Chapter VII: Part 7

They embraced, and again mind flowed into mind; this time with no thought of withholding or reserve on either side. Smoothly, effortlessly, the two essential beings merged, each fitting its tiniest, remotest members into the deepest, ordinarily most inaccessible recesses of the other; fusing as quickly and as delicately and as thoroughly as two drops of water coalescing into one.

In that supremely intimate fusion, that ultimate union of line and plane and cellule, each mind was revealed completely to the other; a revealment which no outsider should expect to share.

Finally, after neither ever knew how long, they released each other and each put up, automatically, a solid block.

“I don’t know about you, Storm,” Joan said then, “but I’ve had just about all I can take. I’m going to bed and sleep for one solid week.”

“You and me both,” Storm agreed, ungrammatically, but feelingly. “Good night, sweetheart . . . and this had all better be strictly hush-hush, don’t you think?”

“I _do_ think,” she assured him. “Can’t you just imagine the field-day the psychs would have, taking us apart?”

In view of the above, it might be assumed that the parting was immediate, positive, and undemonstrative; but such was not exactly the case. But they did finally separate, and each slept soundly and long.

And fairly early the next morning—before either of them got up, at least—Cloud sent Joan a thought.

“Awake, dear?”

“Uh-huh. Just. ’Morning, Storm.”

“I’ve got some news for you, Joanie. My brain is firing on ten times as many barrels as I ever thought it had, and I don’t know what half of ’em are doing. Among other things, you made what I think is probably a top-bracket perceiver out of me.”

“So? Well, don’t peek at me, please . . . but why should I say that, after having studied in Rigel Four for two years? Women are funny, I guess. But, for your information, I have just extracted the ninth root of an eighteen-digit number, in no time at all and to the last significant decimal place, and I _know_ the answer is right. How do you like _them_ potatoes, Buster?”

“Nice. We really absorbed each other’s stuff, didn’t we? But how about joining me in person for a soupcon of ham and eggs?”

“That’s a thought, my thoughtful friend; a cogent and right knightly thought. I’ll be with you in three jerks and a wiggle.” And she was.

Just as they finished eating, Vesta breezed in. “Well, you two deep-sleepers finally crawled out of your sacks, did you? It is confusing, though, that ship’s time never agrees with planetary time. But I live here, you know, in this city you call ‘Vegiaton,’ so I went to bed at noon yesterday and I’ve got over half a day’s work done already. I saw my folks and bought half of my uncle’s bank and made the no-gambling declaration and I want to ask you both something. After the Grand Uproar here at the ’port in your honor, will you two and Helen and Joe and Bob and Barbara come with me to a little dance some of my friends are having? You’ve been _zo_ good to me, and I want to show you off a little.”

“We’ll be _glad_ to, Vesta, and thanks a lot,” Joan said, flashing a thought at Cloud to let her handle this thing her own way, “and I imagine the others would be, too, but . . . well, it’s for _you_, you know, and we might be intruding. . . .”

“Why, not at all!” Vesta waved the objection away with an airy flirt of her tail. “You’re friends of mine! And everybody’s real friends are always welcome, you know, everywhere. And it’ll be small and quiet; only six or eight hundred are being asked, they say. . . .” she paused for a moment: “. . . of course, after it gets around that we have _you_ there, a couple of thousand or so strangers will come in too; but they’ll all smell nice, so it’ll be QX.”

“How do you know what they’ll smell like?” Cloud asked.

“Why, they’ll smell like our crowd, of course. If they didn’t they wouldn’t _want_ to come in. It’s QX, then?”

“For us two, yes; but of course we can’t speak for the others.”

“Thanks, you wonderful people; I’ll go ask them right now.”

“Joan, have you blown your stack completely?” Cloud demanded. “Small—quiet—six or eight _hundred_ invited—a couple of thousand or _so_ gate-crashers—what do you want to go to a brawl like _that_ for?”

“The chance is too good to miss—it’s priceless. . . .” She paused, then added, obliquely: “Storm, have you any idea at all of what Vesta thinks of you? You haven’t snooped, I’m sure.”

“No, and I don’t intend to.”

“Maybe you ought to,” Joan snickered a little, “except that it would inflate your ego too much. It’s hard to describe. It’s not exactly love—and not exactly worship, either god-worship or hero-worship. It isn’t exactly adoration, but it’s very much stronger than mere admiration. A mixture of all these, perhaps, and half a dozen others, coupled with a simply unbelievable amount of _pride_ that you are her friend. It’s a peculiarly Vegian thing, that Tellurians simply do not feel. But here’s why I’m so enthused. It has been over twenty years since any non-Vegian has attended one of these uniquely Vegian parties except as an outsider, and a Vegian party with outsiders looking on isn’t a Vegian party at all. But we Storm, will be going as insiders!”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Positive. Oh, I know it isn’t _us_ she wants, but _you_; but that won’t make any difference. As Vesta’s friend—‘friend’ in this case having a very special meaning—you’re in the center of the inner circle. As friends of yours, the rest of us are in, too. Not in the inner circle, perhaps, but well inside the outside circle, at least. See?”

“Dimly. ‘A friend of a friend of a friend of a very good friend of mine,’ eh? I’ve heard that ditty, but I never thought it meant anything.”

“It does here. We’re going to have a time. See you in about an hour?”

“Just about. I’ve got to check with Nordquist.”

“Here I am, Storm,” the Lensman’s thought came in. Then, as Cloud went toward his quarters, it went on: “Just want to tell you we won’t have anything for you to do here. This is going to be a straight combing job.”

“That won’t be too tough, will it? A Tellurian, sixty, tall, thin, grave, distinguished-looking . . . or maybe. . . .”

