The panel job drove up and Kinnison, perceiving that the cateagles had done their work, sent them back into their cage. The Lensman driver, after securely locking cage and truck, cut the Earthman’s bonds.
“QX, Kinnison?” he asked.
“QX, Barknett—thanks,” and the two Lensmen, one in the panel truck and the other in the gangsters’ car, drove back to headquarters. There Kinnison recovered his package.
“This has got me all of a soapy dither, but you have called the turn on every play yet,1’ Winstead told the Tellurian, later. “Is this all of the big shots, do you think, or are there some more of them around here?”
“Not around here, I’m pretty sure,” Kinnison replied. “No, two main lines is all they would have had, I think . . . this time. Next time . . .”
“There won’t be any next time,” Winstead declared.
“Not on this planet, no. Knowing what to expect, you fellows can handle anything that comes up. I was thinking then of my next step.”
“Oh. But you’ll get ‘em, Gray Lensman!”
“I hope so,” soberly.
“Luck, Kinnison!”
“Clear ether, Winstead!” and this time the Tellurian really did flit.
As his speedster ripped through the void Kinnison did more thinking, but he was afraid that Menter would have considered the product muddy indeed. He couldn’t seem to get to the first check-station. One thing was limpidly clear; this line of attack or any very close variation of it would never work again. He’d have to think up something new. So far, he had got away with his stuff because he had kept one lap ahead of them, but how much longer could he manage to keep up the pace?
Bominger had been no mental giant, of course; but this other lad was nobody’s fool and this next higher-up, with whom he had had the interview via Bominger, would certainly prove to be a really shrewd number.
“
“The higher the fewer,’” he repeated to himself the old saying, adding, “and in this case, the smarter.” He had to put out some jets, but where he was going to get the fuel he simply didn’t know.
Again the trip to Tellus was uneventful, and the Gray Lens-man, the symbol of his rank again flashing upon his wrist, sought interview with Haynes.
“Send him in, certainly—send him in!” Kinnison heard the communicator crackle, and the receptionist passed him along. He paused in surprise, however, at the doorway of the office, for Surgeon-Marshal Lacy and a Posenian were in conference with the Port Admiral.
“Come in, Kinnison,” Haynes invited. “Lacy wants to see you a minute, too. Doctor Phillips—Lensman Kinnison, Unattached. His name isn’t Phillips, of course; we gave him that in self-defense, to keep from trying to pronounce his real one.”
Phillips, the Posenian, was as tall as Kinnison, and heavier. His figure was somewhat human in shape, but not in detail. He had four arms instead of two, each arm had two opposed hands, and each hand had two thumbs, one situated about where a little finger would be expected. He had no eyes, not even vestigial ones. He had two broad, flat noses and two toothful mouths; one of each in what would ordinarily be called the front of his round, shining, hairless head; the other in the back. Upon the sides of his head were large, volute, highly dirigible ears.
And, like most races having the faculty of perception instead of that of sight, his head was relatively immobile, his neck being short, massive, and tremendously strong.
“You look well, very well.” Lacy reported, after feeling and prodding vigorously the members which had been in his splints and casts so long. “Have to take a picture, of course, before saying anything definite. No, we won’t either, now. Phillips, look at his . . .” an interlude of technical jargon . . . “and see what kind of a recovery he has made.” Then, while the Posenian was examining Kinnison’s interior mechanisms, the Surgeon-Marshal went on: “Wonderful diagnosticians and surgeons, these Posenians— can see into the patient without taking him apart. In another few centuries every doctor will have to have the sense of perception. Phillips is doing a research in neurology—more particularly a study of the neutral synapse and the proliferation of neural dendrites . ..”
“La—cy-y-y!” Haynes drawled the word in reproof. “I’ve told you a thousand times to talk English when you’re talking to me. How about it, Kinnison?”
“Afraid I can’t quite check you, chief,” Kinnison grinned.
