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from crying, a woman cries to keep from swearing. Both are sound psychology.
Safety valvesûmeans of blowing off excess pressure that would otherwise blow
fuses or burn out tubes."
CHAPTER 3
DEI EX MACHINA
In the library of the port admiral's richly comfortable home, a room as
heavily guarded against all forms of intrusion as was his private office, two
old but active Gray Lensmen sat and grinned at each other like the two
conspirators which in fact they were. One took a squat, red bottle of fayalin
from a cabinet and filled two small glasses. The glasses clinked, rim to rim.
"Here's to love!" Haynes gave the toast.
"Ain't it grand!" Surgeon-Marshal Lacy responded.
"Down the hatch!" they chanted in unison, and action followed word.
"You aren't asking if everything stayed on the beam." This from Lacy.
"No needûI had a spy-ray on the whole performance." "You wouldûyou're the
type. However, I would have, too, if I had a panel full of them in my
office... Well, say it, you old space-hellion!" Lacy grinned again, albeit a
trifle wryly.
"Nothing to say, saw-bones. You did a grand job, and you've got nothing to
blow a jet about."
"No? How would you like to have a red-headed spitfire who's scarcely dry
behind the ears yet tell you to your teeth that you've got softening of the
brain? That you had the mental capacity of a gnat, the intellect of a
Zabriskan fontema? And to have to take it, without even heaving the
insubordinate young jade into the can for about twenty-five well-earned black
spots?"
"Oh, come, now, you're just blasting. It wasn't that bad!"
"Perhaps notûquiteûbut it was bad enough."
"She'll grow up, some day, and realize that you were foxing her six ways
from the origin."
"Probably... In the meantime, it's all part of the bigger job... Thank God
I'm not young any more. They suffer so."
"Check. How they suffer!"
"But you saw the ending and I didn't. How did it turn out?" Lacy asked.
"Partly good, partly bad." Haynes slowly poured two more drinks and
thoughtfully swirled the crimson, pungently aromatic liquid around and around
in his glass before he spoke again. "Hookedûbut she knows it, and I'm afraid
she'll do something about it."
"She's a smart operatorûI told you she was. She doesn't fox herself about
anything. Hmm... A bit of separation is indicated, it would seem."
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"Check. Can you send out a hospital ship somewhere, so as to get rid of her
for two or three weeks?"
"Can do. Three weeks be enough? We can't send him anywhere, you know."
"Plentyûhe'll be gone in two." Then, as Lacy glanced at him questioningly,
Haynes continued: "Ready for a shock? He's going to Lundmark's Nebula."
"But he can't! That would take years! Nobody has ever got back from there
yet, and there's this new job of his. Besides, this separation is only
supposed to last until you can spare him for a while!"
"If it takes very long he's coming back. The idea has always been, you know,
that intergalactic matter may be so thinûone atom per liter or soûthat such a
flit won't take one-tenth the time supposed. We recognize the dangerûhe's
going well heeled."
"How well?"
"The very best."
"I hate to clog their jets this way, but it's got to be done. We'll give her
a raise when I send her outûmake her sector chief. Huh?"
"Did I hear any such words lately as spitfire, hussy, and jade, or did I
dream them?" Haynes asked, quizzically.
"She's all of them, and moreûbut she's one of the best nurses and one of the
finest women that ever lived, too!"
"QX, Lacy, give her her raise. Of course she's good. If she wasn't, she
wouldn't be in on this deal at all. In fact, they're about as fine a couple of
youngsters as old Tellus ever produced."
"They are that. Man, what a pair of skeletons!"
* * *
And in the Nurses' Quarters a young woman with a wealth of
red-bronze-auburn hair and tawny eyes was staring at her own reflection in a
mirror.
"You half-wit, you ninny, you lug!" she stormed, bitterly if almost
inaudibly, at that reflection. "You lame-brained moron, you red-headed,
idiotic imbecile, you microcephalic dumb-bell, you clunker! Of all the men in
this whole cockeyed galaxy, you would have to make a dive at Kimball Kinnison,
the one man who thinks you're just part of the furniture. At a Gray
Lensman..." Her expression changed and she whispered softly, "A... Gray...
Lensman. He can't love anybody as long as he's carrying that load. They can't
let themselves be human... quite... perhaps loving him will be enough..."
She straightened up, shrugged, and smiled; but even that pitiful travesty of
a smile could not long endure. Shortly it was buried in waves of pain and the
girl threw herself down upon her bed.
"Oh Kim, Kim!" she sobbed. "I wish... why can't you... Oh, why did I ever
have to be born!"
* * *
Three weeks later, far out in space, Kimball Kinnison was thinking thoughts
entirely foreign to his usual pattern. He was in his bunk, smoking dreamily,
staring unseeing at the metallic ceiling. He was not thinking of Boskone.
When he had thought at Mac, back there at that dance, he had, for the first
time in his life, failed to narrow down his beam to the exact thought being
sent. Why? The explanation he had given the girl was totally inadequate. For
that matter, why had he been so glad to see her there? And why, at every odd
moment, did visions of her keep coming into his mindûher form and features,
her eyes, her lips, her startling hair?... She was beautiful, of course, but
not nearly such a seven-sector callout as that thionite dream he had met on
Aldebaran IIûand his only thought of her was an occasional faint regret that
he hadn't half-wrung her lovely neck... why, she wasn't really as good-looking
as, and didn't have half the je ne sais quoi of, that blonde heiressûwhat was
her name?ûoh, yes, Forrester... There was only one answer, and it jarred him
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to the coreûhe would not admit it, even to himself. He couldn't love
anybodyûit just simply was not in the cards. He had a job to do. The Patrol
had spent a million credits making a Lensman out of him, and it was up to him
to give them some kind of a run for their money. No Lensman had any business
with a wife, especially a Gray Lensman. He couldn't sit down anywhere, and she
couldn't flit with him. Besides, nine out of every ten Gray Lensmen got killed
before they finished their jobs, and the one that did happen to live long
enough to retire to a desk was almost always half machinery and artificial
parts...
No, not in seven thousand years. No woman deserved to have her life made
into such a hell on earth as that would be-years of agony, of heart-breaking
suspense, climaxed by untimely widowhood; or, at best, the wasting of the
richest part of her life upon a husband who was half steel, rubber, and
phenoline plastic. Red in particular was much too splendid a person to be let
in for anything like that...
But hold onûjet back! What made him think he rated any such girl? That there
was even a possibilityûespecially in view of the way he had behaved while
under her care in Base Hospitalûthat she would ever feel like being anything
more to him than a strictly impersonal nurse? Probably notûhe had Klono's own
gadolinium guts to think that she would marry him, under any conditions, even
if he made a full-power dive at her...
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