Part 15

“I am sure,” the Vegian policeman replied. “Not only did Zambkptkn hold it pierced by the first and fourth fingers of his left hand—the sign positive, as you know—but an eyewitness verified the scent and furnished descriptions. The slayer was dressed as an Aldebaranian, which accounts for the size of the garment your brother could seize before he died; his four bodyguards as Tellurians, with leather belts and holsters for their blasters.”

“QX.” Vesta accepted a pair of offered shears and began to cut off tiny pieces of the cloth. As each piece began to fall it was seized in mid-air by a Vegian man or girl who immediately ran away with it. And in the meantime other Vegians, forming into a long line, ran past Vesta, each taking a quick sniff and running on, out into the street. Cloud, reaching outside the building with his perceptors, saw that all vehicular traffic had paused. A Vegian stood on the walkway, holding a bit of cloth pinched between thumb and fingernail. All passersby, on foot or in any kind of vehicle, would pause, sniff at the cloth, and—apparently—go on about their business.

But Cloud, after reading Vesta’s mind and the policeman’s, turned as white as his space-tan would permit. In less than an hour almost every Vegian in that city of over eight million would know the murderer by scent and would be sniffing eagerly for him; and when any one of them _did_ find him. . . .

Except for the two Vegians and the six Tellurians, the vast hall was now empty. Vesta was holding a pose Cloud had never before seen—stiffly erect, with her tail wrapped tightly around her body.

“Can they get a scent—a _reliable_ scent, I mean—that fast?” Cloud asked.

“Zertainly,” Vesta’s voice was cold, level, almost uninflected. “How long would it take you to learn that an egg you started to eat was rotten? The man who wore this shirt is a class A Triple Prime stinker—his odor is recognizable instantly and anywhere.”

“But as to the rest of it—_don’t_ do this thing, Vesta! Let the law handle it.”

“The law comes second. He killed my brother; it is my right and my privilege to kill him. . . .”

Cloud became conscious of the fact that Joan was in his mind. “You been here all along?” he flashed.

“In or near. You and I are one, you know,” and Vesta’s voice went on:

“. . . and besides, the law is merciful. Its death is instant. Under my claws and teeth he will live for hours—for a full day, I hope.”

“But officer, can’t _you_ do something?”

“Nothing. The law comes second. As she has said, it is her right and her privilege.”

“But it’s suicide, man—sheer _suicide_. You know that, don’t you?”

“Not necessarily. She will not be working alone. Whether she lives or dies, however, it is still her right and her privilege.”

Cloud switched to thought. “Nordquist, _you_ can stop this if you want to. _Do_ it.”

“I can’t, and you know I can’t. The Patrol does not and cannot interfere in purely planetary affairs.”

“You intend, then,” Cloud demanded furiously, “to let this girl put her naked hands and teeth up against four trigger-happy gunnies with DeLameters?”

“Just that. There’s nothing else I or any other Patrolman can do. To interfere in this one instance would alienate half the planets of Civilization and set the Patrol back five hundred years.”

“Well, even though I’m a Patrolman—of sorts—_I_ can do something about it!” Cloud blazed, “and by God, I will!”

“_We_ will, you mean, and we _will_, too,” Joan’s thought came forcibly at first, then became dubious: “That is, if it doesn’t mean getting _you_ blasted, too.”

“Just what?” Nordquist’s thought was sharp. “Oh, I see . . . and, being a Vegian, as well as a Patrolman, and the acknowledged friend of both the dead man and his sister. . . .”

“Who’s a Vegian?” Cloud demanded.

“You are, and so are the other five of your group, as you would have been informed if the party had not been broken up so violently. Honorary Vegians, for life.”

“Why, I never _heard_ of such a thing!” Joan exclaimed, “and I studied them for years!”

“No, you never did,” Nordquist agreed. “There haven’t been many honorary Vegians, and to my certain knowledge, not one of them has ever talked. Vegians are very strongly psychic in picking their off-world friends.”

“You mean to tell me that that bleached blonde over there won’t spill everything she knows fifteen minutes after we leave here?” Cloud demanded.

“Just that. You can’t judge character by hair, even if it were bleached, which it isn’t. You owe her an apology, Storm.”

“If you say so, I do, and I hereby apologize, but. . . .”

