lay you out cold. I’ll send a thought along, just to make sure.”
But he did more than that, for even as he spoke his sense of perception was
already in the room to which they were going. It was a large room, and bare; filled with
tables except for a clear central space upon which at the moment a lithe and supple
person was doing what seemed to be a routine of acrobatic dancing, interspersed with
suddenly motionless posings and posturings of extreme technical difficulty. At the tables
were seated a hundred or so Lyranians, eating.
Kinnison was not interested in the floor show, whatever it was, nor in the massed
Lyranians. The zwilnik was what he was after. Ah, there she was, at a ringside table—a
small, square table seating four—near the door. Her back was to it—good. At her left,
commanding the central view of the floor, was a redhead, sitting in a revolving, reclining
chair, the only such seat in the room. Probably the Big Noise herself— the Elder One.
No matter, he wasn’t interested in her, either—yet. His attention flashed back to his
proposed quarry and he almost gasped.
For she, like Dessa Desplaines, was an Aldebaranian, and she was everything
that the Desplaines woman had been—more so, if possible. She was a seven-sector
callout, a thionite dream if there ever was one. And jewelry! This Lyranian tiger hadn’t
exaggerated that angle very much, at that. Her breast-shields were of gold and platinum
filigree, thickly studded with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, in intricate designs. Her
shorts, or rather trunks, made of something that looked like glamorete, blazed with
gems. A cleverly concealed dagger, with a jeweled haft and a vicious little fang of a
blade. Rings, even a thumb-ring. A necklace which was practically a collar flashed all
the colors of the rainbow. Bracelets, armlets, anklets and knee-bands. High-laced dress
boots, jeweled from stem to gudgeon. Ear-rings, and a meticulous, micrometrically
precise coiffure held in place by at least a dozen glittering buckles, combs and
barrettes.
“Holy Klono’s brazen tendons!” the Lensman whistled to himself, for every last,
least one of those stones was the clear quill. “Half a million credits if it’s a millo’s worth!”
But he was not particularly interested in this jeweler’s vision of what the well-
dressed lady zwilnik will wear. There were other, far more important things. Yes, she
had a thought-screen. It was off, and its battery was mighty low, but it would still work;
good thing he had blocked the warning. And she had a hollow tooth, too, but he’d see to
it that she didn’t get a chance to swallow its contents. She knew plenty, and he hadn’t
chased her this far to let her knowledge be obliterated by that hellish Boskonian drug.
They were at the door now. Disregarding the fiercely-driven metal protests of his
companion, Kinnison flung it open, stiffening up his mental guard as he did so.
Simultaneously he invaded the zwilnik’s mind with a flood of force, clamping down so
hard that she could not move a single voluntary muscle. Then, paying no attention
whatever to the shocked surprise of the assembled Lyranians, he strode directly up to
the Aldebaranian and bent her head back into the crook of his elbow. Forcibly but gently
he opened her mouth. With thumb and forefinger he deftly removed the false tooth.
Releasing her then, mentally and physically, he dropped his spoil to the cement floor
and ground it savagely to bits under his hard and heavy heel.
The zwilnik screamed wildly, piercingly at first. However, finding that she was
getting no results, from Lensman or Lyranian, she subsided quickly into alertly watchful
waiting.
Still unsatisfied, Kinnison flipped out one of his DeLameters and flamed the
remains of the capsule of worse than paralyzing fluid, caring not a whit that his vicious
portable, even in that brief instant, seared a hole a foot deep into the floor. Then and
only then did he turn his attention to the redhead in the boss’s chair.
He had to hand it to Elder Sister—through all this sudden and to her entirely
unprecedented violence of action she hadn’t turned a hair. She had swung her chair
around so that she was facing him. Her back was to the athletic dancer who, now
holding a flawlessly perfect pose, was going on with the act as though nothing out of the
ordinary were transpiring. She was leaning backward in the armless swivel chair, her
right foot resting upon its pedestal. Her left ankle was crossed over her right knee, her
left knee rested lightly against the table’s top. Her hands were clasped together at the
nape of her neck, supporting her red-thatched head; her elbows spread abroad in easy,
indolent grace. Her eyes, so deeply, darkly green as to be almost black stared up
unwinkingly into the Lensman’s—”insolently” was the descriptive word that came first to
his mind.
If the Elder Sister was supposed to be old, Kinnison reflected as he studied
appreciatively the startlingly beautiful picture which the artless Chief Person of this tribe
so unconsciously made, she certainly belied her looks. As far as looks went, she really
qualified—whatever it took, she in abundant measure had. Her hair was not really red,
either. It was a flamboyant, gorgeous auburn, about the same color as Clarrissa’s own,
and just as thick. And it wasn’t all haggled up. Accidentally, of course, and no doubt
because on her particular job her hair didn’t get in the way very often, it happened to be
a fairly even, shoulder-length bob. What a mop! And damned if it wasn’t wavy! Just as
she was, with no dolling up at all, she’d be a primary beam on any man’s planet. She
had this zwilnik houri here, knockout that she was and with all her war-paint and
feathers, blasted clear out of the ether. But this queen bee had a sting; she was still
boring away at his shield. He’d better let her know that she didn’t even begin to have
enough jets to swing that load.
“QX, ace, cut the gun!” he directed, crisply. “Ace”, from him, was a
complimentary term indeed. “Pipe down— that’s all of that kind of stuff from you. I stood
for this much of it, just to show you that you can’t get to the first check-station with that
kind of fuel, but enough is a great plenty.” At the sheer cutting power of the thought,
rebroadcast no doubt by the airport manager, Lyranian activity throughout the room
came to a halt. This was decidedly out of the ordinary. For a male mind—any male
mind—to be able even momentarily to resist that of the meanest person of Lyrane was
starkly unthinkable. The Elder’s graceful body tensed, into her eyes there crept a
dawning doubt, a peculiar, wondering uncertainty. Of fear there was none; all these
sexless Lyranian women were brave to the point of fool-hardiness.
“You tell her, draggle-pate,” he ordered his erstwhile guide. “It took me hell’s own
time to make you understand that I mean business, but you talk her language—see how
fast you can get the thing through Her Royal Nibs’s skull.”
It did not take long. The lovely, dark-green eyes held conviction, now; but also a
greater uncertainty.
“It will be best, I think, to kill you now, instead of allowing you to leave . . .” she
began.
Allow me to leave!” Kinnison exploded. “Where do you get such funny ideas as
that killing stuff? Just who, Toots, is going to keep me from leaving?”
“This.” At the thought a weirdly conglomerate monstrosity which certainly had not
been in the dining hall an instant before leaped at Kinnison’s throat. It was a frightful
thing indeed, combining the worst features of the reptile and the feline, a serpent’s head
upon a panther’s body. Through the air it hurtled, terrible claws unsheathed to rend and
venomous fangs out-thrust to stab.
Kinnison had never before met that particular form of attack, but he knew
instantly what it was—knew that neither leather nor armor of proof nor screen of force
could stop it. He knew that the thing was real only to the woman and himself, that it was
not only invisible, but non-existent to everyone else. He also knew how ultimately deadly
the creature was, knew that if claw or fang should strike him he would die then and
there.
Ordinarily very efficient, to the Lensman this method of slaughter was crude and
amateurish. No such figment of any other mind could harm him unless he knew that it
was coming; unless his mind was given ample time in which to appreciate—in reality, to
manufacture—the danger he was in. And in that time his mind could negate it. He had
two defenses. He could deny the monster’s existence, in which case it would simply
disappear. Or, a much more difficult, but technically a much nicer course, would be to
take over control and toss it back at her.