“Exactly. You’re getting the idea. Cosmeticians and plastic surgery. He could look like a Crevenian, or thirty years old and two hundred pounds and slouchy. He could look like anything. He undoubtedly has a background so perfectly established that fifteen thoroughly honest Vegians would swear by eleven of their gods that he hasn’t left his home town for ten years. So every intelligent being on Vegia who hasn’t got a live tail, with live blood circulating in it, is going under the Lens and through the wringer if we have to keep Vegia in quarantine for a solid year. He is _not_ going to get away from us this time.”

“I’m betting on you, Nordquist. Clear ether!”

The Lensman signed off and Cloud, at the end of the specified hour, undressed and redressed and went to the computer room. All the others except Joe were already there.

“Hi, peoples!” Cloud called; then did a double-take. “Wow! And likewise, Yipes! How come the tri-di outfits didn’t all collapse, Joan, when those two spectaculars took up cybernetics?”

“I’ll never know, Storm.” Joan shook her head wonderingly, then went on via thought; and Cloud felt her pang of sheer jealousy. “Why is it that big girls are always so much more beautiful than little ones? And the more clothes they take off the better they look? It simply isn’t _fair_!”

Cloud’s mind reached out and meshed with hers. “Sure it is, sweetheart. They’re beauties; you can’t take that away from them. . . .”

And beauties they certainly were. Helen, as has been said, was lissom and dark. Her hair was black, her eyes a midnight blue, her skin a deep, golden brown. Barbara, not quite as tall—five feet seven, perhaps—was equally beautifully proportioned, and even more striking-looking. Her skin was tanned ivory, her eyes were gray, her hair was a shoulder-length, carefully-careless mass of gleaming, flowing, wavy silver.

“. . . they’ve got a lot of stuff: but believe me, there are several grand lots of stuff they _haven’t_ got, too. I wouldn’t trade half of you for either one of them—or both of them together.”

“I believe that—at least, about _both_ of them,” Joan giggled mentally, “but how many men. . . .”

“Well, how many men do you want?” Cloud interrupted.

“Touché, Storm . . . but do you really. . . .”

What would have developed into a scene of purely mental lovemaking was put to an end by the arrival of Joe Mackay, who also paused and made appropriate noises of appreciation.

“But there’s one thing I don’t quite like about this deal,” he said finally. “I’m not too easy in my mind about making love to a moll who is packing a Mark Twenty Eight DeLameter. The darn thing might go off.”

“Keep your distance, then, Lieutenant Mackay!” Helen laughed. “Well, are we ready?”

They were. They left the ship and walked in a group through the throng of cheering Vegians toward the nearby, gaily-decorated stands in which the official greetings and thank-yous were to take place. Helen and Babs loved it; just as though they were parading as finalists in a beauty contest. Bob and Joe wished that they had stayed in the ship and kept their clothes on. Joan didn’t quite know whether she liked this kind of thing or not. Of the six Tellurians, only Neal Cloud had had enough experience in public near-nudity so that it made no difference. And Vesta?

Vesta was fairly reveling—openly, unashamedly reveling—in the spotlight with her Tellurian friends. They reached the center stand, were ushered with many flourishes to a reserved section already partly filled by Captain Ross and the lesser officers and crewmen of the good-will-touring Patrol ship _Vortex Blaster II_. Not all of the officers, of course, since many had to stay aboard, and comparatively few of the crew; for many men insist on wearing Tellurian garmenture and refuse to tan their hides under ultra-violet radiation—and no untanned white Tellurian skin can take with impunity more than a few minutes of giant Vega’s blue-white fury.

Of the ceremonies themselves, nothing need be said; such things being pretty much of a piece, wherever, whenever, or for whatever reason held. When they were over, Vesta gathered her six friends together and led them to the edge of the roped-off area. There she uttered a soundless (to Tellurian ears) whistle, whereupon a group of Vegian youths and girls formed a wedge around the seven and drove straight through the milling crowd to its edge. There, by an evidently pre-arranged miracle, they found enough copters to carry them all.

_Chapter 16_
▂▂▂▂▂▂VEGIAN JUSTICE

THE NEARER THEY got to their destination the more fidgety Vesta became. “Oh, I _hope_ Zambkptkn could get away and be there by now—I haven’t seen him for over half a year!”

“Who?” Helen asked.

“My brother. Zamke, you’d better call him, you can pronounce that. The police officer, you know.”

“I thought you saw him this morning?” Joan said.

“I saw my other brothers and sisters, but not him—he was tied up on a job. He wasn’t sure just when he could get away tonight.”

The copter dropped sharply. Vesta seized Cloud’s arm and pointed. “That’s where we’re going; that big building with the landing-field on the roof. The Caravanzerie. Zee?” In moments of emotion or excitement, most of Vesta’s sibilants reverted to Z’s.

“I see. And this is your Great White Way?”

It was, but it was not white. Instead, it was a blaze of red, blue, green, yellow—all the colors of the spectrum. And crowds! On foot, on bicycles, on scooters, motorbikes, and motortricycles, in cars and in copters, it seemed impossible that _anything_ could move in such a press as that. And as the aircab approached its destination Neal Cloud, space-hardened veteran and skillful flyer though he was, found himself twisting wheels, stepping on pedals, and cutting in braking jets, none of which were there.

How that jockey landed his heap and got it into the air again all in one piece without dismembering a single Vegian, Cloud never did quite understand. Blades were scant fractional inches from blades and rotors; people were actually shoved aside by the tapering bumpers of the cab as it hit the deck; but nothing happened. This, it seemed, was _normal_!

The group re-formed and in flying-wedge fashion as before, gained the elevators and finally the ground floor and the ballroom. Here Cloud drew his first full breath for what seemed like hours. The ballroom was tremendous—and it was less than three-quarters filled.

