There was a way out of that, too. In the childishness of his hospitalization he had called Nurse MacDougall a dumb-bell. He had thought of her, and had spoken to her quite frankly, in uncomplimentary terms. But he knew that there was a real brain back of that beautiful face, that a quick and keen intelligence resided under that red-bronze thatch. Therefore when the assembly was complete he was ready, and in no uncertain or ambiguous language he opened up.
“Listen, you—all of you” he roared. “This is the first time in months that we have made such a haul as this, and you fellows have the brazen gall to start helping yourselves to the choicest stuff before anybody else gets a look at it. I tell you now to lay off, and that goes exactly as it lays. I, personally, will kill any man that touches one of those women before they arrive here at base. Now you, captain, are the first and worst offender of the lot,” and he stared directly into the eyes of the officer whom he had last seen entering the dungeon of the Wheelmen.
“I admit that you’re a good picker.” Kinnison’s voice was now venomously soft, his intonation distinct with thinly veiled sarcasm. “Unfortunately, however, your taste agrees too well with mine. You see, captain, I’m going to need a nurse myself. I think I’m coming down with something. And, since I’ve got to have a nurse, I’ll take that red-headed one. I had a nurse once with hair just that color, who insisted on feeding me tea and toast and a soft-boiled egg when I wanted beefsteak; and I’m going to take my grudge out on this one here for all the red-headed nurses that ever lived. I trust that you will pardon the length of this speech, but I want to give you my reasons in full for cautioning you that that particular nurse is my own particular personal property. Mark her for me, and see to it that she gets here—exactly as she is now.”
The captain had been afraid to interrupt his superior, but now he erupted.
“But see here, Blakeslee!” he stormed. “She’s mine, by every right. I captured her, I saw her first, I’ve got her here .”
“Enough of that back-talk, captain!” Kinnison sneered elaborately. “You know, of course, that you are violating every rule by taking booty for yourself before division at base, and that you can get shot for doing it.”
“But everybody does it!” protested the captain.
“Except when a superior officer catches him at it. Superiors get first pick, you know,” the Lensman reminded him suavely.
“But I protest, sir! I’ll take it up with .”
“Shut up!” Kinnison snarled, with cold finality. “Take it up with whom you please, but remember this, my last warning. Bring her in to me as she is and you live. Touch her and you die! Now, you nurses, come over here to the board!”
Nurse MacDougall had been whispering furtively to the others and now she led the way, head high and eyes blazing defiance. She was an actress, as well as a nurse.
“Take a good, long look at this button, right here, marked ‘Relay 46,’ ” came curt instructions. “If anybody aboard this ship touches any one of you, or even looks at you as though he wants to, press this button and I’ll do the rest. Now, you big, red-headed dumb-bell, look at me. Don’t start begging—yet. I just want to be sure you’ll know me when you see me.”
“I’ll know you, never fear, you . you brat!” she flared, thus informing the Lensman that she had received his message. “I’ll not only know you—I’ll scratch your eyes out on sight!”
“That’ll be a good trick if you can do it,” Kinnison sneered, and cut off.
“What’s it all about, Mac? What has got into you?” demanded one of the nurses, as soon as the women were alone.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Watch out, they may have spy-rays on us. I don’t know anything, really, and the whole thing is too wildly impossible, too utterly fantastic to make sense. But pass the word along to all the girls to ride this out, because my Gray Lensman is in on it, somewhere and somehow. I don’t see how he can be, possibly, but I just know he is.”
For, at the first mention of tea and toast, before she perceived even an inkling of the true situation, her mind had flashed back instantly to Kinnison, the most stubborn and rebellious patient she had ever had. More, the only man she had ever known who had treated her precisely as though she were a part of the hospital’s very furniture. As is the way of women—particularly of beautiful women—she had orated of women’s rights and of women’s status in the scheme of things. She had decried all special privileges, and had stated, often and with heat, that she asked no odds of any man living or yet to be born. Nevertheless, and also beautiful-womanlike, the thought had bitten deep that here was a man who had never even realized that she was a woman, to say nothing of realizing that she was an extraordinarily beautiful one! And deep within her and sternly suppressed the thought had still rankled.
At the mention of beefsteak she had all but screamed, gripping her knees with frantic hands to keep her emotion down. For she had had no real hope; she was simply fighting with everything she had until the hopeless end, which she had known could not long be delayed. Now she gathered herself together and began to act.
When the word “dumb-bell” boomed from the speaker she knew, beyond doubt or peradventure, that it was Kinnison, the Gray Lensman, who was really doing that talking. It was crazy—it didn’t make any kind of sense at all—but it was, it must be, true. And, again womanlike, she knew with a calm certainty that as long as that Gray Lensman were alive and conscious, he would be completely the master of any situation in which he might find himself. Therefore she passed along her illogical but cheering thought, and the nurses, being also women, accepted it without question as the actual and accomplished fact.
They carried on, and when the captured hospital ship had docked at base, Kinnison was completely ready to force matters to a conclusion. In addition to the chief communications officer, he now had under his control a highly capable observer. To handle two such minds was child’s play to the intellect which had directed, against their full fighting wills, the minds of two and three quarters alert, powerful, and fully warned officers of the Galactic Patrol!
“Good girl, Mac,” he put his mind en rapport with hers and sent his message. “Glad you got the idea. You did a good job of acting, and if you can do some more as good we’ll be all set. Can do?”
“I’ll say I can!” she assented fervently. “I don’t know what you are doing, how you can possibly do it, or where you are, but that can wait. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it!”
“Make passes at the base commander,” he instructed her. “Hate me—the ape I’m working through, you know; Blakeslee, his name is—like poison. Go into it big—all jets wide open. You maybe could love him, but if I get you you’ll blow out your brains—if any. You knew the line—play up to him with everything you can bring to bear, and hate me to hell and back. Help all you can to start a fight between us. If he falls for you hard enough the blow-off comes then and there. If not, he’ll be able to do us all plenty of dirt. I can kill a lot of them, but not enough of them quick enough.”
“He’ll fall,” she promised him gleefully, “like ten thousand bricks falling down a well. Just watch my jets!”
And fall he did. He had not even seen a woman for months, and he expected nothing except bitter-end resistance and suicide from any of these women of the Patrol. Therefore he was rocked to the heels—set back upon his very haunches—when the most beautiful woman he had ever seen came of her own volition into his arms, seeking in them sanctuary from his own chief communications officer.
“I hate him!” she sobbed, nestling against the huge bulk of the commander’s body and turning upon him the full blast of the high-powered projectors which were her eyes. “You wouldn’t be so mean to me, I just know you wouldn’t!” and her subtly perfumed head sank upon his shoulder. The outlaw was just so much soft wax.
“I’ll say I wouldn’t be mean to you” his voice dropped to a gentle bellow. “Why, you little sweetheart, I’ll marry you. I will so, by all the gods of