Therefore, as he struck and struck and struck again, the cell became a gorily
reeking slaughter-pen, its every corner high-piled with the shattered corpses of the
Wheelmen and its floor running with blood and slime. The last few of the attackers,
unwilling to face longer that irresistible steel, wheeled away, and Kinnison thought
flashingly of what he should do next.
This trip was a bust so far. He couldn’t do himself a bit of good here now, and
he’d better flit while he was still in one piece. How? The door? No. Couldn’t make it-
he’d run out of time quick that way. His screens would stop small-arms projectiles, but
they knew that as well as he did. They’d use a young cannon-or, more probably, a
semiportable. Better take out the wall. That would give them something else to think
about, too, while he was doing his flit.
Only a fraction of a second was taken up by these thoughts, then Kinnison was
at the wall. He set his DeLamater to minimum aperture and at maximum blast, to throw
an irresistible cutting pencil. Through the wall that pencil pierced, up, over, and around.
But, fast as the Lensman had acted, he was still too late. There came trundling
into the room behind him a low, four-wheeled truck, bearing a complex and monstrous
mechanism. Kinnison whirled to face it. As he turned the section of the wall upon which
he had been at work blew outward with a crash. The ensuing rush of escaping
atmosphere swept the Lensman up and whisked him out through the opening and into
the shaft. In the meantime the mechanism upon the truck had begun a staccato,
grinding roar, and as it roared Kinnison felt slugs ripping through his armor and tearing
through his flesh, each as crushing, crunching, paralyzing a blow as though it had been
inflicted by vanBuskirk’s space axe.
This was the first time Kinnison had ever been really badly wounded, and it
made him sick. But. sick and numb, senses reeling at the shock of his slug-torn body,
his right hand flashed to the external controller of his neutralizer. For he was falling
inert. Only ten or fifteen meters to the bottom, as remembered it-he had mightily little
time to waste if he were not to land inert. He snapped the controller. Nothing happened.
Something had been shot away. His driver, too, was dead. Snapping the sleeve of his
armor into its clamp he began to withdraw his arm in order to operate the internal
controls, but he ran out of tine. He crashed, on the top of a subsiding pile of masonry
which had preceded him, but which had not yet attained a state of equilibrium,
underneath a shower of similar material which rebounded from his armor in a boiler-
shop clangor of noise.
Well it was that that heap of masonry had not yet had time to settle into form, for
in some slight measure it acted as a cushion to break the Lensman’s fall. But an inert
fall of forty feet, even cushioned by sliding rocks, is in no sense a light one. Kinnison
crashed. It seemed as though a thousand pile-drivers struck him at once. Surges of
almost unbearable agony swept over him as bones snapped and bruised flesh gave
way, and he knew dimly that a merciful tide of oblivion was reaching up to engulf his
shrieking, suffering mind.
But, foggily at first in the stunned confusion of his entire being, something stirred,
that unknown and -unknowable something, that indefinable ultimate quality that had
made him what he was. He lived, and while a Lensman lived he did not quit. To quit
was to die then and there, since he was losing sir fast. He had plastic in his kit, of
course, and the holes were small. He must plug those leaks, and plug them quick. His
left arm, he found, he could not move at all. It must be smashed pretty badly. Every
shallow breath was a ‘searing pain-that meant a rib or two gone out. Luckily, however,
he was not breathing blood, therefore his lungs must still be intact. He could move his
right arm, although it seemed like a lump of clay or a limb belonging to someone else.
But, mustering all his power of will, he made it move. He dragged it out of the armor’s
clamped sleeve, and forced the leaden hand to slide through the welter of blood that
seemed almost to fill the bulge of his armor. He found his kit-box, and, after an eternity
of pain-wracked time, he compelled his sluggish hand to open it and to take out the
plastic.
Then, in a continuously crescendo throbbing of agony, he forced his maimed,
crushed, and broken body to writhe and to wriggle about, so that his one sound hand
could find and stop the holes through which his precious air was whistling out and
away. Find them he did, and quickly, and seal them tight, but when he had plugged the
last one he slumped down, spent and exhausted. He did not hurt so much, now, his
suffering had mounted to such terrific heights of intolerable keenness that the nerves
themselves, in outraged protest at carrying such a load, had blocked it off.
There was much more to do, but he simply could not do it without a rest. Even
his iron will could not drive his tortured muscles to any further effort until they had been
allowed to recuperate a little from what they had gone through.
How much air did he have left, if any, he wondered, foggily and with an entirely
detached. and disinterested impersonality. Maybe his tanks were empty. Of course it
couldn’t have taken him so long to plug those leaks as it had seemed to, or he wouldn’t
have had any air left at all, in tanks or suit. He couldn’t, however, have much left. He
would look at his gauges and see.
But now he found that he could not move even his eyeballs, so deep was the
coma that was enveloping him. Away off somewhere there was a billowy expanse of
blackness, utterly heavenly in its deep, softly-cushioned comfort, and from that sea of
peace and surcease there came reaching to embrace him huge, soft, tender arms. Why
suffer, something crooned at him. It was so much easier to let go!
CHAPTER 17
Nothing Serious at All
Kinnison did not lose consciousness-quite. There was too much to do, too much that
had to be done. He had to get out of here. He had to get back to his speedster. He had,
by hook or by crook, to get back to Prime Basel Therefore, grimly, doggedly, teeth tight-
locked in the enhancing agony of every movement, he drew again upon those hidden,
those deeply buried resources which even he had no idea he possessed. His code was
simple, the code of the Lens. While a Lensman lived he did not quit. Kinnison was a
Lensman. Kinnison lived. Kinnison did not quit.
He fought back that engulfing tide of blackness, wave by wave as it came. He
beat down by sheer force of will those tenderly beckoning, those sweetly seducing arms
of oblivion. He forced the mass of protesting putty that was his body to do what had to
be done. He thrust styptic gauze into the most copiously bleeding of his wounds. He
was burned, too, he discovered then-they must have had a high-powered needle-beam
on that truck, as well as the rifle-but he could do nothing about burns. There simply
wasn’t time.
He found the power lead that had been severed by a bullet. Stripping the
insulation was an almost impossible job, but it was finally accomplished, after a
fashion. Bridging the gap proved to be even a worse one. Since there was no slack, the
ends could not be twisted together, but had to be joined by a short piece of spare wire,
which in turn had to be stripped and then twisted with each end of the severed lead.
That task, too, he finally finished, working purely by feel although he was, and half-
conscious withal in a wracking haze of pain.
Soldering those joints was of course out of the question. He was afraid even to
try to insulate them with tape, lest the loosely-twined strands should fall apart in the
attempt. He did have some dry handkerchiefs, however, if he could reach them. He
could, and did, and wrapped one carefully about the wires’ bare joints. Then,
apprehensively, he tried his neutralizer. Wonder of wonder, it worked! So did his driver!
In moments then he was rocketing up the shaft, and as he passed the opening
out of which he had been blown he realized with amazement that what had seemed to
him like hours must have been minutes only, and few even of them. For the frantic
Wheelmen were just then lifting into place the temporary shield which was to stem the