Gray Lensman (33 page)

"Well come in force, anyway, and fast. Keep him alive until we meet you," Haynes urged, and disconnected.

It was an unheard-of occurrence for the Port Admiral to turn over his very busy and extremely important desk to a subordinate without notice and without giving him instructions, but Haynes did it now.

"Take charge of everything, Southworth!" he snapped. "I'm called away—emergency.

Kinnison found Boskone— got away—hurt—I'm going after him in the
Dauntless.
Taking the new flotilla with me. Indefinite time—probably a few weeks."

He strode toward the communicator desk. Hie
Dauntless
was, as. always, completely serviced and ready for any emergency. Where was that fleet of her sister-ships, on its shakedown cruise? He'd shake them down! They had with them the new hospital-ship, too—the only Red Cross ship in space that could leg it, parsec for parsec, with the
Dauntless.

"Get me Navigations . . . Figure best point of rendezvous for
Dauntless
and Flotilla ZKD, both at full blast, en route to Lundmark's Nebula. Fifteen minutes departure. Figure approximate time of meeting with speedster, also at full blast, leaving that nebula hour nine fourteen today.

Correction! Cancel speedster meeting, we can compute that more accurately later. Advise adjutant Admiral Southworth will send order, through channels. Get me Base Hospital. . . Lacy, please . . . Kinnison's hurt, sawbones, bad. I'm going out after him. Coming along?"

"Yes. How about. . ."

"On the green. Flotilla ZKD, including your new two-hundred-million-credit hospital, is going along. Slip twelve,
Dauntless,
eleven and one-half minutes from now. Hipe!" and the Surgeon-Marshal "biped."

Two minutes before the scheduled take-off Base Navigations called the chief navigating officer of the
Dauntless.

"Course to rendezvous with Flotilla ZKD latitude three fifty four dash thirty longitude nineteen dash forty two time approximately twelve dash seven dash twenty six place one dash three dash zero outside arbitrary galactic rim check and repeat" rattled from the speaker without pause or punctuation. Nevertheless the chief navigator got it, recorded it, checked and repeated it

"Figures only approximations because of lack of exact data on variations in density of medium and on distance necessarily lost in detouring stars" the speaker chattered on "suggest instructing your second navigator to communicate with navigating officers Flotilla ZKD at time twelve dash zero to correct courses to compensate unavoidably erroneous assumptions in computation Base Navigations off."

"Ill say he's off! 'Way off!" growled the Second. "What does he think I am—a complete nitwit? Pretty soon he'll be telling me two plus two equals four point zero."

The fifteen-second warning bell sounded. Every man came to the ready at his post, and precisely upon the designated second the superdreadnought blasted off. For four or five miles she rose inert upon her under-jets, sirens and flaring lights clearing her way. Then she went free, her needle prow slanted sharply upward, her full battery of main driving projectors burst into action, and to all intents and purposes she vanished.

The Earth fell away from her at an incredible rate, dwindling away into invisibility in less than a minute. In two minutes the sun itself was merely a bright star, in five it had merged indistinguishably into the sharply-defined, brilliantly white belt of the Milky Way.

Hour after hour, day after day the
Dauntless
hurtled through space, swinging almost imperceptibly this way and that to avoid the dense ether in the neighborhood of suns through which the designated course would have led; but never leaving far or for long the direct line, almost exactly in the equatorial plane of the galaxy, between Tellus and the place of meeting.

Behind her the Milky Way clotted, condensed, gathered itself together; before her and around her the stars began rapidly to thin out. Finally there were no more stars in front of her. She had reached the "arbitrary rim" of the galaxy, and the second navigator, then on duty, plugged into Communications.

"Please get me Flotilla ZKD, Flagship Navigations," he requested; and, as a clean-cut young face appeared upon his plate, "Hi, Harvey, old spacehound! Fancy meeting you out here!

It's a small Universe, ain't it? Say, did that crumb back there at Base tell you, too, to be sure and start checking course before you over-ran the rendezvous? If he was singling me out to make that pass at, I'm going to take steps, and not through channels, either."