Just inside the doorway Vesta paused, sniffing delicately. “He _is_ here—come on!” She beckoned the six to follow her and rushed ahead, to be met at the edge of the clear space in head-on collision. Brother and sister embraced fervently for about two seconds. Then, reaching down, the man broke his sister’s grip and flipped her around sidewise, through half of a vertical circle, so that her feet pointed straight up. Then, with a sharp “_Blavzkt!_” he snapped into a back flip.

“_Blavzkt—Zemp!_” she shouted back, bending beautifully into such an arch that, as his feet left the floor, hers landed almost exactly where his had been an instant before. Then for a full minute and a half the joyous pair pinwheeled, without moving from the spot; while the dancers on the floor, standing still now, applauded enthusiastically with stamping, hand-clapping, whistles, cat-calls, and screams.

Vesta stopped the exhibition finally, and led her brother toward Cloud and Joan. The music resumed, but the dancers did not. Instead, they made a concerted rush for the visitors, surrounding them in circles a dozen deep. Vesta, with both arms wrapped tightly around Cloud and her tail around Joan, shrieked a highly consonantal sentence—which Cloud knew meant “Lay off these two for a couple of minutes, you howling hyenas, they’re mine”—then, switching to English: “Go ahead, you four, and have fun!”

The first two men to lay hands on the two tall Tellurian beauties were, by common consent and without argument, their first partners. Two of the Vegian girls, however, were not so polite. Both had hold of Joe, one by each arm, and stood there spitting insults at each other past his face until a man standing near by snapped a few words at them and flipped a coin. The two girls, each still maintaining her grip, leaned over eagerly to see for themselves the result of the toss. The loser promptly relinquished her hold on Joe and the winner danced away with him.

“Oh, this is _wonderful_, Storm!” Joan thought. “We’ve been _accepted_—we’re the first group I ever actually _knew_ of to really break through the crust.”

The Vegians moved away. Vesta released her captives and turned to her brother.

“Captain Cloud, Doctor Janowick, I present to you my brother Zamke,” she said. Then, to her brother: “They have been very good to me, Zambktpkn, both of them, but especially the captain. You know what he did for me.”

“Yes, I know.” The brother spoke the English “S” with barely a trace of hardness. He shook Cloud’s hand firmly, then bent over the hand, spreading it out so that the palm covered his face, and inhaled deeply. Then, straightening up: “For what you have done for my sister, sir, I thank you. As she has said, your scent is pleasing and will be remembered long, enshrined in the Place of Pleasant Odors of our house.”

Turning to Joan, and omitting the handshake, he repeated the performance and bowed—and when an adult male Vegian sets out to make a production of bowing, it is a production well worth seeing.

Then, with the suddenest and most complete change of manner either Cloud or Joan had ever seen he said: “Well, now that the formalities have been taken care of, Joan, how about us hopping a couple of skips around the floor?”

Joan was taken slightly aback, but rallied quickly. “Why, I’d love it . . . but not knowing either the steps or the music, I’m afraid I couldn’t follow you very well.”

“Oh that won’t make any. . . .” Zamke began, but Vesta drowned him out.

“Of _course_ it won’t make any difference, Joan!” she exclaimed. “Just go ahead and dance any way you want to. He’ll match your steps—and if he so much as touches one of your slippers with his big, fat feet, I’ll choke him to death with his own tail!”

“And I suppose it is irrefutable that you can and will dance with me with equal dexterity, aplomb, and insouciance?” Cloud asked Vesta, quizzically, after Joan and Zamke had glided smoothly out into the throng.

“You zaid it, little chum!” Vesta exclaimed, gleefully. “And I know what all those words mean, too, and if I ztep on either one of _your_ feet I’ll choke _my_ zelf to death with my _own_ tail, zo there!”

Snuggling up to him blissfully, Vesta let him lead her into the crowd. She of course was a superb dancer; so much so that she made him think himself a much better dancer than he really was. After a few minutes, when he was beginning to relax, he felt an itchy, tickling touch—something almost impalpable was creeping up his naked back—the fine, soft fur of the extreme tip of Vesta’s ubiquitous tail!

He grabbed for it, but, fast as he was, Vesta was faster, and she shrieked with glee as he missed the snatch.

“See here, young lady,” he said, with mock sternness, “if you don’t keep your tail where it belongs I’m going to wrap it around your lovely neck and tie it into a bow-knot.”

Vesta sobered instantly. “Oh . . . do you _really_ think I’m lovely, Captain Nealcloud—my neck, I mean?”

“No doubt about it,” Cloud declared. “Not only your neck—all of you. You are most certainly one of the most beautiful things I ever saw.”

“Oh, thanks . . . I hadn’t. . . .” she stared into his eyes for moments, as if trying to decide whether he really meant it or was merely being polite; then, deciding that he did mean it, she closed her eyes, let her head sink down onto his shoulder, and began to purr blissfully; still matching perfectly whatever motions he chose to make.

In a few minutes, however, they heard a partially-stifled shriek and a soprano voice, struggling with laughter, rang out.

“Vesta!”

“Yes, Babs?”

“What do you do about this tail-tickling business? I never had to cope with anything like _that_ before!”

“Bite him!” Vesta called back, loudly enough for half the room to hear. “Bite him good and hard, on the end of the tail. If you can’t catch the tail, bite his ear. Bite it good.”

“_Bite_ him? Why, I _couldn’t_—not _possibly_!”

“Well, then give him the knee, or clout him a good, solid tunk on the nose. Or better yet; tell him you won’t dance with him any more—he’ll be good.”

“_Now_ you tell us what to do about tail-ticklers,” Cloud said then. “S’pose I’d take a good bite at _your_ ear?”

