Gray Lensman by E. E. Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

told him so. He may wobble a bit, but you won't. You've got a job to do, and you're doing it You'll finish it, too, in spite of all the vermin infesting all the galaxies of the macrocosmic Universe!" she finished, passionately.
    "Klono's brazen whiskers, Mac!" He turned suddenly and stared intently down into her wide, gold-flecked, tawny eyes. She stared back for a moment, then looked away.
    "Don't look at me like that!" she almost screamed. "I can't stand it—you make me feel stark naked! I know your Lens is off—I'd simply die if it wasn't—but you're a mind-reader, even without it!"
    She did know that that powerful telepath was off and would remain off, and she was glad indeed of the fact; for her mind was seething with thoughts which that Lensman must not know, then or ever. And for his part, the Lensman knew much better than she did that had he chosen to exert the powers at his command she would have been naked, mentally and physically, to his perception; but he did not exert those powers—then. The amenities of human relationship demanded that some fastnesses of reserve remain inviolate, but he had to know what this woman knew. If necessary, he would take the knowledge away from her by force, so completely that she would never know that she had ever known it. Therefore:
    "Just what do you know, Mac, and how did you find it out?" he demanded; quietly, but with a stern finality of inflection that made a quick chill run up and down the nurse's back.
    "I know a lot, Kim." The girl shivered slightly, even though the evening was warm and balmy. "I learned it from your own mind. When you called me, back there on the floor, I didn't get just a single, sharp thought, as though you were speaking to me, as I always did before.
    Instead, it seemed as though I was actually inside your own mind—the whole of it I've heard Lensmen speak of a wide-open two-way, but I never had even the faintest inkling of what such a thing would be like—no one could who has never experienced it. Of course I didn't—I couldn't—understand a millionth of what I saw, or seemed to see. It was too vast, too incredibly immense. 1 never dreamed any mortal could have a mind like that, Kim! But it was ghastly, too—it gave me the shrieking jitters and just about sent me down out of control. And you didn't even know it—I know you didn't! I didn't want to look, really, but I couldn't help seeing, and I'm glad I did—I wouldn't have missed it for the world!" she finished, almost incoherently.
    "Hm . . . m. That changes the picture entirely." Much to her surprise, the man's voice was calm and thoughtful; not at all incensed. Not even disturbed. "So I spilled the beans myself, on a wide-open two-way, and didn't even realize it3 . . . I knew you were backfiring about something, but thought it was because I might think you guilty of petty vanity. And I called you a dumbbell once!" he marveled.
    "Twice," she corrected him, "and the second time I was never so glad to be called names in my whole life."
    "Now I know I was getting to be a space-louse."
    "Uh-uh, Kim," she denied again, gently. "And you aren't a brat or a lug or a clunker, either, even though I have called you such. But, now that I've actually got all this stuff, what can you—what can we—do about it?"
    "Perhaps . . . probably . . . I think, since I gave it to you myself, I'll let you keep it,"
    Kinnison decided, slowly.
    "Keep it!" she exclaimed. "Of course I'll keep it! Why, it's in my mind—I'll have to keep it—nobody can take knowledge away from anyone!"
    "Oh, sure—of course," he murmured, absently. There were a lot of thing that Mac didn't know, and no good end would be served by enlightening her farther. "You see, there's a lot of stuff in my mind that I don't know much about myself, yet Since I gave you an open channel, there must have been a good reason for it, even though, consciously, I don't know myself what it was." He thought intensely for moments, then went on: "Undoubtedly