mighty outrush of their atmosphere. Wonderingly, Kinnison looked at his air-gauges. He
had enough-if he hurried.
And hurry he did. He could hurry, since there was practically no atmosphere to
impede his flight. Up the five-miles-deep shaft he shot and out into space. His
chronometer, built to withstand even severer shocks than that of his fall, told him where
his speedster was to be found, and in a matter of minutes he found her. He forced his
rebellious right arm into the sleeve of his armor and fumbled at the lock. It yielded. The
port swung open. He was inside his own ship again.
Again the encroaching universe of blackness threatened, but again he fought it
off. He could not pass out-yet! Dragging himself to the board, he laid his course upon
Sol., too distant by far to permit of the selection of such a tiny objective as its planet
Earth. He connected the automatic controls.
He was weakening fast, and he knew it. But from somewhere and in some
fashion he must get strength to do what trust be done-and somehow he did it. He cut in
the Berg, cut in maximum blast. Hang on, Kim! Hang on for just a second more! He
disconnected the spacer. He` killed the detector nullifiers. Then, with the utterly last
remnant of his strength he thought into his Lens.
“Haynes.” The thought went out blurred, distorted, weak. “Kinniston. I’m coming .
. . . . com . . . . . ”
He was done. Out, cold. Utterly spent. He had already done too much – far, far
too much. He had driven that pitifully mangled body of his to its ultimately last possible
movement, his wracked and tortured mind to its ultimately last possible thought. The
last iota of even his tremendous reserve of vitality was consumed and he plunged,
parsecs deep, into the black depths of oblivion which bad so long and so
unsuccessfully been trying to engulf him. And on and on the speedster flashed ‘at the
very peak of her unimaginably high speed, carrying the insensible, the utterly spent, the
sorely wounded, the abysmally unconscious Lensman toward his native Earth.
* * *
But Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, had done everything that had had to be
done before he blacked out. His final thought, feeble though it was, and incomplete, did
its work.
Port Admiral Haynes was seated at his desk, discussing matters of import with
an office-full of executives, when that thought arrived. Hardened old spacehound that
he was, and survivor of many encounters and hospitalizations, he knew instantly what
that thought connoted and from the depths of what dire need it had been sent.
Therefore, to the amazement of the officers in the room, he suddenly leaped to
his feet, seized his microphone, and snapped out orders. Orders, and still more orders.
Every vessel in seven sectors, of whatever class or tonnage, was to shove its detectors
out to the limit. Kinnison’s speedster is out there somewhere. Find her-get her-kill her
drive and drag her in here, to number ten landing field. Get a pilot here, fast-no, two
pilots, in armor. Get them off the top of the board, too-Henderson and Watson or
Schermerhorn if they’re anywhere within range. He then Lensed his lifelong friend
Surgeon-Marshal Lacy, at Base Hospital.
“Sawbones, I’ve got a boy out that’s badly hurt. He’s coming in free-you know
what that means. Send over a good doctor. And have you got a nurse who knows how
to use a personal neutralizer and who isn’t afraid to go into the net?”
“Coming myself. Yes.” The doctor’s thought was as crisp as the admiral’s. “When
do you want us?”
“As soon as they get their tractors on that speedster — you’ll know when that
happens.”
Then, neglecting all other business, the Port Admiral directed in person the far-
flung screen of ships searching for Kinnison’s flying midget.
Eventually she was found, and Haynes, cutting off his plates, leaped to a closet,
in which was hanging his own armor. Unused for years, nevertheless it was kept in
readiness for instant service, and now, at long last, the old Space-hound had a good
excuse to use it again. He could have sent out one of the younger men, of course, but
this was one job that he was going to do himself.
Armored, he strode out into the landing field across the paved way. There
awaiting him were two armored figures, the two top-bracket pilots. There were the
doctor and the nurse. He barely saw-or, rather, he saw without noticing -a saucy white
cap atop a riot of red-bronze-auburn curls, a symmetrical young body in its spotless
white. He did not notice the face at all. What he saw was that there was a neutralizer
strapped snugly into the curve of her back, that it was fitted properly, and that it was not
yet functioning.
For this that faced them was no ordinary job. The speedster would land free.
Worse, the admiral feared-and rightly-that Kinnison would also be free, but
independently, with an intrinsic velocity different from that of his ship. They must enter
the speedster, take her out into space, and inert her. Kinnison must be taken out of the
speedster, inerted, his velocity matched to that of the flier, and brought back aboard.
Then and only then could doctor and nurse begin to work on him. Then they would
have to land as fast as a landing could be made-the boy should have been in hospital
long ago. .
And during all these evolutions and until their return to ground the rescuers
themselves would remain inertialess. Ordinarily such-visitors left the ship, inserted
themselves, and came back to it inert, under their own power. But now there was no
time for that. They had to get Kinnison to the hospital, and besides, the doctor and the
nurse-particularly the nurse-could not be expected to be space-suit navigators. They
would all take it in the net, and that was another reason for haste. For while they were
gone their intrinsic velocity would remain unchanged, while that of their present
surroundings would be changing constantly. The longer they were gone the greater
would become the discrepancy. Hence the net.
The net-a leather-and-canvas sack, lined with sponge-rubber-padded coiled
steel, anchored to ceiling and to walls and to floor through every shock-absorbing
artifice of beryllium-copper springs and of rubber and nylon cable that the mind of man
had been able to devise. It takes something to absorb and to dissipate the kinetic
energy which may reside within a human body when its intrinsic velocity does not match
the intrinsic velocity of its surroundings-that is, if that body is not to be mashed to a
pulp. It takes something, also, to enable any human being to face without flinching the
prospect of going into that net, especially in ignorance of exactly how much kinetic
energy will have to be dissipated. Haynes cogitated, studying the erect, supple young
back, then spoke.
“Maybe we’d better cancel the nurse, Lacy, or get her a suit . . . . .
“Time is too important,” the girl herself put in, crisply. “Don’t worry about me, Port
Admiral, I’ve been in the net before.”
She turned toward Haynes as she spoke, and for the first time he really saw her
face. Why, she was a real beauty -a knockout-a seven-sector callout . . . . .
“Here she is!” In the grip of a tractor the speedster flashed to ground in front of
the waiting five, and they hurried aboard.
They . hurried, but there was no flurry, no confusion. Each knew exactly what to
do, and each did it.
Out into space shot the little vessel, jerking savagely downward and sidewise as
one of the pilots cut the Bergenholm. Out of the airlock flew the Port Admiral and the
helpless, unconscious Kinnison, inertialess both and now chained together. Off they
darted, in a new direction and with tremendous speed as Haynes cut Kinnison’s
neutralizer. There was a mighty double flare as the drivers of both space-suits went to
work.
As soon as it was safe to do so, out darted an armored figure with a space-line,
whose grappling end clinked into a socket of the old man’s armor as the pilot rammed it
home. Then, as an angler plays a fish, two husky pilots, feet wide – braced against the
steel portal of the air-lock and bodies sweating with effort, heaving when they could
and giving line only when they must helped the laboring drivers to overcome the
difference in velocity.
Soon the Lensmen, young and old, were inside. Doctor and nurse went instantly
to work, with the calmness and precision so characteristic of their highly-skilled crafts.
In a trice they had him out of his armor, out of his leather, and into a hammock,
perceiving at once that except for a few pads of gauze they could do nothing for their
patient until they had him upon an operating table. Meanwhile the pilots, having swung