suppressed the thought had still rankled.
At the mention of beefsteak she had all -but screamed, gripping her knees with
frantic hands to keep her emotion down. For she had had no real hope, she was simply
fighting with everything she had until the hopeless end, which she had known could not
long be delayed. Now she gathered herself together and began to act.
When the word “dumb-bell” boomed from the speaker she knew, beyond doubt
or peradventure, that it was Kinnison, the Gray Lensman, who was really doing that
talking. It was crazy-it didn’t make any kind of sense at all-but it was, it must be, true.
And, again womanlike, she knew with a calm certainty that as long as that Gray
Lensman were alive and conscious, he would be complete master of any situation in
which he might find himself. Therefore she passed along her illogical but cheering
thought, and the nurses, being also women, accepted it without question as the actual
and accomplished fact.
They carried on, and when the captured hospital ship had docked at base,
Kinnison was completely ready to force matters to a conclusion. In addition to the chief
communications officer, he now had under his control a highly capable observer. To
handle two such minds was child’s play to the intellect which had directed, against their
full fighting wills, the minds of two and three quarters alert, powerful, and fully warned
officers of the Galactic Patrol!
“Good girl, Mac” he put his mind en rapport with hers and sent his message.
“Glad you got the idea. You did a good job of acting, and if you can do some more as
good we’ll be all set. Can do?”
“I’ll say I can!” she assented fervently. “I don’t know what you are doing, how you
can possibly do it or where you are, but that can wait. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it !”
“Make passes at the base commander,” he instructed her. “Hate me – the ape
I’m working through, you know, Blakeslee, his name is – like poison. Go into it big – all
jets wide open. You maybe could love him, but if I get you you’ll blow out your brains – if
any. You know the line – play up to him with everything you can bring to bear, and hate
me to hell and back. Help all you can to start a fight between us. If he falls for you hard
enough the blow-off comes then and there. If not, he’ll be able to do us all plenty of dirt.
I can kill a lot of them, but not enough of them quick enough.”
“He’ll fall,” she promised him gleefully, “like ten thousand bricks falling down a
well. Just watch my jets !”
And fall he did. He had not even seen a woman for months, and he expected
nothing except bitter-end resistance and suicide from any of these women of the Patrol.
Therefore he was rocked to the heels-set back upon his very haunches-when the most
beautiful woman he had ever seen came of her own volition into his arms, seeking in
them sanctuary from his own chief communications officer.
“I hate him!” she sobbed, nestling against the huge bulk of the commander’s
body and turning upon him the full blast of the high powered projectors which were her
eyes. “You wouldn’t be so mean to me, I just know you wouldn’t!” and her subtly
perfumed head sank upon his shoulder. The outlaw was just so much soft wax.
“I’ll say I wouldn’t be mean to you” his voice dropped to a gentle bellow. “Why,
you little sweetheart, I’ll marry you. I will so, by all the gods of space!”
It thus came about that nurse and base commander entered the control room
together, arms about each other.
“There he is!” she shrieked, pointing at the chief communications officer. “He’s
the one! Now let’s see you start something, you rat-faced clunker ! There’s one real
man around here, and he won’t let you touch me – ya-a-a!” She gave him a resounding
Bronx cheer, and-her escort swelled visibly.
“Is-that-so?” Kinnison sneered. “Get this, glamor-puss, and get it straight. I
marked you for mine as soon as, I saw you, and mine you’re going to be, whether you
like it or not and no matter what anybody says or does about it. As for you, captain,
you’re too late-I saw her first. And now, you red-headed tomato, come over here where
you belong.”
She snuggled closer into the commander’s embrace and the big man turned
purple.
“What d’you mean, too late!” he roared. “You took her away from the ship’s
captain, didn’t you? You said that superior officers get first choice, didn’t you? I’m the
boss here and I’m taking her away from you, get me? You’ll stand for it, too, Blakeslee,
and like it. One word out of you and I’ll have you spread-eagled across the mouth of
number six projector!”
“Superior officers don’t always get first choice,” Kinnison replied, with bitter, cold
ferocity, but choosing his words with care. “It depends entirely on who the two men
are.”
Now was the time to strike. Kinnison knew that if the commander kept his head,
the lives of those valiant women were forfeit, and his own whole plan seriously
endangered. He himself could get away, of course-but he could not see himself doing it
under these conditions. No, he must goad the commander to a frenzy. And without
swearing would be better-the ape was used to invectives that would raise blisters on
armor plate. Mac would help. In fact, and without his suggestion, she was even then
hard at work fomenting trouble between the two men.
“You don’t have to take that kind of stuff off of anybody, big boy,” she was
whispering, urgently. “Don’t call in a crew to-spread-eagle him, either, beam him out
yourself. You’re a better man than he is, any time. Blast him down-that’ll show him
who’s who around here !”
“When the inferior is such a man as I am, and the superior such a louse as you
are,” the biting, contemptuously sneering voice went on without a break, “Such a
bloated swine, such a mangy, low-down cur, such a pussy-gutted tub of lard, such a
brainless, filthy spawn of the lowest dregs of the rottenest scum of space, such an
utterly incompetent, self-opinionated, misbegotten abortion as you are . . . . .”
The outraged pirate, bellowing profanity in wildly mounting rage, tried to break in,
but Kinnison-Blakeslee’s voice, if no louder than his, was far more penetrant.
“Then, in that case, the inferior keeps the redheaded wench himself. Put that on
a tape, you white-livered coward, and eat it!”
Still bellowing, the fat man had turned and was leaping toward the arms cabinet.
“Blast him! Blast him down!” the nurse had been shrieking, and, as the raging
commander neared the cabinet, no one noticed that her latest and loudest scream was
“Kim! Blast him down! Don’t wait any longer-beam him before he gets a gun !”
But the Lensman did not act-yet. Although almost every man of the pirate crew
stared spell-bound, Kinnison’s enslaved observer had for many seconds been jamming
the sub-ether with Helmuth’s personal and urgent call. It was of almost vital importance
to his plan that Helmuth himself should see the climax of this scene. Therefore
Blakeslee stood immobile while his profanely raving superior reached the cabinet and
tore it open.
CHAPTER 21
The Second Line
Blakeslee was already armed-Kinnison had seen to that-and as the base commander
wrenched open the arms cabinet Helmuth’s private look-out set began to draw current.
Helmuth himself was now looking on and the enslaved observer had already begun to
trace his beam. Therefore as the furious pirate whirled around with raised DeLameter
he faced one already ablaze, and in a matter of seconds there was only a charred and
smoking heap where he had stood.
Kinnison wondered that Helmuth’s cold voice was not already snapping from the
speaker, but he was soon to discover the reason for that silence. Unobserved by the
Lensman, one of the observers had recovered sufficiently from his shocked amazement
to turn in a riot alarm to the guard-room. Five armed men answered that call on the
double, stopped and glanced around.
“Guards! Blast Blakeslee down!” Helmuth’s unmistakable voice blared from his
speaker.
Obediently and manfully enough the five guards tried, and, had it actually been
Blakeslee confronting them so defiantly, they probably would have succeeded. It was
the body of the communications officer, it is true. The mind operating the muscles of
that body, however, was the mind of Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, the fastest man
with a hand-gun old Tellus had ever produced, keyed up, expecting the move, and with
two DeLameters out and poised at hip! This was the being whom Helmuth was so
nonchalantly ordering his minions to slay! Faster than any watching eye could follow,