"Hi, Skeleton-gazer!"
"Ho, Big Chief Feet-on-the-desk!"
"I see that your red-headed sector chief is still occupying all
strategic salients in force." Haynes had paused in the surgeon
general's office on his way to another of his conferences with the Gray
Lensman. "Can't you get rid of her or don't you want to?"
"Don't want to. Couldn't, anyway, probably. The young vixen would tear
down the hospital--she might even resign, marry him out of hand, and
lug him off somewhere. You want him to recover, don't you?"
"Don't be any more of an idiot than you have to. What a question!"
"Don't work up a temperature about MacDougall, then. As long as she's
around him--and that's twenty-four hours a day--he'll get everything in
the Universe that he can get any good out of."
"That's so, too. This other thing's out of our hands now, anyway.
Kinnison can't hold his position long against her and himself
both--overwhelmingly superior force. Just as well, too--civilization
needs more like those two."
"Check, but the affair isn't out of our hands yet, by any means. We've
got quite a little more fine work to do there, as you'll see, before
it's a really good job. But about Kinnison--"
"Yes. When are you going to fit arms and legs on him? He should be
practicing with them at this stage of the game, I should think--I was."
"You _should_ think--but, unfortunately, you don't, about anything
except war," was the surgeon's dry rejoinder. "If you did, you would
have paid more attention to what Phillips has been doing. He is making
the final test today. Come along--your conference with Kinnison can
wait half an hour."
In the research laboratory which had been assigned to Phillips they
found von Hohendorff with the Posenian. Haynes was surprised to see the
old commandant of cadets, but Lacy quite evidently had known that he
was to be there.
"Phillips," the surgeon general began, "explain to Admiral Haynes, in
nontechnical language, what you are doing."
"The original problem was to discover what hormone or other agent
caused proliferation of neural tissue--"
"Wait a minute; I'd better do it," Lacy broke in. "Anyway, you wouldn't
do yourself justice. The first thing that Phillips found out was that
the problem of repairing damaged nervous tissue was inextricably
involved with several other unknown things, such as the original growth
of such tissue, its relationship to growth in general, the regeneration
of lost members in lower forms, and so on. You see, Haynes, it is a
known fact that nerves do grow, or else they could not exist; and in
some lower forms of life they regenerate. Those facts were all he had,
at first. In higher forms, even during the growth stage, regeneration
does not occur spontaneously. Phillips set out to find out why.
"The thyroid controls growth, but does not initiate it, he learned.
This fact seemed to indicate that there was an unknown hormone
involved--that certain lower types possess an endocrine gland which
is either atrophied or non-existent in higher types. If the latter,
he was sunk. He reasoned, however, that, since higher types evolved
from lower, the gland in question might very well exist in a vestigial
stage. He studied animals, thousands of them, from the germ upward. He
exhausted the patience of the Posenian authorities; and when they cut
off his appropriation, on the ground that the thing was impossible, he
came here. We gave him carte blanche.
"The man is a miracle of perseverence, a keen observer, a shrewd
reasoner, and a mechanic par excellence--a born researcher. Therefore,
in time he learned what it must be: to cut it short, the pineal body.
Then he had to find the stimulant. Drugs, chemicals, and spectrum of
radiation; singly and in combination. Years of plugging, with just
enough progress to keep him at it. Visits to other planets peopled
by races human to two places or more; learning everything that had
been done along the line of his problem. When you fellows moved Medon
over here he visited it as a matter of routine, and there he hit
the jackpot. Wise himself is a surgeon, and the Medonians have for
centuries been having warfare and grief enough, steadily and in heroic
doses, to develop the medical and surgical arts no end.
"They knew how to stimulate the pineal--a combination of drugs and
specific radiations--but their method was dangerous. With Phillips'
fresh viewpoint, his wide, new knowledge, and his mechanical genius,
they worked out a new and highly satisfactory technique. He was going
to try it out on a pirate going into the lethal chamber, but von
Hohendorff heard about it and insisted that it should be tried on him.
Got up on his Unattached Lensman's high horse and won't come down. So
here we are."
"Hm-m-m--interesting!" The admiral had listened attentively. "You're
pretty sure that it will work, aren't you?"
"As sure as we can be of anything that hasn't been tried.
Ninety-percent probability, say--certainly not over ninety-five."
