Galactic Patrol (26 page)

He was weakening fast, and he knew it. But from somewhere and in some fashion he
must
get strength to do what
trust
be done-and somehow he did it. He cut in the Berg, cut in maximum blast. Hang on, Kim! Hang on for just a second more! He disconnected the spacer. Hè killed the detector nullifiers. Then, with the utterly last remnant of his strength he thought into his Lens.

"Haynes." The thought went out blurred, distorted, weak. "Kinniston. I'm coming . .

. . . com . . . . . "

He was done. Out, cold. Utterly spent. He had already done too much – far, far too much. He had driven that pitifully mangled body of his to its ultimately last possible movement, his wracked and tortured mind to its ultimately last possible thought. The last iota of even his tremendous reserve of vitality was consumed and he plunged, parsecs deep, into the black depths of oblivion which bad so long and so unsuccessfully been trying to engulf him. And on and on the speedster flashed 'at the very peak of her unimaginably high speed, carrying the insensible, the utterly spent, the sorely wounded, the abysmally unconscious Lensman toward his native Earth.

*

Port Admiral Haynes was seated at his desk, discussing matters of import with an office-full of executives, when that thought arrived. Hardened old spacehound that he was, and survivor of many encounters and hospitalizations, he knew instantly what that thought connoted and from the depths of what dire need it had been sent.

Therefore, to the amazement of the officers in the room, he suddenly leaped to his feet, seized his microphone, and snapped out orders. Orders, and still more orders.

Every vessel in seven sectors, of whatever class or tonnage, was to shove its detectors out to the limit. Kinnison's speedster is out there somewhere. Find her-get her-kill her drive and drag her in here, to number ten landing field. Get a pilot here, fast-no, two pilots, in armor. Get them off the top of the board, too-Henderson and Watson or Schermerhorn if they're anywhere within range. He then Lensed his lifelong friend Surgeon-Marshal Lacy, at Base Hospital.

"Sawbones, I've got a boy out that's badly hurt. He's coming in free-you know what that means. Send over a good doctor. And have you got a nurse who knows how to use a personal neutralizer and who isn't afraid to go into the net?"

"Coming myself. Yes." The doctor's thought was as crisp as the admiral's. "When do you want us?"

"As soon as they get their tractors on that speedster -- you'll know when that happens."

Then, neglecting all other business, the Port Admiral directed in person the farflung screen of ships searching for Kinnison's flying midget.

Eventually she was found, and Haynes, cutting off his plates, leaped to a closet, in which was hanging his own armor. Unused for years, nevertheless it was kept in readiness for instant service, and now, at long last, the old Spacehound had a good excuse to use it again. He could have sent out one of the younger men, of course, but this was one job that he was going to do himself.

Armored, he strode out into the landing field across the paved way. There awaiting him were two armored figures, the two top-bracket pilots. There were the doctor and the nurse. He barely saw-or, rather, he saw without noticing -a saucy white cap atop a riot of red-bronze-auburn curls, a symmetrical young body in its spotless white. He did not notice the face at all. What he saw was that there was a neutralizer strapped snugly into the curve of her back, that it was fitted properly, and that it was not yet functioning.

For this that faced them was no ordinary job. The speedster would land free.

Worse, the admiral feared-and rightly-that Kinnison would also be free, but independently, with an intrinsic velocity different from that of his ship. They must enter the speedster, take her out into space, and inert her. Kinnison must be taken out of the speedster, inerted, his velocity matched to that of the flier, and brought back aboard.

Then and only then could doctor and nurse begin to work on him. Then they would have to land as fast as a landing could be made-the boy should have been in hospital long ago. .

And during all these evolutions and until their return to ground the rescuers themselves would remain inertialess. Ordinarily such-visitors left the ship, inserted themselves, and came back to it inert, under their own power. But now there was no time for that. They had to get Kinnison to the hospital, and besides, the doctor and the nurse-particularly the nurse-could not be expected to be space-suit navigators. They would all take it in the net, and that was another reason for haste. For while they were gone their intrinsic velocity would remain unchanged, while that of their present surroundings would be changing constantly. The longer they were gone the greater would become the discrepancy. Hence the net.

The net-a leather-and-canvas sack, lined with sponge-rubber-padded coiled steel, anchored to ceiling and to walls and to floor through every shock-absorbing artifice of beryllium-copper springs and of rubber and nylon cable that the mind of man had been able to devise. It takes something to absorb and to dissipate the kinetic energy which may reside within a human body when its intrinsic velocity does not match the intrinsic velocity of its surroundings-that is, if that body is not to be mashed to a pulp. It takes something, also, to enable any human being to face without flinching the prospect of going into that net, especially in ignorance of exactly how much kinetic energy will have to be dissipated. Haynes cogitated, studying the erect, supple young back, then spoke.

"Maybe we'd better cancel the nurse, Lacy, or get her a suit . . . . .

“Time is too important," the girl herself put in, crisply. "Don't worry about me, Port Admiral, I've been in the net before."

She turned toward Haynes as she spoke, and for the first time he really saw her face. Why, she was a real beauty -a knockout-a seven-sector callout . . . . .

"Here she is!” In the grip of a tractor the speedster flashed to ground in front of the waiting five, and they hurried aboard.

They . hurried, but there was no flurry, no confusion. Each knew exactly what to do, and each did it.

Out into space shot the little vessel, jerking savagely downward and sidewise as one of the pilots cut the Bergenholm. Out of the airlock flew the Port Admiral and the helpless, unconscious Kinnison, inertialess both and now chained together. Off they darted, in a new direction and with tremendous speed as Haynes cut Kinnison's neutralizer. There was a mighty double flare as the drivers of both space-suits went to work.

