Lensman 05 Second Stage Lensman by E.E. "Doc" Smith

Author:E.E. "Doc" Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780425054611
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2011-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

As has been said, Kinnison-ex-Cartiff was en route for Lyrane II while the

foregoing conference was taking place. Throughout the trip he kept in touch with

Clarrissa. At first he tried, with his every artifice of diplomacy, cajolery, and downright

threats, to make her lay off; he finally invoked all his Unattached Lensman's

transcendental authority and ordered her summarily to lay off.

No soap. How did he get that way, she wanted furiously to know, to be ordering

her around as though she were an uncapped probe? She was a Lensman, too, by

Klono's curly whiskers! Solving this problem was her job—nobody else's— and she was

going to do it. She was on a definite assignment —his own assignment, too,

remember—and she wasn't going to be called off of it just because he had found out all

of a sudden that it might not be quite as safe as dunking doughnuts at a down-river

picnic. What kind of a sun-baked, space-tempered crust did he have to pull a crack like

that on her? Would he have the bare-faced, unmitigated gall to spring a thing like that

on any other Lensman in the whole cock-eyed universe?

That stopped Dim—cold. Lensmen always went in; that was the Code. For any

Tellurian Lensman, anywhere, to duck or to dodge because of any personal danger was

sheerly, starkly unthinkable. The fact that she was, to him, the sum total of all the

femininity of the galaxy could not be allowed any weight whatever; any more than the

converse aspect had ever been permitted to sway him. Fair enough. Bitter, but

inescapable. This was one—just one—of the consequences which Mentor had

foreseen. He had foreseen it, too, in a dimly unreal sort of way, and now that it was here

he'd simply have to take it. QX.

"But be careful, anyway," he surrendered. "Awfully careful —as careful as I would

myself."

"I could be ever so much more careful than that and still be pretty reckless." Her

low, entrancing chuckle came through as though she were present in person. "And by

the way, Kim, did I ever tell you that I am fast getting to be a gray Lensman?"

"You always were, ace—you couldn't very well be anything else."

"No—I mean actually gray. Did you ever stop to consider what the laundry

problem would be on this heathenish planet?"

"Cris, I'm surprised at you—what do you need of a laundry?" he derided her,

affectionately. "Here you've been blasting me to a cinder about not taking your

Lensmanship seriously enough, and yet you are violating one of the prime tenets—that

of conformation to planetary customs. Shame on you!"

He felt her hot blush across all those parsecs of empty space. "I tried it at first,

Kim, but it was just simply terrible.'"

"You've got to learn how to be a Lensman or else quit throwing your weight

around like you did a while back. No back chat, either, you insubordinate young jade, or

I'll take that Lens away from you and heave you into the clink."

"You and what regiment of Valerians? Besides, it didn't make any difference,"

she explained, triumphantly. "These matriarchs don't like me one bit better, no matter

what I wear or don't wear."

Time passed, and in spite of Kinnison's highly disquieting fears, nothing

happened.

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