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 the _Dauntless_. Taking the new flotilla with me. Time
indefinite--probably a few weeks."
He strode toward the communicator desk. The _Dauntless_ was, 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 the _Dauntless_.
"Get me Navigations.... Figure best point of rendezvous for the
_Dauntless_ and 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 the _Dauntless_.
"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, the _Dauntless_ hurtled 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 the _Dauntless_
crept; 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 the _Dauntless_ go 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 the _Pasteur_ the 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. The _Pasteur_, 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 he _could_--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?"
"_Anyone_ else," 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!"
"You _can't_ be there, Mac." He did not need to tell her. She knew; he
knew that she knew. "Somebody else--_anybody_ else."
"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 would _ever_ let anyone else
work on _him_?" 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 the _Pasteur_, 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.
[Illustration: _They wheeled Kim out of the speedster, grim Worsel's
vast strength gentle to help him into the hospital ship._]
"Never mind the anæsthetic, Dr. Lacy. You can't make me unconscious
without killing me. Go ahead with your work. I'll hold a nerve block
while you're doing what has to be done. I can do it perfectly--I've had
lots of practice."
"But we can't, man!" Lacy exclaimed. "You've got to be under a general
for this job--we can't have you conscious. You're raving, I think. It
will work, surely; it always has. Let us try it, anyway, won't you?"
"Sure. It'll save me the trouble of holding the block, even though it
won't do anything else. Go ahead."
The attendant physician did so, with the same cool skill and to the
same end point as in thousands of similar and successful undertakings.
At its conclusion: "Gone now, aren't you, Kinnison?" Lacy asked,
through his Lens.
"No," came the surprising reply. "Physically, it worked. I can't feel a
thing and I can't move a muscle, but mentally I am as wide awake as I
ever was."
"But you shouldn't be!" Lacy protested. "Perhaps you were right, at
that--we can't give you much more without danger of collapse. But
you've _got_ to be unconscious! Isn't there some way in which you can
be made so?"
"Yes, there is. But why do I have to be unconscious?" Kinnison asked
curiously.
"To avoid mental shock--seriously damaging," the surgeon explained. "In
your case particularly the mental aspect is much graver than the purely
physical one."
"Maybe you're right but you can't do it with drugs. Call Worsel; he has
done it before. He had me unconscious most of the way over here, except
when he had to give me a drink or something to eat. He's the only man
this side of Arisia who can operate on my mind."
Worsel came. "Sleep, my friend," he commanded, gently but firmly.
"Sleep profoundly, body and mind, with no physical or mental
sensations, no consciousness, no perception even of the passage of
time. Sleep until someone having authority to do so bids you awaken."
And Kinnison slept; so deeply that even Lacy's probing Lens could
elicit no response.
"He will _stay_ that way?" the surgeon asked in awe.
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"Indefinitely. Until one of you doctors or nurses tells him to wake up,
or until he dies for lack of food or water."
"We will see to it that he gets nourishment. He would make a much
better recovery if we could keep him in that state until his injuries
are almost healed. Would that do him harm, think you?"
"None whatever."
Then the surgeons and the nurses went to work. Lacy was not guilty of
exaggeration when he described Kinnison as being a "ghastly mess."
He was all of that. The job was long and hard. It was heartbreaking,
even for those to whom Kinnison was merely another case, not a beloved
personality. What they had to do they did, and the white marble
chief nurse carried on through every soul-wrenching second, through
every shocking, searing motion of it. She did her part, stoically,
unflinchingly, as efficiently as though the patient upon the table were
a total stranger undergoing a simple appendectomy and not the one man
in her entire universe suffering radical dismemberment. Nor did she
faint--then.
* * * * *
Back in Base Hospital, then, time wore on until Lacy decided that the
Lensman could be aroused from his trance. Clarrissa it was who woke
him up. She had fought for the privilege; first claiming it as a right
and then threatening to commit mayhem upon the person of anyone else
who dared even to think of doing it.
"Wake up, Kim, dear," she whispered. "The worst of it is over now. You
are getting well."
The Gray Lensman came to instantly, in full command of every faculty,
knowing everything that had happened up to the instant of his hypnosis
by Worsel. He stiffened, ready to establish again the nerve block
against the intolerable agony to which he had been subjected so long,
but there was no need. His body was, for the first time in untold
æons, free from pain; and he relaxed blissfully, reveling in the sheer
comfort of it.
