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

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      “Luka—turn your wheel so I need not slay this woman!”

      It had to be. Why in all the nine hells of Valeria did he have to be a Lensman? Why did he have to be the one to do it? But it had to be done, and soon; they’d be here shortly.

      “There’s just one thing you can do to make me believe you’re even partially innocent,” he ground out, “that you have even one decent thought or one decent instinct anywhere in you.”

      “What is that, Lensman? I’ll do it, whatever it is!”

      “Release your thought-screen and send out a call to the Big Shot.”

      The girl stiffened. This big cop wasn’t so dumb—he really knew something. He must die, and at once. How could she get word to . ?

      Simultaneously Kinnison perceived that for which he had been waiting; the Narcotics men were coming.

      He tore open the woman’s gown, flipped the switch of her thought-screen, and invaded her mind. But, fast as he was, he was late—almost too late altogether. He could get neither direction line nor location; but only and faintly a picture of a space-dock saloon, of a repulsively obese man in a luxuriously-furnished back room. Then her mind went completely blank and her body slumped down, bonelessly.

      Thus Narcotics found them; the woman inert and flaccid upon the bench, the man staring down at her in black abstraction.