“I’d bite you right back,” said Vesta, gleefully, “and I bet you’d taste just as nice as you smell.”

The dance went on, and Cloud finally, by the aid of both Vesta and Zamke, did finally manage to get one dance with Joan. And, as he had known he would, he enjoyed it immensely. So did she.

“Having fun, chum? I never saw you looking so starry-eyed before.”

“Oh, brother!” she breathed. “To say that I was never the belle of any ball in my schooldays is the understatement of the century, but here . . . can you imagine it, Storm, _me_ actually outshining Barbara Benton and Helen Worthington both at once?”

“Sure I can. I told you. . . .”

“Of course it’s probably because their own women are so big that I’m a sort of curiosity,” she rushed on, “but whatever the reason, this dance is going down in my memory book in great big letters in the reddest ink I can find!”

“Good for you—hail the conquering heroine!” he applauded. “It’ll do you good to have your ego inflated a little. But what do _you_ do about this tail-tickling routine?”

“Oh, I grab their tails”—with her sense of perception, she could, of course—“and when they try to wiggle them free I wiggle back at them, like this,” she demonstrated, “and we have a perfectly wonderful time.”

“Wow! I’ll bet you do—and when I get you home, you shameless. . . .”

“Sorry, Storm, my friend,” the big Vegian who cut in wasn’t sorry at all, and he and Cloud both knew it. “You can dance with Joan any time and we can’t. So loosen all clamps, friend. Grab him, Vzelkt!”

Vzelkt grabbed. So, in about a minute, did another Vegian girl; and then after a few more minutes, it was Vesta’s turn again. No other girl could dance with him more than once, but Vesta, by some prearranged priority, could have him once every ten minutes.

“Where’s your brother, Vesta?” he asked once. “I haven’t seen him for an hour.”

“Oh, he had to go back to the police station. They’re all excited and working all hours. They’re chasing Public Enemy Number One—a Tellurian, they think he is, named Fairchild—why?” as Cloud started, involuntarily, in the circle of her arm. “Do you know him?”

“I know _of_ him, and that’s enough.” Then, in thought: “Did you get that, Nordquist?”

“I got it.” Cloud was, as the Lensman had said that he would be, under surveillance every second. “Of course, this one may not be Fairchild, since there are three or four other suspects in other places, but from the horrible time we and the Vegians both are having, trying to locate this bird, I’m coming to think he is.”

The dance went on until, some hours later, there was an unusual tumult and confusion at the door.

“Oh, the police are calling Vesta—something has happened!” his companion exclaimed. “Let’s rush over—oh, hurry!”

Cloud hurried; but, as well as hurrying, he sent his sense of perception on ahead, and meshed his mind imperceptibly with Vesta’s as well.

Her mind was a queerly turbid, violently turbulent mixture of emotions: hot with a furiously passionate lust for personal, tooth-and-claw-revenge; at the same time icily cold with the implacable, unswervable resolve of the dedicated, remorseless, and merciless killer.

“Are you sure, beyond all doubt, that this is the garment of my brother’s slayer?” Vesta was demanding.

“I am sure,” the Vegian policeman replied. “Not only did Zambkptkn hold it pierced by the first and fourth fingers of his left hand—the sign positive, as you know—but an eyewitness verified the scent and furnished descriptions. The slayer was dressed as an Aldebaranian, which accounts for the size of the garment your brother could seize before he died; his four bodyguards as Tellurians, with leather belts and holsters for their blasters.”

“QX.” Vesta accepted a pair of offered shears and began to cut off tiny pieces of the cloth. As each piece began to fall it was seized in mid-air by a Vegian man or girl who immediately ran away with it. And in the meantime other Vegians, forming into a long line, ran past Vesta, each taking a quick sniff and running on, out into the street. Cloud, reaching outside the building with his perceptors, saw that all vehicular traffic had paused. A Vegian stood on the walkway, holding a bit of cloth pinched between thumb and fingernail. All passersby, on foot or in any kind of vehicle, would pause, sniff at the cloth, and—apparently—go on about their business.

But Cloud, after reading Vesta’s mind and the policeman’s, turned as white as his space-tan would permit. In less than an hour almost every Vegian in that city of over eight million would know the murderer by scent and would be sniffing eagerly for him; and when any one of them _did_ find him. . . .

Except for the two Vegians and the six Tellurians, the vast hall was now empty. Vesta was holding a pose Cloud had never before seen—stiffly erect, with her tail wrapped tightly around her body.

“Can they get a scent—a _reliable_ scent, I mean—that fast?” Cloud asked.

“Zertainly,” Vesta’s voice was cold, level, almost uninflected. “How long would it take you to learn that an egg you started to eat was rotten? The man who wore this shirt is a class A Triple Prime stinker—his odor is recognizable instantly and anywhere.”

“But as to the rest of it—_don’t_ do this thing, Vesta! Let the law handle it.”

“The law comes second. He killed my brother; it is my right and my privilege to kill him. . . .”

Cloud became conscious of the fact that Joan was in his mind. “You been here all along?” he flashed.

“In or near. You and I are one, you know,” and Vesta’s voice went on:

“. . . and besides, the law is merciful. Its death is instant. Under my claws and teeth he will live for hours—for a full day, I hope.”

“But officer, can’t _you_ do something?”

“Nothing. The law comes second. As she has said, it is her right and her privilege.”

“But it’s suicide, man—sheer _suicide_. You know that, don’t you?”

“Not necessarily. She will not be working alone. Whether she lives or dies, however, it is still her right and her privilege.”

Cloud switched to thought. “Nordquist, _you_ can stop this if you want to. _Do_ it.”

“I can’t, and you know I can’t. The Patrol does not and cannot interfere in purely planetary affairs.”

