starry with tears—happy tears. Then the ranking officers made short speeches of
appreciation and the spectators carried the actors—actual carrying, in Illona’s case,
upon an improvised throne—off for refreshments.
Back in his quarters, Kinnison tackled his problem again. He could work out
something on Lonabar now, but what about Lyrane? It tied in, too—there was an angle
there, somewhere. To get it, though, somebody would have to get close to —really
friendly with—the Lyranians. Just looking on from the outside wouldn’t do. Somebody
they could trust and would confide in—and they were so damnably, so fanatically non-
cooperative! A man couldn’t get a millo’s worth of real information—he could read any
one mind by force, but he’d never get the right one. Neither could Worsel or Tregonsee
or any other non-human Lensman; the Lyranians just simply didn’t have the galactic
viewpoint. No, what he wanted was a human woman Lensman, and there weren’t any . .
.
At the thought he gasped; the pit of his stomach felt cold. Mac! She was more
than half Lensman already—she was the only un-Lensed human being who had ever
been able to read his thoughts . . . But he didn’t have the gall, the sheer, brazen crust,
to shove a load like that onto her . . . or did he? Didn’t the job come first? Wouldn’t she
be big enough to see it that way? Sure she would! As to what Haynes and the rest of
the Lensmen would think . . . let them think! In this, he had to make his own decisions . .
.
He couldn’t. He sat there for an hour; teeth locked until his jaws ached, fists
clenched.
“I can’t make that decision alone,” he breathed, finally. “Not jets enough by half,”
and he shot a thought to distant Arisia and Mentor the Sage.
“This intrusion is necessary,” he thought coldly, precisely. “It seems to me to be
wise to do this thing which has never before been done. I have no data, however, upon
which to base a decision and the matter is grave. I ask, therefore—is it wise?”
“You do not ask as to repercussions—consequences, either to yourself or to the
woman?”
“I ask what I asked.”
“Ah, Kinnison of Tellus, you truly grow. You at last learn to think. It is wise,” and
the telepathic link snapped.
Kinnison slumped down in relief. He had not known what to expect. He would not
have been surprised if the Arisian had pinned his ears back; he certainly did not expect
either the compliment or the clear-cut answer. He knew that Mentor would give him no
help whatever in any problem which he could possibly solve alone; he was just
beginning to realize that the Arisian would aid him in matters which were absolutely,
intrinsically, beyond his reach.
Recovering, he flashed a call to Surgeon-Marshal Lacy.
“Lacy? Kinnison. I would like to have Sector Chief Nurse Clarrissa MacDougall
detached at once. Please have her report to me here aboard the Dauntless, en route, at
the earliest possible moment of rendezvous.”
“Huh? What? You can’t . . . you wouldn’t . . .” the old Lensman gurgled.
“No, I wouldn’t. The whole Corps will know it soon enough, so I might as well tell
you now. I’m going to make a” Lensman out of her.”
Lacy exploded then, but Kinnison had expected that.
“Seal it!” he counseled, sharply. “I’m not doing it entirely on my own—Mentor of
Arisia made the final decision. Prefer charges against me if you like, but in the
meantime please do as I request.”
And that was that.
CHAPTER 8
Cartiff the Jeweler
Few hours before the time of rendezvous with the cruiser which was bringing
Clarrissa out to him, the detectors picked up a vessel whose course, it proved, was set
to intersect their own. A minute or so later a sharp, clear thought came through
Kinnison’s Lens.
“Kim? Raoul. Been flitting around out Arisia way, and they called me in and
asked me to bring you a package. Said you’d be expecting it. QX?”
“Hi, Spacehound! QX.” Kinnison had very decidedly not been expecting it — he
had been intending to do the best he could without it — but he realized instantly, with a
thrill of gladness, what it was. “Inert? Or can’t you stay?”
“Free. Got to make a rendezvous. Can’t take time to inert — that is, if you’ll inert
the thing in your cocoon. Don’t want it to hole out on you, though.”
