Part 17

"In two weeks he'll be wanting to get up and go places and do things; and in six he'll be tearing down your hospital, stone by stone."

"Yes." The surgeon smiled. "He is not the type to make an ideal patient; but, as I have told you before, I like to have patients that we do not like."

* * * * *

"And another thing. I want the files on his nurses, particularly the red-headed one."

"I suspected that you would, so I had them sent down. Here you are. Glad you noticed MacDougall--she's by way of being my favorite. Clarrissa MacDougall--Scotch, of course, with that name--twenty years old. Height, one hundred sixty-eight centimeters; weight, sixty-six kilos. Here are her pictures. Never mind the conventional photo; this X-ray is the one that counts. Man, look at that skeleton! Beautiful! The only really perfect skeleton I ever saw in a woman----"

"It isn't the skeleton I'm interested in," grunted Haynes. "It's what is outside the skeleton that my Lensman will be looking at."

"You needn't worry about MacDougall," declared the surgeon. "One good look at that picture will tell you that. She classifies. With that skeleton she _has_ to. She couldn't leave the beam a millimeter, even if she wanted to. Good, bad, or indifferent; male or female; physical, mental, moral, and psychological; the skeleton tells the whole story."

"Maybe it does to you, but not to me." And Haynes took up the "conventional" photograph--a stereoscope in full and absolutely true color, an almost living duplicate of the girl in question. Her thick, heavy hair was not red, but was a vividly intense and indescribable auburn, a gorgeous mass of coppery bronze, flashed with red and gold. Her eyes--bronze was all that he could think of, with flecks of topaz and of tawny gold. Her skin, too, was faintly bronze, glowing with even more than healthy youth's normal measure of sparkling vitality. Not only was she beautiful, the port admiral decided; in the words of the surgeon, she "classified."

"Hm-m-m. Worse even than I thought," he muttered. "She's a menace to civilization." And he went on to read the documents. "Family--hm-m-m. History.... Experiences.... Reactions and characteristics ... behavior ... psychology ... mentality----"

"She'll do, Lacy," he advised the surgeon finally. "Keep her on with him."

"But see here, Haynes, you suspicious old granny!" snorted the doctor. "He won't be falling for anybody yet. Why, he's just been unattached. He'll be bulletproof for quite a while. You ought to know that young Lensmen--especially young gray Lensmen--can't see anything but their jobs, for a couple of years, anyway."

"His skeleton tells you that, too, huh?" Haynes grunted, skeptically. "Ordinarily, yes! but you never can tell, especially in hospitals."

"More of your layman's misinformation!" Lacy snapped. "Contrary to popular belief, romance does not thrive in hospitals; except, of course, among the staff. Patients oftentimes think that they fall in love with nurses, but it takes two people to make one romance. Nurses do not fall in love with patients, because a man is never at his best under hospitalization. In fact, the better a man is, the poorer a showing he is apt to make."

"And, as I forget who said, a long time ago, 'no generalization is ever true, not even this one,'" retorted the port admiral. "When it does hit him it will hit hard, and we'll take no chances. How about the black-haired one?"

"Well, I just told you that MacDougall has the only perfect skeleton I ever saw in a woman. Brownlee is very good, too, of course, but----"

"But not good enough to rate Lensman's mate, eh?" Haynes completed the thought. "Then take her out. Pick the best skeletons you've got for this job, and see that no others come anywhere near him. Transfer them to some other hospital--to some other floor of this one, at least. Any woman that he ever falls for will fall for him, in spite of your ideas as to the one-wayness of hospital romance; and I don't want him to have such a good chance of making a dive at something that doesn't rate up. Am I right or wrong, you old sawbones, and for how much?"

"Well, I haven't had time yet to really study his skeleton, but----"

"Better take a week off and study it. I've studied a lot of people in the last sixty-five years, and I'll match my experience against your knowledge of bones, any time. Not saying that he _will_ fall this trip, you understand--just playing safe. Good-by, Lacy!"

XVIII.

