something new. And the frustration of inaction and the trying to figure out what was
coming next was driving him not-so-slowly nuts.
Then, striking through the doldrums, came a call from Maitland.
“Kim? You told me to Lens you immediately about any off-color work. Don’t know
whether this is or not. The guy may be—probably is—crazy. Conklin, who reported him,
couldn’t decide. Neither can I, from Conklin’s report. Do you want to send somebody
special, take over yourself, or what?”
“I’ll take over,” Kinnison decided instantly. If neither Conklin nor Maitland, Gray
Lensmen both, could decide, there was no point in sending anyone else. “Where and
who?”
“Planet, Meneas II, not too far from where you are now. City, Meneateles; 116-3-
29, 45-22-17. Place, Jack’s Haven, a meteor-miner’s hangout at the corner of Gold and
Sapphire Streets. Person, a man called ‘Eddie’.”
“Thanks, I’ll check.” Maitland did not send, and Kinnison did not want, any
additional information. Both knew that since the coordinator was going to investigate
this thing himself, he should get his facts, and particularly his impressions, at first and
unprejudiced hand.
To Meneas II, then, and to Jack’s Haven, Sybly Whyte went, notebook very much
in evidence. An ordinary enough space-dive Jack’s turned out to be—higher-toned man
that Radeligian space-dock saloon of Bominger’s; much less flamboyant than notorious
Miners’ Rest on far Euphrosyne.
“I wish to interview a person named Eddie,” he announced, as he bought a bottle
of wine. “I have been informed that he has had deep-space adventures worthy of
incorporation into one of my novels.”
“Eddie? Haw!” The barkeeper laughed raucously. “That space-louse?
Somebody’s been kidding you, mister. He’s nothing but a broken-down meteor-
miner—you know what a space-louse is, don’t you?—that we let clean cuspidors and do
such-Iike odd jobs for his keep. We don’t throw him out, like we do the others, because
he’s kind of funny in one way. Every hour or so he throws a fit, and that amuses
people.”
Whyte’s eager-beaver attitude did not change; his face reflected nothing of what
Kinnison thought of this callous speech. For Kinnison did know exactly what a space-
louse was. More, he knew what turned a man into one. Ex-meteor-miner himself, he
knew what the awesome depths of space, the ever-present dangers, the privations, the
solitude, the frustrations, did to any mind not adequately integrated. He knew that only
the strong survived; that the many weak succumbed. From sickening memory he knew
just what pitiful wrecks those many became. Nevertheless, and despite the fact that the
information was not necessary:
“Where is this Eddie now?”
“That’s him, over there in the corner. By the way he’s acting, he’ll have another fit
pretty quick now.”
The shambling travesty of a man accepted avidly the invitation to table and
downed at a gulp the proffered drink. Then, as though the mild potion had been a
trigger, his wracked body tensed and his features began to writhe.
“Cateagles!” he screamed; eyes rolling, breath coming in hard, frantic gasps.
“Gangs of cateagles! Thousands! They’re clawing me to bits! And the Lensman! He’s
sicking them on! Ow!! YOW!!!” He burst into unintelligible screams and threw himself to
the floor. There, rolling convulsively over and over, he tried the impossible feat of
covering simultaneously with his two claw-like hands his eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and
throat.
Ignoring the crowding spectators, Kinnison invaded the helpless mind before him.
He winced mentally as he scanned the whole atrocious enormity of what was there.
Then, while Whyte busily scribbled notes, he shot a thought to distant Klovia.
“Cliff! I’m here in Jack’s Haven, and I’ve got Eddie’s data. What did you and
Conklin make of it? You agree, of course, that the Lensman is the crux.”
“Definitely. Everything else is hop-happy space-drift. The fact that there are
not—there can’t be—any such Lensman as Eddie imagined, makes him space-drift, too,
in our opinion. We called you in on the millionth chance—sorry we sent you out on a
false alarm, but you said we had to be sure.”
“You needn’t be sorry.” Kinnison’s thought was the grimmest Clifford Maitland
had ever felt. “Eddie isn’t an ordinary space-louse. You see, I know one thing that you
and. Conklin don’t. You noticed the woman? Very faint, decidedly in the background?”
