First Lensman

by Edward E Smith

  “But this is preposterous!” Samms stormed.

  “Preposterous, hell,” Roderick Kinnison’s thought was still coldly level; only the fact that he was beginning to use non-ballroom language revealed any sign of the strain he was under. “Stop being so goddam heroic and start using your brain. You turned down fifty billion credits. Why do you suppose they offered that much, when they can get anybody killed for a hundred? And what would they do about it?”

  “But they couldn’t get away with it, Rod, at an Ambassadors’ Ball. They couldn’t, possibly.”

  “Formerly, no. That was my first thought, too. But it was you who pointed out to me, not so long ago, that the techniques of crime have changed of late. In the new light, the swankier the brawl the greater the confusion and the better the chance of getting away clean. Comb that out of your whiskers, you red-headed mule!”

  “Well…there might be something in it, after all…” Samms’ thought showed apprehension at last.

  “You know damn well there is. But you boys—Jack and Mase especially—loosen up. You can’t do good shooting while you’re strung up like a couple of cocoons. Do something—talk to your partners or think at Jill…”

  “That won’t be hard, sir.” Mason Northrop grinned feebly. “And that reminds me of something, Jill. Mentor certainly bracketed the target when he—or she, or it, maybe—said that you would never need a Lens.”

  “Huh?” Jill demanded, inelegantly. “I don’t see the connection, if any.”

  “No? Everybody else does, I’ll bet. How about it?” The other Lensmen, even Samms, agreed enthusiastically. “Well, do you think that any of those characters, particularly Herkimer Herkimer Third, would let a harness bull in harness—even such a beautiful one as you—get close enough to him to do such a Davey the Dip act on his mind?”

  “Oh… I never thought of that, but it’s right, and I’m glad…but Pops, you said something about ‘support in force.’ Have you any idea how long it will be? I hope I can hold out, with you all supporting me, but…”

  “You can, Jill. Two or three minutes more, at most.”

  “Support? In force? What do you mean?” Samms snapped.

  “Just that. The whole damned army,” Kinnison replied. “I sent Two-Star Commodore Alexander Clayton a thought that lifted him right out of his chair. Everything he’s got, at full emergency blast. Armor—mark eighty fours—six by six extra heavies—a ninety sixty for an ambulance—full escort, upstairs and down—way-friskers—’copters—cruisers and big stuff—in short, the works. I would have run with you before this, if I dared; but the minute the relief party shows up, we do a flit.”

  “If you dared?” Jill asked, shaken by the thought.

  “Exactly, my dear. I don’t dare. If they start anything we’ll do our damndest, but I’m praying they won’t.”

  But Kinnison’s prayers—if he made any—were ignored Jill heard a sharp, but very usual and insignificant sound; someone had dropped a pencil. She felt an inconspicuous muscle twitch slightly. She saw the almost imperceptible tensing of a neck-muscle which would have turned Herkimer’s head in a certain direction if it had been allowed to act. Her eyes flashed along that line, searched busily for milli-seconds. A man was reaching unobtrusively, as though for a handkerchief. But men at Ambassadors’ Balls do not carry blue handkerchiefs; nor does any fabric, however dyed, resemble at all closely the blued steel of an automatic pistol.

  Jill would have screamed, then, and pointed; but she had time to do neither. Through her rapport with her father the Lensmen saw everything that she saw, in the instant of her seeing it. Hence five shots blasted out, practically as one, before the girl could scream, or point, or even move. She did scream, then; but since dozens of other women were screaming, too, it made no difference—then.

  Conway Costigan, trigger-nerved spacehound that he was and with years of gun-fighting and of hand-to-hand brawling in his log, shot first; even before the gunman did. It was Costigan’s blinding speed that saved Virgil Samms’ life that day; for the would-be assassin was dying, with a heavy slug crashing through his brain, before he finished pulling the trigger. The dying hand twitched upward. The bullet intended for Samms’ heart went high; through the fleshy part of the shoulder.

  Roderick Kinnison, because of his age, and his son and Northrop, because of their inexperience, were a few milliseconds slow. They, however, were aiming for the body, not for the head; and any of those three resulting wounds would have been satisfactorily fatal. The man went down, and stayed down.

