“I will.” Dronvire needed no time to consider his decision.
The meeting was dismissed. The same entity who had been Samms’ chauffeur on the in-bound trip drove him back to the Chicago, driving as “slowly” and as “carefully” as before. Nor, this time, did the punishment take such toll, even though Samms knew that each terrific lunge and lurch was adding one more bruise to the already much-too-large collection discoloring almost every square foot of his tough hide. He had succeeded, and the thrill of success had its usual analgesic effect.
The Chicago’s captain met him in the air-lock and helped him remove his suit.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Samms?” Winfield was no longer the formal captain, but a friend. “Even though you didn’t call, we were beginning to wonder . . . you look as though you’d been to a Valerian clambake, and I sure as hell don’t like the way you’re favoring those ribs and that left leg. I’ll tell the boys you got back in A-prime shape, but I’ll have the doctors look you over, just to make sure.”
Winfield made the announcement, and through his Lens Samms could plainly feel the wave of relief and pleasure that spread throughout the great ship with the news. It surprised him immensely. Who was he, that all these boys should care so much whether he lived or died?
“I’m perfectly all right,” Samms protested. “There’s nothing at all the matter with me that twenty hours of sleep won’t fix as good as new.”
“Maybe; but you’ll go to the sick-bay first, just the same,” Winfield insisted. “And I suppose you want me to blast back to Tellus?”
“Right. And fast. The Ambassadors’ Ball is next Tuesday evening, you know, and that’s one function I can’t stay away from, even with a Class A Double Prime excuse.”
CHAPTER 6
The Ambassadors’ Ball, one of the most ultra-ultra functions of the year, was well under way. It was not that everyone who was anyone was there; but everyone who was there was, in one way or another, very emphatically someone. Thus, there were affairs at which there were more young and beautiful women, and more young and handsome men; but none exhibiting newer or more expensive gowns, more ribbons and decorations, more or costlier or more refined jewelry, or a larger acreage of powdered and perfumed epidermis.
And even so, the younger set was well enough represented. Since pioneering appeals more to youth than to age, the men representing the colonies were young; and their wives, together with the daughters and the second (or third or fourth, or occasionally the fifth) wives of the human personages practically balanced the account.
Nor was the throng entirely human. The time had not yet come, of course, when warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing monstrosities from hundreds of other solar systems would vie in numbers with the humanity present. There were, however, a few Martians on the floor, wearing their light “robes du convention” and dancing with meticulously mathematical precision. A few Venerians, who did not dance, sat in state or waddled importantly about. Many worlds of the Solarian System, and not a few other systems, were represented.
One couple stood out, even against that opulent and magnificent background.
Byes followed them wherever they went.
The girl was tall, trim, supple; built like a symphony. Her Callistan vexto-silk gown, of the newest and most violent shade of “radioactive” green, was phosphorescently luminous; fluorescent; gleaming and glowing. Its hem swept the floor, but above the waist it vanished mysteriously except for wisps which clung to strategic areas here and there with no support, apparently, except the personal magnetism of the wearer. She, almost alone of all the women there, wore no flowers. Her only jewelry was a rosette of huge, perfectly-matched emeralds, perched precariously upon her bare left shoulder. Her hair, unlike the other womens’ flawless coiffures, was a flamboyant, artistically-disarranged, red-bronze-auburn mop. Her soft and dewy eyes-Virgilia Samms could control her eyes as perfectly as she could her highly educated hands-were at the moment gold-flecked, tawny wells of girlish innocence and trust.
“But I can’t give you this next dance, too, HerkimerHonestly I can’t!” she pleaded, snuggling just a trifle closer into the embrace of the young man who was just as much man, physically, as she was woman. “I’d just love to, really, but I just simply can’t, and you know why, too.”
“You’ve got some duty-dances, of course . . .”
“Some? I’ve got a list as long as from here to there! Senator Morgan first, of course, then Mr. Isaacson, then I sat one out with Mr. Ossmen-I can’t stand Venerians, they’re so slimy and fat and repulsive!-and that leathery horned toad from Mars and that Jovian hippopotamus . . .”
She went down the list, and as she named or characterized each entity another finger of her left hand pressed down upon the back of her partner’s right, to emphasize the count of her social obligations. But those talented fingers were doing more-far, far more-than that.
Herkimer Herkimer Third, although no little of a Don Juan, was a highly polished, smoothly finished, thoroughly seasoned diplomat. As such, his eyes and his other features – particularly his eyes-had been schooled for years to reveal no trace of whatever might be going on inside his brain. If he had entertained any suspicion of the beautiful girl in his arms, if anyone had suggested that she was trying her best to pump him, be would have smiled the sort of smile which only the top-drawer diplomat can achieve. He was not suspicious of Virgilia Samms. However, simply because she was Virgil Samms’ daughter, he took an extra bit of pain to betray no undue interest in any one of the names she recited. And besides, she was not looking at his eyes, nor even at his face. Her glance, demurely downcast, was all too rarely raised above the level of his chin.
There were some things, however, that Herkimer Herkimer Third did not know. That Virgilia Samms was the most accomplished muscle-reader of her times. That she was so close to him, not because of his manly charm, but because only in that position could she do her prodigious best. That she could work with her eyes alone, but in emergencies, when fullest possible results were imperative, she had to use her exquisitely sensitive fingers and her exquisitely tactile skin. That she had studied intensively, and had tabulated the reactions of, each of the entities on her list. That she was now, with his help, fitting those reactions into a pattern. And finally, that that pattern was beginning to assume the grim shape of MURDER!
And Virgilia Samms, working now for something far more urgent and vastly more important than a figmental Galactic Patrol, hoped desperately that this Herkimer was not a muscle-reader too; for she knew that she was revealing her secrets even more completely than was he. In fact, if things got much worse, he could not help but feel the pounding of her heart . . . but she could explain that easily enough, by a few appropriate wiggles . . . No, he wasn’t a reader, definitely not. He wasn’t watching the right places; he was looking where that gown had been designed to make him look, and nowhere else . . . and no tell-tale muscles lay beneath any part of either of his hands.
As her eyes and her fingers and her lovely torso sent more and more information to her keen brain, Jill grew more and more anxious. She was sure that murder was intended, but who was to be the victim? Her father? Probably. Pops Kinnison? Possibly. Somebody else? Barely possibly. And when? And where? And how? She didn’t know! And she would have to be sure . . . Mentioning names hadn’t been enough, but a personal appearance . . . Why didn’t dad show up-or did she wish he wouldn’t come at all . . . ?
Virgil Samms entered the ballroom.
“And dad told me, Herkimer,” she cooed sweetly, gazing up into his eyes for the first time in over a minute, “that I must dance with every one of them. So you see . . .
Oh, there he is now, over there! I’ve been wondering where be’s been keeping himself.” She nodded toward the entrance and prattled on artlessly. “He’s almost never late, you know, and I’ve . . .”
He looked, and as his eyes met those of the First Lensman, Jill learned three of the facts she needed so badly to know. Her father. Here. Soon. She never knew how she managed to keep herself under control; but, some way and just barely, she did.
Although nothing showed, she was seething inwardly: wrought up as she had never before been. What could she do? She knew, but she did not have a scrap or an iota of visible or tangible evidence; and if she made one single slip, however slight, the consequences could be immediate and disastrous.