After the fact,-they both knew. There had been at least two vessels; at least one of them
had been inherently indetectable and screened against thought. In one of these latter
“X” had taken a course at some indeterminable angle to the one which they had
followed.
“X” was now at a safe distance.
“X” was nobody’s fool.
CHAPTER 7: KATHRYN ON GUARD
Kathryn Kinnison, trim and taut in black glamorette, strolled into the breakfast
nook humming a lilting song. Pausing before a full-length mirror, she adjusted her cocky
little black toque at an even more piquant angle over her left eye. She made a couple of
passes at her riot of curls and gazed at her reflected self in high approval as, putting
both hands upon her smoothly rounded hips, she—”wriggled” is the only possible term
for it—in sheer joy of being alive.
“Kathryn . . .” Clarrissa Kinnison chided gently. “Don’t be exhibitionistic, dear.”
Except in times of stress the Kinnison women used spoken language, “to keep in
practice,” as they said.
“Why not? It’s fun.” The tall girl bent over and kissed her mother upon the lobe of
an ear. “You’re sweet, mums, you know that? You’re the most precious thing—Ha!
Bacon and eggs? Goody!”
The older woman watched half-enviously as her eldest daughter ate with the
carefree abandon of one completely unconcerned about either digestion or figure. She
had no more understood her children, ever, than a hen can understand the brood of
ducklings she has so. unwittingly hatched out, and that comparison was more strikingly
apt than Clarrissa Kinnison ever would know. She now knew, more than a little ruefully,
that she never would understand them.
She had not protested openly at the rigor of the regime to which her son
Christopher had been subjected from birth. That, she knew, was necessary. It was
inconceivable that Kit should not be a Lensman, and for a man to become a Lensman
he had to be given everything he could possibly take. She was deeply glad, however,
that her four other babies had been girls. Her daughters were not going to be Lensmen.
She, who had known so long and so heavily the weight of Lensman’s Load, would see
to that. Herself a womanly, feminine woman, she had fought with every resource at her
command to make her girl babies grow up into replicas of herself. She had failed.
They simply would not play with dolls, nor play house with other little girls.
Instead, they insisted upon “intruding”, as she considered it, upon Lensmen; preferably
upon Second-Stage Lensmen, if any one of the four chanced to be anywhere within
reach. Instead of with toys, they played with atomic engines and flitters; and, later, with
speedsters and space-ships. Instead of primers, they read galactic encyclopedias. One
of them might be at home, as now, or all of them; or none. She never did know what to
expect.
But they were in no sense disloyal. They loved their mother with a depth of
affection which no other mother, anywhere, has ever known. They tried their best to
keep her from worrying about them. They kept in touch with her wherever they
went—which might be at whim to Tellus or to Thrale or to Alsakan or to any unplumbed
cranny of inter-galactic space—and they informed her, apparently without reservation,
as to everything they did. They loved their father and their brother and each other and
themselves with the same whole-hearted fervor they bestowed upon her. They behaved
always in exemplary fashion. None of them had ever shown or felt the slightest interest
in any one of numerous boys and men; and this trait, if the truth is to be told, Clarrissa
could understand least of all.
No. The only thing basically wrong with them was the fact, made abundantly
clear since they first toddled, that they should not be and could not be subjected to any
jot or tittle of any form of control, however applied.
Kathryn finished eating finally and gave her mother a bright, quick grin. “Sorry,
mums, you’ll just have to give us up as hard cases, I guess.” Her fine eyes, so like
Clarrissa’s except in color, clouded as she went on: “I am sorry, mother, really, that we
can’t be what you so want us to be. We’ve tried so hard, but we just can’t. It’s something
here, and here.” She tapped one temple and prodded her midsection with a pink fore-
finger. “Call it fatalism or anything you please, but I think we’re slated to do a job of
some kind, some day, even though none of us has any idea of what it’s going to be.”
Clarrissa paled. “I’ve been thinking just that for years, dear . . . I’ve been afraid to
say it, or even to think it . . . You are Kim’s children, and mine . . . If there ever was a
perfect, a predestined marriage, it is ours . . . And Mentor said that our marriage was
necessary . . .” She paused, and in that instant she almost perceived the truth. She was
closer to it than she had ever been before or ever would be again. But that truth was far
too vast for her mind to grasp. She went on: “But I’d do it over again, Kathryn, knowing
everything I know now. ‘Vast rewards’, you know . . .”
“Of course you would,” Kat interrupted. “Any girl would be a fool not to. The
minute I meet a man like dad I’m going to marry him, if I have to scratch Kay’s eyes out
and snatch Cam and Con bald-headed to get him. But speaking of dad, just what do
you think of l’affaire Radelix?”
Gone every trace of levity, both women stood up. Gold-flecked tawny eyes stared
deeply into gold-flecked eyes of dark and velvety green.
“I don’t know.” Clarrissa spoke slowly, meaningfully. “Do you?”
“No. I wish I did.” Kathryn’s was not the voice of a girl, but that of an avenging
angel. “As Kit says, I’d give four front teeth and my right leg to the knee joint to know
who or what is back of that, but I don’t. I feel very much in the mood to do a flit out that
way.”
“Do you?” Clarrissa paused. “I’m glad. I’d go myself, in spite of everything he
says, except that I couldn’t do anything . . . If that should be the job you were talking
about . . . Oh, do. anything you can, dear; anything to make sure he comes back to me!”
“Of course, mums.” Kathryn broke away almost by force from her mother’s
emotion. “I don’t think it is; at least, I haven’t got any cosmic hunch to that effect. And
don’t worry; it puts wrinkles in the girlish complexion. I’ll do just a little look-see, stick
around long enough to find out what’s what, and let you know all about it. “Bye.”
At high velocity Kathryn drove her indetectable speedster to Radelix, and around
and upon that planet she conducted invisible investigations. She learned a part of the
true state of affairs, she deduced more of it, but she could not see, even dimly, the
picture as a whole. This part, though, was clear enough.
A third-level operator, she did not have to be at the one apparent mouth of a
hyper-spatial tube in order to enter it; she knew that while communication was
impossible either through such a tube from space to space or from the interior of the
tube to either space, the quality of the tube was not the barrier. The interface was.
Wherefore, knowing what to expect first and working diligently to solve the whole
problem, she waited.
She watched Kinnison’s abduction. There was nothing she could do about that.
She could not interfere then without setting up repercussions which might very well
shatter the entire structure of the Galactic Patrol. When the Boskonian ship had
disappeared, however, she tapped the tube and followed it. Almost nose to tail she
pressed it, tensely alert to do some helpful deed which could be ascribed to accident or
to luck. For she knew starkly that Kinnison’s present captors would not slip and that his
every ability had been discounted in advance.
Thus she was ready, when Kinnison’s attention concentrated on the switch
controlling the Boskonian captain’s thought-screen generator. There were no pets or
spiders or worms, or even gnats, but the captain could sit down. Around his screen,
then, she drove a solid beam of thought, on a channel which neither the pirate nor the
Lensman knew existed. She took over in a trice the fellow’s entire mind. He sat down,
as Kinnison had so earnestly willed him to do, the merest fraction of an inch too close to
the chair’s arm. The switch-handle flipped over and Kathryn snatched her mind away.
She was sure that her father would think that bit of luck purely fortuitous. She was