“But to get back to the subject,” the Lensman went on, narrowing his thought down so sharply as to exclude Joan. “You can do something. You’re the _only_ one who can. Such being the case, and since you are no longer indispensable. I withdraw all objections. Go ahead.”

Cloud started a thought, but Joan blanked him out. “Lensman, has Storm been sending—_can_ he send information to you that _I_ can’t dig out of his mind?”

“Very easily. He is an exceptionally fine tuner.”

“I’m sorry, Joanie,” Cloud thought, hastily, “but it sounded too much like bragging to let you in on. However, you’re in from now on.”

Then, aloud, “Vesta, I’m staying with you,” he said, quietly.

“I was sure you would,” she said, as quietly. “You are my friend and Zamke’s. Although your customs are not exactly like ours, a man of your odor does not desert his friends.”

Cloud turned then to the four lieutenants, who stood close-grouped. “Will you four kids please go back to the ship, and take Joan with you?”

“Not on Thursdays, Storm,” Joe said, pointing to an inconspicuous bronze button set into a shoulder-strap. “We both rate Blaster Expert First. Count us in,” and Bob added:

“Joan has been telling us an earful, and what she didn’t tell us a couple of Vegian boys did. The Three Honorary Vegian Musketeers; that’s us. Lead on, d’Artagnan!”

“Bob and Joe are staying, too, Vesta,” Cloud said then.

“Of course. I’m sorry I didn’t get to tell you myself about being adopted, but I knew somebody would. But you, Joan and Barbara and Helen, you three had better go back to the ship. You can be of no use here.”

Two of them were willing enough to go, but:

“Where Neal Cloud goes, I go,” Joan said, and there was no doubt whatever that she meant exactly that.

“Why?” Vesta demanded. “Commander Cloud, the fastest gunman in all space, is necessary for the success of this our mission. He can, from a cold, bell-tone start, at thirty yards, burn the centers out of six irregularly-spaced targets. . . .”

“Nordquist! Lay off! What in _hell_ do you think you’re doing?” Cloud thought, viciously.

“I don’t think—I _know_,” came instant reply. “Do you want her hanging on your left arm when the blasting starts? This is the only _possible_ way Joan Janowick can be handled. Lay off yourself!” and Vesta’s voice went calmly on:

“. . . in exactly two hundred and forty nine mils. Lieutenant Mackay and Lieutenant Ingalls, although perhaps not absolutely necessary, are highly desirable. They are fast enough, and are of deadly accuracy. When either of them shoots a man in a crowd, however large, that one man dies, and not a dozen bystanders. Now just what good would _you_ be, Lieutenant-Commander Janowick? Can you fire a blaster with any one of these men? Or bite a man’s throat out with me?”

For probably the first time in her life, Joan Janowick stood mute.

“And suppose you _do_ come along,” Vesta continued relentlessly. “With _you_ at his side, in the line of fire, do you suppose. . . .”

“Just a minute—shut up, Vesta!” Cloud ordered, roughly. “Listen, all of you. The Lensman is doing this, not Vesta, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let anybody, not even a Lensman, bedevil my Joan this way. So, Joan, wherever we go, you can come along. All I ask is, you’ll keep a little ways back?”

“Of course I will, Storm,” and Joan crept into the shelter of his arm.

“Ha—I thought you’d pop off at about this point,” Nordquist’s thought came chattily into Cloud’s mind. “Good work, my boy; you’ve consolidated your position no end.”

“Well, what do we do now?” Joe Mackay broke the somewhat sticky silence that followed.

“We wait,” Vesta said, calmly. “We wait right here until we receive news.”

They waited; and, as they waited the tension mounted and mounted. Before it became intolerable, however, the news came in, and Cloud, reading Vesta’s mind as the ultra-sonic information was received, relayed it to other Tellurians. The murderer and his four bodyguards were at that moment entering a theater less than one city block away. . . .

“Why, they _couldn’t_ be!” Helen protested. “_Nobody_ could be _that_ stupid . . . or . . . I wonder. . . ?”

“I wonder, too.” This from Joan. “Yes, it would be the supremely clever thing to do; the perfect place to hide for a few hours while the worst of the storm blows over and they can complete their planned getaway. Provided, of course, they’re out-worlders and thus don’t know what we Vegians can do with our wonderful sense of smell. Of course they aren’t a Tellurian and four Aldebaranians any more, are they?”