  Samms staggered, but did not go down until the elder Kinnison, as gently as was consistent with the maximum of speed, threw him down.

  “Stand back! Get back! Give him air!” Men began to shout, the while pressing closer themselves.

  “You men, stand back. Some of you go get a stretcher. You women, come here.” Kinnison’s heavy, parade-ground voice smashed down all lesser noises. “Is there a doctor here?”

  There was; and, after being “frisked” for weapons, he went busily to work.

  “Joy—Betty—Jill—Clio,” Kinnison called his own wife and their daughter, Virgilia Samms, and Mrs. Costigan. “You four first. Now you—and you—and you—and you…” he went on, pointing out large, heavy women wearing extremely extreme gowns, “Stand here, right over him. Cover him up, so that nobody else can get a shot at him. You other women, stand behind and between these—closer yet—fill those spaces up solid—there! Jack, stand there. Mase, there. Costigan, the other end; I’ll take this one. Now, everybody, listen. I know damn well that none of you women are wearing guns above the waist, and you’ve all got long skirts—thank God for ballgowns! Now, fellows, if any one of these women makes a move to lift her skirt, blow her brains out, right then, without waiting to ask questions.”

  “Sir, I protest! This is outrageous!” one of the dowagers exclaimed.

  “Madam, I agree with you fully. It is.” Kinnison smiled as genuinely as be could under the circumstances. “It is, however, necessary. I will apologize to all you ladies, and to you, doctor—in writing if you like—after we have Virgil Samms aboard the Chicago; but until then I would not trust my own grandmother.”

  The doctor looked up. “The Chicago? This wound does not appear to be a very serious one, but this man is going to a hospital at once. Ah, the stretcher. So…please…easy…there, that is excellent. Call an, ambulance, please, immediately.”

  “I did. Long ago. But no hospital, doctor. All those windows—open to the public—or the whole place bombed—by no means. I’m taking no chances whatever.”

  “Except with your own life!” Jill, put in sharply, looking up from her place at her father’s side. Assured that the First Lensman was in no danger of dying, she had begun to take interest in other things. “You are important, too, you know, and you’re standing right out there in the open. Get another stretcher, lie down on it, and we’ll guard you, too…and don’t be too stiff-necked to take your own advice!” she flared, as he hesitated.

  “I’m not, if it were necessary, but it isn’t. If they had killed him, yes. I’d probably be next in line. But since he got only a scratch, there’d be no point at all in killing even a good Number Two.”

  “A scratch!” Jill fairly seethed. “Do you call that horrible wound a scratch?”

  “Huh? Why, certainly—that’s all it is—thanks to you,” he returned, in honest and complete surprise. “No bones shattered—no main arteries cut—missed the lung—he’ll be as good as new in a couple of weeks.”

  “And now,” he went on aloud, “if you ladies will please pick up this stretcher we will move en masse, and slowly, toward the door.”

  The women, no longer indignant but apparently enjoying the sensation of being the center of interest, complied with the request.

  “Now, boys,” Kinnison Lensed a thought. “Did any of you—Costigan?—see any signs of a concerted rush, such as there would have been to get the killer away if we hadn’t interfered?”

  “No, sir,
” came Costigan’s brisk reply. “None within sight of me.”

  “Jack and Mase—I don’t suppose you looked?”

  They hadn’t—had not thought of it in time.

  “You’ll learn. It takes a few things like this to make it automatic. But I couldn’t see any, either, so I’m fairly certain there wasn’t any. Smart operators—quick on the uptake.”

  “I’d better get at this, sir, don’t you think, and let Operation Boskone go for a while?” Costigan asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Kinnison frowned in thought. “This operation was planned, son, by people with brains. Any clues you could find now would undoubtedly be plants. No, we’ll let the regulars look; we’ll stick to our own…”

  Sirens wailed and screamed outside. Kinnison sent out an exploring thought.

  “Alex?”

  “Yes. Where do you want this ninety-sixty with the doctors and nurses? It’s too wide for the gates.”

