one ship. One sure thing, though, they earned it. You must have been able to pick men,
too, in those days.”‘
“What d’ya mean, ‘those days’, you disrespectful young ape? I can still pick men,
son!” Kim grinned back at Kit, but sobered quickly. “There’s more to this than meets the
eye. They went through the strain once, and know what it means. They can take it, and
just about all of them will come back. With a crew of kids, twenty percent would be a
high estimate.”
As soon as the vessel was outside the system, Kit got another surprise. Even
though those men were studded with brass and were, by a boy’s standard, old, they
were not passengers. In their old Dauntless and well away from port, they gleefully
threw off their full-dress regalia. Each donned the uniform of his status of twenty-odd
years back and went to work. The members of the regular crew, young as all regular
space crewmen are, did not know at first whether they liked the idea of working watch-
and-watch with so much braid or not; but they soon found out that they did. Those men
were men.
It is an iron-clad rule of space, however, that operating pilots must be young.
Master Pilot Henry Henderson cursed that ruling sulphurously, even while he watched
with a proud, if somewhat jaundiced eye, the smooth performance of Henry Junior at his
own old board.
They approached their destination—cut the jets—felt for the vortex—found
it—cut in the special generators. Then, as the fields of the ship reacted against those of
the tube, every man aboard felt a malaise to which no being has ever become
accustomed. Most men become immune rather quickly to seasickness, to airsickness,
and even to spacesickness. Inter-dimensional acceleration, however, is something else.
It is different—just how different cannot be explained to anyone who has never
experienced it.
The almost unbearable acceleration ceased. They were in the tube. Every plate
showed blank; everywhere there was the same drab and featureless gray. There was
neither light nor darkness; there was simply and indescribably—nothing whatever, not
even empty space.
Kit threw a switch. There was wrenching, twisting, shock, followed by a
deceleration exactly as sickening as the acceleration had been. It ceased. They were in
that enigmatic Nth space which each of the older men remembered so well; in which so
many of their “natural laws” did not hold. Time still raced, stopped, or ran backward,
seemingly at whim; inert bodies had intrinsic velocities far above that of light—and so
on. Each of those men, about to be marooned of his own choice in this utterly hostile
environment, drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders as he prepared to
disembark.
“That’s computation, Kit!” Kinnison applauded, after one glance into a plate.
“That’s the same planet we worked on before, right there. All our machines and stuff,
untouched. If you’d figured it any closer it’d have been a collision course. Are you dead
sure, Kit, that everything’s QX?”
“Dead sure, dad.”
“QX. Well, fellows, I’d like to stay here with you, and so would Kit, but we’ve got
chores to do. I don’t have to tell you to be careful, but I’m going to, anyway. BE
CAREFUL! And as soon as you get done, come back home just as fast as Klono will let
you. Clear ether, fellows!”
“Clear ether, Kim!”
Lensman father and Lensman son boarded their speedster and left. They
traversed the tube and emerged into normal space. All without a word.
“Kit,” the older man ground out, finally. “This gives me the colly wobblies, no less.
Suppose some of them—or all of them—get killed out there? Is it worth it? I know it’s my
own idea, but will we need it badly enough to take such a chance?”
“We will, dad. Mentor says so.”
And that was that.
CHAPTER 24: THE CONFERENCE SOLVES A PROBLEM
Kit wanted to get back to normal space as soon as possible, in order to help his
sisters pull themselves together, just as they had helped him. Think as he would, he had
not been able to find any flaw in any of them; but he knew that Mentor would; and he
stood aside and watched while Mentor did.
Kinnison had to get back because he had a lot of business, all of it pressing.
Finally, however, he took time to call a conference of all the Second-Stage Lensmen
and his children; a conference which, bizarrely enough, was to be held in person and
not via Lens.
