But Kinnison’s prayers—if he made any—were ignored. Jill heard a sharp, but very usual and insignificant sound; someone had dropped a pencil. She felt an inconspicuous muscle twitch slightly. She saw the almost imperceptible tensing of a neck-muscle which would have turned Herkimer’s head in a certain direction if it had been allowed to act. Her eyes flashed along that line, searched busily for milliseconds. A man was reaching unobtrusively, as though for a handkerchief. But men at Ambassadors’ Balls do not carry blue handkerchiefs; nor does any fabric, however dyed, resemble at all closely the blued steel of an automatic pistol.
Jill would have screamed, then, and pointed; but she had time to do neither. Through her rapport with her father the Lensmen saw everything that she saw, in the instant of her seeing it. Hence five shots blasted out, practically as one, before the girl could scream, or point, or even move. She did scream, then; but since dozens of other women were screaming, too, it made no difference—then.
Conway Costigan, trigger-nerved spacehound that he was and with years of gun-fighting and of hand-to-hand brawling in his log, shot first; even before the gunman did. It was Costigan’s blinding speed that saved Virgil Samms’ life that day; for the would-be assassin was dying, with a heavy slug crashing through his brain, before he finished pulling the trigger. The dying hand twitched upward. The bullet intended for Samms’ heart went high; through the fleshy part of the shoulder.
Roderick Kinnison, because of his age, and his son and Northrop, because of their inexperience, were a few milliseconds slow. They, however, were aiming for the body, not for the head; and any of those three resulting wounds would have been satisfactorily fatal. The man went down, and stayed down.
Samms staggered, but did not go down until the elder Kinnison, as gently as was consistent with the maximum of speed, threw him down.
“Stand back! Get back! Give him air!” Men began to shout, the while pressing closer themselves.
“You men, stand back. Some of you go get a stretcher. You women, come here.” Kinnison’s heavy, parade-ground voice smashed down all lesser noises. “Is there a doctor here?”
There was; and, after being “frisked” for weapons, he went busily to work.
“Joy—Betty—Jill—Clio,” Kinnison called his own wife and their daughter, Virgilia Samms, and Mrs. Costigan. “You four first. Now you—and you—and you—and you. …” he went on, pointing out large, heavy women wearing extremely extreme gowns, “Stand here, right over him. Cover him up, so that nobody else can get a shot at him. You other women, stand behind and between these—closer yet—fill those spaces up solid—there! Jack, stand there. Mase, there. Costigan, the other end; I’ll take this one. Now, everybody, listen. I know damn well that none of you women are wearing guns above the waist, and you’ve all got long skirts—thank God for ballgowns! Now, fellows, if any one of these women makes a move to lift her skirt, blow her brains out, right then, without waiting to ask questions.”
“Sir, I protest! This is outrageous!” one of the dowagers exclaimed.
“Madam, I agree with you fully. It is.” Kinnison smiled as genuinely as he could under the circumstances. “It is, however, necessary. I will apologize to all you ladies, and to you, doctor—in writing if you like—after we have Virgil Samms aboard the Chicago; but until then I would not trust my own grandmother.”
The doctor looked up. “The Chicago? This wound does not appear to be a very serious one, but this man is going to a hospital at once. Ah, the stretcher. So … please … easy … there, that is excellent. Call an ambulance, please, immediately.”
“I did. Long ago. But no hospital, doctor. All those windows—open to the public—or the whole place bombed—by no means. I’m taking no chances whatever.”
“Except with your own life!” Jill put in sharply, looking up from her place at her father’s side. Assured that the First Lensman was in no danger of dying, she had begun to take interest in other things. “You are important, too, you know, and you’re standing right out there in the open. Get another stretcher, lie down on it, and we’ll guard you, too … and don’t be too stiff-necked to take your own advice!” she flared, as he hesitated.
“I’m not, if it were necessary, but it isn’t. If they had killed him, yes. I’d probably be next in line. But since he got only a scratch, there’d be no point at all in killing even a good Number Two.”
“A scratch!” Jill fairly seethed. “Do you call that horrible wound a scratch?”
“Huh? Why, certainly—that’s all it is—thanks to you,” he returned, in honest and complete surprise. “No bones shattered—no main arteries cut—missed the lung—he’ll be as good as new in a couple of weeks.”
“And now,” he went on aloud, “if you ladies will please pick up this stretcher we will move en masse, and slowly, toward the door.”
The women, no longer indignant but apparently enjoying the sensation of being the center of interest, complied with the request.
“Now, boys,” Kinnison Lensed a thought. “Did any of you—Costigan?—see any signs of a concerted rush, such as there would have been to get the killer away if we hadn’t interfered?”
“No, sir,” came Costigan’s brisk reply. “None within sight of me.”
“Jack and Mase—I don’t suppose you looked?”
They hadn’t—had not thought of it in time.
“You’ll learn. It takes a few things like this to make it automatic. But I couldn’t see any, either, so I’m fairly certain there wasn’t any. Smart operators—quick on the uptake.”
“I’d better get at this, sir, don’t you think, and let Operation Boskone go for a while?” Costigan asked.
“I don’t think so.” Kinnison frowned in thought. “This operation was planned, son, by people with brains. Any clues you could find now would undoubtedly be plants. No, we’ll let the regulars look; we’ll stick to our own …”
Sirens wailed and screamed outside. Kinnison sent out an exploring thought.
“Alex?”
“Yes. Where do you
