Chapter XXIII

At Base Hospital it was midnight. The two largest of Thrale's four major moons were visible, close together in the zenith, almost at the full; shining brilliantly from a cloudless, star-besprinkled sky upon the magnificent grounds.

Fountains splashed and tinkled musically. Masses of flowering shrubs, bordering meandering walks, flooded the still air with a perfume almost cloying in its intensity. No one who has once smelled the fragrance of Thralian thorn flower at midnight will ever forget it--it is as though the poignant sweetness of the mountain syringa has been blended harmoniously with the heavy, entrancing scent of the jasmine and the appealing pungency of the lily of the valley. Statues of gleaming white stone and of glinting metal were spaced infrequently over acres and acres of springy, close-clipped turf. Trees, not overhigh but massive of bole and of tremendous spread and thickness of foliage, cast shadows of impenetrable black.

"QX, Chris?" Kinnison Lensed the thought as he arrived on the grounds. She had known that he was coming. "Kinda late, I know, but I wanted to see you, and I know that you don't have to punch the clock."

"Surely, Kim"--and her low, infectious chuckle welled out. "What's the use of being a Red Lensman, else? This is just right--you couldn't make it any sooner, and tomorrow would have been too late--much too late."

They met at the door and with each an arm around the other strolled wordless down a walk. Across the resilient sward they made their way and to a bench beneath one of the spreading trees.

Kinnison swept her into both arms, hers went eagerly around his neck. How long, how unutterably long it had been since they had stood thus, nurse's white crushed against Lensman's Gray!

"Chris ... _my_ Chris. _How_ I love you!" he whispered, tense. "And now that I've got you again, by Klono's crimson claws, I'll _never_ let you go!"

"Oh ... oh, Kim, dear. I've missed you so terribly, Kim. If they separate us again, it will simply break my heart," she breathed, her low, rich voice pure music. Then womanlike, she faced the facts and made the man face them, too. "Let's sit down, Kim, and have this out. You know as well as I do that we can't go on if ... if we can't ... that's all."

They sat down upon the bench, arms still around each other. They had no need, these Lensmen, of sight. No need of language, either, although upon this page their thoughts must be put into words. They did, however, have need--a profound need--of physical contact.

"I do not," the man declared vigorously. "We've got a right to _some_ happiness, Chris, you and I. They can't keep us apart forever, sweetheart--we're going straight through with it this time."

"Uh-uh, Kim," she denied gently, shaking her spectacular head. "What would have happened if we'd have gone ahead before, leaving these horrible Thralians free to ruin Civilization?"

"But Mentor stopped us then," Kinnison argued. Deep down, he knew that if the Arisian called he would have to answer, but he argued nevertheless. "If the job wasn't done, he would have stopped us before we got this far--I think."

"You hope, you mean," the girl contradicted. "What makes you think--if you really do--that he might not wait until the ceremony has actually begun?"

"Not a thing in the universe. He might, at that," Kinnison confessed, bleakly.

"You've been afraid to ask him, haven't you?" Clarrissa pursued.

* * * * *

"But the job must be done!" Kinnison insisted, avoiding the question. "The prime minister--that Fossten--_must_ have been the top; you know very well that there couldn't possibly be anything bigger than an Arisian to be back of Boskone. It's unthinkable! They've got no military organization left--not a beam hot enough to light a cigarette or a screen that would stop a firecracker. We have all their records--everything. Why, it's just a matter of routine now for the boys to uproot them completely; system by system, planet by planet."

"Uh-huh." Chris eyed him shrewdly, there in the dark. "Cogent. Really pellucid. As clear as so much crystal--and twice as fragile. If you're so sure, why not call Mentor and ask him, right now? You're not afraid of just the calling part, like I am; you're afraid of what he will say."

"I'm going to marry you before I do another lick of work of any kind, anywhere," he insisted doggedly.

