"Listen, my beautiful but dumb guide," Kinnison counseled the Lyranian
girl as they neared their objective. "I see that you're forgetting all
your good girl scout resolutions and are getting all hot and bothered
again. I'm telling you now for the last time to watch your step. If
that zwilnik person has even a split second's warning that I am on her
tail, all hell will be out for noon--and I don't mean perchance."
"But I must notify the Elder One that I am bringing you in," she told
him. "One simply does not intrude unannounced. It is not permitted."
"QX. Stick to the announcement, though, and don't put out any funny
ideas. I'll send a thought along, just to make sure."
But he did more than that, for even as he spoke, his sense of
perception was already in the room to which they were going. It was a
large room, and bare; filled with tables except for a clear central
space upon which at the moment a lithe and supple person was doing what
seemed to be a routine of acrobatic dancing, interspersed with suddenly
motionless posings and posturings of extreme technical difficulty. At
the tables were seated a hundred or so Lyranians, eating.
Kinnison was not interested in the floor show, whatever it was, nor
in the massed Lyranians. The zwilnik was what he was after. Ah, there
she was, at a ringside table--a small, square table seating four--near
the door. Her back was to it--good. At her left, commanding the
central view of the floor, was a redhead, sitting in a revolving,
reclining chair, the only such seat in the room. Probably the Big
Noise herself--the Elder One. No matter, he wasn't interested in her,
either--yet. His attention flashed back to his proposed quarry and he
almost gasped.
For she, like Dessa Desplaines, was an Aldebaranian, and she was
everything that the Desplaines woman had been--more so, if possible.
She was a seven-sector call-out, a thionite dream if there ever was
one. And jewelry! This Lyranian tiger hadn't exaggerated that angle
very much, at that. Her breast shields were of gold and platinum
filigree, thickly studded with diamonds, emeralds and rubies, in
intricate designs. Her shorts, or rather trunks, were of Manarkan
glamorette, blazing with gems. A cleverly concealed dagger, with a
jeweled haft and a vicious little fang of a blade. Rings, even a thumb
ring. A necklace which was practically a collar flashed all the colors
of the rainbow. Bracelets, armlets, anklets and knee bands. High-laced
dress boots, jeweled from stem to gudgeon. Earrings, and a meticulous,
micrometrically precise coiffure held in place by at least a dozen
glittering buckles, combs and barrettes.
"Holy Klono's brazen tendons!" the Lensman whistled to himself, for
every last, least one of those stones was the clear quill. "Half a
million credits if it's a millo's worth!"
But he was not particularly interested in this jeweler's vision of
what the well-dressed lady zwilnik will wear. There were other, far
more important things. Yes, she had a thought-screen. Its battery was
mighty low now, but it would still work; good thing he had blocked the
warning. And she had a hollow tooth, too, but he'd see to it that she
didn't get a chance to swallow its contents. She knew plenty, and he
hadn't chased her this far to let her knowledge be obliterated by that
hellish Boskonian drug.
* * * * *
They were at the door now. Disregarding the fiercely driven mental
protests of his companion, Kinnison flung it open, stiffening up his
mental guard as he did so. Simultaneously he invaded the zwilnik's
mind with a flood of force, clamping down so hard that she could not
move a single voluntary muscle. Then, paying no attention whatever to
the shocked surprise of the assembled Lyranians, he strode directly up
to the Aldebaranian and bent her head back into the crook of his elbow.
Forcibly but gently he opened her mouth. With thumb and forefinger
he deftly removed the false tooth. Releasing her then, mentally and
physically, he dropped his spoil to the cement floor and ground it
savagely to bits under his hard and heavy heel.
The zwilnik screamed wildly, piercingly at first. However, finding that
she was getting no results, from Lensman or Lyranian, she subsided
quickly into alertly watchful waiting.
Still unsatisfied, Kinnison flipped out one of his DeLameters and
flamed the remains of the capsule of worse than paralyzing fluid,
caring not a whit that his vicious portable, even in that brief
instant, seared a hole a foot deep into the floor. Then and only then
did he turn his attention to the redhead in the boss' chair.