“Now that you mention her—yes. Too far in the background and too faint to be a
key. Most every spaceman has a woman—or a lot of different ones—more or less on
his mind all the time, you know. Immaterial, I’d say.”
“So would I, maybe, except for the fact that she isn’t a woman at all, but a
Lyranian . . .”
“A LYRANIAN!” Maitland interrupted. Kinnison could feel the racing of his
assistant’s thoughts. “That complicates things . . . But how in Palain’s purple hells, Kim,
could Eddie ever have got to Lyrane—and if he did, how did he get away alive?”
“I don’t know, Cliff.” Kinnison’s mind, too, was working fast. “But you haven’t got
all the dope yet. To cinch things, I know her personally—she’s that airport manager who
tried her damndest to kill me all the time I was on Lyrane II.”
“Hm . . . m . . . m.” Maitland tried to digest that undigestible bit. Tried, and failed.
“That would seem to make the Lensman real, too, then—real enough, at least, to
investigate—much as I hate to think of the possibility of a Lensman going that far off the
beam.” Maitland’s convictions died hard. “You’ll handle this yourself, then?”
“Check. At least, I’ll help. There may be people better qualified than I am. I’ll get
them at it Thanks, Cliff—clear ether.”
. He lined a thought to his wife; and after a short, warmly ultimate contact, he told
her the story.
“So you see, beautiful,” he concluded, “your wish is coming true. .I couldn’t keep
you out of this if I wanted to. So check with the girls, put on your Lens, shed your
clothes, and go to work.”
“I’ll do that.” Clarrissa laughed and her soaring spirit flooded his mind. “Thanks,
my dear.”
Then and only then did Kimball Kinnison, master therapist, pay any further
attention to that which lay contorted upon the floor. But when Whyte folded up his
notebook and left the place, the derelict was resting quietly, and in a space of time long
enough so that the putative writer of space-opera would not be connected with the cure,
those fits would end. Moreover, Eddie would return, whole, to the void: he would
become what he had never before been—a successful meteor-miner.
Lensmen pay their debts; even to spiders and to worms.
CHAPTER 9: AN ARISIAN EDUCATION
Her adventure in the hyper-spatial tube had taught Kathryn Kinnison much.
Realizing her inadequacy and knowing what to do about it, she drove her speedster at
high velocity to Arisia. Unlike the -Second-Stage Lensmen, she did not even slow down
as she approached the planet’s barrier; but, as one sure of her welcome, merely threw
out ahead of her an identifying thought.
“Ah, daughter Kathryn, again you are in time.” Was there, or was there not, a
trace of emotion—of welcome, even of affection?—in that usually utterly emotionless
thought? “Land as usual.”
She neutralized her controls as she felt the mighty beams of the landing-engine
take hold of her little ship. During previous visits she had questioned nothing—this time
she was questioning everything. Was she landing, or not? Directing her every force
inwardly, she probed her own mind to its profoundest depths. Definitely, she was her
own mistress throughout—no conceivable mind could take hers over so tracelessly. As
definitely, then, she was actually landing.
She landed. The ground on which she stepped was real. So was the automatic
flyer—neither plane nor helicopter— which whisked her from the spaceport to her
familiar destination, an unpretentious residence in the grounds of the immense hospital.
The graveled walk, the flowering shrubs, and the indescribably sweet and pungent
perfume were real; as were the tiny pain and the drop of blood which resulted when a
needle-sharp thorn pierced her incautious finger.
Through automatically-opening doors she made her way into the familiar,
comfortable, book-lined room which was Mentor’s study. And there, at his big desk,
unchanged, sat Mentor. A lot like her father, but older—much older. About ninety, she
had always thought, even though he didn’t look over sixty. This time, however, she
drove a probe—and got the shock of her life. Her thought was stopped—cold—not by
superior mental force, which she could have taken unmoved, but by a seemingly
ordinary thought-screen, and her fast-disintegrating morale began visibly to crack.
“Is all this—are you—real, or not?” she burst out, finally. “If it isn’t, I’ll go mad!”
“That which you have tested—and I—are real, for the moment and as you
understand reality. Your mind in its present state of advancement cannot be deceived
concerning such elementary matters.”
“But it all wasn’t, before? Or don’t you want to answer that?”
“Since the knowledge will affect your growth, I will answer. It was not. This is the