Kinnison was dragged out of unconsciousness by the knowledge that he had landed his speedster inertialess. He came to--or, rather, to say that he came half to would be a more accurate statement--with a yell directed at the blurrily seen figure in white which he knew must be a nurse.

"Nurse!" Then, as a searing stab of pain shot through him at the effort, he went on, thinking at the figure in white through his Lens: "My speedster! I landed her free! Get the space port----"

"There, there, Lensman," a low, rich voice crooned, and a red head bent over him. "The speedster has been taken care of. Everything is on the needles; go to sleep and rest."

"But my ship----"

"Never mind your ship," the unctuous voice went on. "It was landed and put away----"

"Listen, dumb-bell!" snapped the patient, speaking aloud now, in spite of the pain, the better to drive home his meaning. "Don't try to soothe me! What do you think I am, delirious? Get this and get it straight. I said that I landed that speedster _free_. If you don't know what that means, tell somebody that does. Get the space port--get Haynes--get----"

"We got them, Lensman, long ago." Although her voice was still creamily, sweetly soft, an angry color burned into the nurse's face. "I said everything is on zero. Your speedster was inerted; how else could you be here, inert? I helped do it myself, so I _know_ that she is inert."

"QX." The patient relapsed instantly into unconsciousness and the nurse turned to an interne standing by. (Wherever _that_ nurse was, at least one doctor could almost always be found.)

"Dumb-bell!" she flared. "What a sweet mess _he's_ going to be to take care of! He's not even conscious yet, and he's calling names and picking fights already!"

In a few days Kinnison was fully and alertly conscious. In a week most of the pain had left him, and he was beginning to chafe under restraint. In ten days he was "fit to be tied," and his acquaintance with his head nurse, so inauspiciously begun, developed even more inauspiciously as time went on. For, as Haynes and Lacy had each more than anticipated, the Lensman was by no means an ideal patient. In fact, he was most decidedly the opposite.

Nothing that could be done would satisfy him. All doctors were fatheads, even Lacy, the man who had put him together. All nurses were dumb-bells, even--or specially?--Mac, who with almost superhuman skill, tact and patience had been holding him together. Why, even fatheads and dumb-bells, even high-grade morons, ought to know that a man needed food!

Accustomed to eating everything that he could reach, three or four or five times a day, he did not realize--nor did his stomach--that his now quiescent body could no longer use the five thousand or more calories that it had been wont to burn up, each twenty-four hours, in intense effort. He was always hungry, and he was forever demanding food.

And food, to him, did not mean orange juice or grape juice or tomato juice or milk. Nor did it mean weak tea and hard, dry toast and an occasional soft-boiled egg. If he ate eggs at all he wanted them fried--three or four of them, accompanied by two or three thick slices of ham.

He wanted--and demanded in no uncertain terms, argumentatively and persistently--a big, thick, rare beefsteak. He wanted baked beans, with plenty of fat pork. He wanted bread in thick slices, piled high with butter, and not this quadruply-and-unmentionably-qualified toast. He wanted roast beef, rare, in great chunks. He wanted potatoes and thick brown gravy. He wanted corned beef and cabbage. He wanted pie--any kind of pie--in large, thick quarters. He wanted peas and corn and asparagus and cucumbers, and also various other worldly staples of diet which he often and insistently mentioned by name.

But above all, he wanted beefsteak. He thought about it days and dreamed about it nights. One night in particular he dreamed about it--an especially luscious porterhouse, fried in butter and smothered in mushrooms--only to wake up, mouth watering, literally starved, to face again the weak tea, dry toast, and, horror of horrors, this time a flabby, pallid, flaccid _poached_ egg! It was the last straw.

"Take it away," he said, weakly; then, when the nurse did not obey, he reached out and pushed the breakfast, tray and all, off the table. As it crashed to the floor, he turned away, and, in spite of all his efforts, two hot tears forced themselves between his eyelids.

* * * * *

It was a particularly trying ordeal, and one requiring all of even Mac's skill, diplomacy, and forbearance, to make the recalcitrant patient eat the breakfast prescribed for him. She was finally successful, however, and as she stepped out into the corridor she met the ubiquitous interne.