He had to hand it to Elder Sister--through all this sudden and to her
entirely unprecedented violence of action she hadn't turned a hair.
She had swung her chair around so that she was facing him. Her back
was to the athletic dancer who, now holding a flawlessly perfect pose,
was going on with the act as though nothing out of the ordinary were
transpiring. She was leaning backward, far backward, in the armless
swivel chair, her right foot resting upon its pedestal. Her left ankle
was crossed over her right knee, her left knee rested lightly against
the table's top. Her hands were clasped together at the nape of her
neck, supporting her red-thatched head; her elbows spread abroad in
easy, indolent grace. Her eyes, so deeply, darkly green as to be almost
black, stared up unwinkingly into the Lensman's--"insolently" was the
descriptive word that came first to his mind.
If the Elder Sister was supposed to be old, Kinnison reflected as he
studied appreciatively the startlingly beautiful picture which the
artless chief person of this tribe so unconsciously made, she certainly
belied her looks. As far as looks went, she really qualified--whatever
it took, she in abundant measure had. Her hair was not really red,
either. It was a flamboyant, gorgeous auburn, about the same color
as Chris' own, and just as thick. And it wasn't all haggled up.
Accidentally, of course, and no doubt because on her particular job her
hair didn't get in the way very often, it happened to be a fairly even,
shoulder-length bob. What a mop! And damned if it wasn't wavy! Just as
she was, with no dolling up at all, she would be a primary beam on any
man's planet. She had this zwilnik here, knockout that she was and with
all her war paint and feathers, blasted clear out of the ether. But
this queen bee had a sting; she was still boring away at his shield.
He'd better let her know that she didn't even begin to have enough jets
to swing _that_ load.
* * * * *
"QX, ace, cut the gun!" he directed crisply. "Ace," from him, was a
complimentary term indeed. "Pipe down--that is all of that kind of
stuff from you. I stood for this much of it, just to show you that
you can't get to the first check station with that kind of fuel, but
enough is a great plenty." At the sheer cutting power of the thought,
rebroadcast no doubt by the airport manager, Lyranian activity
throughout the room came to a halt. This was decidedly out of the
ordinary. For a male mind--_any_ male mind--to be able even
momentarily to resist that of the meanest person of Lyrane was starkly
unthinkable. The Elder's graceful body tensed; into her eyes there
crept a dawning doubt, a peculiar, wondering uncertainty. Of fear there
was none; all these sexless Lyranian women were brave to the point of
foolhardiness.
"You tell her, draggle-pate," he ordered his erstwhile guide. "It took
me hell's own time to make you understand that I mean business, but you
talk her language--see how fast you can get the thing through Her Royal
Nibs' skull."
It did not take long. The lovely dark-green eyes held conviction now;
but also a greater uncertainty.
"It will be best, I think, to kill you now, instead of allowing you to
leave--" she began.
"_Allow_ me to leave!" Kinnison exploded. "Where do you get such
funny ideas as that killing stuff? Just who, Toots, is going to keep me
from leaving?"
"This." At the thought a weirdly conglomerate monstrosity which
certainly had not been in the dining hall an instant before leaped
at Kinnison's throat. It was a frightful thing indeed, combining the
worst features of the reptile and the feline, a serpent's head upon a
panther's body. Through the air it hurtled, terrible claws unsheathed
to rend and venomous fangs outthrust to stab.
Kinnison had never before met that particular form of attack, but he
knew instantly what it was--knew that neither leather nor armor of
proof nor screen of force could stop it. He knew that the thing was
real only to the woman and himself, that it was not only invisible,
but nonexistent to everyone else. He also knew how ultimately deadly
the creature was, knew that if claw or fang should strike him, he would
die then and there.
Ordinarily very efficient, to the Lensman this method of slaughter was
crude and amateurish. No such figment of any other mind could harm him
unless he knew that it was coming; unless his mind was given ample time
in which to appreciate--in reality, to manufacture--the danger he was
in. And in _that_ time _his_ mind could negate it. He had two
defenses. He could deny the monster's existence, in which case it would
simply disappear. Or, a much more difficult, but technically a much
nicer course, would be to take over control and toss it back at her.
