"No, I didn't operate," he assured her. "No such operation can possibly be done without leaving scars—breaks in the memory chains—that you can find in a minute if you look for them. There are no breaks or blanks in any chain in your mind."
"No—at least, I can't find any," she reported after a few minutes' thought. "But why didn't you? You can't turn me loose this way, you know—a z…an enemy of your society."
"You don't need saving," he grinned. "You believe in absolute good and absolute evil, don't you?"
"Why of course—certainly! Everybody must!"
"Not necessarily. Some of the greatest thinkers in the universe do not." His voice grew somber, then lightened again. "Such being the case, however, all you need to 'save' yourself is experience, observation, and knowledge of both sides of the question. You're a colossal little fraud, you know."
"How do you mean?" She blushed vividly, her eyes wavered.
"Pretending to be such a hard–boiled egg. 'Never broke yet'. Why should you break, when you've never been under pressure?"
"I have so!" she flared. "What do you suppose I'm carrying this knife for?"
"Oh, that." He mentally shrugged the wicked little dagger aside as he pondered. "You little lamb hi wolfs clothing…but at that, your memories may, I think, be altogether too valuable to monkey with…there's something funny about this whole matrix—damned funny. Come clean, baby– face—why?"
"They told me to," she admitted, wriggling slightly. 'To act tough— really tough. As though I were an adventuress who had been everywhere and had done… done everything. That the worse I acted the better I would get along in your Civilization."
"I suspected something of the sort. And what did you zwil—excuse me, you folks—go to Lyrane for, hi the first place?"
"I don't know. From chance remarks I gathered that we were to land on one of the planets—any one, I supposed—and wait for somebody."
"What were you, personally, going to do?"
"I don't know that, either—not exactly, that is. I was to take some kind of a ship somewhere, but I don't know what, or when, or where, or why, or whether I was to go alone or take somebody. Whoever it was that we were going to meet was going to give us orders."
"How come those women killed your men? Didn't they have thought–screens, too?"
"No. They weren't agents—just soldiers. They shot about a dozen of the Lyranians when we first landed, just to show their authority, then they dropped dead."
"Um–m–m. Poor technique, but typically Boskonian. Your trip to Tellus was more or less accidental, then?"
"Yes. I wanted her to take me back to Lonabar, but she wouldn't. She couldn't have, anyway, because she didn't know any more about where it is than I did."
"Huh?" Kinnison blurted. "You don't know where your own home planet is? What the hell kind of a pilot are you, anyway?"
"Oh, I'm not really a pilot. Just what they made me learn after we left Lonabar, so I'd be able to make that trip. Lonabar wasn't shown on any of the charts we had aboard. Neither was Lyrane—that was why I had to make my own chart, to get back there from Tellus."
"But you must know something!" Kinnison fumed. "Stars? Constellations? The Galaxy—the Milky Way?"
"The Milky Way, yes. By its shape, Lonabar isn't anywhere near the center of the galaxy. I've been trying to remember if there were any noticeable star configurations, but I can't. You see, I wasn't the least bit interested in such things, then."
"Hell's Brazen Hinges! You can't be that dumb—nobody can! Any Tellurian infant old enough to talk knows either the Big Dipper or the Southern Cross! Hold it—I'm coming in and find out for myself."
He came—but he did not find out.
"Well, I guess people can be that dumb, since you so indubitably are," he admitted then. "Or—maybe—aren't there any?"
"Honestly, Lensman, I don't know. There were lots of stars, of course…if there were any striking configurations I might have noticed them; but I might not have, too. As I said, I wasn't the least bit interested."
"That was very evident," dryly. "However, excuse me, please, for talking so rough."
"Rough? Of course, sir," Illona giggled. "That wasn't rough, comparatively—and nobody ever apologized before—I'd like awfully well to help you, sir, if I possibly can."
"I know you would, Toots, and thanks. To get back onto the beam, what put it into Helen's mind to go to Tellus?"
"She learned about Tellus and the Patrol from our minds—none of them could believe at first that there were any inhabited worlds except their own—and wanted to study them at first hand. She took our ship and made me fly it."
"I see. I'm not surprised. I thought that there was something remarkably screwy about those activities—they seemed so aimless and so barren of results—but I couldn't put my finger on it. And we crowded her so close that she decided to flit for home. You could see her, but nobody else could—that she didn't want to."
"That was it. She said that she was being hampered by a mind of power. That was you, of course?"
"And others. Well, that's that, for a while."
He called the tailor in. No, he didn't have a thing to make a girl's dress out of, especially not a girl like that. She should wear glamorette, and sheer—very sheer. He didn't know a thing about ladies' tailoring, either; he hadn't made a gown since he was knee–high to a duck. All he had hi the shop was coat–linings. Perhaps nylon would do, after a fashion. He remembered now, he did have a bolt of nylon that wasn't any good for linings—not stiff enough, and red. Too heavy, of course, but it would drape well.
It did. She came swaggering back, an hour or so later, the hem of her skirt swishing against the tops of her high–laced boots.
"Do you like it?" she asked, pirouetting gayly.
"Fine!" he applauded, and it was. The tailor had understated tremendously both his ability and the resources of his shop.
"Now what? I don't have to stay in my room all the time now, please?"
"I'll say not. The ship is yours. I want you to get acquainted with every man on board. Go anywhere you like—except the private quarters, of course— even to the control room. The boys all know that you're at large."
"The language—but I'm talking English now!"
"Sure. I've been giving it to you right along. You know it as well as I do."
She stared at him in awe. Then, her natural buoyancy asserting itself, she flirted out of the room with a wave of her hand.
And Kinnison sat down to think. A girl—a kid who wasn't dry behind the ears yet—wearing beads worth a full grown fortune, sent somewhere…to do what? Lyrane II, a perfect matriarchy. Lonabar, a planet of zwilniks that knew all about Tellus, but wasn't on any Patrol chart, sending expeditions to Lyrane. To the system, perhaps not specifically to Lyrane II. Why? For what? To do what? Strange, new jewels of fabulous value. What was the hook–up? It didn't make any kind of sense yet…not enough data…
And faintly, waveringly, barely impinging upon the outermost, most tenuous fringes of his mind he felt something: the groping, questing summons of an incredibly distant thought.
"Male of Civilization…Person of Tellus…Kinnison of Tellus…Lensman Kinnison of Sol III…Any Lensbearing officer of the Galactic Patrol…" Endlessly the desperately urgent, almost imperceptible thought implored.
Kinnison stiffened. He reached out with the full power of his mind, seized the thought, tuned to it, and hurled a reply—and when that mind really pushed a thought, it traveled.
"Kinnison of Tellus acknowledging!" His answer fairly crackled on its way.
"You do not know my name," the stranger's thought came clearly now. "I am the Toots', the 'Rep–Top', the 'Queen of Sheba", the 'Cleopatra', the Elder Person of Lyrane
II. Do you remember me, Kinnison of Tellus?" "I certainly do!" he shot back. What a brain—what a terrific brain—that sexless woman had! "We are invaded by manlike beings in ships of space, who wear screens against our thoughts and who slay without cause. Will you help us with your ship of might and your mind of power?"