maneuvering, Class Three, on the tail. Tail over to belly landing. Hipe!”
The Bergenholms were cut and as the tremendously massive super-
dreadnought, inert, shot off at an angle under its Tellurian intrinsic velocity, Master Pilot
Number One proved his rating. As much a virtuoso of the banks and tiers of blast keys
and levers before him as a concert organist is of his instrument, his hands and feet
flashed hither and yon. Not music?—the bellowing, crescendo thunders of those jets
were music to the hard-boiled space-hounds who heard them. And in response to the
exact placement and the precisely-measured power of those blasts the great sky-rover
spun, twisted, and bucked as her prodigious mass was forced into motionlessness
relative to the terrain beneath her.
Three G’s, Kinnison reflected, while this was going on. Not bad—he’d guessed it
at four or better. He could sit up and take notice at three, and he did so.
This world wasn’t very densely populated, apparently. Quite a few cities, but all
just about on the equator. Nothing in the temperate zones at all; even the highest power
revealed no handiwork of man. Virgin forest, untouched prairie. Lots of roads and things
in the torrid zone, but nothing anywhere else. The speedster was making a rough and
unskillful, but not catastrophic landing.
The field which was their destination lay just outside a large city. Funny—it wasn’t
a space-field at all. No docks, no pits, no ships. Low, flat buildings—hangars. An air-
field, then, although not like any air-field he knew. Too small. Gyros? ‘Copters? Didn’t
see any—all little ships. Crates— biplanes and tripes. Made of wire and fabric. Wotta
woil, wotta woil!
The Dauntless landed, fairly close to the now deserted speedster.
“Hold everything, men,” Kinnison cautioned. “Something funny here. I’ll do a bit of
looking around before we open up.”
He was not surprised that the people in and around the airport were human to at
least ten places of classification; he had expected that from the planetary data. Nor was
he surprised at the fact that they wore no clothing. He had learned long since that, while
most human or near-human races—particularly the women—wore at least a few
ornaments, the wearing of clothing as such, except when it was actually needed for
protection, was far more the exception than the rule. And, just as a Martian, out of
deference to conventions, wears a light robe upon Tellus, Kinnison as a matter of
course stripped to his evenly-tanned hide when visiting planets upon which nakedness
was de rigueur. He had attended more than one state function, without a quibble or a
qualm, tastefully attired in his Lens.
No, the startling fact was that there was not a man in sight anywhere around the
place; there was nothing male perceptible as far as his sense of perception could reach.
Women were laboring, women were supervising, women were running the machines.
Women were operating the airplanes and servicing them. Women were in the offices.
Women and girls and little girls and girl babies filled the waiting rooms and the
automobile-like conveyances parked near the airport and running along the streets.
And, even before Kinnison had finished uttering his warning, while his hand was
in the air reaching for a spy-ray switch, he felt an alien force attempting to insinuate
itself into his mind.
Fat chance! With any ordinary mind it would have succeeded, but in the case of
the Gray Lensman it was just like trying to stick a pin unobtrusively into a panther. He
put up a solid block automatically, instantaneously; then, a fraction of a second later, a
thought-tight screen enveloped the whole vessel.
“Did any of you1 fellows . . .” he began, then broke off. They wouldn’t have felt it,
of course; their brains could have been read completely with them none the wiser. He
was the only Lensman aboard, and even most Lensmen couldn’t . . . this was his oyster.
But that kind of stuff, on such an apparently backward planet as this? It didn’t make
sense, unless that zwilnik . . . ah, this was his oyster, absolutely!
“Something funnier even than I thought—thought-waves,” he calmly continued
his original remark. “Thought I’d better undress to go out there, but I’m not going to. I’d
wear full armor, except that I may need my hands or have to move fast. If they get
insulted at my clothes I’ll apologize later.”
“But listen, Kim, you can’t go out there alone—especially without armor!”
“Sure I can. I’m not taking any chances. You fellows couldn’t do me much good
out there, but you can here. Break out a ‘copter and keep a spy-ray on me. If I give you
the signal, go to work with a couple of narrow needle-beams. Pretty sure that I won’t
need any help, but you can’t always tell.”
The airlock opened and Kinnison stepped out. He had a high-powered thought-
screen, but he did not need it—yet. He had his DeLameters. He had also a weapon
deadlier by far even than those mighty portables; a weapon so utterly deadly that he
had not used it. He did not need to test it— since Worsel had said that it would work, it
would. The trouble with it was that it could not merely disable: if used at all it killed, with
complete and grim finality. And behind him he had the full awful power of the Dauntless.
He had nothing to worry about.
Only when the space-ship had settled down upon and into the hard-packed soil
of the airport could those at work there realize just how big and how heavy the visitor
was. Practically everyone stopped work and stared, and they continued to stare as
Kinnison strode toward the office. The Lensman had landed upon many strange
planets, he had been met in divers fashions and with various emotions; but never before
had his presence stirred up anything even remotely resembling the sentiments written
so plainly upon these women’s faces and expressed even more plainly in their seething
thoughts.
Loathing, hatred, detestation—not precisely any one of the three, yet containing
something of each. As though he were a monstrosity, a revolting abnormality that
should be destroyed on sight. Beings such as the fantastically ugly, spider-like denizens
of Dekanore VI had shuddered at the sight of him, but their thoughts were mild
compared to these. Besides, that was natural enough. Any human being would appear
a monstrosity to such as those. But these women were human; as human as he was.
He didn’t get it, at all.
Kinnison opened the door and faced the manager, who was standing at that
other-worldly equivalent of a desk. His first glance at her brought to the surface of his
mind one of the peculiarities which he had already unconsciously observed. Here, for
the first time in his life, he saw a woman without any touch whatever of personal
adornment. She was tall and beautifully proportioned, strong and fine; her smooth skin
was tanned to a rich and even brown. She was clean, almost blatantly so.
But she wore no jewelry, no bracelets, no ribbons; no decoration of any sort or
kind. No paint, no powder, no touch of perfume. Her heavy, bushy eyebrows had never
been plucked or clipped. Some of her teeth had been expertly filled, and she had a two-
tooth bridge that would have done credit to any Tellurian dentist—but her hair! It, too,
was painfully clean, as was the white scalp beneath it, but aesthetically it was a mess.
Some of it reached almost to her shoulders, but it was very evident that whenever a lock
grew long enough to be a bother she was wont to grab it and hew it off, as close to the
skull as possible, with whatever knife, shears, or other implement came readiest to
hand.
These thoughts and the general inspection did not take any appreciable length of
time, of course. Before Kinnison had taken two steps toward the manager’s desk, he
directed a thought:
“Kinnison of Sol III—Lensman, Unattached. It is possible, however, that neither
Tellus nor the Lens are known upon this planet?”
“Neither is known, nor does anyone of Lyrane care to know anything of either,”
she replied coldly. Her brain was keen and clear; her personality vigorous, striking,
forceful. But, compared with Kinnison’s doubly-Arisian-trained mind, hers was woefully
slow. He watched her assemble the mental bolt which was intended to slay him then
and there. He let her send it, then struck back. Not lethally, not even paralyzingly, but
solidly enough so that she slumped down, almost unconscious, into a nearby chair.
“It’s good technique to size a man up before you tackle him, sister,” he advised
her when she had recovered. “Couldn’t you tell from the feel of my mind-block that you
couldn’t crack it?”
“I was afraid so,” she admitted, hopelessly, “but I had to kill you if I possibly
could. Since you are the stronger you will of course kill me.” Whatever else these