that you have rescued me—at least, until after I have killed Cleonie and Ladora.”
“QX. What are you waiting for? Which way, Helen?”
“Back to the city first, for several reasons. Cleonie probably is not there, but we
must make sure. Also, I want my guns . . .”
“Guns? No. DeLameters are better. I have several spares.” In one fleeting mental
contact Clarrissa taught the Lyranian all there was to know about DeLameters. And that
feat impressed Helen even more than did the nature and power of the weapon.
“What a mind!” she exclaimed. “You didn’t have any such equipment as that, the
last time I saw you. Or were you—no, you weren’t hiding it.”
“You’re right; I have developed considerably since then. But about guns—what
do you want of one?”
“To kill that nitwit Ladora on sight, and that snake Cleonie, too, as soon as you
get done with it.”
“But why guns? Why not the mental force you always used?
“Except by surprise, I couldn’t,” Helen admitted, frankly. “All adult persons are of
practically equal mental strength. But speaking of strength, I marvel that a craft as small
as this should be able to ward off the attack of one of those tremendous Boskonian
ships of space . . .”
“But she can’t! What made you think she could?”
“Your own statement—or were you thinking of purely Lyranian dangers, not
realizing that Ladora of course called Cleonie as soon as you showed your teeth, and
that Cleonie as surely called the Lensman or some other Boskonian? And that they
must have ships of war not too far away?”
“Heavens, no! It never occurred to me!”
Clarrissa thought briefly. It wouldn’t do any good to call Kim. Both the Dauntless
and the Velan were coming as. fast as they could, but it would be a day or so yet before
they arrived. Besides, he would tell her to lay off, which was exactly what she was not
going to do. She turned her thought back to the matriarch.
“Two of our best ships are coming, and I hope they get here first. In the
meantime, we’ll just have to work fast and keep our detectors full out. Anyway, Cleonie
won’t know that I’m looking for her—I haven’t even mentioned her to anyone except
you.”
“No?^* pessimistically. “Cleonie knows that 7 am looking for it, and since it knows
by now that I am with you, it would think that both of us were hunting it even if we
weren’t. But we are nearly close enough now; I must concentrate. Fly around quite low
over the city, please.”
“QX I’ll tune hi with you too. Two heads’, you know.” Clarrissa learned Cleonie’s
pattern, tuned to it, and combed^ the city while Helen was getting ready.
“She isn’t here, unless she’s behind one of those thought-screens,” the Red
Lensman remarked. “Can you tell?”
“Thought-screens! The Boskonians had a few of them, but none of us ever did.
How can you find them? Where are they?”
“One there—two over there. They stick out like big black spots on a white screen.
Can’t you see them? I supposed your scanners were the same as mine, but apparently
they aren’t. Take a quick peek at them with the spy—you work it like so. If they’ve got
spy-ray blocks up, too, we’ll have to go down there and blast.”
“Politicians only,” Helen reported, after a moment’s manipulation of the suddenly
familiar instrument. “They need killing, of course, on general principles, but perhaps we
shouldn’t take time for that now. The next place to look is a few degrees east of north of
here.”
Cleonie was not, however, in that city. Nor in the next, nor the next. But the
speedster’s detector screens remained blank and the two allies, so much alike
physically, so different mentally, continued their hunt. There was opposition, of
course—all that the planet afforded—but Clarrissa’s second-stage mind took care of the
few items of offense which her speedster’s defenses could not handle.
Finally two things happened almost at once. Clarrissa ‘found Cleonie, and Helen
saw a dim and fuzzy white spot upon the lower left-hand corner of the detector plate.
“Can’t be ours,” the Red Lensman decided instantly. “Almost exactly the wrong
direction. Boskonians. Ten minutes— twelve at most—before we have to flit. Time
enough—I hope —if we work fast.”