"I just love to hear you say that, even if I do know that you're just blasting off!" She giggled sunnily and snuggled deeper into the curve of his arm. "I feel that way, too, but both of us know very well that if Mentor stops us ... even at the altar--" Her thought slowed, became intense, solemn. "We're Lensmen, Kim, you and I. We both realize to the full just what that means. We'll have to muster jets enough, some way or other, to swing the load. Let's call him now, Kim, together. I just simply can't stand this not knowing ... I can't, Kim ... I _can't_!" Tears come hard and seldom to such a woman as Clarrissa MacDougall; but they came then--and they hurt.

"QX, ace." Kinnison patted her back and her gorgeous head. "Let's go--but I tell you now that if he says 'no' I'll tell him to go hunt up an asteroid out on the Rim and take a swan dive off into intergalactic space."

She linked her mind with his, thinking in affectionate half reproach, "I'd like to, too, Kim, but that's pure baloney. You couldn't--" she broke off as he hurled their joint thought to Arisia the Old, going on frantically:

"You think at him, Kim, and I'll just listen. He scares me into a shrinking, quivering pulp!"

"QX, ace," he said again. Then: "Is it permissible that we do what we are about to do?" he asked crisply of Arisia's ancient sage.

"Ah, 'tis Kinnison and MacDougall; once of Tellus, henceforth of Klovia," the calmly unsurprised thought rolled in. "I was expecting you at this time. Any mind, however far from competent, could have visualized this event in its entirety. That which you contemplate is not merely permissible; it has now become necessary." And as usual, without tapering off or leave-taking, Mentor broke the line of thought.

The two clung together rapturously then for minutes, but something was obtruding itself disquietingly upon the nurse's mind.

"But his thought was 'necessary,' Kim?" she asked, rather than said. "Isn't there sort of a sinister connotation in that, somewhere? What did he mean?"

"Nothing--exactly nothing," Kinnison assured her, comfortably. "He's got a complete picture of the macrocosmic universe in his mind--his 'visualization of the Cosmic All,' he calls it--and in it we get married now, just as I've been telling you we are going to. Since it gripes him no end to have even the tiniest thing not to conform to his visualization, our marriage is NECESSARY, in capital letters. See?"

"Uh-huh.... Oh, I'm _glad_!" she exclaimed. "That shows you how scared of him I am." And thoughts and actions became such that, although they were no doubt of much personal pleasure and satisfaction, they do not require detailed treatment here.

* * * * *

Clarrissa MacDougall resigned the next day, without formality or fanfare. That is, she thought that she did so then, and rather wondered at the frictionless ease with which it went through; it had simply not occurred to her that in the instant of being made an Unattached Lensman she had been freed automatically from every man-made restraint. That was one of the few lessons hard for her to learn; it was the only one which she refused consistently even to try to learn.

Nothing was said or done about the ten thousand credits which had been promised her upon the occasion of her fifteen-minutes-long separation from the Patrol following the fall of Jarnevon. She thought about it briefly, but with no real sense of loss. Some way or other, money did not seem important. Anyway, she had some--enough for a fairly nice, if limited, trousseau--in the bank upon Tellus. She could undoubtedly get it through the Disbursing Office here.

She took off her Lens and stuffed it into a pocket. That wasn't so good, she reflected. It bulged, and besides, it might fall out; and anyone who touched it would die. She didn't have a bag; in fact, she had with her no civilian clothes at all. Wherefore she put it back upon her wrist, pausing as she did so to admire the Manarkan star drop flashing pale fire from the third finger of her left hand. Of all his gems, Cartiff had retained only this one, the loveliest. It was a beauty.

It was not far to the Disbursing Office, so she walked; window-shopping as she went. It was a peculiar sensation, this being out of harness--it felt good, though, at that--and upon arriving at the bank she found to her surprise that she was both well known and expected. An officer whom she had never seen before greeted her cordially and led her into his private office.

