But this game could not be hurried. Bases, no matter how important, did not call
Grand Base except upon matters of the most dire urgency, and no such matter
eventuated.
Nor did Helmuth call that base, since nothing out of the ordinary was happening-
to any pirates’ knowledge, that is-and his attention was more necessary elsewhere.
One day, however, there came crackling in a triumphant report-a ship working
out of that base had taken noble booty indeed, no less a prize than a fully-supplied
hospital ship of the Patrol itself! As the report progressed Kinnison’s heart went down
into his boots and he swore bitterly to himself. How in all the nine hells of Valeria had
they managed to take such a ship as that? Hadn’t she been escorted?
Nevertheless, as chief communications officer he took the report and
congratulated heartily, through the ship’s radio man, its captain, its officers, and its
crew.
“Mighty fine work, Helmuth himself shall hear of this,” he concluded his words of
praise. “How did you do it? With one of the new maulers?”
“Yea, sir,” came the reply. “Our mauler, accompanying us just out of range,
came up and engaged theirs. That left us free to take this ship. We locked on with
magnets, cut our way in, and here we are.”
There they were indeed. The hospital ship was red with blood, patients, doctors,
interns, officers and operating crew alike had been butchered with the horribly ruthless
savagery which was the customary technique of all the agencies of Boskone. Of all that
ship’s personnel only the nurses lived. They were not to be put to death-yet. In fact, and
under certain conditions, they need not die at all.
They huddled together, a little knot of white-clad misery in that corpse-littered
room, and even now one of them was being dragged away. She was fighting viciously,
with fists and feet, with nails and teeth. No one pirate could handle her, it took two
strong men to subdue that struggling fury. They hauled her upright and she threw back
her head in panting defiance. There was a cascade of red-bronze hair and Kinnison
saw-Clarrissa MacDougalI! And remembered that there had been some talk that they
were going to put her back into space service! The Lensman decided instantly what to
do.
“Stop, you swine!” he roared through his pirate mouthpiece. “Where do you think
you’re going with that nurse?”
“To the captain’s cabin, sir.” The huskies stopped short in amazement as that
roar filled the room, but answered the question concisely.
“Let her go!” Then, as the girl fled back to the huddled group in the corner. “Tell
the captain to come out here and assemble every officer and man of the crew. I want to
talk to you all at once.”
He had a minute or two in which to think, and he thought furiously, but
accurately. He had to do something, but whatever he did must be done strictly
according to the pirates’ own standards of ethics, if he made one slip it might be
Aldebaran I all over again. He knew how to keep from making that slip, he thought. But
also, and this was the hard part, he must work in something that would let those nurses
know that there was still hope, that there were more acts of this drama yet to come.
Otherwise he knew with a stark, cold certainty what would happen. He knew of what
stuff the space-nurses of the Patrol were made, knew that they could be driven just so
far, and no farther -alive.
There was a way out of that, too. In the childishness of his hospitalization he had
called Nurse MacDougall a dumbbell. He had thought of her, and had spoken to her
quite frankly, in uncomplimentary terms. But he knew that there was a real brain back of
that beautiful face, that a quick and keen intelligence resided under that red-bronze
thatch. Therefore when the assembly was complete he was ready, and in no uncertain
or ambiguous language he opened up.
“Listen, you-all of you” be roared. “This is the first time in months that we have
made such a haul as this, and a you fellows have the brazen gall to start helping
yourselves to the choicest stuff before anybody else gets a look at it. I tell you now to
lay off, and that goes exactly as it lays. I, personally, will kill any man that touches one
of those women before they arrive here at base. Now you, captain, are the first and
worst offender of the lot,” and he stared directly into the eyes of the officer whom he
had last seen entering the dungeon of the Wheelmen.
“I admit that you’re a good picker.” Kinnison’s voice was now venomously soft,
his intonation distinct with thinly veiled sarcasm “Unfortunately, however, your taste
agrees too well with mine. You see, captain, I’m going to need a nurse myself. I think
I’m coming down with something. And, since I’ve got to have a nurse, I’ll take that red-
headed one. I had a nurse once with hair just that color, who insisted on feeding me tea
and toast and a soft-boiled egg when I wanted beefsteak, and I’m going to take my
grudge out on this one here for all the red-headed nurses that ever lived. I trust that you
will pardon the length of this speech, but I want to give you my reasons in full for
cautioning you that that particular nurse is my own particular personal property. Mark
her for me, and see to it that she gets here-exactly as she is now.”
The captain had been afraid to interrupt his superior, but now he erupted.
“But see here, Blakeslee!” he stormed. “She’s mine, by every right. I captured
her, I saw her first, I’ve got her here . . . .”
“Enough of that back-talk, captain!” Kinnison sneered elaborately. “You know, of
course, that you are violating every rule by taking booty for yourself before division at
base, and that you can get shot for doing it.”
“But everybody does it!” protested the captain.
“Except when a superior officer catches him at it. Superiors get first pick, you
know,” the Lensman reminded him suavely.
“But I protest, sir! I’ll take it up with . . . . .
“Shut up!” Kinnison snarled, with cold finality. “Take it up with whom you please,
but remember this, my last warning. Bring her in to me as she is and you live. Touch
her and you die ! Now, you nurses, come over here to the board !”
Nurse MacDougall had been whispering furtively to the others and now, she led
the way, head high and eyes blazing defiance. She was an actress, as well as a nurse.
“Take a good, long look at this button, right here, marked ‘Relay 46,”‘ came curt
instructions. “If anybody aboard this ship touches any one of you, or even looks at you
as though he wants to, press this button and I’ll do the rest. Now, you big, red-headed
dumb-bell, look at me. Don’t start begging-yet. I just want to be sure you’ll know me
when you see me.”
“I’ll know you, never fear, you , . . you brat” she flared, thus informing the
Lensman that she had received his message. “I’ll not only know you-I’ll scratch your
eyes out on sight!”
“That’ll be a good trick if you can do it,” Kinnison sneered, and cut off.
“What’s it all about, Mac? What has got into you?” demanded one of the nurses,
as soon as the women were alone.
“I don’t know,”. she whispered. “Watch out, they may have spy-rays on us. I don’t
know anything, really, and the whole thing is too wildly impossible, too utterly fantastic
to make sense. But pass the word along to all the girls to ride this out, because my
Gray Lensman is in on it, somewhere and somehow. I don’t see how he can be,
possibly, but I Just know he is.”
For, at the first mention of tea and toast, before she perceived even an inkling of
the true situation, her mind had flashed back instantly to Kinnison, the most stubborn
and rebellious patient she had ever had. More, the only man she had ever known who
had treated her precisely as though she were a part of the hospital’s very furniture. As
is the way of women-particularly of beautiful women-she had orated of women’s rights
and of women’s status in the scheme of things. She had decried all special privileges,
and had stated, often and with heat, that she asked no odds of any man living or yet to
be born. Nevertheless, and also beautiful-womanlike, the thought had bitten deep that
here was a man who had never even realized that she was a woman, to say nothing of
realizing that she was an extraordinarily beautiful one! And deep within her and sternly