"I'm _so_ glad that you're awake, Kim," the nurse went on. "I know
that you can't talk to me--we can't unbandage your jaw until next
week--and you can't think at me, either, because your new Lens
hasn't come yet. But I can talk to you and you can listen. Don't be
discouraged, Kim. Don't let it get you down. I love you just as much as
I ever did, and as soon as you can talk we're going to get married. I
am going to take care of you--"
"Don't 'poor dear' me, Mac," he interrupted her with a vigorous
thought. "You didn't say it, I know, but you were thinking it. I'm not
half as helpless as you think I am. I can still communicate, and I can
see as well as I ever could, or better. And if you think that I'm going
to let you marry me to take care of me, you're crazy."
"You're raving! Delirious! Stark, staring mad!" She started back,
then controlled herself with an effort. "Maybe you can think at people
without a Lens--of course you can, since you just did, at me--but you
_can't_ see, Kim, possibly. Believe me, boy, I _know_ that you can't. I
was there--"
"I can, though," he insisted. "I got a lot of stuff on my second trip
to Arisia that I couldn't let anybody know about then, but I can now.
I've got as good a sense of perception as Tregonsee has--maybe better.
To prove it, you look thin, worn--whittled down to a nub. You've been
working too hard--on me."
"Deduction," she scoffed. "You would know that I would."
"QX. How about those roses over there on the table? White ones, yellow
ones, and red ones? With ferns?"
"You can smell them, perhaps"--dubiously. Then, with more assurance:
"You would know that practically all the flowers known to botany would
be here."
"Well, I'll count 'em and point 'em out to you, then--or, better, how
about that little gold locket, with 'CM' engraved on it, that you're
wearing under your uniform? I can't smell that, nor the picture in
it--" The man's thought faltered in embarrassment. "_My_ picture!
Klono's whiskers, Mac, where did you get that--and why?"
"It's a reduction that Admiral Haynes let me have made. I am wearing it
because I love you--I've said that before."
The girl's entrancing smile was now in full evidence. She knew now that
he _could_ see, that he would never be the helpless hulk which she had
so gallingly thought him doomed to become, and her spirits rose in
ecstatic relief. But he would _never_ take the initiative now. Well,
then, she would; and this was as good an opening as she ever would have
with the stubborn brute. Therefore:
"More than that, as I said before, I am going to marry you, whether
you like it or not." She blushed a heavenly--and discordant--magenta,
but went on unfalteringly: "And not out of pity, either, Kim, or just
to take care of you. It's older than that--much older."
"It can't be done, Mac." His thought was a protest to high Heaven at
the injustice of Fate. "I've thought it over out in space a thousand
times--thought until I was black in the face--but I get the same
result every time. It's just simply no soap. You are much too fine a
woman--too splendid, too vital, too much of everything a woman should
be--to be tied down for life to a thing that's half steel, rubber, and
phenoline. It just simply is not on the wheel, that's all."
"You're full of pickles, Kim." Gone was all her uncertainty and
nervousness. She was calm, poised; glowing with a transcendent inward
beauty. "I didn't really _know_ until this minute that you love me,
too, but I do now. Don't you realize, you big, dumb, wonderful clunker,
that as long as there's one single, little bit of a piece of you left
alive I'll love that piece more than I ever could any other man's
entire being?"
"But I _can't_, I tell you!" He groaned the thought. "I can't and
I won't! My job isn't done yet, either, and the next time they'll
probably get me. I _can't_ let you waste yourself, Mac, on a fraction
of a man for a fraction of a lifetime!"
"QX, Gray Lensman." Clarrissa was serene, radiantly untroubled. She
could make things come out right now; everything was on the green.
"We'll put this back up on the shelf for a while. I'm afraid that I
have been terribly remiss in my duties as a nurse. Patients mustn't be
excited or quarreled with, you know."
"That's another thing. How come you, a sector chief, to be on ordinary
room duty, and night duty at that?"
"Sector chiefs assign duties, don't they?" she retorted sunnily. "Now
I'll give you a rub and change some of these dressings."