* * * * *
Clarrissa's body went limp upon her bed. Her heart slowed; her
breathing almost stopped. Kit probed quickly, finding that those secret
cells into which he had scarcely dared to glance were now empty and
bare. Even the Red Lensman's tremendous reserves of vital force were
exhausted.
"Mother, come back!"
"Come back to us!"
"Please, _please_, Mums, come back!"
"Know you, children, your mother so little?"
They knew her. They knew starkly that she would not come back.
Regardless of any danger to herself, regardless of life itself, she
would not return until she had found her Kim.
"But _do_ something, Mentor--DO SOMETHING!"
"What? Nothing can be done. It was simply a question of which was the
greater; the volume of the required hypersphere or her remarkable store
of vitality."
"Shut up!" Kit blazed. "We'll do _something_! Come on, kids, and
we'll try."
"The Unit!" Kathryn shrieked. "Link up, quick! Cam, make mother's
pattern, all of it--hurry! Now, Unit, grab it--make her one of us, a
six-ply Unit--_make_ her come in, and snap it up! There! Now, Kit,
drive us. DRIVE US!"
Kit drove. As the surging life-force of the Unit pushed a measure
of vitality back into Clarrissa's inert body, she gained a little
strength and did not grow weaker. The children, however, did; and
Mentor, who had been entirely unmoved by the woman's imminent death,
became highly concerned.
"Children, return!" He first ordered, then entreated. "You are throwing
away not only your lives, but also long lifetimes of intensive labor
and study!"
They paid no attention. He had known that they would not. No more
than their mother would those children abandon such a mission
unaccomplished. Seven Kinnisons would come back or none.
The Arisian pondered--and brightened. Now that a theretofore impossible
linkage had been made, the outlook changed. The odds shifted. The
Unit's delicacy of web, its driving force, had not been enough; or,
rather, it would have taken too long. Adding the Red Lensman's affinity
for her husband, however--Yes, definitely, this Unit of his should now
succeed.
It did. Before any of the Five weakened to the danger point the Unit,
again five-fold, snapped back. Clarrissa's life-force, which had tried
so valiantly to fill all of space and all of time, was flowing back
into her. A tight, hard beam ran, it seemed, to infinity and vanished.
Mentor had been unable to follow the Unit, but he could and did follow
that beam to Kimball Kinnison. Abruptly the trace was hidden by the
walls of a hyperspatial tube.
"A right scholarly bit of work, children," Mentor approved. "I could
not follow you, but I have arranged the means of his return."
"Thanks, children. Thanks, Mentor." Instead of fainting, Clarrissa
sprang from her bed and stood erect. Flushed and panting, eyes
flamingly alight, she was more intensely vital than any of her children
had ever seen her. Reaction might--would--come later, but she was now
all buoyantly vibrant woman. "Where will he come into our space, and
when?"
"In your room before you. Now."
Kinnison materialized; and as the Red Lensman and the Gray went
hungrily into each other's arms, Mentor and the Five turned their
attention toward the future.
* * * * *
"First, the hyperspatial tube which was called the 'Hell Hole in
Space,'" Kit began. "We must establish as fact in the minds of all
Civilization that the Ploorans were actually at the top of Boskone.
The story as we have arranged it is that Ploor was the top, and--which
happens to be the truth--that it was destroyed through the efforts of
the Second-Stage Lensmen. The 'Hell Hole' is to be explained as being
operated by the Plooran 'residuum' which every Lensman knows all about
and which he will never forget. The problem of Dad's whereabouts was
different from the previous one in degree only, not in kind. To all
except us, there never were any Eddorians. Any objections? Will that
version hold?"
The consensus was that the story was sound and tight.
"The time has come, then," Karen thought, "to go into the very
important matter of our reason for being and our purpose in life.
You have intimated repeatedly that you Arisians are resigning your
Guardianship of Civilization and that we are to take over; and I have
just perceived the terribly shocking fact that you four are now alone,
that all the other Arisians have already gone. We are not ready,
Mentor; you know that we are not--this scares me through and through."
"You are ready, children, for everything that will have to be done.