“You intend, then,” Cloud demanded furiously, “to let this girl put her naked hands and teeth up against four trigger-happy gunnies with DeLameters?”

“Just that. There’s nothing else I or any other Patrolman can do. To interfere in this one instance would alienate half the planets of Civilization and set the Patrol back five hundred years.”

“Well, even though I’m a Patrolman—of sorts—_I_ can do something about it!” Cloud blazed, “and by God, I will!”

“_We_ will, you mean, and we _will_, too,” Joan’s thought came forcibly at first, then became dubious: “That is, if it doesn’t mean getting _you_ blasted, too.”

“Just what?” Nordquist’s thought was sharp. “Oh, I see . . . and, being a Vegian, as well as a Patrolman, and the acknowledged friend of both the dead man and his sister. . . .”

“Who’s a Vegian?” Cloud demanded.

“You are, and so are the other five of your group, as you would have been informed if the party had not been broken up so violently. Honorary Vegians, for life.”

“Why, I never _heard_ of such a thing!” Joan exclaimed, “and I studied them for years!”

“No, you never did,” Nordquist agreed. “There haven’t been many honorary Vegians, and to my certain knowledge, not one of them has ever talked. Vegians are very strongly psychic in picking their off-world friends.”

“You mean to tell me that that bleached blonde over there won’t spill everything she knows fifteen minutes after we leave here?” Cloud demanded.

“Just that. You can’t judge character by hair, even if it were bleached, which it isn’t. You owe her an apology, Storm.”

“If you say so, I do, and I hereby apologize, but. . . .”

“But to get back to the subject,” the Lensman went on, narrowing his thought down so sharply as to exclude Joan. “You can do something. You’re the _only_ one who can. Such being the case, and since you are no longer indispensable. I withdraw all objections. Go ahead.”

Cloud started a thought, but Joan blanked him out. “Lensman, has Storm been sending—_can_ he send information to you that _I_ can’t dig out of his mind?”

“Very easily. He is an exceptionally fine tuner.”

“I’m sorry, Joanie,” Cloud thought, hastily, “but it sounded too much like bragging to let you in on. However, you’re in from now on.”

Then, aloud, “Vesta, I’m staying with you,” he said, quietly.

“I was sure you would,” she said, as quietly. “You are my friend and Zamke’s. Although your customs are not exactly like ours, a man of your odor does not desert his friends.”

Cloud turned then to the four lieutenants, who stood close-grouped. “Will you four kids please go back to the ship, and take Joan with you?”

“Not on Thursdays, Storm,” Joe said, pointing to an inconspicuous bronze button set into a shoulder-strap. “We both rate Blaster Expert First. Count us in,” and Bob added:

“Joan has been telling us an earful, and what she didn’t tell us a couple of Vegian boys did. The Three Honorary Vegian Musketeers; that’s us. Lead on, d’Artagnan!”

“Bob and Joe are staying, too, Vesta,” Cloud said then.

“Of course. I’m sorry I didn’t get to tell you myself about being adopted, but I knew somebody would. But you, Joan and Barbara and Helen, you three had better go back to the ship. You can be of no use here.”

Two of them were willing enough to go, but:

“Where Neal Cloud goes, I go,” Joan said, and there was no doubt whatever that she meant exactly that.

“Why?” Vesta demanded. “Commander Cloud, the fastest gunman in all space, is necessary for the success of this our mission. He can, from a cold, bell-tone start, at thirty yards, burn the centers out of six irregularly-spaced targets. . . .”

“Nordquist! Lay off! What in _hell_ do you think you’re doing?” Cloud thought, viciously.

“I don’t think—I _know_,” came instant reply. “Do you want her hanging on your left arm when the blasting starts? This is the only _possible_ way Joan Janowick can be handled. Lay off yourself!” and Vesta’s voice went calmly on:

“. . . in exactly two hundred and forty nine mils. Lieutenant Mackay and Lieutenant Ingalls, although perhaps not absolutely necessary, are highly desirable. They are fast enough, and are of deadly accuracy. When either of them shoots a man in a crowd, however large, that one man dies, and not a dozen bystanders. Now just what good would _you_ be, Lieutenant-Commander Janowick? Can you fire a blaster with any one of these men? Or bite a man’s throat out with me?”

For probably the first time in her life, Joan Janowick stood mute.

“And suppose you _do_ come along,” Vesta continued relentlessly. “With _you_ at his side, in the line of fire, do you suppose. . . .”

“Just a minute—shut up, Vesta!” Cloud ordered, roughly. “Listen, all of you. The Lensman is doing this, not Vesta, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let anybody, not even a Lensman, bedevil my Joan this way. So, Joan, wherever we go, you can come along. All I ask is, you’ll keep a little ways back?”

“Of course I will, Storm,” and Joan crept into the shelter of his arm.

“Ha—I thought you’d pop off at about this point,” Nordquist’s thought came chattily into Cloud’s mind. “Good work, my boy; you’ve consolidated your position no end.”

“Well, what do we do now?” Joe Mackay broke the somewhat sticky silence that followed.

“We wait,” Vesta said, calmly. “We wait right here until we receive news.”

They waited; and, as they waited the tension mounted and mounted. Before it became intolerable, however, the news came in, and Cloud, reading Vesta’s mind as the ultra-sonic information was received, relayed it to other Tellurians. The murderer and his four bodyguards were at that moment entering a theater less than one city block away. . . .

“Why, they _couldn’t_ be!” Helen protested. “_Nobody_ could be _that_ stupid . . . or . . . I wonder. . . ?”

“I wonder, too.” This from Joan. “Yes, it would be the supremely clever thing to do; the perfect place to hide for a few hours while the worst of the storm blows over and they can complete their planned getaway. Provided, of course, they’re out-worlders and thus don’t know what we Vegians can do with our wonderful sense of smell. Of course they aren’t a Tellurian and four Aldebaranians any more, are they?”