"Yeah, he told me the same. I thought it was funny, too— an oiler's pimp would know enough to do that without being told. We figured maybe he was jittery on account of us meeting the admiral or something. What's burned out all the jets, Paul, to get the big brass hats 'way out here and all dithered up, and to pull us offa the cruise this way? Must be a hell of an important flit! You're computing the Old Man himself, you must know something. What's this speedster that we're going to escort, and why? Give us the dope!"

"I don't know anything, Harvey, honest, any more than you do. They didn't put out a thing. Well, we'd better be getting onto the course—'to compensate unavoidably erroneous assumptions in computation,'" he mimicked, caustically. "What do you read on my lambda?

Fourteen—three —point zero six—decrement. . ."

The conversation became a technical jargon; because of which, however, the courses of the flying spaceships changed subtly. The flottila swung around, through a small arc of a circle of prodigious radius, decreasing by a tenth its driving force. Up to it the
Dauntless
crept; through it and into the van. Then again in cone formation, but with fifty five units instead of fifty four, the flotilla screamed forward at maximum blast.

Well before the calculated time of meeting the speedster a Velantian Lensman who knew Worsel well put himself en rapport with him and sent a thought out far ahead of the flying squadron. It found its goal—Lensmen of that race, as has been brought out, have always been extraordinarily capable communicators—and once more the course was altered slightly. In due time Worsel reported that he could detect the fleet, and shortly thereafter:

"Worsel says to cut your drive to zero," the Velantian transmitted. "He's coming up . . .

He's close. . . He's going to go inert and start driving . . . We're to stay free until we see what his intrinsic velocity is . . . Watch for his flare."

It was a weird sensation, this of knowing that a speedster —quite a sizable chunk of boat, really—was almost in their midst, and yet having all their instruments, even the electros, register empty space . . .

There it was! The flare of the driving blast, a brilliant streamer of fierce white light, sprang into being and drifted rapidly away to one side of their course. When it had attained a safe distance:

"All ships of the flotilla except the
Dauntless
go inert," Haynes directed. Then, to his own pilot. "Back us off a bit, Henderson, and do the same," and the new flagship, too, went inert.

"How can I get onto the
Pasteur
the quickest, Haynes?" Lacy demanded.

"Take a gig," the Admiral grunted, "and tell the boys how much you want to take. Three G's is all we can use without warning and preparation."

There followed a curious and fascinating spectacle, for the hospital ship had an intrinsic velocity entirely different from that of either Kinnison's speedster or Lacy's powerful gig. The
Pasteur,
gravity pads cut to zero, was braking down by means of her under-jets at a conservative one point four gravities—hospital ships were not allowed to use the brutal accelerations employed as a matter of course by ships of war.

The gig was on her brakes at five gravities, all that Lacy wanted to take—but the speedster! Worsel had put his patient into a pressure-pack and had hung him on suspension, and was "balancing her down on her tail" at a full eleven gravities!

But even at that, the gig first matched the velocity of the hospital ship. The intrinsics of those two were at least of the same order of magnitude, since both had come from the same galaxy. Therefore Lacy boarded the Red Cross vessel and was escorted to the office of the chief nurse while Worsel was still blasting at eleven G's—fifty thousand miles distant then and getting farther away by the second—to kill the speedster's Lundmarkian intrinsic velocity. Nor could the tractors of the warships be of any assistance—the speedster's own vicious jets were fully capable of supplying more acceleration than even a pressure-packed human body could endure.

"How do you do, Doctor Lacy? Everything is ready." Clarrissa MacDougall met him, hand outstretched. Her saucy white cap was worn as perkily cocked as ever: perhaps even more so, now that it was emblazoned with the cross-surmounted wedge which is the insignia of sector chief nurse. Her flaming hair was as gorgeous, her smile as radiant, her bearing as confidently—Kinnison has said of her more than once that she is the only person he has ever known who can strut sitting down!—as calmly poised. "I'm very glad to see you, doctor. It's been quite a while . . ." Her voice died away, for the man was looking at her with an expression defying analysis.

For Lacy was thunder-struck. If he had ever known it—and he must have—he had completely forgotten that MacDougall had this ship. This was awful—terrible!

