He's close. He's going to go inert and start driving. We're to stay free until we see what his intrinsic velocity is. Watch for his flare."
It was a weird sensation, this of knowing that a speedster—quite a sizable chunk of boat, really—was almost in their midst, and yet having all their instruments, even the electros, register empty space.
There it was! The flare of the driving blast, a brilliant streamer of fierce white light, sprang into being and drifted rapidly away to one side of their course. When it had attained a safe distance:
"All ships of the flotilla except theDauntlessgo inert," Haynes directed. Then, to his own pilot, "Back us off a bit, Henderson, and do the same," and the new flagship also went inert.
"How can I get onto thePasteurthe quickest, Haynes?" Lacy demanded.
"Take a gig," the admiral grunted. "Strapped down, you can use as much acceleration as you like. Three G's is all we can use without warning and preparation."
There followed a curious and fascinating spectacle, for the hospital ship had an intrinsic velocity entirely different from that of either Kinnison's speedster or Lacy's powerful gig. ThePasteur, gravity pads cut to zero, was braking down by means of her under jets at a conservative one point four gravities, since hospital ships were not allowed to use the brutal inert accelerations employed as a matter of course by ships of war.
The gig was on her brakes at five gravities, all that Lacy wanted to take—but the speedster! Worsel had put his patient into a pressure pack and had hung him on suspension, and was "balancing her down on her tail" at everything he could stand—a full eleven gravities!
But even at that, the gig first matched the velocity of the hospital ship. The intrinsics of those two were at least of the same order of magnitude, since both had come from the same galaxy. Therefore, Lacy boarded the Red Cross vessel and was escorted to the office of the chief nurse while Worsel was still blasting at eleven G's—fifty thousand miles distant then and getting farther away by the second—to kill the speedster's Lundmarkian intrinsic velocity. Nor could the tractors of the warships be of any assistance—the speedster's own vicious jets were fully capable of supplying more acceleration than even unhuman Worsel could endure!
"How do you do, Dr. Lacy? Everything is ready." Clarrissa MacDougall met him, hand outstretched. Her saucy white cap was worn as jerkily cocked as ever; perhaps even more so, now that it was emblazoned with the cross-surmounted wedge which is the insignia of sector chief nurse. Her flaming hair was as gorgeous, her smile was as radiant, her bearing as confidently—Kinnison has said of her more than once that she is the only person he has ever known who can strut sitting down!—as calmly poised. "I'm very glad to see you, doctor. It's been quite a while—" Her voice died away, for the man was looking at her with an expression defying analysis.
For Lacy was thunderstruck. If he had ever known it—and he must have—he had forgotten completely that MacDougall had this ship. This was awful—terrible!
"Oh, yes ... yes, of course. How do you do? Mighty glad to see you again. How's everything going?" He pumped her hand vigorously, thinking frantically the while what he would—what hecould—say next. "Oh, by the way, who is to be in charge of the operating room?"
"Why, I am, of course," she replied in surprise. "Who else would be?"
"Anyoneelse," he wanted to say, but did not—then. "Why, that isn't at all necessary. I would suggest—"
"You'll suggest nothing of the kind!" She stared at him intently; then, as she realized what his expression really meant—she had never before seen such a look of pitying anguish upon his usually sternly professional face—her own turned white and both hands flew to her throat.
"Not Kim, Lacy!" she gasped. Gone now was everything of poise, of insouciance, which had so characterized her a moment before. She who had worked unflinchingly upon all sorts of dismembered, fragmentary, maimed and mangled men was now a pleading, stricken, desperately frightened girl. "Not Kim—please! Oh, merciful God, don't let it be my Kim!"
"Youcan'tbe there, Mac." He did not need to tell her. She knew; he knew that she knew. "Somebody else—anybodyelse."
"No!" came the hot negative, although the blood drained completely from the chief nurse's face, leaving it as white as the immaculate uniform she wore. Her eyes were black, burning holes. "It's my job, Lacy, in more ways than one. Do you think that I wouldeverlet anyone else work onhim?" she finished passionately.
"You'll have to," he declared. "I didn't want to tell you this, but he's a ghastly mess. Altogether too much so for any woman, to say nothing of one who loves him." This, from a surgeon of Lacy's long and wide experience, was an unthinkable statement. Nevertheless:
"All the more reason why I've got to do it. No matter what shape he's in, I'll let no one else work on my Kim."
"I say no. That's an order—official!"
"Damn such orders!" she flamed. "There's nothing back of it—you know that as well as I do!"
"See here, young woman—"
"Do you think that you can get away with ordering me not to perform the very duties I have taken an oath to do?" she stormed. "And even if it were not my job, I'd come in and work on him if I had to get a torch and cut the ship apart, plate by plate, to do it! The only way you can keep me out of that operating room, Lacy, is to have about ten of your men put me into a strait jacket—and if you do that I'll have you kicked out of the service bodily. You know that I could and that I would!"
"QX, MacDougall, you win." She had him there. This girl could and would do exactly that. "But if you faint, I swear that I'll make you wish—"
"You know me better than that, doctor." She was cold now as a woman of marble. "If he dies, I'll die, too, right then. But if he lives, I'll stand by as long as I can do a single thing, however small, to help."
"You would, at that," the surgeon admitted. "Probably you would be able to hold together better than anyone else could. But there'll be after-effects in your case, you know."
"I know." Her voice was bleak. "I'll live through them—if Kim lives." She became all nurse in the course of a breath. White, cold, inhuman; strung to highest tension and yet placidly calm, as only a truly loving woman in life's great crises can be. "You have had reports on him, doctor. What is your provisional diagnosis?"
"Something like elephantiasis, only worse, affecting both arms and both legs. Drastic amputations indicated. Eye sockets require attention. Various multiple and compound fractures. Punctured and incised wounds. Traumatism, ecchymosis, extensive extravasations, œdema. Profound systemic shock, of course. The prognosis, however, seems to be distinctly favorable, as far as we can tell."
"Oh, I'm glad of that!" she breathed, the woman for a moment showing through the armor of the nurse. She had not dared even to think of prognosis. Then she had a thought. "Is that really true, or are you just giving me a shot in the arm?" she demanded.
"The truth—strictly," he assured her. "Worsel has an excellent sense of perception, and he has reported fully and clearly. Kinnison's mind, brain, and spine are not affected in any way, and we should be able to save his life. That is the one good feature of the whole thing."
The speedster finally matched the velocity of the hospital ship. She went free, flashed up to thePasteur, inerted, and maneuvered briefly. The larger vessel engulfed the smaller. The Gray Lensman was carried into the operating room. The anæsthetist approached the table and Lacy was stunned at a thought from Kinnison.