LITMIR.BIZ

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mid-leap the apparition swerved, in a full right-angle turn, directly toward the quietly-poised body of the Lyranian. She acted just barely in time; the madly-reaching claws were within scant inches of her skin when they vanished. Her eyes widened in frightened startlement; she was quite evidently shaken to the core by the Lensman’s viciously skillful riposte. With an obvious effort she pulled herself together.

      “Or these, then, if I must,” and with a sweeping gesture of thought she indicated the roomful of her Lyranian sisters.

      “How?” Kinnison asked, pointedly.

      “By force of numbers; by sheer weight and strength. You can kill many of them with your weapons, of course, but not enough or quickly enough.”

      “You yourself would be the first to die,” he cautioned her; and, since she was en rapport with his very mind, she knew that it was not a threat, but the stern finality of fact.

      “What of that?” He in turn knew that she, too, meant precisely that and nothing else.

      He had another weapon, but she would not believe it without a demonstration, and he simply could not prove that weapon upon an unarmed, defenseless woman, even though she was a Lyranian.

      Stalemate.

      No, the ’copter. “Listen, Queen of Sheba, to what I tell my boys,” he ordered, and spoke into his microphone.

      “Ralph? Stick a one-second needle down through the floor here; close enough to make her jump, but far enough away so as not to blister her fanny.”

      At his word a narrow, but ragingly incandescent pencil of destruction raved downward through ceiling and floor. So inconceivably hot was it that if it had been a fraction larger, it would have ignited the Elder Sister’s very chair. Effortlessly, insatiably it consumed everything in its immediate path, radiating the while the entire spectrum of vibrations. It was unbearable, and the auburn-haired creature did indeed jump, in spite of herself—half-way to the door. The rest of the hitherto imperturbable persons clustered together in panic-stricken knots.

      “You see, Cleopatra,” Kinnison explained, as the dreadful needle-beam expired, “I’ve got plenty of stuff if I want to—or have to—use it. The boys up there will stick a needle like that through the brain of any one or everyone in this room if I give the word. I don’t want to kill any of you unless it’s necessary, as I explained to your misbarbered friend here, but I am leaving here alive and all in one piece, and I’m taking this Aldebaranian along with me, in the same condition. If I must, I’ll lay down a barrage like that sample you just saw, and only the zwilnik and I will get out alive. How about it?”

      “What are you going to do with the stranger?” the Lyranian asked, avoiding the issue.

      “I’m going to take some information away from her, that’s all. Why? What were you going to do with her yourselves?”

      “We were—and are going to kill it,” came flashing reply. The lethal bolt came even before the reply; but, fast as the Elder One was, the Gray Lensman was faster. He blanked out the thought, reached over and flipped on the Aldebaranian’s thought-screen.

      “Keep it on until we get to the ship, sister,” he spoke aloud in the girl’s native tongue. “Your battery’s low, I know, but it’ll last long enough. These hens seem to be strictly on the peck.”

      “I’ll say they are—you don’t know the half of it.” Her voice was low, rich, vibrant. “Thanks, Kinnison.”

      “Listen, Red-Top, what’s the percentage in playing so dirty?” the Lensman complained then. “I’m doing my damndest to let you off easy, but I’m all done dickering. Do we go out of here peaceably, or do we fry you and your crew to cinders in your own lard, and walk out over the grease spots? It’s strictly up to you, but you’ll decide right here and right now.”

      The Elder One’s face was hard, her eyes flinty. Her fingers were curled into ball-tight fists. “I suppose, since we cannot stop you, we must let you go free,” she hissed, in helpless but controlled fury. “If by giving my life and the lives of all these others we could kill you, here and now would you two die . but as it is, you may go.”

      “But why all the rage?” the puzzled Lensman asked. “You strike me as being, on the whole, reasoning creatures. You in particular went to Tellus with this zwilnik here, so you should know .”

      “I do know,” the Lyranian broke in. “That is why I would go to any length, pay any price whatever, to keep you from returning to your own world, to prevent the inrush of your barbarous hordes here .”

      “Oh! So that’s it!” Kinnison exclaimed. “You think that some of our people might want to settle down here, or to have traffic with you?”

      “Yes.” She went into a eulogy concerning Lyrane II, concluding, “I have seen the planets and the races of your so-called Civilization, and I detest them and it. Never again shall any of us leave Lyrane; nor, if I can help it, shall any stranger ever come here.”

      “Listen, angel-face!” the man commanded. “You’re as mad as a Radeligian cateagle—you’re as cockeyed as Trenco’s ether. Get this, and get it straight. To any really intelligent being of any one of forty million planets, your whole Lyranian race would be a total loss with no insurance. You’re a God-forsaken, spiritually and emotionally starved, barren, mentally ossified, and completely monstrous mess. If I, personally, never see either you or your planet again, that will be exactly twenty seven minutes too soon. This girl here thinks the same of you as I do. If anybody else ever hears of Lyrane and thinks he wants to visit it, I’ll take him out of—I’ll knock a hip down on him if I have to, to keep him away from here. Do I make myself clear?”

      “Oh, yet—perfectly!” she fairly squealed in school-girlish delight. The Lensman’s tirade, instead of infuriating her farther, had been sweet music to her peculiarly insular mind. “Go, then, at once—hurry! Oh, please, hurry! Can you drive the car back to your vessel, or will one of us have to go with you?”

      “Thanks. I could drive your car, but it won’t be necessary. The ’copter will pick us up.”

      He spoke to the watchful Ralph, then he and the Aldebaranian left the hall, followed at a careful distance by the throng. The helicopter was on the ground, waiting. The man and the woman climbed aboard.

      “Clear ether, persons!” The Lensman waved a salute to the crowd and the Tellurian craft shot into the air.

      Thence to the Dauntless, which immediately did likewise, leaving behind her, upon the little airport, a fused blob of metal that had once been the zwilnik’s speedster. Kinnison studied the white face of his captive, then handed her a tiny canister.

      “Fresh battery for your thought-screen generator; yours is about shot.” Since she made no motion to accept it, he made the exchange himself and tested the result. It worked. “What’s the matter with you, kid, anyway? I’d say you were starved, if I hadn’t caught you at a full table.”

      “I am starved,” the girl said, simply. “I couldn’t eat there. I knew they were going to kill me, and it . it sort of took away my appetite.”

      “Well, what are we waiting for? I’m hungry, too—let’s go eat.”

      “Not with you, either, any more than with them. I thanked you, Lensman, for saving my life there, and I meant it. I thought then and still think that I would rather have you kill me than those horrible, monstrous women, but I simply can’t eat.”

      “But I’m not even thinking of killing you—can’t you get that through your skull? I don’t make war on women; you ought to know that by this time.”

      “You will have to.” The girl’s voice was low and level. “You didn’t kill any of those Lyranians, no, but you didn’t chase them a million parsecs, either. We have been taught ever since we were born that you Patrolmen always torture people to death. I don’t quite believe that of you personally, since I have had a couple of glimpses into your mind, but you’ll kill me before I’ll talk. At least,

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