“Specialists—precisionists—can’t talk in Basic.”
“Right, my boy—surprisingly and pleasingly right!” Lacy exclaimed. “Why can’t you adopt that attitude, Haynes, and learn enough words so you can understand what a man’s talking about? But to reduce it to monosyllabic simplicity, Phillips is studying a thing that has baffled us for thousands of years. The lower forms of cells are able to regenerate themselves; wounds heal, bones knit. Higher types, such as nerve cells, regenerate imperfectly, if at all; and the highest type, the brain cells, do not do so under any conditions.” He turned a reproachful gaze upon Haynes. “This is terrible. Those statements are pitiful—inadequate—false. Worse than that—practically meaningless. What I wanted to say, and what .I’m going to say, is that. . .”
“Oh no you aren’t, not in this office,” his old friend interrupted. “We got the idea perfectly. The question is, why can’t human beings repair nerves or spinal cords, or grow new ones? If such a worthless beastie as a starfish can grow a whole new body to one leg, including a brain, if any, why can’t a really intelligent victim of simple infantile paralysis— or a ray—recover the use of a leg that is otherwise in perfect shape?”
“Well, that’s something like it, but I hope you can aim closer than that at a battleship,”
Lacy grunted. “We’ll buzz off now, Phillips, and leave these two war-horses alone.”
“Here is my report in detail.” Kinnison placed the package upon the Port Admiral’s desk as soon as the room was sealed behind the visitors. “I talked to you direct about most of it— this is for the record.”
“Of course. Mighty glad you found Medon, for our sake as well as theirs. They have things that we need, badly.”
“Where did they put them? I suggested a sun near Sol, so as to have them handy to Prime Base.”
“Right next door—Alpha Centauri. Didn’t get to do much scouting, did you?”
“I’ll say we didn’t. Boskonia owns that galaxy; lock, stock, and barrel. May be some other independent planets— bound to be, of course; probably a lot of them—but it’s too dangerous, hunting them at this stage of the game. But at that, we did enough, for the time being. We proved our point. Boskone, if there is any such being, is certainly in the Second Galaxy. However, it will he a long time before we’re ready to carry the war there to him, and in the meantime we’ve got a lot to do. Check?”
“To nineteen decimals.”
“It seems to me, then, that while you are rebuilding our first-line ships, super-powering them with Medonian insulation and conductors, I had better keep on tracing Boskone along the line of drugs. I’m just about sure that they’re back of the whole drug business.”
“And in some ways their drugs are more dangerous to Civilization than their battleships.
More insidious and, ultimately, more fatal.”
“Check. And since I am perhaps as well equipped as any of the other Lensmen to cope with that particular problem . . . ?” Kinnison paused, questioningly.
“That certainly is no overstatement,” the Port Admiral replied, dryly. “You’re the only one equipped to cope with it.”
“None of the other boys except Worsel, then? . . . I heard that a couple . . .”
“They thought they had a call, but they didn’t. All they had was a wish. They came back.”
“Too bad . . . but I can see how it would be. It’s a rough course, and if a man’s mind isn’t completely ready for it, it burns it out. It almost does, anyway . . . mind is a funny thing. But that isn’t getting us anywhere. Can you take time to let me talk at you a few minutes?”
“I certainly can. You’ve got the most important assignment in the galaxy, and I’d like to know more about it, if it’s anything you can pass on.”
“Nothing that need be sealed from any Lensman. The main object of all of us, as you know, is to push Boskonia out of this galaxy. From a military standpoint they practically are out.
Their drug syndicate, however, is very decidedly in, and getting in deeper all the time. Therefore we next push the zwilniks out. They have peddlers and such small fry, who deal with distributors and so on. These fellows form the bottom layer. Above them are the secret agents, the observers, and the wholesale handlers; runners and importers. All these folks are directed and controlled by one man, the boss of each planetary organization. Thus, Bominger was the boss of all zwilnick activities on the whole planet of Radelix.