many millions of factors and will consume a not inconsiderable number of your years . .
.”
“You mean lifetimes!” an impetuous young thought broke in. “Why, long before
that. . .”
“Contain yourself, daughter Constance,” Mentor reproved, gently. “I realize quite
fully all the connotations and implications involved. I was about to say that it may prove
desirable to assist your mother in the application of powers which may very well
transcend in some respects those of either Arisia or Eddore.” He widened the band of
thought to include the Red Lensman and went on as though he were just emerging from
contemplation:
“Children, it appears that the solution of this problem by ordinary processes will
require more time than can conveniently be spared. Moreover, it affords a priceless and
perhaps a unique opportunity of increasing our store of knowledge. Be informed,
however, that the probability is great that in this project you, Clarrissa, will lose your
life.”
“Better not, mother. When Mentor says anything like that, it means suicide. We
don’t want to lose you, too.” Kit pleaded, and the four girls added their pleas to his.
Clarrissa knew that suicide was against the Code—but she also knew that, as
long as it wasn’t quite suicide, Lensmen went in.
“Exactly how great?” she demanded, vibrantly. “It isn’t certain—it can’t be!”
“No, daughter, it is not certain.”
“QX, then, I’m going in. Nothing can stop me.”
“Very well. Tighten your linkage, Clarrissa, with me. Yours will be the task of
sending your thought to your husband, wherever and whenever in total space and in
total time he may be. If it can be done, you can do it. You alone of all the entities in
existence can do it. I can neither help you nor guide you in your quest; but by virtue of
our relationship to him whom we are seeking, your oneness with him, you will require
neither help nor guidance. My part will be to follow you and to construct the means of
his return; but the real labor is and must be yours alone. Take a moment, therefore, to
prepare yourself against the effort, for it will not be small. Gather your resources,
daughter; assemble all your forces and your every power.”
They watched Clarrissa, in her distant room, throw herself prone upon her bed.
She closed her eyes, buried her nose in the counterpane, and gripped a side-rail
fiercely in each hand.
“Can’t we help, too?” The Five implored, as one.
“I do not know.” Mentor’s thought was as passionless as the voice of Fate. “I
know of no force at your disposal which can affect in any way that which is to happen.
Since I do not know the full measure of your powers, however, it would be well for you
to accompany us, keeping yourselves alert to take instant advantage of any opportunity
to be of aid. Are you ready, daughter Clarrissa?”
“I am ready,” and the Red Lensman launched her thought.
Clarrissa Kinnison did not know, then or ever; did not have even the faintest
inkling of what she did or of how she did it. Nor, tied to her by bonds of heritage, love,
and sympathy though they were and of immense powers of mind though they were, did
any of the Five succeed, until after centuries had passed, in elucidating the many
complex phenomena involved. And Mentor, the ancient Arisian sage, never did
understand.
All that any of them knew was that an infinitely loving and intensely suffering
woman, stretched rigidly upon a bed, hurled out through space and time a passionately
questing thought: a thought behind which she put everything she had.
Clarrissa Kinnison, Red Lensman, had much—and every iota of that impressive
sum total ached for, yearned for, and insistently demanded her Kim—her one and only
Kim. Kim her husband; Kim the father of her children; Kim her lover; Kim her other half;
Kim her all in all for so many perfect years.
“Kim! KIM! Wherever you are, Kim, or whenever, listen! Listen and answer! Hear
me—you must hear me calling_I need you, Kim, from the bottom of my soul . . . Kim! My
Kim! KIM!!”
Through countless spaces and through untellable times that poignant thought
sped; driven by a woman’s fears, a woman’s hopes, a woman’s all-surpassing love;
urged ever onward and ever outward by the irresistible force of a magnificent woman’s
frankly bared soul.
Outward . . . farther . . . farther out. . . farther . . .