"How's your Lensman?" he asked, in the privacy of the diet kitchen.

"Don't call him _my_ Lensman!" she stormed. She was about to explode with the pent-up feelings which she, of course, could not vent upon such a pitiful, helpless thing as her star patient. "Beefsteak! I almost wish they _would_ give him a beefsteak, and that he'd choke on it--which, of course, he would. He's worse than a baby. I never saw such a--such a _brat_ in my life. I'd like to spank him! He needs it. I'd like to know how _he_ ever got to be a Lensman, the big, cantankerous clunker! I'm _going_ to spank him, too, one of these days; see if I don't!"

"Don't take it so hard, Mac," the interne urged. He was, however, very much relieved that relations between the handsome young Lensman and the gorgeous redhead were not upon a more cordial basis. "He won't be here very long. But I never saw a patient clog _your_ jets before."

"You probably never saw a patient like _him_ before, either. I certainly hope he never gets cracked up again."

"Huh?"

"Do I have to draw you a chart?" she asked, sweetly. "Or, if he does get cracked up again, I hope they send him to some other hospital." And she flounced out.

Nurse MacDougall thought that when the Lensman could eat the meat he craved, her troubles would be over; but she was mistaken, Kinnison was nervous, moody, brooding, by turns irritable, sullen, and pugnacious. Nor is it to be wondered at. He was chained to that bed, and in his mind was the gnawing consciousness that he had failed. And not only failed--he had made a complete fool of himself. He had underestimated an enemy, and as a result of his own stupidity the whole patrol had taken a setback. He was anguished and tormented.

Therefore: "Listen, Mac," he pleaded one day. "Bring me some clothes and let me take a walk. I need the exercise."

"Not yet, Kim," she denied him gently, but with her entrancing smile in full evidence. "But pretty quick, when that leg looks a little less like a Chinese puzzle, you and nursie go bye-bye."

"Beautiful, but dumb!" the Lensman growled. "Can't you and those cockeyed croakers realize that I'll _never_ get any strength back if you keep me in bed all the rest of my life? And don't talk baby talk at me, either. I'm well enough at least so that you can wipe that professional smile off your pan and cut that soothing bedside manner of yours."

"Very well--I think so, too!" she snapped, patience at long last gone. "Somebody should tell you the truth. I always supposed that Lensmen had to have _brains_, but you've acted like a spoiled brat ever since you've been here. First you wanted to eat yourself sick, and now you want to get up, with bones half knit and burns half healed, and undo everything that has been done for you. Why don't you snap out of it and act your age for a change?"

"I never did think nurses had much sense, and now I know they haven't." Kinnison eyed her with intense disfavor, not at all convinced. "I'm not talking about going back to work. I mean a little gentle exercise, and I know what I need."

"You'd be surprised at what you don't know." And the nurse walked out, chin in air. In five minutes, however, she was back, her radiant smile again flashing.

"Sorry, Kim, I shouldn't have blasted off that way, I know that you're bound to back-fire and to have brain storms. I would, too, if I were----"

"Cancel it, Mac," he began, awkwardly. "I don't know why I have to be such a mutt as to be crabbing at you all the time."

"QX, Lensman," she replied, entirely serene now. "I do. You are not the type to stay in bed without it griping you; but when a man has been ground up into such hamburger as you are, he has to stay in bed whether he likes it or not, and no matter how much he pops off about it. Roll over here, now, and I'll give you an alcohol rub. But it won't be long now, really--pretty soon we'll have you out in a wheel chair----"

Thus it went for weeks. Kinnison knew his behavior was atrocious, abominable; but he simply could not help it. Every so often the accumulated pressure of his bitterness and anxiety _would_ blow off; and, like a jungle tiger with a toothache, he would bite and claw anything or anybody within reach.

* * * * *

Finally, however, the last picture was studied, the last bandage was removed, and he was discharged as fit. And he was not discharged, bitterly although he resented his "captivity," as he called it, until he really _was_ fit. Haynes saw to that. And Haynes had allowed only the most sketchy interviews during that long convalescence. Discharged, however, Kinnison sought him out.