“No, they are five Centralians now. Perfectly innocent. They think their blasters are completely hidden under those long over shirts, but now and again a bulge shows—they’ve still got blasters on their hips. The theater’s crowded, but the five friends want to sit together. The manager thinks it could be arranged, by paying a small gratuity to a few seat-holders who would like to make a fast credit that way . . . he’ll place them and it’s almost time for us to go. ’Bye, Joanie—stay back, remember!” and she was in his arms.

“How about it, Helen?” Joe asked. “Surely you’re going to kiss your Porthos good-bye, aren’t you?”

“Of a surety, m’enfant!” she exclaimed, and did so with enthusiasm. “But it’s more like Aramis, I think—he kissed everybody, you know—and since I’m not hooked like Joan is—yet—don’t think that this is establishing a precedent.”

“Well, Babs, that leaves you and me.” Bob reached out—she was standing beside him—and pulled her close. “QX?”

“Why, I . . . I guess so.” Barbara blushed furiously. “But Bob . . . is it really _dangerous_?” she whispered.

“I don’t know. Not very, really, I don’t think. At least I certainly _hope_ not. But blasters are _not_ cap-pistols, you know, and whenever one goes off it can raise pure hell. Why? Would you really miss me?”

“You _know_ I would, Bob,” and her kiss had more fervor than either she or he would have believed possible a few minutes before. And at its end she laughed, shakily, and blushed again as she said, “I’ve got sort of used to having you around, so be _sure_ and come back.”

They left the building and walked rapidly along a strangely quiet street to the theater. Without a word they were ushered up a short flight of stairs.

“Hold up, Vesta!” Cloud thought sharply. “We can’t see a thing—wait a couple of minutes.”

They waited five minutes, during which time they learned exactly where the enemy were and discussed every detail of the proposed attack.

“I _still_ can’t see well enough to shoot,” Cloud said then. “Can they give us a little glow of light?”

They could. By almost imperceptible increments the thick, soft blackness was relieved.

“That’s enough.” The light, such as it was, steadied.

“Ready?” Vesta’s voice was a savage growl, low, deep in her throat.

“Ready.”

“No more noise, then.”

They walked forward to the balcony’s edge, leaned over it, looked down. Directly beneath Vesta’s head was seated a man in Centralian garb; four others were behind, in front of, and at each side of, their chief.

“Now!” Vesta yelled, and flung herself over the low railing.

At her shout four Vegians ripped four Centralian shirts apart, seized four hip-holstered blasters, and shouted with glee—but they shouted too soon. For the real gun-slick, then as now, did not work from the hip, but out of his sleeve; and these were four of the coldest, fastest killers to be found throughout the far flung empire of Boskone. Thus, all four flashed into action even before they began rising to their feet.

But so did Storm Cloud; and his heavy weapon was already out and ready. He knew what those hands were doing, in the instant of their starting to do it, and his DeLameter flamed three times in what was practically one very short blast. He had to move a little before he could sight on the fourth guard—Vesta’s furiously active body was in the way—so Joe and Bob each got a shot, too. Three bolts of lightning hit that luckless wight at once, literally cremating him in air as he half-crouched, bringing his blaster to bear on the catapulting thing attacking his boss.

When Vesta went over the rail she did not jump to the floor below. Instead, her hands locked on the edge; her feet dug into the latticework of the apron. She squatted. Her tail flashed down, wrapping itself twice around the zwilnik’s neck. She heaved, then, and climbed with everything she had; and as she stood upright on the railing, eager hands reached down to help her tail lift its burden up into the balcony. The man struck the floor with a thud and Vesta jumped at him.

“Your fingers first—one at a time,” she snarled; and, seizing a hand, she brought it toward her mouth.

She paused then as if thunderstruck; a dazed, incredulous expression spreading over her face. Bending over, she felt, curiously, tenderly, of his neck.

“Why, he . . . he’s _dead_!” she gasped. “His neck . . . it’s . . . it’s _broken_! From such a little, tiny pull as _that_? Why, _anybody_ ought to have a stronger neck than _that_!”

She straightened up; then, as a crowd of Vegians and the Tellurian women came up, she became instantly her old, gay self. “Well, shall we all go back and finish our dance?”

“What?” Cloud demanded. “After _this_?”

“Why certainly,” Vesta said, brightly. “I’m sorry, of course, that I killed him so quickly, but it doesn’t make any real difference. Zamke is avenged; he can now enjoy himself. We’ll join him in a few years, more or less. Until then, what would you do? What you call ‘mourn’?”