Clarrissa’s body went limp upon her bed. Her heart slowed; her breathing almost
stopped. Kit probed quickly, finding that those secret cells into which he had scarcely
dared to glance were empty and bare. Even the Red Lensman’s tremendous reserves
of vital force were exhausted.
“Mother, come back!”
“Come back to us!”
“Please, please, mums, come back!”
“Know you, children, your mother so little?”
They knew her. She would not come back alone. Regardless of any danger to
herself, regardless of life itself, she would not come back until she had found her Kim.
“But do something, Mentor—DO SOMETHING!”
“Do what? Nothing can be done. It was simply a question of which was the
greater; the volume of the required hyper-sphere or her remarkable store of vitality . . .”
“Shut up!” Kit blazed. “We’ll do something! Come on, kids, and we’ll try . . .”
“The Unit!” Kathryn shrieked. “Link up, quick! Cam, make mother’s
pattern—hurry it!! Now, Unit, grab it—make her one of us, a six-ply Unit—make her
come in, and snap it up! There! Now, Kit, drive us . . . DRIVE US!”
Kit drove. As the surging life-force of the Unit pushed a measure of vitality back
into Clarrissa’s inert body, she gained a little strength and did not grow weaker. The
children, however, did; and Mentor, who had been entirely unmoved by the woman’s
imminent death, became highly concerned.
“Children, return!” He first ordered, then entreated. “You are throwing away not
only your lives, but also long lifetimes of intensive labor and study!”
They paid no attention. No more than their mother would those children abandon
such a mission unaccomplished. Seven Kinnisons would come back or none.
The four-ply Arisian pondered; and brightened. Now that a theretofore impossible
linkage had been made, the outlook changed. The odds shifted. The Unit’s delicacy of
web, its driving force, had not been enough; or rather, it would have taken too long.
Adding the Red Lensman’s affinity for her husband, however . . . Yes, definitely, the Unit
should now succeed.
It did. Before any of the Five weakened to the danger point the Unit, again five-
fold, snapped back. Clarrissa’s life-force, which had tried so valiantly to fill all of space
and all of time, was flowing back into her. A tight, hard, impossibly writhing and twisting
multidimensional beam ran, it seemed, to infinity and vanished.
“A right scholarly bit of work, children,” Mentor approved. “I have arranged the
means of his return.”
“Thanks, children. Thanks, Mentor.” Instead of fainting, Clarrissa sprang from her
bed and stood erect. Flushed and panting, eyes flamingly alight, she was more
intensely vital than any of her children had ever seen her. Reaction
might—would—come later, but she was now all buoyantly vibrant woman. “Where will
he come into our space, and when?”
“In your room before you. Now.”
Kinnison materialized; and as the Red Lensman and the Gray went hungrily into
each other’s arms, Mentor and the Five turned their attention toward the future.
* * * *
“First, the hyper-spatial tube which was called the ‘Hell-Hole in Space’,” Kit
began. “We must establish as fact in the minds of all Civilization that the Ploorans were
actually at the top of Boskone. The story as we have arranged it is that Floor was the
top, and—which happens to be the truth—that it was destroyed through the efforts of
the Second-Stage Lensmen. The ‘Hell-Hole’ is to be explained as being operated by the
Plooran ‘residuum’ which every Lensman knows all about and which he will never
forget. The problem of dad’s whereabouts was different from the previous one in degree
only, not in kind. To all except us, there never were any Eddorians. Any objections? Will
that version hold?”
The consensus was that the story was sound and tight.
“The time has come, then,” Karen thought, “to go into the very important matter
of our reason for being and our purpose in life. You have intimated repeatedly that you
Arisians are resigning your Guardianship of Civilization and that we are to take over;
and I have just perceived the terribly shocking fact that you four are now alone, that all
the other Arisians have already gone. We’re not ready, Mentor; you know we’re
not—this scares me through and through.”
“You are ready, children, for everything that will have to be done. You have not
come to your full maturity and power, of course; that stage will come only with time. It is