"Let me talk first," Haynes instructed him at sight. "No self-reproaches, no destructive criticism. Everything constructive. Now, Kimball, I'm mighty glad to hear that you made a perfect recovery. You were in bad shape. Go ahead."

"You have just about shut my mouth by your first order." Kinnison smiled sourly as he spoke. "Two words--flat failure. No, let me add two more--as yet."

"That's the spirit!" Haynes exclaimed. "Nor do we agree with you that it was a failure. It was merely not a success--so far--which is an altogether different thing. Also, I may add that we had very fine reports indeed on you from the hospital."

"Huh?" Kinnison was amazed to the point of being inarticulate.

"You just about tore it down, of course, but that was only to be expected."

"But, sir, I made such a----"

"Exactly. As Lacy tells me quite frequently, he likes to have patients over there that they don't like. Mull that one over for a bit. You may understand it better as you get older. The thought, however, may take some of the load off your mind."

"Well, sir, I am feeling a trifle low, but if you and the rest of them still think----"

"We do so think. Cheer up and get on with the story."

"I've been doing a lot of thinking, and before I go around sticking out my neck again I'm going to----"

"You don't need to tell me, you know."

"No, sir, but I think I'd better. I'm going to Arisia to see if I can get me a few treatments for swelled head and lame brain. I still think that I know how to use the Lens to good advantage, but I simply haven't got enough jets to do it. You see, I----" He stopped. He would not offer anything that might sound like an alibi; but his thoughts were plain as print to the old Lensman.

"Go ahead, son. We know you wouldn't."

"If I thought at all, I assumed that I was tackling men, since those on the ship were men, and men were the only known inhabitants of the Aldebaranian system. But when those Wheelmen took me so easily and so completely, it became very evident that I didn't have enough stuff. I ran like a scared pup, and I was lucky to get home at all. It wouldn't have happened if----" He paused.

"If what? Reason it out, son," Haynes advised, pointedly. "You are wrong, dead wrong. You made no mistake, either in judgment or in execution. You have been blaming yourself for assuming that they were men. Let us suppose that you had assumed that they were the Arisians themselves. Then what? After close scrutiny, even in the light of after-knowledge, we do not see how you could have changed the outcome." It did not occur, even to the sagacious old admiral, that Kinnison need not have gone in. Lensmen always went in.

"Well, anyway, they licked me, and that hurts," Kinnison admitted, frankly. "So I'm going back to Arisia for more training, if they'll give it to me. I may be gone quite a while, as it may take even them a long time to increase the permeability of my skull enough so that an idea can filter through it in something under a century."

"Um-m-m." Haynes pondered. "It has never been done. They are a peculiar race, incomprehensible--but not vindictive. They may refuse you, but nothing worse--that is, if you do not cross the barrier without invitation. It's a splendid idea, I think; but be very careful to strike that barrier free and at almost zero power--or else don't strike it at all."

* * * * *

They shook hands, and in a space of minutes the speedster was again tearing through space. Kinnison now knew exactly what he wanted to get, and he utilized every waking hour of that long trip in physical and mental exercise to prepare himself to take it. Thus the time did not seem long. He crept up to the barrier at a snail's pace, stopping instantly as he touched it, and through that barrier he sent a thought.

"Is it permitted that I approach your planet?" he asked, neither brazenly nor obsequiously. He was matter-of-factly asking a simple question and expecting a simple reply. He knew that to these beings, whatever they really were, salutations and identifications were alike superfluous. Nor was he met as Helmuth had been met.

"Ah, 'tis Kimball Kinnison, of Earth," a slow, deep, measured voice resounded in his brain. "Neutralize your controls. You will be landed."

He did so, and the inert speedster shot forward, to come to ground in a perfect landing at a regulation space port. He strode into the office, to confront the same grotesque, dragonlike entity who had measured him for his Lens not so long ago. Now, however, he stared straight into that entity's unblinking eyes, in silence.

"Ah, you have progressed. You realize now that vision is not always reliable. At our previous interview you took it for granted that what you saw must really exist, and did not wonder as to what our true shapes might be."

