"Bad," the girl replied, gravely. "Not the worst possible, perhaps, but from my standpoint plenty bad enough. What can I expect from me Patrol except what I do expect?'You don't need to kid me along, Kinnison. I can take it, and I'd a lot rather take it standing up, facing it, than have you sneak up on me with it after giving me your shots in the arm."
"What somebody has done to you is a sin and a shrieking shame," Kinnison declared, feelingly. "Come on, you poor little devil." He picked up sundry pieces of apparatus, then, taking her arm, he escorted her to another, almost luxuriously furnished cabin.
"That door," he explained carefully, "is solid chrome–tungsten–molybdenum steel. The lock can't be picked. There are only two keys to it in existence, and here they are. There's a bolt, too, that's proof against anything short of a five–hundred–ton hydraulic jack, or an atomic–hydrogen cutting torch. Here's a full–coverage screen, and a twentyfoot spy–ray block. There is your stuff out of the speedster. If you want help, or anything to eat or drink, or anything else that can be expected aboard a ship like this, there's the communicator. QX?
"Then you really mean it? That I…that you…I mean…"
"Absolutely," he assured her. "Just that You are completely the master of your destiny, the captain of your soul. Good–night."
"Good–night, Kinnison. Good–night, and th…thanks." The girl threw herself face downward upon the bed in a storm of sobs.
Nevertheless, as Kinnison started back toward his own cabin, he heard the massive bolt click into its socket and felt the blocking screens go on.
5: …illona of Lonabar
Twelve or fourteen hours later, after the Aldebaranian girl had had her breakfast, Kinnison went to her cabin.
"Hi, Cutie, you look better. By the way, what's your name, so we'll know what to call you?"
"Illona,"
"Illona what?"
"No what—just Illona, that's all."
"How do they tell you from other Illonas, then?"
"Oh, you mean my registry number. In the Aldebaranian language there are not the symbols—it would have to be The Illona who is the daughter of Porlakent the potter who lives in the house of the wheel upon the road of…'"
"Hold everything—well call you Illona Porter." He eyed her keenly. "I thought your Aldebaranian wasn't so hot—didn't seem possible that I could have got that rusty. You haven't been on Aldebaran II for a long time, have you?"
"No, we moved to Lonabar when I was about six."
"Lonabar? Never heard of it—I'll check up on it later. Your stuff was all here, wasn't it? Did any of the red–headed person's things get mixed in?"
"Things?" She giggled sunnily, then sobered in quick embarrassment "She didn't carry any. They're horrid, I think—positively indecent—to run around that way."
"Hm…m. Glad you brought the point up. You've got to put on some clothes aboard this ship, you know."
"Me?" she demanded. "Why, I'm fully dressed…" She paused, then shrank together visibly. "Oh! Tellurians—I remember, all those coverings! You mean, then…you think I'm shameless and indecent too?"
"No. Not at all—yet." At his obvious sincerity Illona unfolded again. "Most of us—especially the officers—have been on so many different planets, had dealings with so many different types and kinds of entities, that we're used to anything. When we visit a planet that goes naked, we do also, as a matter of course; when we hit one that muffles up to the smothering point we do that, too. 'When in Rome, be a Roman candle', you know. The point is that we're at home here, you're the visitor. It's all a matter of convention, of course; but a rather important one. Don't you think so?"
"Covering up, certainly. Uncovering is different. They told me to be sure to, but I simply can't. I tried it back there, but I felt naked!"
"QX—we'll have the tailor make you a dress or two. Some of the boys haven't been around very much, and you'd look pretty bare to them. Everything you've got on, jewelry and all, wouldn't make a Tellurian sun–suit, you know."
"Then have them hurry up the dress, please. But this isn't jewelry, it is…"
"Jet back, beautiful. I know gold, and platinum, and…"
"The metal is expensive, yes," Illona conceded. "These alone," she tapped one of the delicate shields, "cost five days of work. But base metal stains the skin blue and green and black, so what can one do? As for the beads, they are synthetics—junk. Poor girls, if they buy it themselves, do not wear jewelry, but beads, like these. Half a day's work buys the lot."
"What!" Kinnison demanded.
"Certainly. Rich girls only, or poor girls who do not work, wear real jewelry, such as…the Aldebaranian has not the words. Let me think at you, please?"
"Sorry, nothing there that I recognize at all," Kinnison answered, after studying a succession of thought–images of multi–colored, spectacular gems. "That's one to file away in the book, too, believe me. But as to that 'junk' you've got draped all over yourself—half a day's pay—what do you work at for a living, when you work?"
"I'm a dancer—like this." She leaped lightly to her feet and her left boot whizzed past her ear in a flashingly fast high kick. Then followed a series of gyrations and contortions, for which the Lensman knew no names, during which the girl seemed a practically boneless embodiment of suppleness and grace. She sat down; meticulous hairdress scarcely rumpled, not a buckle or bracelet awry, breathing hardly one count faster.
"Nice." He applauded briefly. "Hard for me to evaluate such talent as that—I thought you were a pilot. However, on Tellus or any one of a thousand other planets I could point out to you, you can sell that 'junk' you're wearing for—at a rough guess—about fifty thousand days' work."
"Impossible!"
"True, nevertheless. So, before we land, you'd better give them to me, so that I can send them to a bank for you, under guard."
"If I land." As Kinnison spoke Illona's manner changed; darkened as though an inner light had been extinguished. "You have been so friendly and nice, I was forgetting where I am and the business ahead. Putting it off won't make it any easier. Better be getting on with it, don't you think?"
"Oh, that? That's all done, long ago."
"What?" she almost screamed. "It isn't! It couldn't be!"
"Sure. I got most of the stuff I wanted last night, while I was changing your thought–screen battery. Menjo Bleeko, your big–shot boss, and so on."
"You didn't! But…you must have, at that, to know it…but you didn't hurt me, or anything…you couldn't have operated—changed me, because I have all my memories…or seem to…I'm not an idiot, I mean any more than usual…"
"You've been taught a good many sheer lies, and quite a few half truths," he informed her, evenly. "For instance, what did they tell you that hollow tooth would do to you when you broke the seal?"
"Make my mind a blank. But one of their doctors would get hold of me very soon and give me the antidote that would restore me exactly as I was before."
"That is one of the half truths. It would certainly have made your mind a blank, but only by blasting most of your memory files out of existence. Their therapists would 'restore' you by substituting other memories for your real ones—whatever other ones they pleased."
"How horrible! How perfectly ghastly! That was why you treated it so, then; as though it were a snake. I wondered at your savagery toward it. But how, really, do I know that you are telling the truth?"
"You don't," he admitted. "You will have to make your own decisions after acquiring full information."
"You are a therapist," she remarked, shrewdly. "But if you operated on my mind you didn't 'save' me, because I still think exactly the same as I always did about the Patrol and everything pertaining to it…or do I?…Or is this…" her eyes widened with a startling possibility.