“Now you know as well as I do—better, probably—that Morgan is only the Pernicious Activities Committee of the North American Senate. Multiply him by the thousands of others, all over space, who will be on our necks before the Patrol can get its space-legs, and you will see that all that stuff will have to be handled by a Lensman who, as well as being a mighty smooth operator, will have to know all the answers and will have to have plenty of guts. I’ve got the guts, but none of the other prime requisites. Jill hasn’t, although she’s got everything else. Fairchild, your Relations ace, isn’t a Lensman and can never become one. So you can see quite plainly who has got to handle politics himself.”
“You may be right … but this Lensman business comes first. …” Samms pondered, then brightened. “Perhaps—probably—I can find somebody on this trip—a Palainian, say—who is better qualified than any of us.”
Kinnison snorted. “If you can, I’ll buy you a week in any Venerian relaxerie you want to name.”
“Better start saving up your credits, then, because from what I already know of the Palainian mentality such a development is distinctly more than a possibility.” Samms paused, his eyes narrowing. “I don’t know whether it would make Morgan and his kind more rabid or less so to have a non-Solarian entity possess authority in our affairs political—but at least it would be something new and different. But in spite of what you said about ‘ducking’ politics, what have you got Northrop, Jill and Fairchild doing?”
“Well, we had a couple of discussions. I couldn’t give either Jill or Dick orders, of course. …”
“Wouldn’t, you mean,” Samms corrected.
“Couldn’t,” Kinnison insisted. “Jill, besides being your daughter and Lensman grade, had no official connection with either the Triplanetary Service or the Solarian Patrol. And the Service, including Fairchild, is still Triplanetary; and it will have to stay Triplanetary until you have found enough Lensmen so that you can spring your twin surprises—Galactic Council and Galactic Patrol. However, Northrop and Fairchild are keeping their eyes and ears open and their mouths shut, and Jill is finding out whatever she can about drugs and so on, as well as the various political angles. They’ll report to you—facts, deductions, guesses, and recommendations—whenever you say the word.”
“Nice work, Rod. Thanks. I think I’ll call Jill now, before I go—wonder where she is? … but I wonder … with the Lens perhaps telephones are superfluous? I’ll try it.”
“Jill!” he thought intensely into his Lens, forming as he did so a mental image of his gorgeous daughter as he knew her. But he found, greatly to his surprise, that neither elaboration nor emphasis was necessary.
“Ouch!” came the almost instantaneous answer, long before his thought was complete. “Don’t think so hard, Dad, it hurts—I almost missed a step.” Virgilia was actually there with him; inside his own mind; in closer touch with him than she had ever before been. “Back so soon? Shall we report now, or aren’t you ready to go to work yet?”
“Skipping for the moment your aspersions on my present activities—not quite.” Samms moderated the intensity of his thought to a conversational level. “Just wanted to check with you. Come in, Rod.” In flashing thoughts he brought her up to date. “Jill, do you agree with what Rod here has just told me?”
“Yes. Fully. So do the boys.”
“That settles it, then—unless, of course, I can find a more capable substitute.”
“Of course—but we will believe that when we see it.”
“Where are you and what are you doing?”
“Washington, DC European Embassy. Dancing with Herkimer Third, Senator Morgan’s Number One secretary. I was going to make passes at him—in a perfectly ladylike way, of course—but it wasn’t necessary. He thinks he can break down my resistance.”
“Careful, Jill! That kind of stuff. …”
“Is very old stuff indeed, Daddy dear. Simple. And Herkimer Third isn’t really a menace; he just thinks he is. Take a look—you can, can’t you, with your Lens?”
“Perhaps … Oh, yes. I see him as well as you do.” Fully en rapport with the girl as he was, so that his mind received simultaneously with hers any stimulus which she was willing to share, it seemed as though a keen, handsome, deeply tanned face bent down from a distance of inches toward his own. “But I don’t like it a bit—and him even less.”
“That’s because you aren’t a girl,” Jill giggled mentally. “This is fun; and it won’t hurt him a bit, except maybe for a slightly bruised vanity, when I don’t fall down flat at his feet. And I’m learning a lot that he hasn’t any suspicion he’s giving away.”
“Knowing you, I believe that. But don’t … that is … well, be very careful not to get your fingers burned. The job isn’t worth it—yet.”
“Don’t worry, Dad.” She laughed unaffectedly. “When it comes to playboys like this one, I’ve got millions and skillions and whillions of ohms of resistance. But here comes Senator Morgan himself, with a fat and repulsive Venerian—he’s calling my boyfriend away from me, with what he thinks is an imperceptible high-sign, into a huddle—and my olfactory nerves perceive a rich and fruity aroma, as of skunk—so … I hate to seem to be giving a Solarian Councillor the heave-ho, but if I want to read what goes on—and I certainly do—I’ll have to concentrate. As soon as you get back give us a call and we’ll report. Take it easy, Dad!”
“You’re the one to be told that, not me. Good hunting, Jill!”
Samms, still seated calmly at his desk, reached out and pressed a button marked “garage.” His office was on the seventieth floor; the garage occupied