She shot downward, going inert and matching intrinsics at a lack of altitude which
would have been suicidal for any ordinary pilot. She rammed her beryllium-bronze
torpedo through the first-floor wall of a forbidding, almost windowless building—its many
stories of massive construction, she knew, would help no end against the heavy stuff so
sure to come. Then, while every hitherto-hidden offensive arm of the Boskone-coached
Lyranians converged, screaming through the air and crashing and clanking along the
city’s streets, Clarrissa probed and probed and probed. Cleonie had locked herself into
a veritable dungeon cell in the deepest sub-basement of the structure. She was wearing
a thought-screen, too, but she had been releasing it, for an instant at a time, to see what
was going on. One of those instants was enough—that screen would never work again.
She had been prepared to kill herself at need; but her full-charged weapons emptied
themselves futilely against a massive lock and she threw her vial of poison across the
corridor and into an empty cell.
So far, so good; but how to get her out of there? Physical approach was out of
the question. There must be somebody around, somewhere, with keys, or hack-saws,
or sledge-hammers, or something. Ha—oxyacetylene torches! Very much against their
wills, two Lyranian mechanics trundled a dolly along a corridor, into an elevator. The
elevator went down four levels; the artisans began to burn away a barrier of thick steel
bars.
By this time the whole building was rocking to the detonation of high explosive.
Much more of that kind of stuff and she would be trapped by the sheer mass of the
rubble. She was handling six jackass-stubborn people already and that Boskonian
warship was coming fast; she did not quite know whether she was going to get away
with this or not.
But somehow, from the unplumbed and unplumbable depths which made her
what she so uniquely was, the Red Lensman drew more and ever more power.
Kinnison, who had once made heavy going of handling two-and-a-fraction Lensmen,
guessed, but never did learn from her, what his beloved wife really did that day.
Even Helen, only a few feet away, could not understand what was happening.
Left parsecs behind long since, the Lyranian could not help in any particular, but could
only stand and wonder. She knew that this queerly powerful Lens-bearing Earth-
person—white-faced, sweating, strung to the very snapping-point as she sat motionless
at her board—was exerting some terrible, some tremendous force. She knew that the
heaviest of the circling bombers sheered away and crashed. She knew that certain
mobile projectors, a few blocks away, did not come any closer. She knew that Cleonie,
against every iota of her mulish Lyranian will, was coming toward the speedster. She
knew that many persons, who wished intensely to bar Cleonie’s progress or to shoot her
down, were physically unable to act. She had no faint idea, however, of how such work
could possibly be done.
Cleonie came aboard and Clarrissa snapped out of her trance. The speedster
nudged and blasted its way out of the wrecked stronghold, then tore a hole through
protesting air into open space. Clarrissa shook her head, wiped her face, studied a tiny
dot in the corner of the plate opposite the one now showing clearly the Boskonian
warship, and set her controls.
“We’ll make it—I think,” she announced. “Even though we’re indetectable, they of
course know our line, and they’re so much faster that they’ll be able to find us on their
visuals before long. On the other hand, they must be detecting our ships now, and my
guess is that they won’t dare follow us long enough to do us any harm. Keep an eye on
things, Helen, while I find out what Cleonie really knows. And while I think of it, what’s
your real name? It isn’t polite to keep on calling you by a name that you never even
heard of until you met us.”
“Helen,” the Lyranian made surprising answer. “I liked it, so I adopted
it—officially.”
“Oh . . . That’s a compliment, really, to both Kim and me. Thanks.”
The Red Lensman then turned her attention to her captive, and as mind fitted
itself precisely to mind her eyes began to gleam in gratified delight. Cleonie was a real
find; this seemingly unimportant Lyranian knew a lot—an immense lot— about things
that no adherent of the Patrol had ever heard before. And she, Clarrissa Kinnison,
would be the first of all the Gray Lensmen to learn of them! Therefore, taking her time
now, she allowed every detail of the queer but fascinating picture-story-history to imprint