  “Go through the wall. Across the lawn. Right up to the door, and never mind the frippery they’ve got all over the place—have your adjutant tell them to bill us for damage. Samms is shot in the shoulder. Not too serious, but I’m taking him to the Hill, where I know he’ll be safe. What have you got, on top of the umbrella, the Boise or the Chicago? I haven’t had time to look up yet.”

  “Both.”

  “Good man.”

  Jack Kinnison started at the monstrous tank, which was smashing statues, fountains, and ornamental trees flat into the earth as it moved ponderously across the grounds, and licked his lips. He looked at the companies of soldiers “frisking” the route, the grounds, and the crowd—higher up, at the hovering helicopters—still higher, at the eight light cruisers so evidently and so viciously ready to blast—higher still, at the long streamers of fire which, he now knew, marked the locations of the two most powerful engines of destruction ever built by man—and his face turned slowly white.

  “Good Lord, Dad!” he swallowed twice. “I had no idea…but they might, at that.”

  “Not ‘might’, son. They damn well would, if they could get here soon enough with heavy enough stuff.” The elder Kinnison’s jaw-muscles did not loosen, his darting eyes did not relax their vigilance for a fraction of a second as he Lensed the thought. “You boys can’t be expected to know it all, but right now you’re learning fast. Get this—paste it in your iron hats. Virgil Samms’ life is the most important thing in this whole damned universe! If they had got him then it would not, strictly speaking, have been my fault, but if they get him now, it will be.”

  The land cruiser crunched to a stop against the very entrance, and a white-clad man leaped out.

  “Let me look at him, please…”

  “Not yet!” Kinnison denied, sharply. “Not until he’s got four inches of solid steel between him and whoever wants to finish the job they started. Get your men around him, and get him aboard—fast!”

  Samms, protected at every point at every instant, was lifted into the maw of the ninety-sixty; and as the massive door clanged shut Kinnison heaved a tremendous sigh of relief. The cavalcade moved away.

  “Coming with us, Rod?” Commodore Clayton shouted.

  “Yes, but got a couple minutes’ work here yet. Have a staff car wait for me, and I’ll join you.” He turned to the three young Lensmen and the girl. “‘This fouls up our plans a little, but not too much—I hope. No change in Mateese or Boskone; you and Costigan, Jill, can go ahead as planned. Northrop, you’ll have to brief Jill on Zwilnik and find out what she knows. Virgil was going to do it tonight, after the brawl here, but you know as much about it now as any of us. Check with Knobos, DalNalten, and Fletcher—while Virgil is laid up you and Jack may have to work on both Zabriska and Zwilnik—he’ll Lens you. Get the dope, then do as you think best. Get going!” He strode away toward the waiting staff-car.

  “Boskone? Zwilnik?” Jill demanded. “What gives? What are they, Jack?”

  “We don’t know yet—maybe we’re going to name a couple of planets…”

  “Piffle!” she scoffed. “Can you talk sense, Mase? What’s Boskone?”

  “A simple, distinctive, pronounceable coined word; suggested, I believe, by Dr. Bergenholm…” he began.

  “You know what I mean, you…” she broke in, but was silenced by a sharply Lensed thought from Jack. His touch was very light, barely sufficient to make conversation possible; but even so, she flinched.

  “Use your brain, Jill; you aren’t thinking a lick—not that you can be blamed for it. Stop talking; there may be lip-readers or high-powered listeners around. This feels funny, doesn’t it?” He twitched mentally and went on: “You already know what Operation Mateese is, since it’s your own dish—politics. Operation Zwilnik is drugs, vice, and so on. Operation Boskone is pirates; Spud is running that. Operation Zabriska is Mase and me checking some peculiar disturbances in the sub-ether. Come in, Mase, and do your stuff—I’ll see you later, aboard. Clear ether, Jill!”

  Young Kinnison vanished from the fringes of her mind and Northrop appeared. And what a difference! His mind touched hers as gingerly as Jack’s had done; as skittishly, as instantaneously ready to bolt away from anything in the least degree private. However, Jack’s mind had rubbed hers the wrong way, right from the start—and Mase’s didn’t!

  “Now, about this Operation Zwilnik,” Jill began.