"We have been wondering why you didn't pick up your kit, Lensman MacDougall," he went on, briskly. "Sign here, please, and press your right thumb in this box here, after peeling off this plastic strip, so." She wrote in her boldly flowing script, and peeled, and pressed; and watched fascinatedly as her thumbprint developed itself sharply black against the bluish off-white of the Patrol's stationery. "That transfers your balance upon Tellus to the Patrol's general fund. Now sign and print this, in quadruplicate. Thank you. Here's your kit. When this book of slips is gone you can get another one at any bank or Patrol station anywhere. It has been a real pleasure to have met you, Lensman MacDougall; come in again whenever you happen to be upon Thrale." And he escorted her to the street as briskly as he had ushered her in.

Clarrissa felt slightly dazed. She had gone in there to get the couple of hundred credits which represented her total wealth; but instead of getting it she had meekly surrendered her savings to the Patrol and had been given--what? She leafed through the little book. One hundred blue-white slips; small things, smaller than currency bills. A little printing, two lines for description, a blank for figures, a space for signature, and a plastic-covered oblong area for thumbprint. That was all--but what an all! Any one of those slips, she knew, would be honored without hesitation or question for any amount of cash money she pleased to draw; for any object or thing she chose to buy. Anything--absolutely _anything_--from a pair of half-credit stockings up to and beyond a hundred-million-credit spaceship. ANYTHING! The thought chilled her buoyant spirit, took away her zest for shopping.

"Kim, I can't!" she wailed through her Lens. "Why didn't they give me my own money and let me spend it the way I please?"

"Hold everything, ace--I'll be with you in a sec." He wasn't--quite--but it was not long. "You can get all the money you want, you know--just give them a chit."

"I know, but all I wanted was my own money. I didn't ask for this stuff!"

"None of that, Chris--when you get to be a Lensman, you've got to take what goes with it. Besides, if you spend money foolishly all the rest of your life, the Patrol knows that it will still owe you plenty for what you did on Lyrane II. Where do you want to begin?"

"Brenleer's," she decided, after she had been partially convinced. "They aren't the largest, but they give real quality at a fair price."

At the shop the two Lensmen were recognized at sight and Brenleer himself did the honors.

"Clothes," the girl said succinctly, with an all-inclusive wave of her hand. "All kinds of clothes, except nurse's uniforms."

They were ushered into a private room and Kinnison wriggled as mannequins began to appear before them in various degrees of enclothement.

"This is no place for me," he declared. "I'll see you later, Chris. How long--half an hour or so?"

"Half an hour!" The nurse giggled, and:

"She will be here all the rest of today, and most of the time for a week," the couturier informed him severely--and she was.

"Oh, Kim, I'm having the most _marvelous_ time!" she told him excitedly, a few days later. "But it makes me feel sick to think of how much of the Patrol's money I'm spending."

"You may think that you're spending money, but you aren't," he informed her, cryptically.

"Huh? What do you mean?" she demanded, but he would not talk.

She found out, however, after the long-drawn-out business of selecting and matching and designing and fitting was over.

"You have seen me in civvies only a couple of times, and I got myself all prettied up in the beauty shop." She posed provocatively. "Do you like me, Kim?"

"_Like_ you!" The man could scarcely speak. She had been a seven-sector call-out in faded moleskin breeches and a patched shirt. She had been a thionite dream in uniform. But now--radiantly, vibrantly beautiful, a symphony in her favorite dark green. "Words fail, ace. Thoughts, too. They fold up and quit. The universe's best, is all I can say--"

And--later--they sought out Brenleer.

"I would like to ask you to do me a tremendous favor," the merchant said hesitantly, without filling any of the blanks upon the credit slip the girl had proffered. "If, instead of paying for these things, you would write upon this voucher the date and 'my fall outfit and much of my trousseau were made by Brenleer of Thrale--'?" His voice expired upon a wistful note.

"Why ... I never even thought of such a thing. Would it be quite ethical, do you think, Kim?"