“Can do. Free it is. Pilot room! Prepare for inertialess contact with vessel
approaching. Magnets. Messenger coming aboard — free.”
The two speeding vessels flashed together, at all their unimaginable velocities,
without a thump or jar. Magnetic clamps locked and held. Airlock doors opened, shut,
opened; and at the inner port Kinnison met Raoul LaForge, his classmate through the
four years at Wentworth Hall. Brief but hearty greetings were exchanged, but the visitor
could not stop. Lensmen are busy men.
“Fine seeing you, Kim — be sure and inert the thing — clear ether!”
“Same to you, ace. Sure I will — think I want to vaporize half of my ship?”
Indeed, inerting the package was the Lensman’s first care, for in the free
condition it was a frightfully dangerous thing. Its intrinsic velocity was that of Arisia,
while the ship’s was that of Lyrane II. They might be forty or fifty miles per second apart;
and if the Dauntless should go inert that harmless-looking package would instantly
become a meteorite inside the ship. At the thought of that velocity he paused. The
cocoon would stand it—but would the Lens? Oh, sure, Mentor knew what was coming;
the Lens would be packed to stand it Kinnison wrapped the package in heavy gauze,
then in roll after roll of spring-steel mesh. He jammed heavy steel springs into the ends,
then clamped the whole thing into a form with high-alloy bolts an inch in diameter. He
poured in two hundred pounds of metallic mercury, filling the form to the top. Then a
cover, also bolted on. This whole assembly went into the “cocoon”, a cushioned,
heavily-padded affair suspended from all four walls, ceiling, and floor by every shock-
absorbing device known to the engineers of the Patrol.
The Dauntless incited briefly at Kinnison’s word and it seemed as though a troop
of elephants were running silently amuck in the cocoon room. The package to be
inerted weighed no more than eight ounces—but eight ounces of mass, at a relative
velocity of fifty miles per second, possesses a kinetic energy by no means to be
despised.
The frantic lurchings and bouncings subsided, the cruiser resumed her free flight,
and the man undid all that he had done. The Arisian package looked exactly as before,
but it was harmless now; it had the same intrinsic velocity as did everything else aboard
the vessel.
Then the Lensman pulled on a pair of insulating gloves and opened the package;
finding, as he had expected, that the packing material was a dense, viscous liquid. He
poured it out and there was the Lens—Cris’s Lens! He cleaned it carefully, then
wrapped it in heavy insulation. For of all the billions of unnumbered billions of living
entities in existence, Clarrissa MacDougall was the only one whose flesh could touch
that apparently innocuous jewel with impunity. Others could safely touch it while she
wore it, while it glowed with its marvelously polychromatic cold flame; but until she wore
it and unless she wore it its touch meant death to any life to which it was not attuned.
Shortly thereafter another Patrol cruiser hove in sight. This meeting, however,
was to be no casual one, for the nurse could not be inerted from the free state in the
Dauntless” cocoon. No such device ever built could stand it—and those structures are
stronger far than is the human frame. Any adjustment which even the hardest, toughest
spacehound can take in a cocoon is measured in feet per second, not in miles.
Hundreds of miles apart, the ships inerted and their pilots fought with supreme
skill to make the two intrinsics match. And even so the vessels did not touch, even
nearly. A space-line was thrown; the nurse and her space-roll were quite
unceremoniously hauled aboard.
Kinnison did not meet her at the airlock, but waited for her in his con room; and
the details of that meeting will remain unchronicled. They were young, they had not
seen each other for a long time, and they were very much in love. It is evident,
therefore, that Patrol affairs were not the first matters to be touched upon. Nor, if the
historian has succeeded even partially in portraying truly the characters of the two
persons involved, is it either necessary or desirable to go at any length into the
argument they had as to whether or not she should be inducted so cavalierly into a
service from which her sex had always, automatically, been barred. He did not want to