"Just a sec, Toots—Henderson!" Orders snapped. The Dauntless spun end–for–end.
"QX, Helen of Troy," he reported then. "We're on our way back there at maximum blast. Say, that name 'Helen of Troy' fits you better than anything else I have called you. You don't know it, of course, but that other Helen launched a thousand ships. You're launching only one; but believe me, Babe, the old Dauntless is SOME ship!"
"I hope so." The Elder Person, ignoring the by–play, went directly to the heart of the matter in her usual pragmatic fashion. "We have no right to ask; you have every reason to refuse…"
"Don't worry about that, Helen. We're all good little Boy Scouts at heart. We're supposed to do a good deed every day, and we've missed a lot of days lately."
"You are what you call 'kidding', I think." A matriarch could not be expected to possess a sense of humor. "But I do not lie to you or pretend. We did not, do not now, and never will like you or yours. With us now, however, it is that you are much the lesser of two terrible evils. If you will aid us now we will tolerate your Patrol; we will even promise to endure others of your kind."
"And that's big of you, Helen, no fooling." The Lensman was really impressed. The plight of the Lyranians must be desperate indeed. "Just keep a stiff upper lip, all of you. We're coming loaded for bear, and we are not exactly creeping."
Nor were they. The big cruiser had plenty of legs and she was using them all; the engineers were giving her all the of her drivers would take. She was literally blasting a hole through space; she was traveling so fast that the atoms of substance in the interstellar vacuum, merely wave–forms though they were, simply could not get out of the flyer's way. They were being blasted into nothingness against the Dauntless" wallshields.
And throughout her interior the Patrol ship, always in complete readiness for strife, was being gone over again with microscopic thoroughness, to be put into more readiness, if possible, even than that.
After a few hours Illona danced back to Kinnison's "con" room, fairly bubbling over.
"Why, they're marvelous, Lensman!" she cried, "simply marvelous!"
"What are marvelous?"
"The boys," she enthused. "All of them. They're here because they want to be—why, the officers don't even have whips! They like them, actually! The officers who push the little buttons and things and those who walk around and look through the little glass things and even the gray–haired old man with the four stripes, why they like them all! And the boys were all putting on guns when I left—why, I never heard of such a thing!—and they're just simply crazy about you. I thought it was awfully funny you took off your guns as soon as the ship left Lyrane and you don't have guards around you all the time because I thought sure somebody would stab you in the back or something but they don't even want to and that's what's so marvelous and Hank Henderson told me…"
"Save it!" he ordered. "Jet back, angel–face, before you blow a fuse." He had been right in not operating—this girl was going to be a mine of information concerning Boskonian methods and operations, and all without knowing it. "That's what I've been trying to tell you about our Civilization; that it's based on the freedom of the individual to do pretty much as he pleases, as long as it is not to the public harm. And, as far as possible, equality of all the entities of Civilization."
"Uh–huh, I know you did," she nodded brightly, then sobered quickly, "but I couldn't understand it. I can't understand it yet; I can scarcely believe that you all are so…you know, don't you, what would happen if this were a Lonabarian ship and I would go running around talking to officers as though I were their equal?"
"No—what?"
"It's inconceivable, of course; it simply couldn't happen. But if it did, I would be punished terribly—perhaps though, at a first offense, I might be given only a twenty–scar whipping." At his lifted eyebrow she explained, "One that leaves twenty scars that show for life.
"That's why I'm acting so intoxicated, I think. You see, I…" she hesitated shyly, "I'm not used to being treated as anybody's equal, except of course other girls like me. Nobody is, on Lonabar. Everybody is higher or lower than you are. I'm going to simply love this when I get used to it." She spread both arms in a sweeping gesture. "I'd like to squeeze this whole ship and everybody in it—I just can't wait to get to Tellus and really live there!"
"That's a .thing that has been bothering me," Kinnison confessed, and the girl stared wonderingly at his serious face. "We're going into battle, and we can't take time to land you anywhere before the battle starts."
"Of course not Why should you?" she paused, thinking deeply. "You're not worrying about me, surely? Why, you're a high officer! Officers don't care whether a girl gets shot or not, do they?" The thought was obviously, utterly new.
"We do. It's extremely poor hospitality to invite a guest aboard and then have her killed. All I can say, though, is that if our number goes up…I still don't see how I could have done anything else."
"Oh…thanks, Gray Lensman. Nobody ever spoke to me like that before. But I wouldn't land if I could. I like Civilization. If you…if you don't win, I couldn't go to Tellus anyway, so I'd much rather take my chances here than not, sir, really. I'll never go back to Lonabar, in any case."
"At–a–girl, Toots!l" He extended his hand. She looked at it dubiously, then hesitantly stretched out her own. But she learned fast; she put as much pressure into the brief handclasp as Kinnison did. "You'd better flit now, I've got work to do."
"Can I go up top? Hank Henderson is going to show me the primaries."
"Sure. Go anywhere you like. Before the trouble starts I'll take you down to the center and put you into a suit."
"Thanks, Lensman!" The girl hurried away and Kinnison Lensed the master pilot.
"Henderson? Kinnison. Official. Illona just told me about the primaries. They're QX—but no etchings."
"Of course not, sir."
"And please pass a word around for me. I know as well as anybody does that she doesn't belong aboard; but it couldn't be helped and I'm getting rid of her as soon as I possibly can. In the meantime she's my personal responsibility. So—no passes'. She's strictly off limits."
"Ill pass the word, sir."
"Thanks." The Gray Lensman broke the connection and got into communication with Helen of Lyrane, who gave him a resume of everything that had happened.
Two ships—big ships, immense space–cruisers—appeared near the airport. Nobody saw them coming, they came so fast. They stopped, and without warning or parley destroyed all the. buildings and all the people nearby with beams like Kinnison's needle–beam, except much larger. Then the ships landed and men disembarked. The Lyranians killed ten of them by direct mental impact or by monsters of the mind, but after that everyone who came out of the vessel wore thought–screens and the persons were quite helpless. The enemy had burned down and melted a part of the city, and as a further warning were then making formal plans to execute publicly a hundred leading Lyranians—ten for each man they had killed.
Because of the screens no communication was possible, but the invaders had made it clear that if there was one more sign of resistance, or even of non– cooperation, the entire city would be beamed; every living thing in it blasted out of existence. She herself had escaped so far. She was hidden in a crypt in the deepest sub–cellar of the city. She was, of course, one of the ones they wanted to execute, but finding any of Lyrane's leaders would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. They were still searching, with .many persons as highly unwilling guides. They had indicated that they would stay there until the leaders were found; that they would make the Lyranians tear down their city, stone by stone, until they were found.