You have not come to your full maturity and power, of course; that
stage will come only with time. It is best for you, however, that we
leave you now. Your race is potentially vastly stronger and abler than
ours. We reached some time ago the highest point attainable to us: we
could no longer adapt ourselves to the ever-increasing complexity of
life. You, a young new race amply equipped for any emergency within
reckonable time, will be able to do so. In capability and in equipment
you begin where we leave off."
"But we know--you've taught us--scarcely anything!" Constance protested.
"I have taught you exactly enough. That we do not know exactly what
changes to anticipate is implicit in the fact that our race is out of
date. Further Arisian teaching would tend to set you in the out-dated
Arisian mold and thereby defeat our every purpose. As I have informed
you repeatedly, we ourselves do not know what extra qualities you
possess. Hence we are in no sense competent to instruct you in the
natures or in the uses of them. It is certain, however, that you have
those extra qualities. It is equally certain that you possess the
abilities to develop them to the full. I have set your feet on the sure
way to the full development of those abilities."
"But that will take much time, sir," Kit thought, "and if you leave us
now we won't have it."
"You will have time enough and to spare."
"Oh--then we won't have to do it right away?" Constance broke in.
"Good!"
"We are all glad of that," Camilla added. "We're too full of our own
lives, too eager for experiences, to enjoy the prospect of living such
lives as you Arisians have lived. I am right in assuming, am I not,
that our own development will in time force us into the same or a
similar existence?"
"Your muddy thinking has again distorted the truth," Mentor reproved
her. "There will be no force involved. You will gain everything, lose
nothing. You have no conception of the depth and breadth of the vistas
now just beginning to open to you. Your lives will be immeasurably
fuller, higher, greater than any heretofore known to this universe. As
your capabilities increase, you will find that you will no longer care
for the society of entities less able than your own kind."
* * * * *
"But I don't _want_ to live forever!" Constance wailed.
"More muddy thinking." Mentor's thought was--for him--somewhat testy.
"Perhaps, in the present instance, barely excusable. You know that you
are not immortal. You should know that an infinity of time is necessary
for the acquirement of infinite knowledge; and that your span of life
will be just as short, in comparison with your capacity to live and
to learn, as that of Homo sapiens. When the time comes you will want
to--you will need to--change your manner of living."
"Tell us when?" Kat suggested. "It would be nice to know, so that we
could get ready."
"I could tell you, since in that way my visualization is clear, but
I will not. Fifty years--a hundred--a million--what matters it? Live
your lives to the fullest, year by year, developing your every obvious,
latent, and nascent capability; calmly assured that long before
any need for your services shall arise, you shall have established
yourselves upon some planet of your choice and shall be in every
respect ready for whatever may come to pass."
"You are--you must be--right," Kit conceded. "In view of what has just
happened, however, and the chaotic condition of both galaxies, it seems
a poor time to vacate all Guardianship."
"All inimical activity is now completely disorganized. Kinnison and
the Patrol can handle it easily enough. The real conflict is finished.
Think nothing of a few years of vacancy. The Lensmakers, as you know,
are fully automatic, requiring neither maintenance nor attention;
what little time you may wish to devote to the special training of
selected Lensmen can be taken at odd moments from your serious work of
developing yourselves for Guardianship."
"We still feel incompetent," the Five insisted. "Are you sure that you
have given us all the instruction we need?"
"I am sure. I perceive doubt in your minds as to my own competence,
based upon the fact that in this supreme emergency my visualization
was faulty and my actions almost too late. Observe, however, that my
visualization was clear upon every essential factor and that we were
not actually too late. The truth is that our timing was precisely
right--no lesser stress could possibly have prepared you as you are now
prepared.
"I am about to go. The time may come when your descendants will
realize, as we did, their inadequacy for continued Guardianship. Their
visualizations, as did ours, may become imperfect and incomplete.
If so, they will then know that the time will have come for them to
develop, from the highest race then existing, new and more competent
Guardians. Then they, as my fellows have done and as I am about to do,
will of their own accord pass on. But that is for the remote future. As
to you children, doubtful now and hesitant as is only natural, you may
believe implicitly what I now tell you is the truth, that even though
we Arisians are no longer here, all shalt be well; with us, with you,
and with all Civilization."
The deeply resonant pseudovoice ceased; the Kinnisons knew that Mentor,
the last of the Arisians, was gone.