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

the subconscious.
    Probably it recognized the necessity of discussing the whole situation with someone having a fresh viewpoint, someone whose ideas can help me develop a fresh angle of attack. Haynes and I think too much alike for him to be of much help."
    "You trust me that much?" the girl asked, dumbfounded.
    "Certainly," he replied without hesitation. "I know enough about you to know that you can keep your mouth shut."
    Thus unromantically did Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, acknowledge the first glimmerings of the dawning perception of a vast fact—that this nurse and he were two between whom there never would nor could exist any iota of doubt or of question.
    Then they sat and talked. Not idly, as is the fashion of lovers, of the minutiae of their own romantic affairs, did these two converse, but cosmically, of the entire Universe and of the already existent conflict between the cultures of Civilization and Boskonia.
    They sat there, romantically enough to all outward seeming; their privacy assured by Kinnison's Lens and by his ever-watchful sense of perception. Time after time, completely unconsciously, that sense reached out to other couples who approached; to touch and to affect their minds so insidiously that they did not know that they were being steered away from the tree in whose black moon-shadow sat the Lensman and the nurse.
    Finally the long conversation came to an end and Kinnison assisted his companion to her feet. His frame was straighter, his eyes held a new and brighter light.
    "By the way, Kim," she asked idly as they strolled back toward the ball-room, "who is this Klono, by whom you were swearing a while ago? Another spaceman's god, like Noshabkeming, of the Valerians?"
    "Something like him, only more so," he laughed. "A combination of Noshabkeming, some of the gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans, all three of the Fates, and quite a few other things as well. I think, originally, from Corvina, but fairly wide-spread through certain sections 3Of course this was not the true explanation; but at that time only Mentor of Arisia had any idea of the real power of Clarrissa MacDougall's mind. E.E.S.
    of the galaxy now. He's got so much stuff—teeth and horns, claws and whiskers, tail and everything—that he's much more satisfactory to swear by than any other space-god I know of."
    "But why do men have to swear at all, Kim?" she queried, curiously. "It's so silly."
    "For the same reason that women cry," he countered. "A man swears to keep from crying, a woman cries to keep from swearing. Both are sound psychology. Safety valves —means 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 fayalin4 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 need—I had a spy-ray on the whole performance." "You would—you'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, sawbones. 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