“I don’t know . . . I simply don’t know,” Cloud said, slowly, his arm tightening around Joan’s supple waist. “I thought I’d seen everything, but . . . I suppose you can have somebody take that body out to the ship, so they can check it for identity?”

“Oh, yes, I’ll do that. Right away. You’re sure you don’t want to dance any more?”

“Very sure, my dear. _Very_ sure. All _I_ want to do is take Joan back to the ship.”

“QX. I won’t see you again this trip, then; your hours are so funny. I’ll send for my things. And I won’t say good-bye, Captain Nealcloud and you other wonderful people, because we’ll see each other again, soon and often. Just so-long, and thanks tremendously for all you have done for me.”

And Vesta the Vegian strode away, purring contentedly to herself—tail high.

_Chapter 17_ ▂▂▂▂▂▂THE CALL

THE LENSMEN and their Patrolmen, having made sure that the body of Zamke’s murderer was in fact that of the long-sought Fairchild, went unostentatiously about their various businesses.

The six Tellurians, although shaken no little by their climactic experience on Vegia, returned soon to normal and resumed their accustomed routines of life—with certain outstanding variations. Thus, Helen and Joe flirted joyously and sparred dextrously, but neither was ever to be found tête-à-tête with anyone else. And thus, Bob and Barbara, neither flirting nor sparring, became quietly but enthusiastically inseparable. And thus, between Joan and Cloud, so close even before Vegia, the bonding became so tight that their two minds were, to all intents and purposes, one mind.

The week on Vegia was over. The _Vortex Blaster II_ was loafing through the void at idling speed. Cloud was pacing the floor in his office. Joan, lounging in a deeply-cushioned chair with legs stuck out at an angle of forty-five degrees to each other, was smoking a cigarette and watching him, with her eyes agleam.

“Confound it, I wish they’d hurry up with that fine-tooth,” he said, flipping his half-smoked cigarette at a receptacle and paying no attention to the fact that he missed it by over a foot. “How can I tell Captain Ross where to go when I don’t know myself?”

“That’s one thing I just _love_ about you, my pet,” Joan drawled. “You’re so wonderfully, so superhumanly _patient_. You know as well as I do that the absolutely irreducible minimum of time is twenty-six minutes from now, and that they’ll probably find something they’ll want to study for a minute or so after they get there. So light somewhere, why don’t you, and unseethe yourself?”

“Touché, Joan.” He sat down with a thump. “Has Doctor Janowick a prescription specific for the ailment?”

“Nothing else but, chum. That tight-linkage snooping that we’ve been going to try, but never had time for. Let’s start on Helen and Barbara. I’ve snooped them repeatedly, of course, but our fusion of minds, theoretically, should be able to pick their minds apart cell by cell; to tap their subconscious ancestral memories, even—if there are such things—for a thousand generations back.”

He looked at her curiously. “You know, I think you must have some ghoul blood in you somewhere? I tell you again, those girls are _friends_ of ours!”

“So what?” she grinned at him, entirely unabashed. “You’ll have to get rid of that squeamishness some day; it’s the biggest roadblock there is on the Way of Knowledge. If not them, how would Nadine suit you?”

“Worse yet. She’s just as good at this business as we are, maybe better, and she probably wouldn’t like it.”

“You may have something there. We’ll save her for last, and call on her formally, with announcements and everything. Vesta, then?”

“_Now_ you’re squeaking, little mouse. But no deep digging for a while. We’ll take it easy and light—we don’t want to do any damage we may not be able to undo. As I told you before, my brain is firing on altogether too damn many barrels that I simply don’t know what are doing. Let’s go.”

They fused their minds—an effortless process now—and were at their objective instantaneously.

Vesta was primping; enjoying sensuously the physical feel of her physical body even as dozens of parts of speech of dozens of different languages went through her racing mind. And, one layer down, she was wishing she were old enough to be a newlywed; wishing she had a baby of her own . . . babies were so cute and soft and cuddlesome. . . .

