now owned in fee simple half of the ship and nine-tenths of the crew. Why in Palain’s
purple hells couldn’t she have had a brain? How could anybody be dumb enough not to
know the galactic coordinates of their own planet? Not even to know anything that could
help locate it? But at that, she was probably about as smart as most—you couldn’t
expect any other woman in the galaxy to have a mind like Mac’s . . .
For minutes, then, he abandoned his problem and reveled in visions of the
mental and physical perfections of his fiancee. But this was getting him nowhere, fast.
The girl or the jewels —which? They were the only real angles he had.
He sent out a call for her, and in a few minutes she came swirling in. How
different she was from what she had been! Gone were the somberness, the dread, the
terror which had oppressed her; gone were the class-conscious inhibitions against
which she had been rebelling, however subconsciously, since childhood. Here she was
free! The boys were free, everybody was free! She had expanded
tremendously—unfolded. She was living as she had never dreamed it possible to live.
Each new minute was an adventure in itself. Her black eyes, once so dull, sparkled with
animation; radiated her sheer joy in living. Even her jet-black hair-seemed to have taken
on a new luster and gloss, in its every, precisely-arranged wavelet.
“Hi, Lensman!” she burst out, before Kinnison could say a word or think a thought
in greeting. “I’m so glad you sent for me, because there’s something I’ve been wanting
to ask you since yesterday. The boys are going to throw a blow-out, with all kinds of
stunts, and they want me to do a dance. QX, do you think?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Clothes,” she explained. “I told them I couldn’t dance in a dress, and they said I
wasn’t supposed to, that acrobats didn’t wear dresses when they performed on Tellus,
that my regular clothes were just right. I said they were trying to string me and they
swore they weren’t—said to ask the Old Man . . .” she broke off, two knuckles jammed
into her mouth, expressive eyes wide in sudden fright. “Oh, excuse me, sir,” she
gasped. “I didn’t. . .”
” ‘Smaller? What bit you?” Kinnison asked, then got it. “Oh —the ‘Old Man’, huh?
QX, angel-face, that’s standard nomenclature in the Patrol. Not with you folks, though, I
take it?”
“I’ll say not,” she breathed. She acted as though a catastrophe had been averted
by the narrowest possible margin. “Why, if anybody got caught even thinking such a
thing, the whole crew would go into the steamer that very minute. And if I would dare to
say ‘Hi’ to Menjo Bleeko . . . !” she shuddered.
“Nice people,” Kinnison commented.
“But are you sure that the . . . that I’m not getting any of the boys into trouble?”
she pleaded. “For, after all, none of them ever dare call you that to your face, you
know.”
“You haven’t been around enough yet,” he assured her. “On duty, no; that’s
discipline—necessary for efficiency. And I haven’t hung around the wardrooms much of
late—been too busy. But at the party you’ll be surprised at some of the things they call
me—if you happen to hear them. You’ve been practicing—keeping in shape?”
“Uh-huh,” she confessed. “In my room, with the spy-ray-block on.”
“Good. No need to hide, though, and no need to wear dresses any time you’re
practicing—the boys were right on that. But what I called you in about is that I want you
to help me. Will you?”
“Yes, sir. In anything I can—anything, sir,” she answered, instantly.
“I want you to give me every scrap of information you possibly can about
Lonabar; its customs and habits, its work and its play—everything, even its money and
its jewelry.” This last apparently an after-thought. “To do so, you’ll have to let me into
your mind of your own free will—you’ll have to cooperate to the limit of your capability.
QX?”
“That will be quite all right, Lensman,” she agreed, shyly. “I know now that you
aren’t going to hurt me.”