“No, they are five Centralians now. Perfectly innocent. They think their blasters are completely hidden under those long over shirts, but now and again a bulge shows—they’ve still got blasters on their hips. The theater’s crowded, but the five friends want to sit together. The manager thinks it could be arranged, by paying a small gratuity to a few seat-holders who would like to make a fast credit that way . . . he’ll place them and it’s almost time for us to go. ’Bye, Joanie—stay back, remember!” and she was in his arms.

“How about it, Helen?” Joe asked. “Surely you’re going to kiss your Porthos good-bye, aren’t you?”

“Of a surety, m’enfant!” she exclaimed, and did so with enthusiasm. “But it’s more like Aramis, I think—he kissed everybody, you know—and since I’m not hooked like Joan is—yet—don’t think that this is establishing a precedent.”

“Well, Babs, that leaves you and me.” Bob reached out—she was standing beside him—and pulled her close. “QX?”

“Why, I . . . I guess so.” Barbara blushed furiously. “But Bob . . . is it really _dangerous_?” she whispered.

“I don’t know. Not very, really, I don’t think. At least I certainly _hope_ not. But blasters are _not_ cap-pistols, you know, and whenever one goes off it can raise pure hell. Why? Would you really miss me?”

“You _know_ I would, Bob,” and her kiss had more fervor than either she or he would have believed possible a few minutes before. And at its end she laughed, shakily, and blushed again as she said, “I’ve got sort of used to having you around, so be _sure_ and come back.”

They left the building and walked rapidly along a strangely quiet street to the theater. Without a word they were ushered up a short flight of stairs.

“Hold up, Vesta!” Cloud thought sharply. “We can’t see a thing—wait a couple of minutes.”

They waited five minutes, during which time they learned exactly where the enemy were and discussed every detail of the proposed attack.

“I _still_ can’t see well enough to shoot,” Cloud said then. “Can they give us a little glow of light?”

They could. By almost imperceptible increments the thick, soft blackness was relieved.

“That’s enough.” The light, such as it was, steadied.

“Ready?” Vesta’s voice was a savage growl, low, deep in her throat.

“Ready.”

“No more noise, then.”

They walked forward to the balcony’s edge, leaned over it, looked down. Directly beneath Vesta’s head was seated a man in Centralian garb; four others were behind, in front of, and at each side of, their chief.

“Now!” Vesta yelled, and flung herself over the low railing.

At her shout four Vegians ripped four Centralian shirts apart, seized four hip-holstered blasters, and shouted with glee—but they shouted too soon. For the real gun-slick, then as now, did not work from the hip, but out of his sleeve; and these were four of the coldest, fastest killers to be found throughout the far flung empire of Boskone. Thus, all four flashed into action even before they began rising to their feet.

But so did Storm Cloud; and his heavy weapon was already out and ready. He knew what those hands were doing, in the instant of their starting to do it, and his DeLameter flamed three times in what was practically one very short blast. He had to move a little before he could sight on the fourth guard—Vesta’s furiously active body was in the way—so Joe and Bob each got a shot, too. Three bolts of lightning hit that luckless wight at once, literally cremating him in air as he half-crouched, bringing his blaster to bear on the catapulting thing attacking his boss.

When Vesta went over the rail she did not jump to the floor below. Instead, her hands locked on the edge; her feet dug into the latticework of the apron. She squatted. Her tail flashed down, wrapping itself twice around the zwilnik’s neck. She heaved, then, and climbed with everything she had; and as she stood upright on the railing, eager hands reached down to help her tail lift its burden up into the balcony. The man struck the floor with a thud and Vesta jumped at him.

“Your fingers first—one at a time,” she snarled; and, seizing a hand, she brought it toward her mouth.

She paused then as if thunderstruck; a dazed, incredulous expression spreading over her face. Bending over, she felt, curiously, tenderly, of his neck.

“Why, he . . . he’s _dead_!” she gasped. “His neck . . . it’s . . . it’s _broken_! From such a little, tiny pull as _that_? Why, _anybody_ ought to have a stronger neck than _that_!”

She straightened up; then, as a crowd of Vegians and the Tellurian women came up, she became instantly her old, gay self. “Well, shall we all go back and finish our dance?”

“What?” Cloud demanded. “After _this_?”

“Why certainly,” Vesta said, brightly. “I’m sorry, of course, that I killed him so quickly, but it doesn’t make any real difference. Zamke is avenged; he can now enjoy himself. We’ll join him in a few years, more or less. Until then, what would you do? What you call ‘mourn’?”

“I don’t know . . . I simply don’t know,” Cloud said, slowly, his arm tightening around Joan’s supple waist. “I thought I’d seen everything, but . . . I suppose you can have somebody take that body out to the ship, so they can check it for identity?”

“Oh, yes, I’ll do that. Right away. You’re sure you don’t want to dance any more?”

“Very sure, my dear. _Very_ sure. All _I_ want to do is take Joan back to the ship.”

“QX. I won’t see you again this trip, then; your hours are so funny. I’ll send for my things. And I won’t say good-bye, Captain Nealcloud and you other wonderful people, because we’ll see each other again, soon and often. Just so-long, and thanks tremendously for all you have done for me.”

And Vesta the Vegian strode away, purring contentedly to herself—tail high.

_Chapter 17_
▂▂▂▂▂▂THE CALL

THE LENSMEN and their Patrolmen, having made sure that the body of Zamke’s murderer was in fact that of the long-sought Fairchild, went unostentatiously about their various businesses.