  “Something else first. I couldn’t help noticing, back there, that you and Jack…well, not out of phase, exactly, or really out of sync, but sort of…well, as though…”

  “‘Hunting’?” she suggested.

  “Not exactly…‘forcing’ might be better—like holding a tight beam together when it wants to fall apart. So you noticed it yourself?”

  “Of course, but I thought Jack and I were the only ones who did. Like scratching a blackboard with your fingernails—you can do it, but you’re awfully glad to stop…and I like Jack, too, darn it—at a distance.”

  “And you and I fit like precisely tuned circuits. Jack really meant it, then, when he said that you…that is, he… I didn’t quite believe it until now, but if…you know, of course, what you’ve already done to me”

  Jill’s block went on, full strength. She arched her eyebrows and spoke aloud—“why, I haven’t the faintest idea!”

  “Of course not. That’s why you’re using voice. I’ve found out, too, that I can’t lie with my mind. I feel like a heel and a louse, with so much job ahead, but you’ve simply got to tell me something. Then—whatever you say—I’ll hit the job with everything I’ve got. Do I get heaved out between planets without a space-suit, or not?”

  “I don’t think so.” Jill blushed vividly, but her voice was steady. “You would rate a space-suit, and enough oxygen to reach another plan—another goal, And now we’d better get to work, don’t you think?”

  “Yes. Thanks, Jill, a million. I know as well as you do that I was talking out of turn, and how much—but I had to know.” He breathed deep. “And that’s all I ask—for now. Cut your screens.”

  She lowered her mental barriers, finding it surprisingly easy to do so in this case; let them down almost as far as she was in the habit of doing with her father. He explained in flashing thoughts everything he knew of the four Operations, concluding:

  “I’m not assigned to Zabriska permanently; I’ll probably work with you on Mateese after your father gets back into circulation. I’m to act more as a liaison man—neither Knobos nor DalNalten knows you well enough to Lens you. Right?”

  “Yes, I’ve met Mr. Knobos only once, and have never even seen Dr. DalNalten.”

  “Ready to visit them, via Lens?”

  “Yes. Go ahead.”

  The two Lensmen came in. They came into his mind, not hers. Nevertheless their thoughts, superimposed upon Northrop’s, came to the girl as clearly as though all four were speaking to each other face to face.

  “What a weird sensation!” Jill exclaimed. “Why, I never imagined anything like it!”

  “We are sorry to
trouble you, Miss Samms…” Jill was surprised anew. The silent voice deep within her mind was of characteristically Martian timber, but instead of the harshly guttural consonants and the hissing sibilants of any Martian’s best efforts at English, pronunciation and enunciation were flawless.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean that. It’s no trouble at all, really, I just haven’t got used to this telepathy yet.”

  “None of us has, to any noticeable degree. But the reason for this call is to ask you if you have anything new, however, slight, to add to our very small knowledge of Zwilnik?”

  “Very little, I’m afraid; and that little is mostly guesses, deductions, and jumping at conclusions. Father told you about the way I work, I suppose?”

  “Yes. Exact data is not to be expected. Hints, suggestions, possible leads, will be of inestimable value.”

  “Well, I met a very short, very fat Venerian, named Ossmen, at a party at the European Embassy. Do either of you know him?”

  “I know of him,” DalNalten replied. “A highly reputable merchant, with such large interests on Tellus that he has to spend most of his time here. He is not in any one of our books…although there is nothing at all surprising in that fact. Go on, please, Miss Samms.”

  “He didn’t come to the party with Senator Morgan; but he came to some kind of an agreement with him that night, and I am pretty sure that it was about thionite. That’s the only new item I have.”

  “Thionite!” The three Lensmen were equally surprised.

  “Yes. Thionite. Definitely.”

  “How sure are you of this, Miss Samms?” Knobos asked, in deadly earnest.

  “I am not sure that this particular agreement was about thionite, no; but the probability is roughly nine-tenths. I am sure, however, that both Senator Morgan and Ossmen know a lot about thionite that they want to hide. Both gave very high positive reactions—well beyond the six-sigma point of virtual certainty.”

  There was a pause, broken by the Martian, but not by a thought directed at any one of the three.

  “Sid!” he called, and even Jill could feel the Lensed thought speed.