Illona did not like it at first, there was no question of that. And small wonder. It is
an intensely disturbing thing to have your mind invaded, knowingly, by another;
particularly when that other is the appallingly powerful mind of Gray Lensman Kimball
Kinnison. There were lots of things she did not want exposed, and the very effort not to
think of them brought them ever and ever more vividly to the fore. She squirmed
mentally and physically: her mind was for minutes a practically illegible turmoil. But she
soon steadied down and, as she got used to the new sensations, she went to work with
a will. She could not increase the planetographical knowledge which Kinnison had
already obtained from her, but she was a mine of information concerning Lonabars’ fine
gems. She knew all about every one of them, with the completely detailed knowledge
one is all too apt to have of a thing long and intensely desired, but supposedly forever
out of reach.
“Thanks, Illona.” It was over; the Lensman knew as much as she did about
everything which had any bearing upon his quest. “You’ve helped a lot—now you can
flit.”
“I’m glad to help, sir, really—any time. I’ll see you at the party, then, if not before.”
Illona left the room in a far more subdued fashion than she had entered it. She had
always been more than half afraid of Kinnison; just being near him did things to her
which she did not quite like. And this last thing, this mind-searching interview, did not
operate to quiet her fears. It gave her the screaming meamies, no less!
And Kinnison, alone in his room, started to call for a tight beam to Prime Base,
then changed his mind and Lensed a thought—gingerly and diffidently enough—to Port
Admiral Haynes.
“Certainly I’m free!” came instant response. “To you, I’m free twenty four hours of
every day. Go ahead.”
“I want to try something that I don’t know whether can be done or not. A wide-
open, Lens-to-Lens conference with all the Lensmen, especially all Unattached
Lensmen, who can be reached. Can it be done?”
“Whew!” Haynes whistled. “I’ve been in such things up to a hundred or so . . . no
reason why it wouldn’t work. Most of the people you want know me, and those who
don’t can tune in through someone who does. If everybody tunes to me at the same
time, we’ll all be en rapport with each other.”
“It’s QX, then? The reason I. . .”
“Skip it, son. No use explaining twice—I’ll get it when the others do. I’ll take care
of it. It’ll take some little time. . . Would hour twenty, tomorrow, be soon enough?”
“That’ll be fine. Thanks a lot, chief.”
The next day dragged, even for the always-busy Kinnison. He prowled about,
aimlessly. He saw the spectacular Aldebaranian several times, noticing something
which tied in very nicely with a fact he had half-seen in the girl’s own mind before he
could dodge it—that whenever she made a twosome with any man, the man was Henry
Henderson.
“Blasted, Hen?” he asked, casually, when he came upon the pilot in a corner of a
ward-room, staring fixedly at nothing.
“Out of the ether,” Henderson admitted. “However, I haven’t been making any
passes. No use telling you that, though.”
There wasn’t. Unattached Lensmen, as well as being persons of supreme
authority, are supremely able mind-readers. Verbum sap.
“I know you haven’t” Then, answering the unasked question: “No, I haven’t been
reading your mind. Nor anybody else’s, except Illona’s. I’ve read hers, up and down and
crosswise.”
“Oh . . . so you know, then . . . say, Kim, can I talk to you for a minute? Really
talk, I mean?”
“Sure. On the Lens?”
“That’d be better.”
“Here you are. About Illona, the beautiful Aldebaranian zwilnik, I suppose.”
“Don’t, Kim.” Henderson actually flinched, physically. “She isn’t a zwilnik,
really—she can’t be—I’d bet my last millo on that?”
“Are you telling me or asking me?”
“I don’t know.” Henderson hesitated. “I’ve been wanting to ask you . . . you’ve got
a lot of stuff we haven’t, you know . . . whether she . . . I mean if I . . . Oh, hell! Kim, is
there any reason why I shouldn’t. . . well, er . . . get married?”
“Millions of reasons why you should, Hen. Everybody ought to.”
“Damnation, Kim! That isn’t what I meant, and you know it!”
“Think straight, then.”
“QX. Sir, would Unattached Lensman Kimball Kinnison approve of my marriage
to Illona Potter, if I’ve got jets enough to swing it?”
Mighty clever, the Lensman thought. Since the men of the Patrol were
notoriously averse to going sloppy about it, he had wondered just how the pilot was