Unhesitatingly he did the latter. In midleap the apparition swerved, in
a full right-angle turn, directly toward the quietly poised body of the
Lyranian. She acted just barely in time; the madly reaching claws were
within scant inches of her skin when they vanished. Her eyes widened in
frightened startlement; she was quite evidently shaken to the core by
the Lensman's viciously skillful riposte. With an obvious effort she
pulled herself together.
"Or these, then, if I must," and with a sweeping gesture of thought she
indicated the roomful of her Lyranian sisters.
"How?" Kinnison asked, pointedly.
"By force of numbers; by sheer weight and strength. You can kill many
of them with your weapons, of course, but not enough or quickly enough."
"You yourself would be the first to die," he cautioned her; and, since
she was en rapport with his very mind, she knew that it was not a
threat, but the stern finality of fact.
"What of that?" He in turn knew that she, too, meant precisely that and
nothing else.
He had another weapon, but she would not believe it without a
demonstration, and he simply could not prove that weapon upon an
unarmed, defenseless woman, even though she was a Lyranian.
Stalemate.
No, the 'copter. "Listen, Queen of Sheba, to what I tell my boys," he
ordered, and spoke into his microphone.
"Ralph? Stick a three-second needle down through the floor here; close
enough to make her jump, but far enough away so that you won't blister
her. Say about fifteen feet or so back--Fire!"
* * * * *
At Kinnison's word a narrow, but ragingly incandescent pencil of
destruction raved downward through ceiling and floor. So inconceivably
hot was it that if it had been a fraction larger, it would have ignited
the Elder Sister's very chair. Effortlessly, insatiably it consumed
everything in its immediate path, radiating the while the entire
spectrum of vibrations. It was unbearable, and the auburn-haired
creature did indeed jump, in spite of herself--halfway to the door.
The rest of the hitherto imperturbable persons clustered together in
panic-stricken knots.
"You see, Cleopatra," Kinnison explained, as the dreadful needle beam
expired, "I've got plenty of stuff if I want to--or have to--use it.
The boys up there will stick a needle like that through the brain
of anyone or everyone in this room if I give the word. I don't want
to kill any of you unless it's necessary, as I explained to your
misbarbered friend here, but I am leaving here alive and all in one
piece, and I'm taking this Aldebaranian along with me, in the same
condition. If I must, I'll lay down a barrage like that sample you just
saw, and only the zwilnik and I will get out alive. How about it?"
"What are you going to do with the stranger?" the Lyranian asked,
avoiding the issue.
"I'm going to take some information away from her, that's all. Why?
What were you going to do with her yourselves?"
"We were--and are--going to kill it," came flashing reply. The lethal
bolt came even before the reply; but, fast as the Elder One was, the
Gray Lensman was faster. He blanked out the thought, reached over and
flipped on the Aldebaranian's thought-screen.
"Keep it on until we get to the ship, sister," he spoke aloud in the
girl's native tongue. "Your battery's low, I know, but it'll last long
enough. These hens seem to be strictly on the peck."
"I'll say they are--you don't know the half of it." Her voice was low,
rich, vibrant. "Thanks, Kinnison."
"Listen, Scarlet-top, what's the percentage in playing so dirty?" the
Lensman complained then. "I'm doing my damnedest to let you off easy,
but I'm all done dickering. Do we go out of here peaceably, or do we
fry you and your crew to cinders in your own lard, and walk out over
the grease spots? It's strictly up to you, but you'll decide right here
and right now."
The Elder One's face was hard, her eyes flinty. Her fingers were curled
into ball-tight fists. "I suppose, since we cannot stop you, we must
let you go free," she hissed, in helpless but controlled fury. "If by
giving my life and the lives of all these others we could kill you,
here and now would you two die--but as it is, you may go."