"You said that he gives value for price, so I don't see why not. Lots of things they never let any of us pay for--" Then, to Brenleer, "Never thought of that angle, of what a terrific draw she would be. I suppose that this business of yours is worth fifty thousand credits more right now than it was before she cut loose here, and that it'll be worth twice that much when you have this chit unobtrusively displayed in a gold-and-platinum frame four feet square."

The man nodded. "Twice that already, but there isn't money enough upon Thrale to buy it."

"I'm not surprised," Kinnison grinned understandingly. "But you might as well give him a break, Chris. What tore it was your buying the stuff here, not admitting the fact over your signature and thumbprint."

She did so and they went out.

"Do you mean to tell me that I'm so ... so--"

"Famous? Notorious?" he helped out.

"Uh-huh. Or words to that effect." A touch of fear darkened her glorious eyes.

"All of that, and then some," he declared. "I never thought of what your buying so much plunder in one store would do, but it'd have the pulling power of a planetary tractor. It's bad enough with us regulars--half the chits we sign are never cashed--but you are absolutely unique. The first Lady Lensman--the only Red Lensman--and _what_ a Lensman! Wow! As I think it over one gets you a hundred if any chit you ever sign ever will get cashed. There have been collectors, you know, ever since Civilization began--maybe before."

"But I don't like it!" she stormed.

"That won't change the facts," he countered, philosophically. "Are you ready to flit? The _Dauntless_ is hot, they tell me."

"Uh-huh, all my stuff is aboard." And soon they were en route to Klovia.

* * * * *

The trip was uneventful, and even before they reached that transformed planet it became evident that it was theirs from pole to pole. Their cruiser was met by a horde of spaceships of all types and sizes, which formed a turbulent and demonstrative escort of honor. The seething crowd at the spaceport could scarcely be kept out of range of the dreadnought's searing landing blasts. Half the brass bands of the world, it seemed, burst into "Our Patrol" as the Lensmen disembarked, and their ground car and the street along which it slowly rolled were decorated lavishly with deep-blue flowers.

"Thorn flowers!" Clarrissa choked. "Thralian thorn flowers, Kim--how could they?"

"They grow here as well as there, and when they found out that you liked them so well they imported them by the shipload"--and Kinnison himself swallowed a lump.

Their brief stay upon Klovia was a hectic one indeed. Parties and balls, informal and formal, and at least a dozen telenews poses every day. Receptions, at which there were presented the personages and the potentates of a thousand planets; at which the uniforms and robes and gowns put the solar spectrum to shame.

And from tens of thousands of planets came Lensmen, to make or to renew acquaintance with the Galactic Co-ordinator and to welcome into their ranks the Lensman-bride. From Tellus, of course, they came in greatest number and enthusiasm, but other planets were not too far behind. They came from Manark and Velantia and Chickladoria and Alsakan and Vandemar, from the worlds of Canopus and Vega and Antares, from all over the Galaxy. Human, near-human, nonhuman, monstrous; there even appeared briefly quite large numbers of frigid-blooded Lensmen, whose fiercely laboring refrigerators chilled the atmosphere for yards around their insulated and impervious suits. All those various beings came with a united purpose, with a common thought--to congratulate Kinnison of Tellus and to wish his Lensman-mate all the luck and all the happiness of the universe.

Kinnison was surprised at the sincerity with which they acclaimed him; he was amazed at the genuineness and the intensity of their adoption of his Chris as their own. He had been afraid that some of them would think that he was throwing his weight around when he violated precedent by making her a Lensman. He had been afraid of animosity and ill will. He had been afraid that outraged masculine pride would set up a sex antagonism. But if any of these things existed, the keenest use of his every penetrant sense could not discover them.

Instead, the human Lensmen literally mobbed her as, en masse, they took her to their collective bosom. No party, wherever or for what reason held, was complete without her. If she ever had less than ten escorts at once, she was slighted. They ran her ragged, they danced her slippers off, they stuffed her to repletion, they would not let her sleep, they granted her the privacy of a goldfish--and she loved every tumultuous second of it.