"I am wondering now, seriously," Kinnison replied. "And if it is permitted, I intend to stay here until I can see your true shapes."

"This?" And the figure changed instantly into that of an old, white-bearded, scholarly gentleman.

"No. There is a vast difference between seeing something myself and having you show it to me. I realize only too well that you can make me see you as anything you choose. You could appear to me as a perfect copy of myself, or as any other thing, person or object conceivable to my mind."

"Ah, you have indeed progressed. While you were expected to return, you are ahead of time by several of your years. When you approached the barrier it was supposed that you came to ask for some particular information, but now that I search your mind I perceive that what you seek is not mere information, but is indeed knowledge."

"You say that you expected me. How could you know that I was coming? I didn't decide definitely myself until only a couple of weeks ago."

"It was inevitable. When we fitted your Lens we knew that you would return if you lived. As we recently informed that one known as Helmuth----"

"_Helmuth!_ You know, then, where----" Kinnison choked himself off. He would not ask for help in that. He would fight his own battles and bury his own dead. If they volunteered the information, well and good; but he would not ask it. Nor did the Arisian furnish it.

"You are right," the sage remarked, imperturbably. "For strong development it is essential that you secure that information for yourself."

Then he continued his previous thought: "As we told Helmuth recently, we have given your civilization an instrumentality--the Lens--by virtue of which it should be able to make itself secure throughout the galaxy. Having given it, we could do nothing more of real or permanent benefit until you Lensmen yourselves began to realize what it was that we had given you. That realization has been inevitable; from the first it has been certain that in time your minds would become strong enough to discover the theretofore unknown depths of power of your Lenses. As soon as any mind made that discovery it would, of course, return to Arisia, the source of the Lens, for additional instruction; which, equally of course, that mind could not have borne previously.

"Decade by decade your minds have become stronger. Finally you came to be fitted with a Lens. Your mind, while pitifully undeveloped, had a latent capacity and a power that made your return here certain. Since your enlensment there has been one other who will return. Indeed, it has become a topic of discussion among us as to whether you or that other would be the first advanced student."

"Who is that other, if I may ask?"

"Your friend, Worsel, the Velantian."

"He's got a real mind--'way, 'way ahead of mine," the Lensman stated, as a matter of self-evident fact.

"In some ways, yes. In other and highly important characteristics, no."

"Huh?" Kinnison exclaimed. "In what possible way have I got it over him?"

"I am not certain that I can explain it exactly in thoughts which you can understand. Broadly speaking, his mind is the better trained, the more fully developed. It is of more grasp and reach, and of vastly greater present power. It is more controllable, more responsive, more adaptable than is yours--now. But your mind, while undeveloped, is of considerably greater capacity than his, and of greater and more varied latent capabilities. Above all, you have a driving force, a will to do, an undefeatable mental urge that no one of his race will be able to develop for many cycles of time to come. Since I selected you as the first to return, I am naturally gratified that you have developed so rapidly."

"Well, I have been more or less under pressure, and I got quite a few lucky breaks. But at that, it seemed to me that I was progressing backward instead of forward."

"It is ever thus with the really competent. Prepare yourself!"

He launched a mental bolt, at the impact of which Kinnison's mind literally turned inside out in a wildly gyrating spiral vortex of dizzyingly confused images.

"Resist!" came the harsh command.

"Resist! How?" demanded the writhing, sweating Lensman. "You might as well tell a fly to resist an inert space ship!"

"Use your will--your force--your adaptability. Shift your mind to meet mine at every point. Apart from these fundamentals neither I nor any one else can tell you how; each mind must find its own medium and develop its own technique. But this is a very mild treatment indeed, one conditioned to your present strength. I will increase it gradually in severity, but rest assured that I will at no time raise it to the point of permanent damage. Constructive exercises will come later; the first step must be to build up your resistance. Therefore, resist!"

The force, which had not slackened for an instant, waxed slowly to the very verge of intolerability; and grimly, doggedly, the Lensman fought it. Teeth locked, muscles straining, fingers digging savagely into the hard leather upholstery of his chair he fought it; mustering his every ultimate resource to the task----