As soon as it was safe to do so, out darted an armored figure with a space-line, whose grappling end clinked into a socket of the old man's armor as the pilot rammed it home. Then, as an angler plays a fish, two husky pilots, feet wide – braced against the steel portal of the airlock and bodies sweating with effort, heaving when they could and giving line only when they must helped the laboring drivers to overcome the difference in velocity.

Soon the Lensmen, young and old, were inside. Doctor and nurse went instantly to work, with the calmness and precision so characteristic of their highly-skilled crafts. In a trice they had him out of his armor, out of his leather, and into a hammock, perceiving at once that except for a few pads of gauze they could do nothing for their patient until they had him upon an operating table. Meanwhile the pilots, having swung the hammocks, had been observing, computing and conferring.

"She's got a lot of speed, Admiral-most of it straight down," Henderson reported.

"On her landing jets it'll take close to two G's on a full revolution to bring her in. Either one of us can balance her down, but it'll have to be straight on her tail and it'll mean over five G's most of the way. Which do you want?"

"Which is more important, Lacy, time or pressure?" Haynes transferred decision to the surgeon.

`Time." Lacy decided .instantly. "Fight her down!" His patient had been through so much already of force and pressure that a little more would not do additional hurt, and time was most decidedly of the essence. Doctor, nurse, and admiral leaped into hammocks, pilots at their controls tightened safety belts and acceleration straps-five gravities for over half an hour is no light matter-and the fight was on.

Starkly incandescent flares ripped and raved from driving jets and aide jets. The speedster spun around viciously, only to be curbed, skillfully if savagely, at the precisely right instant. Without an orbit, without even a corkscrew or other spiral, she was going down-straight down. And not upon her under jets was this descent to be, nor upon her even more powerful braking jets. Master Pilot Henry Henderson, Prime Base's best, was going to kill the awful inertia of the speedster by "balancing her down on her tail." Or, to translate from the jargon of space, he was going to hold the tricky, cranky little vessel upright upon the terrific blasts of her main driving projectors, against the Earth's gravitation and against all other perturbing forces, while her driving force counteracted, overcame, and dissipated the full frightful measure of the kinetic energy of her mass and speed!

And balance her down he did. Haynes was afraid for a minute that that intrepid wight was actually going to
land
the speedster on her tail. He didn't-quite-but he had only a scant hundred feet to spare when he nosed her over and eased her to ground on her under-jets.

The crash-wagon and its crew were waiting, and as Kinnison was rushed to the hospital the others hurried to the net room. Doctor Lacy first, of course, then the nurse, and, to Haynes' approving surprise, she took it like a veteran. Hardly had the surgeon let himself out of the "cocoon" than she was in it, and hardly had the terrific surges and recoils of her own not inconsiderable one hundred and forty-five pounds of mass abated than she herself was out and sprinting across the sward toward the hospital.

Haynes went back to his office and tried to work, but he could not concentrate, and made his way back to the hospital. There he waited, and as Lacy came out of the operating room he buttonholed him.

"How about it, Lacy, will be live?" he demanded.

"Live? Of course he'll live." the surgeon replied, gruffly. "Can't tell you details yet-we won't know, ourselves, for a couple of hours yet. Do a flit, Haynes. Come back at sixteen forty-not a second before-and I'll tell you all about it."

Since there was no help for it the Port Admiral did go away, but he was back promptly on the tick of the designated hour.

"How is he?" he demanded without preamble. "Will he really live, or were you just giving me a shot in the arm?"

"Better than that, much better," the surgeon assured him. "Definitely so, yes. He's in much better shape than we dared hope. Must have been a very light crash indeed –

nothing seriously the matter with him at all. We won't even have to amputate, from what we can see now. He should make a one hundred percent recovery, not only without artificial members, but with scarcely a scar. He couldn't have been in a space crack-up at all, or he wouldn't have come out with so little injury."

"Fine, Doc-wonderful! Now the details."

"Here's the picture." The doctor unrolled a full-length X-ray print, showing every anatomical detail of the Lensman's interior structure. "First, just notice that skeleton. It is really remarkable. Slightly out of true here and there right now, of course, but I believe it's going to turn out to be the first absolutely perfect male skeleton I have ever seen.

That young man will go far, Haynes."

"Sure he will. Why else do you suppose we put him in Gray? But I didn't come over here to be told that-show me the damage."

"Look at the picture-see for yourself. Multiple and compound fractures, you notice, of legs and arm, and a few ribs. Scapula, of course-there. Oh, yes, there's a skull fracture, too, but it doesn't amount to much. That's all-the spine, you see, isn't injured at all."

"What d'you mean, 'that's all'? How about his wounds? I saw some of them myself, and they were not pin-pricks."

"Nothing of the least importance. A few punctured wounds and a couple of incised ones, but nothing even close to a vital part. He won't need even a transfusion, since he stopped the major hemorrhages himself, shortly after he was wounded. There are a few burns, of course, but they are mostly superficial-none that will not yield quite readily to treatment."

"Mighty glad of that. He'll be here six weeks, then?"

"Better call it twelve, I think-ten at least. You see, some of the fractures, especially those in the left leg, and a couple of burns, are rather severe, as such things go. Then, too, the length of time elapsing between injury and treatment didn't do anything a bit of good."

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

"Yes." The surgeon smiled. "He isn't 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 redheaded 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, five feet six, weight, one forty-five and a half. Here are her pictures, conventional and X-ray. Man, look at that skeleton! Beautiful!

The only really perfect skeleton I ever saw in a woman.”

"It isn't the skeleton Im 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."