The six Tellurians, although shaken no little by their climactic experience on Vegia, returned soon to normal and resumed their accustomed routines of life—with certain outstanding variations. Thus, Helen and Joe flirted joyously and sparred dextrously, but neither was ever to be found tête-à-tête with anyone else. And thus, Bob and Barbara, neither flirting nor sparring, became quietly but enthusiastically inseparable. And thus, between Joan and Cloud, so close even before Vegia, the bonding became so tight that their two minds were, to all intents and purposes, one mind.

The week on Vegia was over. The _Vortex Blaster II_ was loafing through the void at idling speed. Cloud was pacing the floor in his office. Joan, lounging in a deeply-cushioned chair with legs stuck out at an angle of forty-five degrees to each other, was smoking a cigarette and watching him, with her eyes agleam.

“Confound it, I wish they’d hurry up with that fine-tooth,” he said, flipping his half-smoked cigarette at a receptacle and paying no attention to the fact that he missed it by over a foot. “How can I tell Captain Ross where to go when I don’t know myself?”

“That’s one thing I just _love_ about you, my pet,” Joan drawled. “You’re so wonderfully, so superhumanly _patient_. You know as well as I do that the absolutely irreducible minimum of time is twenty-six minutes from now, and that they’ll probably find something they’ll want to study for a minute or so after they get there. So light somewhere, why don’t you, and unseethe yourself?”

“Touché, Joan.” He sat down with a thump. “Has Doctor Janowick a prescription specific for the ailment?”

“Nothing else but, chum. That tight-linkage snooping that we’ve been going to try, but never had time for. Let’s start on Helen and Barbara. I’ve snooped them repeatedly, of course, but our fusion of minds, theoretically, should be able to pick their minds apart cell by cell; to tap their subconscious ancestral memories, even—if there are such things—for a thousand generations back.”

He looked at her curiously. “You know, I think you must have some ghoul blood in you somewhere? I tell you again, those girls are _friends_ of ours!”

“So what?” she grinned at him, entirely unabashed. “You’ll have to get rid of that squeamishness some day; it’s the biggest roadblock there is on the Way of Knowledge. If not them, how would Nadine suit you?”

“Worse yet. She’s just as good at this business as we are, maybe better, and she probably wouldn’t like it.”

“You may have something there. We’ll save her for last, and call on her formally, with announcements and everything. Vesta, then?”

“_Now_ you’re squeaking, little mouse. But no deep digging for a while. We’ll take it easy and light—we don’t want to do any damage we may not be able to undo. As I told you before, my brain is firing on altogether too damn many barrels that I simply don’t know what are doing. Let’s go.”

They fused their minds—an effortless process now—and were at their objective instantaneously.

Vesta was primping; enjoying sensuously the physical feel of her physical body even as dozens of parts of speech of dozens of different languages went through her racing mind. And, one layer down, she was wishing she were old enough to be a newlywed; wishing she had a baby of her own . . . babies were so cute and soft and cuddlesome. . . .

Then Tommie. Cloud and Joan enjoyed with her the strong, rank, sense-satisfying flavor of a Venerian cigar and studied with her the intricate electronic equations of a proposed modification of the standard deep space drive. And, one layer down, the Tomingan engineer, too, was thinking of love and of babies. What was all this space hopping getting her, anyway? It didn’t stop the ache, fill the void, satisfy the longing. As soon as this cruise was over, she was going back to Tominga, tell Hanko she was ready, and settle down. A husband and a family did tie a woman down something fierce—but what price freedom to wander when you wake up in the middle of the night from dreaming of a baby in your arms, only to find the baby isn’t there?

Then Thlaskan and Maluleme. They were seated, arms around each other, on a davenport in their own home on Chickladoria. They were not talking, merely feeling. They were deeply, truly, tremendously in love. In the man’s mind there was a background of his work, of pilotry, of orbits and charts and computations. There was a flash of sincere liking for Cloud, the best boss and the finest figure-man he had ever known; but practically all of his mind was full of love for the wonderful woman at his side. In hers, at the moment, there were only two things; love of her husband and longing for the child which she might already have succeeded in conceiving. . . .

Cloud wrenched their linked minds away.

“This is monstrous, Joan!”

“What’s monstrous about it?” she asked, quietly. “Nothing. It isn’t. Women _need_ children, Storm. All women, everywhere. Now that I’ve found _you_, I can scarcely wait to have some myself. And listen, Storm, please. Before we visit Nadine, you _must_ make up your mind to face facts—_any_ kind of facts—without flinching and shying away and getting mental goose-bumps all over your psyche.”

“I see what you mean. In a fully telepathic race there couldn’t be any real privacy without a continuous block, and that probably wouldn’t be very feasible.”

“No, you _don’t_ see what I mean. You aren’t even on the right road—your whole _concept_ is wrong. There couldn’t be any _thought_, even of privacy, no _conception_ of such a thing. _Think_ a minute! From birth—from the very birth of the whole race—full and open meetings of minds must have been the norm of thought. That kind of thing is—must be—what Nadine is accustomed to at home.”

“Hm . . . I never thought . . . you go see her, Joan, and I’ll stay home.”

“What good would _that_ do? Whatever you may be, my dear, I know darn well you’re _not_ stupid.”

“Not exactly stupid, maybe, but I haven’t thought this thing through the way you have . . . of course, if she’s half as good as we know she is, she’s read us both already, clear down to the footings of our foundations . . . but this thing of a _full_ meeting of minds with anybody but you. . . .”

“You haven’t a thing to hide, you know. At least, _I_ know, whether you do or not.”

“No? How do you figure that? Maybe _you_ think so, but . . . I’ve tried, of course, but I’ve failed a lot oftener than I succeeded.”

“Who hasn’t? You’re not unique, my dear. Shall we go?”

“We might as well, I guess . . . I’m as ready as I ever will be. . . . I’ll try, but. . . .”