She had wanted, as she had told Haynes and Lacy so long ago, a big wedding; but this one was already out of hand and was growing more so by the minute. The idea of holding it in a church had been abandoned long since; now it became clear that the biggest armory of Klovia would not hold even half of the Lensmen, to say nothing of the notables and dignitaries who had come so far. It would simply have to be the Stadium; a bowl so vast that no previous crowd had filled one tenth of its seats. Seeing and hearing there were excellent, however, as the spectators did not look at the scene itself, but into visiplates comfortably close.

Even the Stadium could not accommodate that throng, hence speakers and plates were run outside, clear up to the space-field fence. And, although neither of the principals knew it, this marriage had so fired public interest that Universal Telenews men had already arranged the hookup which was to carry it to every planet of Civilization. The number of entities who thus saw and heard that wedding has been estimated, but the figures are too fantastic to be repeated here.

But it was in no sense a circus. No ceremony ever held, in home or in church or in cathedral, was ever more solemn. For when half a million Lensmen concentrate upon solemnity, it prevails--no levity is possible within a radius of miles.

The whole vast bowl was gay with flowers--it seemed as though a state must have been stripped of blooms to furnish so many--and ferns and white ribbons were everywhere. There was a mighty organ, which pealed out triumphal melody as the bridal parties marched down the aisles, subsiding into a lilting accompaniment as the betrothed couple ascended the white-brocaded stairway and faced the Lensman-chaplain in the heavily garlanded little open-air chapel. The minister raised both hands. The massed Patrolmen and nurses stood at attention. A profound silence fell.

"Dearly beloved--" The grand old service--short and simple, but utterly impressive--was soon over. Then, as Kinnison kissed his wife, half a million Lensed members were thrust upward in silent salute.

Through a double lane of flowing Lenses the wedding party made its way up to the locked and guarded gate of the space-field, upon which lay the _Dauntless_--the superdreadnought "yacht" in which the Kinnisons were to take a honeymoon voyage to distant Tellus. The gate opened. The couple, accompanied by the port admiral and the surgeon general, stepped into the car, which sped out to the battleship; and as it did so the crowd loosed its pent-up feelings in a prolonged outburst of cheering.

And as the newlyweds walked up the gangplank, Kinnison turned his head and shouted to Haynes:

"You've been griping so long about Lyrane VIII, chief--I forgot to say that you can go mop up on it now!"

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Your historian, not wishing to take credit which is not rightfully his, wishes to say here that without the fine co-operation of many persons and entities this history must have been of much less value and importance than it now is.

First, of course, there were the Lensmen. It is unfortunate that Nadreck of Palain VII could not be induced either to release his spool of the Fall of Onlo or to enlarge upon his other undertakings.

Co-ordinator Kinnison, Worsel of Velantia, and Tregonsee of Rigel IV, however, were splendidly co-operative, giving in personal conversations much highly useful material which is not heretofore of public record. The gracious and queenly Red Lensman also was of great assistance.

Dr. James R. Enright was both prolific and masterly in deducing that certain otherwise necessarily obscure events and sequences must have in fact occurred, and it is gratefully admitted here that the author has drawn heavily upon "Dr. Jim's" profound knowledge of the mind.

The Galactic Roamers, those intrepid spacemen, assisted no little: E. Everett Evans, their chief communications officer, Paul Leavy, Jr., Alfred Ashley, F. Edwin Counts; to name only a few who aided in the selection, arrangement, and presentation of material.

Verna Trestrail, the exquisite connoisseuse, was of help, not only by virtue of her knowledge of the jewels of Lonabar, but also in her interpretations of many things concerning Illona Potter of which Illona Henderson--characteristically--will not speak.

To all these, and to many others whose help was only slightly less, the writer extends his sincere thanks.

Edward E. Smith.

THE END.