LITMIR.BIZ

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      CHAPTER 3

      DEI EX MACHINA

       Table of Contents

In the library of the Port Admiral’s richly comfortable home, a room as heavily guarded against all forms of intrusion as was his private office, two old but active Gray Lensmen sat and grinned at each other like the two conspirators which in fact they were. One took a squat, red bottle of fayalin^[2] from a cabinet and filled two small glasses. The glasses clinked, rim to rim.

      “Here’s to love!” Haynes gave the toast.

      “Ain’t it grand!” Surgeon-Marshal Lacy responded.

      “Down the hatch!” they chanted in unison, and action followed word.

      “You aren’t asking if everything stayed on the beam.” This from Lacy.

      “No need—I had a spy-ray on the whole performance.”

      “You would—you’re the type. However, I would have, too, if I had a panel full of them in my office. . Well, say it, you old space-hellion!” Lacy grinned again, albeit a trifle wryly.

      “Nothing to say, saw-bones. You did a grand job, and you’ve got nothing to blow a jet about.”

      “No? How would you like to have a red-headed spitfire who’s scarcely dry behind the ears yet tell you to your teeth that you’ve got softening of the brain? That you had the mental capacity of a gnat, the intellect of a Zabriskan fontema? And to have to take it, without even heaving the insubordinate young jade into the can for about twenty-five well-earned black spots?”

      “Oh, come, now, you’re just blasting. It wasn’t that bad!”

      “Perhaps not—quite—but it was bad enough.”

      “She’ll grow up, some day, and realize that you were foxing her six ways from the origin.”

      “Probably. . In the meantime, it’s all part of the bigger job. . Thank God I’m not young any more. They suffer so.”

      “Check. How they suffer!”

      “But you saw the ending and I didn’t. How did it turn out?” Lacy asked.

      “Partly good, partly bad.” Haynes slowly poured two more drinks and thoughtfully swirled the crimson, pungently aromatic liquid around and around in his glass before he spoke again. “Hooked—but she knows it, and I’m afraid she’ll do something about it.”

      “She’s a smart operator—I told you she was. She doesn’t fox herself about anything. Hmm. . A bit of separation is indicated, it would seem.”

      “Check. Can you send out a hospital ship somewhere, so as to get rid of her for two or three weeks?”

      “Can do. Three weeks be enough? We can’t send him anywhere, you know.”

      “Plenty—he’ll be gone in two.” Then, as Lacy glanced at him questioningly, Haynes continued: “Ready for a shock? He’s going to Lundmark’s Nebula.”

      “But he can’t! That would take years! Nobody has ever got back from there yet, and there’s this new job of his. Besides, this separation is only supposed to last until you can spare him for a while!”

      “If it takes very long he’s coming back. The idea has always been, you know, that intergalactic matter may be so thin—one atom per liter or so—that such a flit won’t take one-tenth the time supposed. We recognize the danger—he’s going well heeled.”

      “How well?”

      “The very best.”

      “I hate to clog their jets this way, but it’s got to be done. We’ll give her a raise when I send her out—make her sector chief. Huh?”

      “Did I hear any such words lately as spitfire, hussy, and jade, or did I dream them?” Haynes asked, quizzically.

      “She’s all of them, and more—but she’s one of the best nurses and one of the finest women that ever lived, too!”

      “QX, Lacy, give her her raise. Of course she’s good. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be in on this deal at all. In fact, they’re about as fine a couple of youngsters as old Tellus ever produced.”

      “They are that. Man, what a pair of skeletons!”

      * * * * *

      And in the Nurses’ Quarters a young woman with a wealth of red-bronze-auburn hair and tawny eyes was staring at her own reflection in a mirror.

      “You half-wit, you ninny, you lug!” she stormed, bitterly if almost inaudibly, at that reflection. “You lame-brained moron, you red-headed, idiotic imbecile, you microcephalic dumbbell, you clunker! Of all the men in this whole cockeyed galaxy, you would have to make a dive at Kimball Kinnison, the one man who thinks you’re just part of the furniture. At a Gray Lensman. .” Her expression changed and she whispered softly, “A . Gray . Lensman. He can’t love anybody as long as he’s carrying that load. They can’t let themselves be human . quite . perhaps loving him will be enough. .”

      She straightened up, shrugged, and smiled; but even that pitiful travesty of a smile could not long endure. Shortly it was buried in waves of pain and the girl threw herself down upon her bed.

      “Oh Kim, Kim!” she sobbed. “I wish . why can’t you . Oh, why did I ever have to be born!”

      * * * * *

      Three weeks later, far out in space, Kimball Kinnison was thinking thoughts entirely foreign to his usual pattern. He was in his bunk, smoking dreamily, staring unseeing at the metallic ceiling. He was not thinking of Boskone.

      When he had thought at Mac, back there at that dance, he had, for the first time in his life, failed to narrow down his beam to the exact thought being sent. Why? The explanation he had given the girl was totally inadequate. For that matter, why had he been so glad to see her there? And why, at every odd moment, did visions of her keep coming into his mind—her form and features, her eyes, her lips, her startling hair? . She was beautiful, of course, but not nearly such a seven-sector callout as that thionite dream he had met on Aldebaran II—and his only thought of her was an occasional faint regret that he hadn’t half-wrung her lovely neck . why, she wasn’t really as good-looking as, and didn’t have half the je ne sais quoi of, that blonde heiress—what was her name?—oh, yes, Forrester. .

      There was only one answer, and it jarred him to the core—he would not admit it, even to himself. He couldn’t love anybody—it just simply was not in the cards. He had a job to do. The Patrol had spent a million credits making a Lensman out of him, and it was up to him to give them some kind of a run for their money. No Lensman had any business with a wife, especially a Gray Lensman. He couldn’t sit down anywhere, and she couldn’t flit with him. Besides, nine out of every ten Gray Lensmen got killed before they finished their jobs, and the one that did happen to live long enough to retire to a desk was almost always half machinery and artificial parts. .

      No, not in seven thousand years. No woman deserved to have her life made into such a hell on earth as that would be—years of agony, of heart-breaking suspense, climaxed by untimely widowhood; or, at best, the wasting of the richest part of her life upon a husband who was half steel, rubber, and phenoline plastic. Red in particular was much too splendid a person to be let in for anything like that. .

      But hold on—jet back! What made him think he rated any such girl? That there was even a possibility—especially in view of the way he had behaved while under her care in Base Hospital—that she would ever feel like being anything more to him than a strictly impersonal nurse? Probably not—he had Klono’s own gadolinium guts to think that she would marry him, under any conditions, even if he made a full-power dive at her. .

      Just

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