* * * * *
"Good enough odds." Haynes turned to the commandant. "What do you mean,
you old reprobate, by sneaking around behind my back and horning in on
my reservation? I rate Unattached, too, you know, and it's mine. You're
out, von."
"I saw it first and I refuse to relinquish." Von Hohendorff was adamant.
"You've got to," Haynes insisted. "He isn't your cub any more; he's my
Lensman. Besides, I'm a better test than you are--I've got more parts
to replace than you have."
"Four or five make just as good a test as a dozen," the commandant
declared.
"Gentlemen, think!" the Posenian pleaded. "Please consider that the
pineal is actually inside the brain. It is true that I have not been
able to discover any brain injury so far, but the process has not yet
been applied to a reasoning brain and I can offer no assurance whatever
that some obscure injury will not result."
"What of it?" and the two old Unattached Lensmen resumed their battle,
hammer and tongs. Neither would yield a millimeter.
"Operate on them both, then, since they are both above law or reason,"
Lacy finally ordered in exasperation. "There ought to be a law to
reduce Gray Lensmen to the ranks when they begin to suffer from
ossification of the intellect."
"Starting with yourself, perhaps?" the admiral shot back, not at all
abashed.
Haynes relented enough to let von Hohendorff go first, and both were
given the necessary injections. The commandant was then strapped
solidly into a chair; his head was clamped so firmly that he could not
move it in any direction.
The Posenian swung his needle rays into place; two of them,
diametrically opposed, each held rigidly upon micrometered racks and
each operated by two huge, double, rock-steady hands. The operator
_looked_ entirely aloof--being eyeless and practically headless, it
is impossible to tell from a Posenian's attitude or posture anything
about the focal point of his attention--but the watchers knew that he
was observing in microscopic detail the tiny gland within the old
Lensman's skull.
Then Haynes. "Is this all there is to it, or do we come back for more?"
he asked, when he was released from his shackles.
"That's all," Lacy answered. "One stimulation lasts for life, as far as
we know. But if the treatment is successful you'll come back--about day
after tomorrow, I think--to go to bed here. Your spare equipment won't
fit and your stumps may require surgical attention."
Sure enough, Haynes did come back to the hospital, but not to go to
bed. He was too busy. Instead, he got a wheel chair, and in it he was
taken back to his now-boiling office. And in a few more days he called
Lacy in high exasperation.
"Know what you've done?" he demanded. "Not satisfied with taking my
perfectly good parts away from me, you've taken my teeth, too. They
don't fit--I can't eat a thing! And I'm hungry as a wolf--I was never
so hungry before in all my life! I _can't_ live on soup, man; I've got
work to do. What are you going to do about it?"
"_Ho-ho-haw!_" Lacy roared. "Serves you right--von Hohendorff is taking
it easy here; sitting right on top of the world. Easy, now, sailor,
don't rupture your aorta. I'll send a nurse over with a soft-boiled egg
and a spoon. _Teething_--at _your_ age--_Haw-ho-haw!_"
But it was no ordinary nurse who came, a few minutes later, to see
the port admiral; it was the sector chief herself. She looked at him
pityingly as she trundled him into his private office and shut the
door, thereby establishing complete coverage.
"I had no idea, Admiral Haynes, that you ... that there--" She paused.
"That I was so much of a machine-shop rebuild?"--complacently. "Except
in the matter of eyes--which he doesn't need, anyway--our mutual
friend Kinnison has very little on me, my dear. I got so handy with the
replacements that very few people knew how much of me was artificial.
But it's these teeth that are taking all the joy out of life. I'm
hungry, confound it! Have you got anything really satisfying that I can
eat?"
"I'll say I have!" She fed him; then, bending over, she squeezed him
tight and kissed him emphatically. "You and the commandant are just
perfectly wonderful old darlings, and I love you all to pieces," she
declared. "I think Lacy was simply poisonous to laugh at you the way he
did. Why, you two are the world's greatest heroes! He knew perfectly
well all the time, the lug, that of course you'd be hungry; that you'd
have to eat twice as much as usual while your legs and things were
growing. Don't worry, admiral, I'll feed you until you bulge. I want
you to hurry up with this, so that they'll do it to Kim."
"Thanks, Mac," and as she wheeled him back into the main office he
considered her anew. A ravishing creature, but sound. Rash, and a bit
stubborn, perhaps; impetuous and head-strong; but clean, solid metal
all the way through. She had what it takes--she qualified. She and
Kinnison would make a mighty fine couple when the lad got some of that
heroic damn nonsense knocked out of his head--but there was work to do.
