The Greatest Works of E. E. Smith. E. E. Smith

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and somehow. I don’t see how he can be, possibly, but I just know he is.”

      For, at the first mention of tea and toast, before she perceived even an inkling of the true situation, her mind had flashed back instantly to Kinnison, the most stubborn and rebellious patient she had ever had. More, the only man she had ever known who had treated her precisely as though she were a part of the hospital’s very furniture. As is the way of women—particularly of beautiful women—she had orated of women’s rights and of women’s status in the scheme of things. She had decried all special privileges, and had stated, often and with heat, that she asked no odds of any man living or yet to be born. Nevertheless, and also beautiful-womanlike, the thought had bitten deep that here was a man who had never even realized that she was a woman, to say nothing of realizing that she was an extraordinarily beautiful one! And deep within her and sternly suppressed the thought had still rankled.

      At the mention of beefsteak she had all but screamed, gripping her knees with frantic hands to keep her emotion down. For she had had no real hope; she was simply fighting with everything she had until the hopeless end, which she had known could not long be delayed. Now she gathered herself together and began to act.

      When the word “dumb-bell” boomed from the speaker she knew, beyond doubt or peradventure, that it was Kinnison, the Gray Lensman, who was really doing that talking. It was crazy—it didn’t make any kind of sense at all—but it was, it must be, true. And, again womanlike, she knew with a calm certainty that as long as that Gray Lensman were alive and conscious, he would be completely the master of any situation in which he might find himself. Therefore she passed along her illogical but cheering thought, and the nurses, being also women, accepted it without question as the actual and accomplished fact.

      They carried on, and when the captured hospital ship had docked at base, Kinnison was completely ready to force matters to a conclusion. In addition to the chief communications officer, he now had under his control a highly capable observer. To handle two such minds was child’s play to the intellect which had directed, against their full fighting wills, the minds of two and three quarters alert, powerful, and fully warned officers of the Galactic Patrol!

      “Good girl, Mac,” he put his mind en rapport with hers and sent his message. “Glad you got the idea. You did a good job of acting, and if you can do some more as good we’ll be all set. Can do?”

      “I’ll say I can!” she assented fervently. “I don’t know what you are doing, how you can possibly do it, or where you are, but that can wait. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it!”

      “Make passes at the base commander,” he instructed her. “Hate me—the ape I’m working through, you know; Blakeslee, his name is—like poison. Go into it big—all jets wide open. You maybe could love him, but if I get you you’ll blow out your brains—if any. You knew the line—play up to him with everything you can bring to bear, and hate me to hell and back. Help all you can to start a fight between us. If he falls for you hard enough the blow-off comes then and there. If not, he’ll be able to do us all plenty of dirt. I can kill a lot of them, but not enough of them quick enough.”

      “He’ll fall,” she promised him gleefully, “like ten thousand bricks falling down a well. Just watch my jets!”

      And fall he did. He had not even seen a woman for months, and he expected nothing except bitter-end resistance and suicide from any of these women of the Patrol. Therefore he was rocked to the heels—set back upon his very haunches—when the most beautiful woman he had ever seen came of her own volition into his arms, seeking in them sanctuary from his own chief communications officer.

      “I hate him!” she sobbed, nestling against the huge bulk of the commander’s body and turning upon him the full blast of the high-powered projectors which were her eyes. “You wouldn’t be so mean to me, I just know you wouldn’t!” and her subtly perfumed head sank upon his shoulder. The outlaw was just so much soft wax.

      “I’ll say I wouldn’t be mean to you” his voice dropped to a gentle bellow. “Why, you little sweetheart, I’ll marry you. I will so, by all the gods of space!”

      It thus came about that nurse and base commander entered the control room together, arms about each other.

      “There he is!” she shrieked, pointing at the chief communications officer. “He’s the one! Now let’s see you start something, you rat-faced clunker! There’s one real man around here, and he won’t let you touch me—ya-a-a!” She gave him a resounding Bronx cheer, and her escort swelled visibly.

      “Is—that—so?” Kinnison sneered. “Get this, glamor-puss, and get it straight. I marked you for mine as soon as I saw you, and mine you’re going to be, whether you like it or not and no matter what anybody says or does about it. As for you, captain, you’re too late—I saw her first. And now, you red-headed tomato, come over here where you belong.”

      She snuggled closer into the commander’s embrace and the big man turned purple.

      “What d’you mean, too late!” he roared. “You took her away from the ship’s captain, didn’t you? You said that superior officers get first choice, didn’t you? I’m the boss here and I’m taking her away from you, get me? You’ll stand for it, too, Blakeslee, and like it. One word out of you and I’ll have you spread-eagled across the mouth of number six projector!”

      “Superior officers don’t always get first choice,” Kinnison replied; with bitter, cold ferocity, but choosing his words with care. “It depends entirely on who the two men are.”

      Now was the time to strike. Kinnison knew that if the commander kept his head, the lives of those valiant women were forfeit, and his own whole plan seriously endangered. He himself could get away, of course—but he could not see himself doing it under these conditions. No, he must goad the commander to a frenzy. And without swearing would be better—the ape was used to invectives that would raise blisters on armor plate. Mac would help. In fact, and without his suggestion, she was even then hard at work fomenting trouble between the two men.

      “You don’t have to take that kind of stuff off of anybody, big boy,” she was whispering, urgently. “Don’t call in a crew to spread-eagle him, either; beam him out yourself. You’re a better man than he is, any time. Blast him down—that’ll show him who’s who around here!”

      “When the inferior is such a man as I am, and the superior such a louse as you are;” the biting, contemptuously sneering voice went on without a break, “Such a bloated swine; such a mangy, low-down cur; such a pussy-gutted tub of lard; such a brainless, filthy spawn of the lowest dregs of the rottenest scum of space; such an utterly incompetent, self-opinionated, misbegotten abortion as you are .”

      The outraged pirate, bellowing profanity in wildly mounting rage, tried to break in; but Kinnison-Blakeslee’s voice, if no louder than his, was far more penetrant.

      “. then, in that case, the inferior keeps the red-headed wench himself. Put that on a tape, you white-livered coward, and eat it!”

      Still bellowing, the fat man had turned and was leaping toward the arms cabinet.

      “Blast him! Blast him down!” the nurse had been shrieking; and, as the raging commander neared the cabinet, no one noticed that her latest and loudest scream was “Kim! Blast him down! Don’t wait any longer—beam him before he gets a gun!”

      But the Lensman did not act—yet. Although almost every man of the pirate crew stared spell-bound, Kinnison’s enslaved observer had for many seconds been jamming the sub-ether with Helmuth’s personal and urgent call. It was of almost vital СКАЧАТЬ