"But why all the rage?" the puzzled Lensman asked. "You strike me as
being, on the whole, reasoning creatures. You in particular went to
Tellus with this zwilnik here, so you should know--"
"I _do_ know," the Lyranian broke in. "That is why I would go to
any length, pay any price whatever, to keep you from returning to your
own world, to prevent the inrush of your barbarous hordes here--"
"Oh! So _that's_ it!" Kinnison exclaimed. "You think that some of
our people might want to settle down here, or to have traffic with you?"
"Yes." She went into a eulogy concerning Lyrane II, concluding, "I have
seen the planets and the races of your so-called Civilization, and I
detest them and it. Never again shall any of us leave Lyrane; nor, if I
can help it, shall any stranger ever again come here."
"Listen, angel face!" the man commanded. "You're as mad as a Radeligian
cateagle--you're as cockeyed as Trenco's ether. Get this, and get
it straight. To any really intelligent being of any one of forty
million planets, your whole Lyranian race would be a total loss with
no insurance. You're a God-forsaken, spiritually and emotionally
starved, barren, mentally ossified, and completely monstrous mess. If
I, personally, never see either you or your planet again, that will be
exactly twenty-seven minutes too soon. This girl here thinks the same
of you as I do. If anybody else ever hears of Lyrane and thinks he
wants to visit it, I'll take him out of ... I'll knock a hip down on
him if I have to, to keep him away from here. Do I make myself clear?"
"Oh, yes--perfectly!" she fairly squealed in schoolgirlish delight. The
Lensman's tirade, instead of infuriating her further, had been sweet
music to her peculiarly insular mind. "Go, then, at once--hurry! Oh,
please, hurry! Can you drive the car back to your vessel, or will one
of us have to go with you?"
"Thanks. I could drive your car, but it won't be necessary. The 'copter
will pick us up."
He spoke to the watchful Ralph, then he and the Aldebaranian left the
hall, followed at a careful distance by the throng. The helicopter was
on the ground, waiting. The man and the woman climbed aboard.
* * * * *
"Clear ether, persons!" The Lensman waved a salute to the crowd and the
Tellurian craft shot into the air.
Thence to the _Dauntless_, which immediately did likewise, leaving
behind her, upon the little airport, a fused blob of metal that had
once been the zwilnik's speedster. Kinnison studied the white face of
his captive, then handed her a tiny canister.
"Fresh battery for your thought-screen generator; yours is about shot."
Since she made no motion to accept it, he made the exchange himself and
tested the result. It worked. "What's the matter with you, kid, anyway?
I'd say that you were starved, if I hadn't caught you at a full table."
"I am starved," the girl said, simply. "I couldn't eat there. I knew
that they were going to kill me, and it ... it sort of took away my
appetite."
"Well, what are we waiting for? I'm hungry, too--let's go eat."
"Not with you, either, any more than with them. I thanked you, Lensman,
for saving my life there, and I meant it. I thought then and still
think that I would rather have you kill me than those horrible,
monstrous women, but I simply can't eat."
"But I'm not even thinking of killing you--can't you get that through
your skull? I don't make war on women; you ought to know that by this
time."
"You will have to." The girl's voice was low and level. "You didn't
kill any of those Lyranians, no, but you didn't chase them a million
parsecs, either. We have been taught ever since we were born that you
Patrolmen always torture people to death. I don't quite believe that of
you personally, since I have had a couple of glimpses into your mind,
but you'll kill me before I'll talk. At least, I hope and I believe
that I can hold out."
"Listen, girl." Kinnison was in deadly earnest. "You are in no danger
whatever. You are just as safe as though you were in Klono's hip
pocket. You have some information that I want, yes, and I will get
it, but in the process I will neither hurt you nor do you mental or
physical harm. The only torture you will undergo will be that which, as
now, you give yourself."
"But you called me a ... a zwilnik, and they _always_ kill them,"
she protested.
"Not always. In battles and in raids, yes. Captured ones are tried
in court. If found guilty, they used to go into the lethal chambers.
Sometimes they do yet, but not usually. We have mental therapists now
who can operate on a mind if there's anything there worth saving."