* * * * *
There was. The Galactic Council had considered thoroughly Kinnison's
reports; its every member had conferred with him and with Worsel at
length. Throughout the First Galaxy the Patrol was at work in all its
prodigious might, preparing to wipe out the menace to civilization
which was Boskone. First-line superdreadnoughts--no others would go
upon that mission--were being built and armed, rebuilt and rearmed.
Well it was that the Galactic Patrol had previously amassed an almost
inexhaustible supply of wealth, for its "reserves of expendible credit"
were running like water.
Weapons, supposedly of irresistible power, were made even more
powerful. Screens already "impenetrable" were stiffened into even
greater stubbornness.
Primary projectors were made to take even higher loads, for longer
times. New and heavier Q-type helices were designed and built. Larger
and more destructive duodec bombs were hurled against already ruined,
torn, and quivering test planets. Uninhabited worlds were being
equipped with super-Bergenholms and with driving projectors. The
negasphere, the most incredible menace to navigation which had ever
existed in space, was being patrolled by a cordon of guard ships.
And all this activity centered in one vast building and culminated in
one man--Port Admiral Haynes, Galactic councilor and chief of staff.
And Haynes could not get enough to eat because he was cutting a new set
of teeth!
He cut them, all thirty-two of them. His new limbs grew perfectly, even
to the nails. Hair grew upon what had for years been a shining expanse
of pate. But, much to Lacy's relief, it was old skin, not young, which
covered the new limbs. It was white hair, not brown, that was dulling
the glossiness of Haynes' bald old head. His bifocals, unchanged, were
still necessary if he were to see anything clearly, near or far.
"Our experimental animals aged and died normally," Lacy explained
graciously, "but I was beginning to wonder if we had rejuvenated you
two, or perhaps endowed you with eternal life. Glad to see that the new
parts have the same physical age as the rest of you--it would be mildly
embarrassing to have to kill two Gray Lensmen to get rid of them."
"You aren't even as funny as a rubber crutch," Haynes grunted. "When
are you going to give young Kinnison the works? Don't you realize that
we need him?"
"Pretty soon now--just as soon as we give you and von your
psychological examinations."
"Bah! That isn't necessary--my brain's QX!"
"That's what you think, but what do you know about brains? Worsel will
tell us what shape your mind--if any--is in."
The Velantian put both Haynes and von Hohendorff through a grueling
examination, finding that their minds had not been affected in any way
by the stimulants applied to their pineal glands.
Then and only then did Phillips operate upon Kinnison; and in his
case, too, the operation was a complete success. Arms and legs and
eyes replaced themselves flawlessly. The scars of his terrible wounds
disappeared, leaving no sign of ever having been.
He was a little slower, however; somewhat clumsy, and woefully weak.
Therefore, instead of discharging him from the hospital as cured, which
procedure would have restored to him automatically all the rights and
privileges of an Unattached Lensman, the Council decided to transfer
him to a physical-culture camp. A few weeks there would restore to him
entirely the strength, speed, and agility which had formerly been his,
and he would then be allowed to resume active duty.
* * * * *
Just before he left the hospital, Kinnison strolled with Clarrissa out
to a bench in the grounds.
"--and you're making a perfect recovery," the girl was saying. "You'll
be exactly as you were before. But things between us aren't just as
they were, and they never can be again. You know that, Kim. We've got
unfinished business to transact--let's take it down off the shelf
before you go."
"Better let it lay, Mac," and all the newfound joy of existence went
out of the man's eyes. "I'm whole, yes, but that angle was really the
least important of all. You never yet have faced squarely the fact that
my job isn't done and that my chance of living through it is just about
one in ten. Even Phillips can't do anything about a corpse."
"No, and I won't face it, either, unless and until I must." Her reply
was tranquillity itself. "Most of the troubles people worry about in
advance never do materialize. And even if I did, you ought to know that
I ... that any woman would rather ... well, that half a loaf is better
than no bread."
"QX. I haven't ever mentioned the worst thing. I didn't want to--but if
you've got to have it, here it is," the man wrenched out. "Look at what
I am. A barroom brawler. A rum-dum. A hard-boiled egg. A cold-blooded,
ruthless murderer, even of my own men--"
"Not that, Kim, ever, and you know it," she rebuked him.