“Not strictly necessary, of course,” the Gray Lensman half-apologized to his son
as their speedsters approached the Dauntless. “I still think it was a good idea, though,
especially since we were all so close to Lyrane anyway.”
“So do I. It’s been mighty long since we were all together.”
They boarded. Clarrissa met Kinnison head-on just inside the portal. The girls
hung back a bit, with a trace, almost, of diffidence; even while Kit was attempting the
physically impossible feat of embracing all four of them at once.
By common consent the Five used only their eyes. Nothing showed.
Nevertheless, the girls blushed vividly and Kit’s face twisted into a dry, wry grin.
“It was good for what ailed us, though, at that—I guess.” Kit did not seem at all
positive. “Mentor, the lug, told me no less than six times that I had arrived—or at least
made statements which I interpreted as meaning that. And Eukonidor told me I was a
“finished tool”, whatever that means. Personally, I think they were sitting back and
wondering how long it was going to take us to realize that we never could be half as
good as we used to think we were. Suppose?”
“Something like that, probably. We’ve shivered more than once, wondering
whether we’re finished products yet or not.”
“We’ve learned—I hope.” Karen, hard as she was, did shiver, physically. “If we
aren’t, it’ll be . . . p-s-s-t—dad’s starting the meeting!”
“. . . so settle down, all of you, and we’ll get going.”
What a group! Tregonsee of Rigel IV—stolid, solid, blocky, immobile; looking as
little as possible like one of the profoundest thinkers Civilization had ever produced—did
not move. Worsel, the ultra-sensitive yet utterly implacable Velantian, curled out three or
four eyes and looked on languidly while Constance kicked a few coils of his tail into a
comfortable chaise lounge, reclined unconcernedly in the seat thus made, and lighted
an Alsakanite cigarette. Clarrissa Kinnison, radiant in her Grays and looking scarcely
older than her daughters, sat beside Kathryn, each with an arm around the other. Karen
and Camilla, neither of whom could ordinarily be described by the adjective
“cuddlesome,” were on a davenport with Kit, snuggling as close to him as they could
get. And in the farthest corner the heavily-armored, heavily-insulated space-suit which
contained Nadreck of Palain VII chilled the atmosphere for yards around.
“QX?” Kinnison began. “We’ll take Nadreck first, since he isn’t any too happy
here, and let him flit—he’ll keep in touch from outside after he leaves. Report, please,
Nadreck.”
“I have explored Lyrane IX thoroughly.” Nadreck made the statement and
paused. When he used such a thought at all, it meant much. When he emphasized it,
which no one there had ever before known him to do, it meant that he had examined the
planet practically atom by atom. “There was no life of the level of intelligence in which
we are interested to be found on, beneath, or above its surface. I could find no evidence
that such life has ever been there, either as permanent dwellers or as occasional
visitors.”
“When Nadreck settles anything as definitely as that, it stays settled,” Kinnison
remarked as soon as the Palainian had left. “I’ll report next. You all know what I did
about Kalonia, and so on. The only significant fact that I’ve been able to find—the only
lead to the Boskonian higher-ups— is that Black Lensman Melasnikov got his Lens on
Lyrane IX. There were no traces of mental surgery. I can see two, and only two,
alternatives. Either there was mental surgery which I could not detect, or there were
visitors to Lyrane IX who left no traces of their visits. More reports may enable us to
decide. Worsel?”
The other Second-Stage Lensmen reported in turn. Each had uncovered leads to
Lyrane IX, but Worsel and Tregonsee, who had also studied that planet with care,
agreed with Nadreck that there was nothing to be found there.
“Kit?” Kinnison asked then. “How about you and the girls?”
“We believe that Lyrane IX was visited by beings having sufficient power of mind
to leave no traces whatever as to who they were or where they came from. We also
believe that there was no surgery, but an infinitely finer kind of work— an indetectable
subconscious compulsion—done on the minds of the Black Lensmen and others who
came into physical contact with the Boskonians. These opinions are based upon