"And you think that I will wait to stand trial upon Tellus, in the
entirely negligible hope that your bewhiskered, fossilized therapists
will find something in me worth saving?"
"You won't have to," Kinnison laughed. "Your case has already been
decided--in your favor. I am neither a policeman nor a narcotics man;
but I happen to be qualified as judge, jury and executioner. I am a
therapist to boot. I once saved a worse zwilnik than you are, even
though she wasn't quite such a knockout. Now do we eat?"
"Really? You aren't just ... just giving me the needle?"
* * * * *
The Lensman flipped off her screen and gave her unmistakable evidence.
The girl, hitherto so unmovedly self-reliant, broke down. She recovered
quickly, however, and in Kinnison's cabin she ate ravenously.
"Have you a cigarette?" she sighed with repletion when she could hold
no more food.
"Sure. Alsakanite, Venerian, Tellurian, most anything--we carry a
couple of hundred different brands. What would you like?"
"Tellurian, by all means. I had a package of Camerfields once--they
were gorgeous. Would you have those, by any chance?"
"Uh-huh," he assured her. "Quartermaster! Carton Camerfields, please."
It popped out of the pneumatic tube in seconds. "Here you are, sister."
The glittery girl drew the fragrant smoke deep down into her lungs.
"Ah, that tastes good! Thanks, Kinnison--for everything. I'm glad that
you kidded me into eating; that was the finest meal I ever ate. But it
won't take, really. I have never broken yet, and I don't believe that
I will break now. And if I do, I'm dead certain that I won't be worth
a damn, to myself or to anybody else, from then on." She crushed out
the butt. "So let's get on with the third degree. Bring on your rubber
hose and your lights and the drip can."
"You're still on the wrong foot, Toots," Kinnison said, pityingly. What
a frightful contrast there was between her slimly rounded body, in its
fantastically gorgeous costume, and the stark somberness of her eyes!
"There'll be no third degree, no hose, no lights, nothing like that. In
fact, I'm not even going to talk to you until you've had a good long
sleep. You don't look hungry any more, but you're still not in tune, by
seven thousand kilocycles. How long has it been since you really slept?"
"A couple of weeks, at a guess. Maybe a month."
"Thought so. Come on; you're going to sleep now."
The girl did not move. "With whom?" she asked, quietly. Her voice
did not quiver, but stark terror lay in her mind and her hand crept
unconsciously toward the hilt of her dagger.
"Holy Klono's claws!" Kinnison snorted, staring at her in wide-eyed
wonder. "Just what kind of a bunch of hyenas do you think you've got
into, anyway?"
"Bad," the girl replied, gravely. "Not the worst possible, but from my
standpoint plenty bad enough. What can I expect from the Patrol except
what I do expect? You don't need to kid me along, Kinnison. I can take
it, and I'd a lot rather take it standing up, facing it, than have you
sneak up on me with it after giving me your shots in the arm."
"What somebody has done to you is a sin and a shrieking shame,"
Kinnison declared, feelingly. "Come on, you poor little devil." He
picked up sundry pieces of apparatus, then, taking her arm, he escorted
her to another cabin.
"That door," he explained carefully, "is solid tool steel. The lock
is on the inside, and it cannot be picked. There are only two keys
to it in the Universe, and here they are. There is a bolt, too, that
cannot be forced by anything short of a hydraulic jack. Here is a
full-coverage screen, and here's a twenty-foot spy-ray block. There is
your stuff out of the speedster. If you want help, or anything to eat
or drink, or anything else that can be expected aboard a star wagon,
there's the communicator. QX?"
"Then you really mean it? That I ... that you ... I mean--"
"Absolutely," he assured her. "Just that. You are completely the master
of your destiny, the captain of your soul. Good night."
"Good night, Kinnison. Good night, and th ... thanks." The girl threw
herself face downward upon the bed in a storm of sobs.
Nevertheless, as Kinnison started back toward his own cabin, he heard
the massive bolt click into its socket and felt the blocking screens go
on.