Galactic Patrol

17: Nothing Serious at All

Kinnison did not lose consciousness—quite. There was too much to do, too much that had to be done. He had to get out of here. He had to get back to his speedster. He had, by hook or by crook, to get back to Prime Basel Therefore, grimly, doggedly, teeth tightlocked in the enhancing agony of every movement, he drew again upon those hidden, those deeply buried resources which even he had no idea he possessed. His code was simple, the code of the Lens. While a Lensman lived he did not quit. Kinnison was a Lensman. Kinnison lived. Kinnison did not quit.

He fought back that engulfing tide of blackness, wave by wave as it came. He beat down by sheer force of will those tenderly beckoning, those sweetly seducing arms of oblivion. He forced the mass of protesting putty that was his body to do what had to be done. He thrust styptic gauze into the most copiously bleeding of his wounds. He was burned, too, he discovered then—they must have had a high–powered needle–beam on that truck, as well as the rifle—but he could do nothing about burns. There simply wasn't time.

He found the power lead that had been severed by a bullet. Stripping the insulation was an almost impossible job, but it was finally accomplished, after a fashion. Bridging the gap proved to be even a worse one. Since there was no slack, the ends could not be twisted together, but had to be joined by a short piece of spare wire, which in turn had to be stripped and then twisted with each end of the severed lead. That task, too, he finally finished, working purely by feel although he was, and halfconscious withal in a wracking haze of pain.

Soldering those joints was of course out of the question. He was afraid even to try to insulate them with tape, lest the loosely–twined strands should fall apart in the attempt. He did have some dry handkerchiefs, however, if he could reach them. He could, and did, and wrapped one carefully about the wires' bare joints. Then, apprehensively, he tried his neutralizer. Wonder of wonder, it worked! So did his driver!

In moments then he was rocketing up the shaft, and as he passed the opening out of which he had been blown he realized with amazement that what had seemed to him like hours must have been minutes only, and few even of them. For the frantic Wheelmen were just then lifting into place the temporary shield which was to stem the mighty outrush of their atmosphere. Wonderingly, Kinnison looked at his air–gauges. He had enough—if he hurried.

And hurry he did. He could hurry, since there was practically no atmosphere to impede his flight. Up the five–miles–deep shaft he shot and out into space. His chronometer, built to withstand even severer shocks than that of his fall, told him where his speedster was to be found, and in a matter of minutes he found her. He forced his rebellious right arm into the sleeve of his armor and fumbled at the lock. It yielded. The port swung open. He was inside his own ship again.

Again the encroaching universe of blackness threatened, but again he fought it off. He could not pass out—yet! Dragging himself to the board, he laid his course upon Sol., too distant by far to permit of the selection of such a tiny objective as its planet Earth. He connected the automatic controls.

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. He 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.

* * * * *

But Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, had done everything that had had to be done before he blacked out. His final thought, feeble though it was, and incomplete, did its work.

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 Space– hound 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 air–lock 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 yetwe 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 red– headed 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."

"Maybe it does to you, but not to me," and Haynes took up the "conventional" photograph a stereoscope in full, true color, an almost living duplicate of the girl in question. Her thick, heavy hair was not red, but was a vividly intense and brilliant auburn, a coppery bronze, flashed with red and gold. Her eyes… bronze was all that he could think of, with flecks of topaz and of tawny gold. Her skin, too, was faintly bronze, glowing with even more than healthy youth's normal measure of sparkling vitality. Not only was she beautiful, the Port Admiral decided, in the words of the surgeon, she "classified."

"Hm…m. Dimples, too," Haynes muttered. "Worse even than I thought— she's a menace to civilization," and he went on to read the documents. "Family…hm. History…experiences…reactions and characteristics…behavior patterns… psychology…mentality…"

"She'll do, Lacy," he advised the surgeon finally. "Keep her on with him…"

"Do!" Lacy snorted. "It isn't a question of whether she rates. Look at that hairthose eyes. Pure Samms. A man to match her would have to be one in a hundred thousand million. With that skeleton, though, he is."

"Of course he is. You don't seem to realize, you myopic old appendix– snatcher, that he's pure Kinnison!"

"Ah…so maybe we could…but he won't be falling for anybody yet, since he's just been unattached. He'll be bullet–proof for quite a while. You ought to know that young, Lensmen—especially young Gray Lensmen—can't see anything but their jobs, for a couple of years, anyway."

"His skeleton tells you that, too, huh?" Haynes grunted, skeptically. "Ordinarily, yes, but you never can tell, especially in hospitals…

"More of your layman's misinformation!" Lacy snapped. "Contrary to popular belief, romance does not thrive in hospitals, except, of course, among the staff. Patients oftentimes think that they fall in love with nurses, but it takes two people to make one romance. Nurses do not fall in love with patients, because a man is never at his best under hospitalization. In fact, the better a man is, the poorer a showing he is apt to make."

"And, as I forget who said, a long time ago, 'no generalization is true, not even this one'," retorted the Port Admiral. "When it does hit him it will hit hard, and we'll take no chances. How about the black–haired one?"

"Well, I just told you that MacDougall has the only perfect skeleton I ever saw in a woman. Brownies is very good, too, of course, but…"

"But not good enough to rate Lensman's Mate, eh?" Haynes completed the thought. "Then take her out. Pick the best skeletons you've got for this job, and see that no others come anywhere near him. Transfer them to some other hospital—to some other floor of this one, at least. Any woman that he ever falls for will fall for him, in spite of your ideas as to the one–wayness of hospital romance, and I don't want him to have such a good chance of making a dive at something that doesn't rate up. Am I right or wrong, and for how much?"

"Well, I haven't had time yet to really study his skeleton, but…"

"Better take a week off and study it. I've studied a lot of people in the last sixtyfive years, and I'll match my experience against your knowledge of bones, any time. Not saying that he will fall this trip, you understand—just playing safe."