"Oh, yes ,. . yes, of course. How do you do? Mighty glad to see you again. How's everything going?" He pumped her hand vigorously, thinking frantically the while what he would— what he
could
say next "Oh, by the way, who is to be in charge of the operating room?"

"Why, I am, of course," she replied in surprise. "Who else would be?"

"Anyone
else!" he wanted to say, but did not—then. "Why, that isn't at all necessary . . . I would suggest . . ."

"You'll suggest nothing of the kind!" She stared at him intently; then, as she realized what his expression really meant—she had never before seen such a look of pitying anguish upon his usually sternly professional face—her own turned white and both hands flew to her throat.

"Not Kirn, Lacy!" she gasped. Gone now was everything of poise, of insouciance, which had so characterized her a moment before. She who had worked unflinchingly upon all sorts of dismembered, fragmentary, maimed and mangled men was now a pleading, stricken, desperately frightened girl. "Not Kim—please! Oh, merciful God, don't let it be my Kirn!"

"You
can't
be there, Mac." He did not need to tell her. She knew. He knew that she knew.

"Somebody else—
anybody
else."

"No!" came the hot negative, although the blood drained completely from her face, leaving it as white as the immaculate uniform she wore. Her eyes were black, burning holes. "It's my job, Lacy, in more ways than one. Do you think I'd let anyone else work on
him?"
she finished passionately.

"You'll have to," he declared. "I didn't want to tell you this, but he's a mess." This, from a surgeon of Lacy's long and wide experience, was an unthinkable statement. Nevertheless:

"All the more reason why I've got to do it. No matter what shape he's in I'll let no one else work on my Kim!"

"I say no. That's an order—official!"

"Damn such orders!" she flamed. "There's nothing back of it—you know that as well as I do!"

"See here, young woman . . . !"

"Do you think you can order me not to perform the very duties I swore to do?" she stormed. "And even if it were not my job, I'd come in and work on him if I had to get a torch and cut my way in to do it. The only way you can keep me out is to have about ten of your men put me into a strait-jacket—and if you do that I'll have you kicked out of the Service bodily!"

"QX, MacDougall, you win." She had him there. This girl could and would do exactly that. "But if you faint I'll make you wish. . . ."

"You know me better than that, doctor." She was cold now as a woman of marble. "If he dies I'll die too, right then; but if he lives I'll stand by."

"You would, at that," the surgeon admitted. "Probably you would be able to hold together better than any one else could. But there'll be after-effects in your case, you know."

"I know." Her voice was bleak. "I'll live through them . . . if Kim lives." She became all nurse in the course of a breath. White, cold, inhuman; strung to highest tension and yet placidly calm, as only a truly loving woman in life's great crises can be. "You have had reports on him, doctor. What is your provisional diagnosis?"

"Something like elephantiasis, only worse, affecting both arms and both legs. Drastic amputations indicated. Eye-sockets. Burns. Multiple and compound fractures. Punctured and incised wounds., Traumatism, ecchymosis, extensive extravasations, oedema. Profound systemic shock. The prognosis, however, seems to be favorable, as far as we can tell."

"Oh, I'm glad of that," she breathed, the woman for a moment showing through the armor of the nurse. She had not dared even to think of prognosis. Then she had a thought. "Is that really true, or are you just giving me a shot in the arm?" she demanded.

"The truth—strictly," he assured her. "Worsel has an excellent sense of perception, and has reported fully and clearly. His brain, mind, and spine are not affected in any way, and we should be able to save his life. That is the one good feature of the whole thing."

The speedster finally matched the intrinsic velocity of the hospital ship. She went free, flashed up to the
Pasteur,
inerted, and maneuvered briefly. The larger vessel engulfed the smaller. The Gray Lensman was carried into the operating room. The anaesthetist approached the table and Lacy was stunned at a thought from Kinnison.

"Never mind the anaesthetic, Doctor Lacy. You can't make me unconscious without killing me. Just go ahead with your work. I held a nerve-block while the Delgonian was doing his stuff and I can hold it while you're doing yours."

"But we can't, man!" Lacy exclaimed. "You've got to be under a general for this job—we can't have you conscious. You're raving, I think. It will work—it always has. Let us try it, anyway, won't you?"