could point out to you, you can sell that ‘junk’ you’re wearing for —at a rough
guess—about fifty thousand days’ work.”
“Impossible!”
“True, nevertheless. So, before we land, you’d better give them to me, so that I
can send them to a bank for you, under guard.”
“If I land.” As Kinnison spoke Illona’s manner changed; darkened as though an
inner light had been extinguished. “You have been so friendly and nice, I was forgetting
where I am and the business ahead. Putting it off won’t make it any easier. Better be
getting on with it, don’t you think?”
“Oh, that? That’s all done, long ago.”
“What?” she almost screamed. “It isn’t! It couldn’t be!”
“Sure. I got most of the stuff I wanted last night, while I was changing your
thought-screen battery. Menjo Bleeko, your big-shot boss, and so on.”
“You didn’t! But . . . you must have, at that, to know it . . . but you didn’t hurt me,
or anything . . . you couldn’t have operated—changed me, because I have all my
memories . . . or seem to . . . I’m not an idiot, I mean any more than usual . . .”
“You’ve been taught a good many sheer lies, and quite a few half truths,” he
informed her, evenly. “For instance, what did they tell you that hollow tooth would do to
you when you broke the seal?”
“Make my mind a blank. But one of their doctors would get hold of me very soon
and give me the antidote that would restore me exactly as I was before.”
“That is one of the half truths. It would certainly have made your mind a blank,
but only by blasting most of your memory files out of existence. Their therapists would
‘restore’ you by substituting other memories for your real ones—whatever other ones
they pleased.”
“How horrible! How perfectly ghastly! That was why you treated it so, then; as
though it were a snake. I wondered at your savagery toward it. But how, really, do I
know that you are telling the truth?”
“You don’t,” he admitted. “You will have to make your own decisions after
acquiring full information.”
“You are a therapist,” she remarked, shrewdly. “But if you operated on my mind
you didn’t ‘save’ me, because I still think exactly the same as 1 always did about the
Patrol and everything pertaining to it . . . or do I? . . . Or is this . . .” her eyes widened
with a startling possibility.
“No, I didn’t operate,” he assured her. “No such operation can possibly be done
without leaving scars—breaks in the memory chains—that you can find in a minute if
you look for them. There are no breaks or blanks in any chain in your mind.”
“No—at least, I can’t find any,” she reported after a few minutes’ thought. “But
why didn’t you? You can’t turn me loose this way, you know—a z . . . an enemy of your
society.”
“You don’t need saving,” he grinned. “You believe in absolute good and absolute
evil, don’t you?”
“Why of course—certainly! Everybody must!”
“Not necessarily. Some of the greatest thinkers in the universe do not.”1 His voice
grew somber, then lightened again. “Such being the case, however, all you need to
‘save’ yourself is experience, observation, and knowledge of both sides of the question.
You’re a colossal little fraud, you know.”
“How do you mean?” She blushed vividly, her eyes wavered.
“Pretending to be such a hard-boiled egg. ‘Never broke yet’. Why should you
break, when you’ve never been under pressure?”
“I have so!” she flared. “What do you suppose I’m carrying this knife for?”
“Oh, that.” He mentally shrugged the wicked little dagger aside as he pondered.
“You little lamb hi wolfs clothing . . . but at that, your memories may, I think, be
altogether too valuable to monkey with . . . there’s something funny about this whole
matrix—damned funny. Come clean, baby-face— why?”
“They told me to,” she admitted, wriggling slightly. ‘To act tough—really tough. As
though I were an adventuress who had been everywhere and had done . . . done
everything. That the worse I acted the better I would get along in your Civilization.”
“I suspected something of the sort. And what did you zwil—excuse me, you
folks—go to Lyrane for, hi the first place?”
“I don’t know. From chance remarks I gathered that we were to land on one of
the planets—any one, I supposed—and wait for somebody.”
“What were you, personally, going to do?”
“I don’t know that, either—not exactly, that is. I was to take some kind of a ship
somewhere, but I don’t know what, or when, or where, or why, or whether I was to go
alone or take somebody. Whoever it was that we were going to meet was going to give
us orders.”
“How come those women killed your men? Didn’t they have thought-screens,
too?”
“No. They weren’t agents—just soldiers. They shot about a dozen of the
Lyranians when we first landed, just to show their authority, then they dropped dead.”
“Um. Poor technique, but typically Boskonian. Your trip to Tellus was more or
less accidental, then?”
“Yes. I wanted her to take me back to Lonabar, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t
have, anyway, because she didn’t know any more about where it is than I did.”
“Huh?” Kinnison blurted. “You don’t know where your own home planet is? What
the hell kind of a pilot are you, anyway?”
“Oh, I’m not really a pilot. Just what they made me learn after we left Lonabar, so
I’d be able to make that trip. Lonabar wasn’t shown on any of the charts we had aboard.
Neither was Lyrane—that was why I had to make my own chart, to get back there from
Tellus.”
“But you must know something!” Kinnison fumed. “Stars? Constellations? The
Galaxy—the Milky Way?”
“The Milky Way, yes. By its shape, Lonabar isn’t anywhere near the center of the
galaxy. I’ve been trying to remember if there were any noticeable star configurations,
but I can’t. You see, I wasn’t the least bit interested in such things, then.”
“Hell’s Brazen Hinges! You can’t be that dumb—nobody can! Any Tellurian infant
old enough to talk knows either the Big Dipper or the Southern Cross! Hold it—I’m
coming in and find out for myself.”
He came—but he did not find out.
“Well, I guess people can be that dumb, since you so indubitably are,” he
admitted then. “Or—maybe—aren’t there any?”
“Honestly, Lensman, I don’t know. There were lots of stars, of course . . . if there
were any striking configurations I might have noticed them; but I might not have, too. As
I said, I wasn’t the least bit interested.”
“That was very evident,” dryly. “However, excuse me, please, for talking so
rough.”
“Rough? Of course, sir,” Illona giggled. “That wasn’t rough, comparatively—and
nobody ever apologized before—I’d like awfully well to help you, sir, if I possibly can.”
“I know you would, Toots, and thanks. To get back onto the beam, what put it into
Helen’s mind to go to Tellus?”
“She learned about Tellus and the Patrol from our minds —none of them could
believe at first that there were any inhabited worlds except their own—and wanted to
study them at first hand. She took our ship and made me fly it.”
“I see. I’m not surprised. I thought that there was something remarkably screwy
about those activities—they seemed so aimless and so barren of results—but I couldn’t
put my finger on it. And we crowded her so close that she decided to flit for home. You
could see her, but nobody else could—that she didn’t want to.”
“That was it. She said that she was being hampered by a mind of power. That
was you, of course?”
-And others. Well, that’s that, for a while.”
He called the tailor in. No, he didn’t have a thing to make a girl’s dress out of,
especially not a girl like that. She should wear glamorette, and sheer—very sheer. He
didn’t know a thing about ladies’ tailoring, either; he hadn’t made a gown since he was
knee-high to a duck. All he had hi the shop was coat-linings. Perhaps nylon would do,
after a fashion. He remembered now, he did have a bolt of nylon that wasn’t any good
for linings—not stiff enough, and red. Too heavy, of course, but it would drape well.
It did. She came swaggering back, an hour or so later, the hem of her skirt
swishing against the tops of her high-laced boots.
“Do you like it?” she asked, pirouetting gayly.
“Fine!” he applauded, and it was. The tailor had understated tremendously both
his ability and the resources of his shop.
“Now what? I don’t have to stay in my room all the time now, please?”
“I’ll say not. The ship is yours. I want you to get acquainted with every man on