of my life? And don’t talk baby-talk at me, either. I’m well enough at least so you can
wipe that professional smile off your pan and cut that soothing bedside manner of
yours.”
“Very well-I think so, too!” she snapped, patience at long last gone. “Somebody
should tell you the truth. I always supposed that Lensmen had to have brains, but
you’ve been a perfect brat ever since you’ve been here. First you wanted to eat yourself
sick, and now you want to get up, with bones half-knit and burns half-healed, and undo
everything that has been done for you. Why don’t you snap out of it and act your age
for a change?”
“I never did think nurses had much sense, and now I know they haven’t.”
Kinnison eyed her with intense disfavor, not at all convinced. “I’m not talking about
going back to work. I mean a little gentle exercise, and I know what I need.”
“You’d be surprised at what you don’t know,” and the nurse walked out, chin in
air. In five minutes, however, she was back, her radiant smile again flashing.
“Sorry, Rim, I shouldn’t have blasted off that way-I know that you’re bound to
back-fire and to have brainstorms. I would, too, if I were . . . . .”
“Cancel it, Mac,” he began, awkwardly. “I don’t know why I have to be crabbing
at you all the time.”
“QX, Lensman,” she replied, entirely serene now. “I do. You’re not the type to
stay in bed without it griping you, but when a man has been ground up into such
hamburger as you are, he has to stay in bed whether he likes it or not,. and no matter
how much he pope off about it. Roll over here, now, and I’ll glue you an alcohol rub. But
it won’t be long now, really-pretty soon, we’ll have you out in a wheel-chair . . . . .”
Thus it went for weeks. Kinnison knew his behavior was atrocious, abominable,
but he simply could not help it. Every so often the accumulated pressure of his
bitterness and anxiety would blow off, and, like a jungle tiger with a toothache, he would
bite and claw anything or anybody within reach.
Finally, however, the last picture was studied, the last bandage removed, and he
was discharged as fit. And he was not discharged, bitterly although he resented his
“captivity,” se he called it, until he really was fit. Haynes saw to that. And Haynes had
allowed only the most sketchy interviews during that long convalescence. Discharged,
however, Kinnison sought him out.
“Let me talk first,” Haynes instructed him at sight. “No self-reproaches, no
destructive criticism. Everything constructive. Now, Kimball, I’m mighty glad to hear that
you made a perfect recovery. You were in bad shape. Go ahead.”
“You have just about shut my mouth by your first order.” Kinnison smiled sourly
as he spoke. “Two words – flat failure. No, let me add two more-as yet.”
“That’s the spirit!” Haynes exclaimed. “Nor do we agree with you that it was a
failure. It was merely not a success far-which is an altogether different thing. Also, I may
add that we had very fine reports indeed on you from the hospital.”
“Huh?” Kinnison was amazed to the point of being inarticulate.
“You just about tore it down, of course, but that was only to be expected.”
“But, sir, I made such a . . . .”
“Exactly. As Lacy tells me quite frequently, he likes to have patients over there
that they don’t like. Mull that one over for a bit-you may understand it better as you get
older. The thought, however, may take some of the load off your mind.”
“Well, sir, I am feeling a trifle low, but if you and the rest of them still think . . . . .”
“We do so think. Cheer up and get on with the story.”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and before I go around sticking out my neck
again I’m going to . . . .”
“You don’t need to tell me, you know.”
“No, sir, but I think I’d better. I’m going to Arisia to see if I can get me a few
treatments for swell-head and lame-brain. I still think that I know how to use the Lens to
good advantage, but I simply haven’t got enough jets to do it. You see, I . . . . .” he
stopped. He would not offer anything that might sound like an alibi, but his. thoughts
were plain as print to the old Lensman.
“Go ahead, son. We know you wouldn’t.”
“If I thought at all, I assumed that I was tackling men, since those on the ship
were men, and men were the only known inhabitants of the Aldebaranian system. But
when those wheelers took me so easily and so completely, it became very evident that I
didn’t have enough stuff. I ran like a scared pup, and I was lucky to get home at all. It
wouldn’t have happened if . . . . .” he paused.
“If what? Reason it out, son,’ Haynes advised, pointedly. “You are wrong, dead
wrong. You made no mistake, either in judgment or in execution. You have been
blaming yourself for assuming that they were men. Suppose you had assumed that
they were the Arisians themselves. Then what? After close scrutiny, even in the light of
after-knowledge, we do not see how you could have changed the outcome.” It did not
occur, even to the sagacious old admiral, that Kinnison need not have gone in.
Lensmen always went in.
“Well, anyway, they licked me, and that hurts,” Kinnison admitted, frankly. “So
I’m going back to Arisia for more training, if they’ll give it to me. I may be gone quite a
while, as it may take even Mentor a long time to increase the permeability of my skull
enough so that an idea can filter through it in something under a century.”
‘Didn’t Mentor tell you never to go back there?”
“No, sir.” Kinnison grinned boyishly. “He must’ve forgot it in my case-the only slip
he ever made, I guess. ,That’s what gives me an out.”
“Um . . . m . . . m.” Haynes pondered this startling bit of information. He knew, far
better than young Kinnison could, the Arisian power of mind, he did not believe that
Mentor of Arisia had ever forgotten anything, however tiny or unimportant. “It has never
been done . . . . they are a peculiar race, incomprehensible . . . . but not vindictive. He
may refuse you, but nothing worse-that is, if you do not cross the barrier without
invitation. It’s a splendid idea, I think, but be very careful to strike that barrier free and
at almost zero power-or else don’t strike it at all.”
They shook hands, and in a space of minutes the speedster was again tearing
through apace. Kinnison now knew exactly what he wanted to get, and he utilized every
waking hour of that long trip fn physical and mental exercise to prepare himself to take
it. Thus the time did not seem long. He crept up to the barrier at a snail’s pace, stopping
instantly as he touched it, and through that barrier he sent a thought.
“Kimball Kinnison of Sol Three calling Mentor of Arisia. Is it permitted that I
approach your planet?” He was neither brazen nor obsequious, but was matter-of-factly
asking a simple question and expecting a simple reply.
“It is permitted, Kimball Kinnison of Tellus,” a slow, deep, measured voice
resounded in his brain. “Neutralize your controls. You will be landed.”
He did so, and the inert speedster shot forward, to come to ground in a perfect
landing at a regulation space-port. < He strode into the office, to confront the same grotesque entity who had measured him for his Lens not so long ago. Now, however, he stared straight into that entity's unblinking eyes, in silence. "Ali, you have progressed. You realize now that vision is not always reliable. At our previous interview you took it for granted that what you saw must really exist, and did not wonder as to what our true shapes might be." "I am wondering now, seriously," Kinnison replied, "and ,if it is permitted, I intend to stay here until I can see your v true shapes." "This?" and the figure changed instantly into that of an old, white-bearded, scholarly gentleman. "No. There is a vast difference -between seeing something myself and having you show it to me. I realize fully that you can make me see you as anything you choose. You could appear to me as .a perfect copy of myself, or as any other thing, person or object conceivable to my mind." . "Ah, your development has been eminently satisfactory. It is now permissible to tell you, youth, that your present quest, not for mere information, but for real knowledge,