"What else can you call it?" he grated. "A killer besides; a red-handed
butcher if there ever was one--then, now, and forever. I've got to be.
I can't get away from it. Do you think that you, or any other decent
woman, could stand it to live with me? That you could feel my arms
around you, feel my gory paws touching you, without going sick at the
stomach?"
"Oh, so _that's_ what's really been griping you all this time!"
Clarrissa was surprised and entirely unshaken. "I don't have to think
about that, Kim--I know. If you were a murderer or had the killer
instinct, that would be different, but you aren't and you haven't. You
are hard, of course. You have to be--but do you think that I would
ever run a temperature over a softy? You brawl, yes--like the world's
champion you are. Anybody you ever killed needed killing, there's no
question of that. You don't do those things for fun; and the fact that
you can drive yourself to do the things that have to be done shows your
true caliber.
"Nor have you ever thought of the obverse; that you lean over backward
in wielding that terrific power of yours. The Desplaines woman, the
countess--lots of other instances. I respect and honor you more
than any other man I have ever known. Any woman who really knew you
would--_she must! And I know!_ Remember that wide-open two-way put me
_in_ your mind for an instant--long enough--that let me understand
something of the horrible weight you have to carry, something of the
terrible power you must--for civilization--leash or release, direct and
control. _I know_--no words you may say now can add to or change that
single, full-view understanding I got then.
"Listen, Kim. Read my mind, all of it. You will know me then, and
understand me better than I can ever explain myself."
"Have you got a picture of me doing that?" he asked flatly.
"No, you big, unreasonable clunker, I haven't!" she flared, "and
that's just what's driving me mad!" Then, voice dropping to a whisper,
almost sobbing: "Cancel that, Kim--I didn't mean it. You wouldn't--you
couldn't, I suppose, and still be you, the man I love. But isn't there
something--_anything_--that will make you understand what I really am?"
"I know what you are." Kinnison's voice was uninflected, weary. "As I
told you before--the Universe's best. It's what I am that's clogging
the jets. What I have been and what I have to keep on being. I simply
don't rate up, and you'd better lay off me, Mac, while you can.
There's a poem by one of the ancients--Kipling--the 'Ballad of Boh Da
Thone'--that describes it exactly. You wouldn't know it--"
"You just think that I wouldn't"--nodding brightly. "The only trouble
is that you always think of the wrong verses. Part of it really is
descriptive of you. You know, where all the soldiers of the Black
Tyrone thought so much of their captain?"
She recited:
"And worshiped with fluency, fervor, and zeal
The mud on the boot heels of Crook O'Neil.
"That describes you exactly."
"You're crazy for the lack of sense," he demurred. "I don't rate like
that."
"Sure, you do," she assured him. "All the men think of you that way.
And not only men. Women, too, darn 'em--and the very next time that I
catch one of them at it I'm going to kick her cursed teeth out, one by
one!"
* * * * *
Kinnison laughed, albeit a trifle sourly. "You're raving, Mac.
Imagining things. But to get back to that poem, what I was referring to
went like this--"
"I know how it goes. Listen:
"But the captain had quitted the long-drawn strife
And in far Simoorie had taken a wife;
"And she was a damsel of delicate mold,
With hair like the sunshine and heart of gold.
"And little she knew the arms that embraced
Had cloven a man from the brow to the waist;
"And little she knew that the loving lips
Had ordered a quivering life's eclipse,
"And the eyes that lit at her lightest breath
Had glared unawed in the Gates of Death.
"(For these be matters a man would hide,
As a general thing, from an innocent bride.)
"That's what you, mean, isn't it?" she asked quietly.
"Mac, you know a lot of things that you've got no business knowing."
Instead of answering her question, he stared at her speculatively. "My
sprees and brawls, Dessa Desplaines and the Countess Avondrin, and now
this. Would you mind telling me how you get the stuff?"
"I'm closer to you than you suspect, Kim, and have been for a long
time. Worsel calls it being 'en rapport,' I believe. You don't need
to think at me--in fact, you have to put up a conscious block to keep
me out. So I know a lot that I shouldn't, but Lensmen aren't the only
ones who don't talk. You have been thinking about that poem a lot--it
worried you--so I went to the library and looked it up. I memorized
most of it."
"Well, to get the true picture of me you'll have to multiply that by
a thousand. Also, don't forget that loose heads might be rolling onto
your breakfast table almost any morning instead of only once."