“Please do, Master,” came Nadine’s quiet, composed thought, in a vein completely foreign to her usual attitude of self-sufficient aloofness. “I have been observing; studying with awe and with wonder. If you will so deign, revered Master, come fully into my mind.”

“Deign?” Cloud demanded. “What kind of a thought is that, Nadine, from you to me?”

“Deign.” Nadine repeated, firmly. Deeply moved, she was feeling and sending a solemnity of respect Cloud had never before experienced. “My powers are ordinary, since I am of Type One. The two greatest Masters of Manarka are Fives, and have been the greatest Masters of the past. This is the first time I have ever encountered a mind of a type higher than Five. Come in, sir, I plead.”

Cloud went in, and his first flash of comparison was that it was like diving into the pellucid depths of a clean, cool, utterly transparent mountain lake. This mind was _so_ different from Joan’s! Joan’s was rich, warmly sympathetic, tender and emphatic, yet it was full of dark corners, secret nooks, recesses, and automatic blocks. . . . Huh? He had thought her mind as open as a book, but it wasn’t. . . . On the other hand, Nadine’s was wide open by nature. It was cool, poised—although at the moment uncomfortably worshipful—and utterly, _shockingly_ open!

His second thought was that Joan was no longer with him. She was there, in a sense, but _outside_, some way; she wasn’t in Nadine’s mind the way he was.

“I’ll say I’m not!” Joan agreed, fervently. “Thank God! I don’t know what you did or how you did it, but when you went in you peeled me off like the skin of a banana, and I was clinging like a leech, too. I’m on the outside, looking in. Did you see how he did it, Nadine?”

“No, but since I am only a One, such insight would not be expected. I have called the Fives, and they come.”

“We are here.” Two close-linked minds linked themselves with the two already so closely linked. Each of the two visitors was grave, kindly, and old with an appalling weight of years; each mind bore an appalling freight of knowledge both mundane and esoteric. “We are here, fellow Master of Thought, to be of aid to you in the clarification of your newly-awakened mind, to the end that, in a future time, your superior powers will assist us along Paths of Truth which we could not otherwise traverse.”

“Will you please tell me what this is all about?” Cloud asked. “Starting at the beginning and using words of as few syllables as possible?”

“Gladly. It has been known for some time that Janowick is Type Three. Self-developed, partially-developed, under-developed, struggling against she knew not what, but still a Three. Now Threes as such, while eminently noteworthy, are by no means phenomenal. There are some hundreds of Threes now alive. Being noteworthy, she has been watched. In time she would have completed her development and would have taken her rightful place in the School of Thought.

“You, however, have been a complete enigma to our most penetrant minds. Since no mind of lower type than Three can be an instantaneous calculator, it was clear that you were, basically, at least a Three. However, unlike other Threes, you did nothing whatever to develop the latent, potential abilities of whatever type you might be. Instead and excepting only the small and unimportant item of computation, you used the tremendous powers of your mind, not for any constructive purpose whatever, but only for the application of such rigid controls and suppressions that all the tremendous abilities you should have shown remained completely dormant and inert.

“Nor could we do anything about it. We tried, but you have blocks that not even the full power of two linked Fives can crack; which fact showed that you are of a type higher than Five. We were about to come to you in person, to plead with you, when you met Three Janowick and opened to her your hitherto impregnably-sealed inner mind. She does not know, and you do not know, what you jointly did; which was, in effect, to break and to dissolve the bindings which had been shackling both your minds. That brings us to the present. It has now become clear that you have been Called.”

“Called?” Cloud winced, physically and mentally. No man likes to be reminded that he failed Lensman’s Exam. “You’re wrong. I didn’t make even the first round.”

“We did not mean the Call of the Lens. There are many Calls, of which that is only one. Nor is it the highest, as we have just discovered, in certain little-known aspects of that vast thing we call the mind. For, to the best of our knowledge, no Lensman of the present or of the past is or was of a type higher than Five. The exact nature of your Call is as yet obscure.”

“I’d like to buy that, but I’m afraid it’s. . . .” Cloud paused. Until he’d met Joan, he’d supposed his mind ordinary enough. Since then, however . . . all those extra barrels. . . .

“Exactly. We are specialists of the mind, young man. We perceive your mind, not as it is, but as it should be and will be. It should have and will have a penetrance, a range, a flexibility of directive force, and, above all, a scope of heights and depths we have never encountered before. It is eminently clear that you, and, very probably, Three Janowick as well, have been developed each for some specific Purpose in the Great Scheme of Things.”

“A _Purpose_?” Cloud demanded. “_What_ purpose? What could _I_ do? What could both of us together do?”

“We can not surely know.”

“Does that mean that you can make a well-informed guess? If so, let’s have it.”

“There is a very high probability that Three Janowick was developed specifically to develop you; to pierce and to dissolve those hampering barriers which were amenable to no other force. Concerning you, there are several possibilities, none of which have any very high degree of probability, since you are unique. The one we prefer at the moment is that you are to become the greatest living Master of Thought; the Prime Expounder of the Truth. But that is of no importance now, since in due time it will be revealed. Of present import is the fact that both your minds are confused, cloudy, and disorderly. We offer our services in reorienting and ordering them.”

“We’d like that very much; but first, if I am going to develop into a mental giant of some kind—frankly, I have my doubts—why did it wait this long to show up?”

“The answer to that question is plain and simple. There is a time for everything, and everything that happens does so in its exact time. Let us to work.”

They worked, and when it was done:

“We would like to dwell with you for long,” the ancient Fives said, “but the time for such a boon will not come until you are much emptier of cares and much fuller of years.”

The Fives split apart. “How do you type this new Master, brother? A full Six, I say.”

“A full Six he is, brother, beyond doubt.”