“Hm . . . m . . . interesting!” The admiral had listened attentively. “You’re pretty sure it’ll work, then, I gather?”
“As sure as we can be of any technique so new. Ninety percent probability, say—perhaps ninety five.”
“Good enough odds.” Haynes turned to von Hohendorff. “What do you mean, you old reprobate, by sneaking around behind my back and horning in on my reservation? I rate Unattached too, you know, and it’s mine. You’re out, Von.”
“I saw it first and I refuse to relinquish.” Von Hohendorff was adamant “You’ve got to,” Haynes insisted. “He isn’t your cub any more, he’s my Lensman.
Besides, I’m a better test than you are—I’ve got more parts to replace than you have.”
“Four or five make just as good a test as a dozen,” the commandant declared.
“Gentlemen, think!” the Posenian pleaded. “Please consider that the pineal is actually inside the brain. It is true that I have not been able to discover any brain injury so far, but the process has not yet been applied to a Tellurian brain and I can offer no assurance whatever that some obscure injury will not result.”
“What of it?” and the two old Unattached Lensmen resumed their battle, hammer and tongs. Neither would yield a millimeter.
“Operate on them both, then, since they’re both above law or reason,” Lacy finally ordered in exasperation. “There ought to be a law to reduce Gray Lensmen to the ranks when they begin to suffer from ossification of the intellect”
“Starting with yourself, perhaps?” the admiral shot back, not at all abashed.
Haynes relented enough to let von Hohendorff go first, and both were given the necessary injections. The commandant was then strapped solidly into a chair; his head was immobilized with clamps.
The Posenian swung his needle-rays into place; two of them, each held rigidly upon micrometered racks and each operated by two huge, double, rock-steady hands. The operator looked entirely aloof—being eyeless and practically headless, it is impossible to tell from a Posenian’s attitude or posture anything about the focal point of his attention—but the watchers knew that he was observing in microscopic detail the tiny gland within the old Lensman’s skull.
Then Haynes. “Is this all there is to it, or do we come back for more?” he asked, when he was released from his shackles.
“That’s all,” Lacy answered. “One stimulation lasts for life, as far as we know. But if the treatment was successful you’ll come back—about day after tomorrow, I think—to go to bed here. Your spare equipment won’t fit and your stumps may require surgical attention.”
Sure enough, Haynes did come back to the hospital, but not to go to bed. He was too busy. Instead, he got a wheel-chair and in it he was taken back to his now boiling office. And in a few more days he called Lacy in high exasperation.
“Know what you’ve done?” he demanded. “Not satisfied with taking my perfectly good parts away from me, you took my teeth too! They don’t fit—I can’t eat a thing! And I’m hungry as a wolf—I don’t think I was ever so hungry in my life! I can’t live on soup, man; I’ve got work to do. What are you going to do about it?”
“Ho-ho-haw!” Lacy roared. “Serves you right—von Hohendorff is taking it easy here, sitting on top of the world. Easy, now, sailor, don’t rupture your aorta. Ill send a nurse over with a soft-boiled egg and a spoon. Teething— at your age—Haw-ho-haw!”
But it was no ordinary nurse who came, a few minutes later, to see the Port Admiral; it was the sector chief herself. She looked at him pityingly as she trundled him into his private office and shut the door, thereby establishing complete coverage.
“I had no idea, Admiral Haynes, that you . . . that there . . .” she paused.
“That I was so much of a rebuild?” complacently. “Except in the matter of eyes—which he doesn’t need anyway—our mutual friend Kinnison has very little on me, my dear. I got so handy with the replacements that very few people knew how much of me was artificial. But it’s these teeth that are taking all the joy out of life. I’m hungry, confound it! Have you got anything really satisfying that I can eat?”
“I’ll say I have!” She fed him; then, bending over, she squeezed him tight and kissed him emphatically. “You and the commandant are just perfectly wonderful old darlings, and I love you!” she declared. “Lacy was simply poisonous to laugh at you the way he did. Why, you’re two of the world’s very best! And he knew perfectly well all the time, the lug, that of course you’d be hungry; ,that you’d have to eat twice as much as usual while your legs and things are growing.
Don’t worry, admiral, I’ll feed you until you bulge. I want you to hurry up with this, so they’ll do it to Kim.”
“Thanks, Mac,” and as she wheeled him back into the main office he considered her anew. A ravishing creature, but sound. Rash, and a bit stubborn, perhaps; impetuous and headstrong; but clean, solid metal all the way through. She had what it takes—she qualified. She and Kinnison would make a mighty fine couple when the lad got some of that heroic damn nonsense knocked out of his head . . . but there was work to do.
There was. The Galactic Council had considered thoroughly Kinnison’s reports; its every member had conferred with him and with Worsel at length. Throughout the First Galaxy the Patrol was at work in all its prodigious might, preparing to wipe out the menace to Civilization which was Boskone. First-line super-dreadnoughts—no others would go upon that mission—were being built and armed, rebuilt and re-armed.
Well it was that the Galactic Patrol had previously amassed an almost inexhaustible supply of wealth, for its “reserves of expendable credit” were running like water.
Weapons, supposedly already of irresistible power, were made even more powerful.
Screens already “impenetrable” were stiffened into even greater stubbornness. Primary projectors were made to take even higher loads for longer times. New and heavier Q-type helices were designed and built. Larger and more destructive duodec bombs were hurled against already ruined, torn, and quivering test-planets. Uninhabited worlds were being equipped with super- Bergenholms and with driving projectors. The negasphere, the most incredible menace to navigation which had ever existed in space, was being patrolled by a cordon of guard-ships.
And all this activity centered in one vast building and culminated in one man—Port Admiral Haynes, Galactic Councillor. And Haynes could not get enough to eat because he was cutting a new set of teeth!
He cut them, all thirty two of them. Arm and leg, foot and hand grew perfectly, even to the nails. Hair grew upon what had for years been a shining expanse of pate. But, much to Lacy’s relief, it was old skin, not young, that covered the new limbs. It was white hair, not brown, that was dulling the glossiness of Haynes’ bald old head. His trifocals, unchanged, were still necessary if he were to see anything clearly, near or far.
“Our experimental animals aged and died normally,” he explained graciously, “but I was beginning to wonder if we had rejuvenated you two, or perhaps endowed you with eternal life.
Glad to see that the new parts have the same physical age as the rest of you—It would be mildly embarrassing to have to kill two Gray Lensmen to get rid of them.”
“You’re about as funny as a rubber crutch,” Haynes grunted. “When are you going to give Kinnison the works? Don’t you realize we need him?”
“Pretty quick now. Just as soon as we give you and Von your psychological examinations.”
“Bah! That isn’t necessary—my brain’s QX!”
“That’s what you think, but what do you know about brains? Worse! will tell us what shape your mind—if any —Is in.”
The Velantian put both Haynes and von Hohendorff through a gruelling examination, finding that their minds had not been affected in any way by the stimulants applied to their pineal glands.
Then and only then did Phillips operate upon Kinnison; and in his case, too, the operation was a complete success. Arms and legs and eyes replaced themselves flawlessly. The scars of his terrible wounds disappeared, leaving no sign of ever having been.
He was a little slower, however, somewhat clumsy, and woefully weak. Therefore, instead of discharging him from the hospital as cured, which procedure would have restored to him automatically all the rights and privileges of an Unattached Lensman, the Council decided to transfer him to a physical-culture camp. A few weeks there would restore to him entirely the strength, speed, and agility which had formerly been his, and he would then be allowed to resume active duty.
Just before he left the hospital, Kinnison strolled with Clarrissa out to a bench in the grounds.