"So what?" she countered evenly. "Do you think that I could sit for
Kipling's portrait of Mrs. O'Neil? Nobody ever called my mold delicate,
and he would have said of me:
"With hair like a conflagration
And a heart of solid brass!
"Captain O'Neil's bride, as well as being innocent and ignorant,
strikes me as having been a good deal of a sissy, something of a
weeping willow, and no little of a shrinking violet. Tell me, Kim, do
you think that she would have made good as a sector chief nurse?"
"No, but that's neither here--"
"It is, too," she interrupted. "You've got to consider what I did, and
that it's no job for a girl with a weak stomach. Besides, the Boh's
head took the fabled Mrs. O'Neil by surprise. She didn't know that her
husband used to be in the wholesale mayhem-and-killing business. I do.
"And lastly, you big lug, do you think that I'd be making such
barefaced passes at you--playing the brazen hussy this way--unless I
was very, _very_ certain of the truth?"
"Huh?" he demanded, blushing furiously. "I thought that you were
running a blazer on me before--you really do _know_, then, that--" He
would not say it, even then.
"Of course I know!" She nodded; then, as the man spread his hands
helplessly, she abandoned her attempts to keep the conversation upon a
light level.
"I know, my dear; there is nothing we can do about it yet." Her voice
was unsteady, her heart in every word. "You have to do your job, and I
honor you for that, too; even if it does take you from me. It will be
easier for you, though, I think, and I _know_ that it will be easier
for me, to have us both know the truth. Whenever you are ready, Kim,
I'll be here--or somewhere--waiting. Clear ether, Gray Lensman!" and,
rising to her feet, she turned back toward the hospital.
"Clear ether, Chris!" Unconsciously he used the pet name by which he
had thought of her so much. He stared after her for a minute, hungrily.
Then, squaring his shoulders, he strode away.
* * * * *
And upon far Jarnevon Eichmil, the First of Boskone, was conferring
with Jalte via communicator. Long since, the Kalonian had delivered
through devious channels the message of Boskone to an imaginary
director of Lensmen; long since he had transmitted this cryptically
direful reply:
"Lensman Morgan lives, and so does Star A Star."
Jalte had not been able to report to his chief any news concerning the
fate of that which the speedster bore, since spies no longer existed
within the reservations of the Patrol. He had learned of no discovery
that any Lensman had made. He could not venture any hypothesis as
to how this Star A Star had heard of Jarnevon or had learned of its
location in space. He was sure of only one thing, and that was a grimly
disturbing fact indeed. The Patrol was re-arming throughout the Galaxy,
upon a scale theretofore unknown. Eichmil's thought was cold:
"That means but one thing. A Lensman invaded you and learned of us
here--in no other way could knowledge of Jarnevon have come to them."
"Why me?" Jalte demanded. "If there exists a mind of power sufficient
to break my screens and tracelessly to invade my mind, what of yours?"
"It is a thing proven by the outcome." The Boskonian's statement was
a calm summation of fact. "The messenger sent against you succeeded;
the one sent against us failed. The Patrol intends and is preparing:
certainly to wipe out our remaining forces within the Tellurian Galaxy;
probably to attack your stronghold; eventually to invade our own
galaxy. It is well--for that reason, in part, was the Lensman Morgan
sent back as he was sent."
"Let them come!" snarled the Kalonian. "We can and we will hold this
planet forever against anything they can bring through space!"
"I would not be too sure of that," cautioned the superior. "In fact,
if--as I am beginning to regard as a probability--the Patrol does make
a concerted drive against any significant number of our planetary
organizations, you should abandon your base there and return to
Kalonia, after disbanding and so preserving for future use as many as
possible of the planetary units."
"Future use? In that case there will be no future."
"There will be," Eichmil replied, coldly vicious. "We are strengthening
the defenses of Jarnevon to withstand any conceivable assault. If they
do not attack us here of their own free will, we shall compel them to
do so. Then, after destroying their every mobile force, we shall again
take over their galaxy. Arms for that purpose are even now in the
building. Is the matter entirely clear?"
"It is clear. We shall warn all our groups that such orders may issue;
and we shall prepare to abandon this base if such a step should become
desirable."
So it was planned: neither Eichmil nor Jalte even suspecting two
startling truths:
First, that when the Patrol was ready it would strike hard and without
warning, and,
Second, that it would strike--not low, but high!