“Surely, Kim,” and, breaking out of the crowd, they strolled out into the grounds. Not a word was said until they were seated upon a broad, low bench beneath the spreading foliage of a tree.
Then: “What did you come here for tonight, Mac—the real reason?” he demanded, abruptly.
“I . we . you . I mean—oh, skip it!” the girl stammered, a wave of scarlet flooding her face and down even to her superb, bare shoulders. Then she steadied herself and went on: “You see, I agree with you—as you say, I check you to nineteen decimals. Even Doctor Lacy, with all his knowledge, can be slightly screwy at times, I think.”
“Oh, so that’s it!” It was not, it was only a very minor part of her reason; but the nurse would have bitten her tongue off rather than admit that she had come to that dance solely and only because Kimball Kinnison was to be there. “You knew, then, that this was old Lacy’s idea?”
“Of course. You would never have come, else. He thinks that you may begin wobbling on the beam pretty soon unless you put out a few braking jots.”
“And you?”
“Not in a million, Kim. Lacy’s as cockeyed as Trenco’s ether, and I as good as told him so. He may wobble a bit, but you won’t. You’ve got a job to do, and you’re doing it. You’ll finish it, too, in spite of all the vermin infesting all the galaxies of the macro-cosmic Universe!” she finished, passionately.
“Klono’s brazen whiskers, Mac!” He turned suddenly and stared intently down into her wide, gold-flecked, tawny eyes. She stared back for a moment, then looked away.
“Don’t look at me like that!” she almost screamed. “I can’t stand it—you make me feel stark naked! I know your Lens is off—I’d simply die if it wasn’t—but you’re a mind-reader, even without it!”
She did know that that powerful telepath was off and would remain off, and she was glad indeed of the fact; for her mind was seething with thoughts which that Lensman must not know, then or ever. And for his part, the Lensman knew much better than she did that had he chosen to exert the powers at his command she would have been naked, mentally and physically, to his perception; but he did not exert those powers—then. The amenities of human relationship demanded that some fastnesses of reserve remain inviolate, but he had to know what this woman knew. If necessary, he would take the knowledge away from her by force, so completely that she would never know that she had ever known it. Therefore:
“Just what do you know, Mac, and how did you find it out?” he demanded; quietly, but with a stern finality of inflection that made a quick chill run up and down the nurse’s back.
“I know a lot, Kim.” The girl shivered slightly, even though the evening was warm and balmy. “I learned it from your own mind. When you called me, back there on the floor, I didn’t get just a single, sharp thought, as though you were speaking to me, as I always did before. Instead, it seemed as though I was actually inside your own mind—the whole of it. I’ve heard Lensmen speak of a wide-open two-way, but I never had even the faintest inkling of what such a thing would be like—no one could who has never experienced it. Of course I didn’t—I couldn’t—understand a millionth of what I saw, or seemed to see. It was too vast, too incredibly immense. I never dreamed any mortal could have a mind like that, Kim! But it was ghastly, too—it gave me the shrieking jitters and just about sent me down out of control. And you didn’t even know it—I know you didn’t! I didn’t want to look, really, but I couldn’t help seeing, and I’m glad I did—I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!” she finished, almost incoherently.
“Hm . m. That changes the picture entirely.” Much to her surprise, the man’s voice was calm and thoughtful; not at all incensed. Not even disturbed. “So I spilled the beans myself, on a wide-open two-way, and didn’t even realize it[1] . I knew you were backfiring about something, but thought it was because I might think you guilty of petty vanity. And I called you a dumbbell once!” he marveled.
“Twice,” she corrected him, “and the second time I was never so glad to be called names in my whole life.”
“Now I know I was getting to be a space-louse.”
“Uh-uh, Kim,” she denied again, gently. “And you aren’t a brat or a lug or a clunker, either, even though I have called you such. But, now that I’ve actually got all this stuff, what can you—what can we—do about it?”
“Perhaps . probably . I think, since I gave it to you myself, I’ll let you keep it,” Kinnison decided, slowly.
“Keep it!” she exclaimed. “Of course I’ll keep it! Why, it’s in my mind—I’ll have to keep it—nobody can take knowledge away from anyone!”
“Oh, sure—of course,” he murmured, absently. There were a lot of thing that Mac didn’t know, and no good end would be served by enlightening her farther. “You see, there’s a lot of stuff in my mind that I don’t know much about myself, yet. Since I gave you an open channel, there must have been a good reason for it, even though, consciously, I don’t know myself what it was.” He thought intensely for moments, then went on: “Undoubtedly the subconscious. Probably it recognized the necessity of discussing the whole situation with someone having a fresh viewpoint, someone whose ideas can help me develop a fresh angle of attack. Haynes and I think too much alike for him to be of much help.”
“You trust me that much?” the girl asked, dumbfounded.
“Certainly,” he replied without hesitation. “I know enough about you to know that you can keep your mouth shut.”
Thus unromantically did Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, acknowledge the first glimmerings of the dawning perception of a vast fact—that this nurse and he were two between whom there never would nor could exist any iota of doubt or of question.
Then they sat and talked. Not idly, as is the fashion of lovers, of the minutiæ of their own romantic affairs, did these two converse, but cosmically, of the entire Universe and of the already existent conflict between the cultures of Civilization and Boskonia.
They sat there, romantically enough to all outward seeming; their privacy assured by Kinnison’s Lens and by his ever-watchful sense of perception. Time after time, completely unconsciously, that sense reached out to other couples who approached; to touch and to affect their minds so insidiously that they did not know that they were being steered away from the tree in whose black moon-shadow sat the Lensman and the nurse.
Finally the long conversation came to an end and Kinnison assisted his companion to her feet. His frame was straighter, his eyes held a new and brighter light.
“By the way, Kim,” she asked idly as they strolled back toward the ball-room, “who is this Klono, by whom you were swearing a while ago? Another spaceman’s god, like Noshabkeming, of the Valerians?”
“Something like him, only more so,” he laughed. “A combination of Noshabkeming, some of the gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans, all three of the Fates, and quite a few other things as well. I think, originally, from Corvina, but fairly wide-spread through certain sections of the galaxy now. He’s got so much stuff—teeth and horns, claws and whiskers, tail and everything—that he’s much more satisfactory to swear by than any other space-god I know of.”
“But why do men have to swear at all, Kim?” she queried, curiously. “It’s so silly.”
“For the same reason that women cry,” he countered. “A man swears to keep from crying, a woman cries to keep from swearing. Both are sound psychology. Safety valves—means of blowing off excess pressure that would otherwise blow fuses or burn out tubes.”
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