Melasnikov easily enough, if none of the higher-ups step in, but they probably will. Their
Lensmen are probably important enough to rate protection. Check?”
“Check.”
“So, as soon as dad begins to get the best of the argument, the protector will
step in,” Kathryn continued, “and whether I can handle him alone or not depends on
how high a higher-up they send in. So I’d like to have you all stand by for a minute or
two, just in case.”
How different was Kathryn’s attitude now than it had been in the hyper-spatial
tube! And how well for Civilization that ft was!
“Hold it, kids, I’ve got a thought,” Kit suggested. “We’ve never done any
teamwork since we learned how to handle heavy stuff, and we’ll have to get in some
practice” sometime. What say we link up on this?”
“Oh, yes!” “Let’s do!” ‘Take over, Kit!” Three approvals came as one, and:
“QX, Kit,” came Kathryn’s less enthusiastic concurrence, a moment later.
Naturally enough, she would rather do it alone if she could; but she had to admit that
her brother’s plan was the better.
Kit laid out the matrix and the four girls came in. There ?was a brief moment of
snuggling and fitting; then each of the Five caught his breath in awe. This was
new—brand new. Each had thought himself complete and full; each had supposed that
much practice and at least some give-and-take Would be necessary before they could
work efficiently as a group. But this! This was the supposedly ultimately
unattainable—perfection itself! This was UNITY: full; round; complete. No practice was
or ever would be necessary. Not one micro-micro-second of doubt or of uncertainty
would or ever could exist. This was the UNIT, a thing for which there are no words in
any written or spoken language, a thing theretofore undreamed-of save as a purely
theoretical concept in an unthinkably ancient, four-ply Arisian brain.
“U-m-n-g-n-k.” Kit swallowed a lump as big as his fist. “This, kids, is really . . .”
“Ah, children, you have done it.” Mentor’s thought rolled smoothly in. “You now
understand why I could not attempt to describe the Unit to any one of you. This is the
culminating moment of my life—of our lives, we may now say. For the first time in more
years than you can understand, we are at last sure that our lives have not been lived in
vain. But attend —that for which you are waiting will soon be here.” “What is it?” “Who?”
‘Tell us how to . . .” “We cannot.” Four separate Arisians smiled as one; a wash of
ineffable blessing and benediction suffused the Five. “We who made the Unit possible
are almost completely ignorant of the details of its higher functions. But that it will need
no help from our lesser minds is certain; it is the most powerful and the most nearly
perfect creation this universe has ever seen.”
The Arisian vanished; and, even before Kimball Kinnison had released his
screen, a cryptic, utterly untraceable and all-pervasive foreign thought came in.
To aid the Black Lensman? To study this disturbing new element? Or merely to
observe? Or what? The only certainty was that that thought was coldly, clearly, and
highly inimical to all Civilization.
Again everything happened at once. Karen’s impenetrable block flared into
being—not instantly, but instantaneously. Constance assembled and hurled, in the
same lack of time, a mental bolt of whose size and power she had never been capable.
Camilla, the detector-scanner, synchronized with the attacking thought and steered.
And Kathryn and Kit, with all the force, all the will, and all the drive of human heredity,
got behind it and pushed.
Nor was this, any of it, conscious individual effort. The children of the Lens were
not now five, but one. This was the Unit at work; doing its first job. It is literally
impossible to describe what happened; but each of the Five knew that one would-be
Protector, whever he had been in space or whenever in time, would never think again.
Seconds passed. The Unit held tense, awaiting the riposte. No riposte came.
“Fine work, kids!” Kit broke the linkage and each girl felt hard, brotherly pats on
her back. “That’s all there is to this one, I guess—must have been only one guard on
duty. You’re good eggs, and I like you—How we can operate now!”
“But it was too easy, Kit!” Kathryn protested. ‘Too easy by far for it to have been
an Eddorian. We aren’t that good. Why, I could have handled him alone . . . I think,” she
added hastily, as she realized that she, although an essential part of the Unit, had as
yet no real understanding of what that Unit really was.
“You hope, you mean!” Constance jeered. “If that bolt was as big and as hot as
I’m afraid it was, anything it hit would have looked easy. Why didn’t you slow us down,
Kit? You’re supposed to be the Big Brain, you know. As it was, we haven’t the faintest
idea of what happened. Who was he, anyway?”
“Didn’t have time,” Kit grinned. “Everything got out of hand. All of us were sort of
inebriated by the exuberance of our own enthusiasm, I guess. Now that we know what
our speed is, though, we can slow down next time—if we want to. As for your last
question, Con, you’re asking the wrong guy. Was it Eddorian, Cam, or not?”
“What difference does it make?” Karen asked.
“On the practical side, none. For the completion of the picture, maybe a lot.
Come in, Cam.”
“It was not an Eddorian,” Camilla decided. “It was not of Arisian, or even near-
Arisian, grade. Sorry to say it, Kit, but it was another member of that high-thinking race
you’ve already got down on Page One of your little black book.”
“I thought it might be. The missing link between Kalonia and Eddore. Credits to
millos it’s that dopey planet Floor Mentor was yowling about. Oh, DAMN!”
“Why the capital damn?” asked Constance, brightly. “Let’s link up and let the Unit
find it and knock hell out of it. That’d be fun.”
“Act your age, baby,” Kit advised. “Floor is taboo—you know that as well as I do.
Mentor told us all not to try to investigate it—that we’d learn of it in time, so we probably
will. I told him a while back I was going to hunt it up myself, and he told me if I did he’d
tie both my legs around my neck in a lovers’ knot, or words to that effect. Sometimes I’d
like to half-brain the old buzzard, but everything he has said so far has dead-centered
the beam. We’ll just have to take it, and try to like it.”
* * * *
Kinnison was eminently willing to cut his thought-screen, since he could not work
through it to do what had to be done here. Nor was he over-confident. He knew that he
could handle the Black Lensman—any Black Lensman—but he also knew enough of
mental phenomena in general and of Lensmanship in particular to realize that
Melasnikov might very well have within call reserves about whom he, Kinnison, could
know nothing. He knew that he had lied outrageously to young Frank in regard to the
odds applicable to this enterprise; that instead of a million to one, the actuality was one
to one, or even less.
Nevertheless, he was well content. He had neither lied nor exaggerated in
saying that he himself was expendable. That was why Frank and the Dauntless were
upstairs now. Getting the dope and getting it back to Base were what mattered. Nothing
else did.
He was coldly certain that he could get all the information that Melasnikov had,
once he had engaged the Kalonian Lensman mind to mind. No Boskonian power or
thing, he was convinced, could treat him rough enough or kill him fast enough to keep
him from doing that. And he could and would shoot the stuff along to Frank as fast as he
got it. And he stood an even—almost even, anyway—chance of getting away afterward.
If he could, QX. If he couldn’t. . . well, that would have to be QX, too.
Kinnison flipped his switch and there ensued a conflict of wills that made the sub-
ether boil. The Kalonian was one of the strongest, hardest, and ablest individuals of his
hellishly capable race; and the fact that he believed implicitly in his own complete
invulnerability operated to double and to quadruple his naturally tremendous strength.
On the other hand, Kimball Kinnison was a Second-Stage Lensman of the
Galactic Patrol.
Back and back, then, inch by inch and foot by foot, the Black Lensman’s
defensive zone was forced; back to and down into his own mind. And there, appallingly
enough, Kinnison found almost nothing of value.
No knowledge of the higher reaches of the Boskonian organization; no hint that
any real organization of Black Lensmen existed; only the peculiarly disturbing fact that