Then Tommie. Cloud and Joan enjoyed with her the strong, rank, sense-satisfying flavor of a Venerian cigar and studied with her the intricate electronic equations of a proposed modification of the standard deep space drive. And, one layer down, the Tomingan engineer, too, was thinking of love and of babies. What was all this space hopping getting her, anyway? It didn’t stop the ache, fill the void, satisfy the longing. As soon as this cruise was over, she was going back to Tominga, tell Hanko she was ready, and settle down. A husband and a family did tie a woman down something fierce—but what price freedom to wander when you wake up in the middle of the night from dreaming of a baby in your arms, only to find the baby isn’t there?

Then Thlaskan and Maluleme. They were seated, arms around each other, on a davenport in their own home on Chickladoria. They were not talking, merely feeling. They were deeply, truly, tremendously in love. In the man’s mind there was a background of his work, of pilotry, of orbits and charts and computations. There was a flash of sincere liking for Cloud, the best boss and the finest figure-man he had ever known; but practically all of his mind was full of love for the wonderful woman at his side. In hers, at the moment, there were only two things; love of her husband and longing for the child which she might already have succeeded in conceiving. . . .

Cloud wrenched their linked minds away.

“This is monstrous, Joan!”

“What’s monstrous about it?” she asked, quietly. “Nothing. It isn’t. Women _need_ children, Storm. All women, everywhere. Now that I’ve found _you_, I can scarcely wait to have some myself. And listen, Storm, please. Before we visit Nadine, you _must_ make up your mind to face facts—_any_ kind of facts—without flinching and shying away and getting mental goose-bumps all over your psyche.”

“I see what you mean. In a fully telepathic race there couldn’t be any real privacy without a continuous block, and that probably wouldn’t be very feasible.”

“No, you _don’t_ see what I mean. You aren’t even on the right road—your whole _concept_ is wrong. There couldn’t be any _thought_, even of privacy, no _conception_ of such a thing. _Think_ a minute! From birth—from the very birth of the whole race—full and open meetings of minds must have been the norm of thought. That kind of thing is—must be—what Nadine is accustomed to at home.”

“Hm . . . I never thought . . . you go see her, Joan, and I’ll stay home.”

“What good would _that_ do? Whatever you may be, my dear, I know darn well you’re _not_ stupid.”

“Not exactly stupid, maybe, but I haven’t thought this thing through the way you have . . . of course, if she’s half as good as we know she is, she’s read us both already, clear down to the footings of our foundations . . . but this thing of a _full_ meeting of minds with anybody but you. . . .”

“You haven’t a thing to hide, you know. At least, _I_ know, whether you do or not.”

“No? How do you figure that? Maybe _you_ think so, but . . . I’ve tried, of course, but I’ve failed a lot oftener than I succeeded.”

“Who hasn’t? You’re not unique, my dear. Shall we go?”

“We might as well, I guess . . . I’m as ready as I ever will be. . . . I’ll try, but. . . .”

“Please do, Master,” came Nadine’s quiet, composed thought, in a vein completely foreign to her usual attitude of self-sufficient aloofness. “I have been observing; studying with awe and with wonder. If you will so deign, revered Master, come fully into my mind.”

“Deign?” Cloud demanded. “What kind of a thought is that, Nadine, from you to me?”

“Deign.” Nadine repeated, firmly. Deeply moved, she was feeling and sending a solemnity of respect Cloud had never before experienced. “My powers are ordinary, since I am of Type One. The two greatest Masters of Manarka are Fives, and have been the greatest Masters of the past. This is the first time I have ever encountered a mind of a type higher than Five. Come in, sir, I plead.”

Cloud went in, and his first flash of comparison was that it was like diving into the pellucid depths of a clean, cool, utterly transparent mountain lake. This mind was _so_ different from Joan’s! Joan’s was rich, warmly sympathetic, tender and emphatic, yet it was full of dark corners, secret nooks, recesses, and automatic blocks. . . . Huh? He had thought her mind as open as a book, but it wasn’t. . . . On the other hand, Nadine’s was wide open by nature. It was cool, poised—although at the moment uncomfortably worshipful—and utterly, _shockingly_ open!

His second thought was that Joan was no longer with him. She was there, in a sense, but _outside_, some way; she wasn’t in Nadine’s mind the way he was.

“I’ll say I’m not!” Joan agreed, fervently. “Thank God! I don’t know what you did or how you did it, but when you went in you peeled me off like the skin of a banana, and I was clinging like a leech, too. I’m on the outside, looking in. Did you see how he did it, Nadine?”

“No, but since I am only a One, such insight would not be expected. I have called the Fives, and they come.”