“Go through the wall. Across the lawn. Right up to the door, and never mind the frippery they’ve got all over the place—have your adjutant tell them to bill us for damage. Samms is shot in the shoulder. Not too serious, but I’m taking him to the Hill, where I know he’ll be safe. What have you got on top of the umbrella, the Boise or the Chicago? I haven’t had time to look up yet.”
“Both.”
“Good man.”
Jack Kinnison started at the monstrous tank, which was smashing statues, fountains, and ornamental trees flat into the earth as it moved ponderously across the grounds, and licked his lips. He looked at the companies of soldiers “frisking” the route, the grounds, and the crowd—higher up, at the hovering helicopters—still higher, at the eight light cruisers so evidently and so viciously ready to blast—higher still, at the long streamers of fire which, he now knew, marked the locations of the two most powerful engines of destruction ever built by man—and his face turned slowly white.
“Good Lord, Dad!” he swallowed twice. “I had no idea … but they might, at that.”
“Not ‘might,’ son. They damn well would, if they could get here soon enough with heavy enough stuff.” The elder Kinnison’s jaw-muscles did not loosen, his darting eyes did not relax their vigilance for a fraction of a second as he Lensed the thought. “You boys can’t be expected to know it all, but right now you’re learning fast. Get this—paste it in your iron hats. Virgil Samms’ life is the most important thing in this whole damned universe! If they had got him then it would not, strictly speaking, have been my fault, but if they get him now, it will be.”
The land cruiser crunched to a stop against the very entrance, and a white-clad man leaped out.
“Let me look at him, please …”
“Not yet!” Kinnison denied, sharply. “Not until he’s got four inches of solid steel between him and whoever wants to finish the job they started. Get your men around him, and get him aboard—fast!”
Samms, protected at every point at every instant, was lifted into the maw of the ninety-sixty; and as the massive door clanged shut Kinnison heaved a tremendous sigh of relief. The cavalcade moved away.
“Coming with us, Rod?” Commodore Clayton shouted.
“Yes, but got a couple minutes’ work here yet. Have a staff car wait for me, and I’ll join you.” He turned to the three young Lensmen and the girl. “This fouls up our plans a little, but not too much—I hope. No change in Mateese or Boskone; you and Costigan, Jill, can go ahead as planned. Northrop, you’ll have to brief Jill on Zwilnik and find out what she knows. Virgil was going to do it tonight, after the brawl here, but you know as much about it now as any of us. Check with Knobos, DalNalten, and Fletcher—while Virgil is laid up you and Jack may have to work on both Zabriska and Zwilnik—he’ll Lens you. Get the dope, then do as you think best. Get going!” He strode away toward the waiting staff-car.
“Boskone? Zwilnik?” Jill demanded. “What gives? What are they, Jack?”
“We don’t know yet—maybe we’re going to name a couple of planets …”
“Piffle!” she scoffed. “Can you talk sense, Mase? What’s Boskone?”
“A simple, distinctive, pronounceable coined word; suggested, I believe, by Dr. Bergenholm …” he began.
“You know what I mean, you …” she broke in, but was silenced by a sharply Lensed thought from Jack. His touch was very light, barely sufficient to make conversation possible; but even so, she flinched.
“Use your brain, Jill; you aren’t thinking a lick—not that you can be blamed for it. Stop talking; there may be lip-readers or high-powered listeners around. This feels funny, doesn’t it?” He twitched mentally and went on: “You already know what Operation Mateese is, since it’s your own dish—politics. Operation Zwilnik is drugs, vice, and so on. Operation Boskone is pirates; Spud is running that. Operation Zabriska is Mase and me checking some peculiar disturbances in the sub-ether. Come in, Mase, and do your stuff—I’ll see you later, aboard. Clear ether, Jill!”
Young Kinnison vanished from the fringes of her mind and Northrop appeared. And what a difference! His mind touched hers as gingerly as Jack’s had done; as skittishly, as instantaneously ready to bolt away from anything in the least degree private. However, Jack’s mind had rubbed hers the wrong way, right from the start—and Mase’s didn’t!
“Now, about this Operation Zwilnik,” Jill began.
“Something else first. I couldn’t help noticing, back there, that you and Jack … well, not out of phase, exactly, or really out of sync, but sort of … well, as though …”
“ ‘Hunting’?” she suggested.
“Not exactly … ‘forcing’ might be better—like holding a tight beam together when it wants to fall apart. So you noticed it yourself?”
“Of course, but I thought Jack and I were the only ones who did. Like scratching a blackboard with your fingernails—you can do it, but you’re awfully glad to stop … and I like Jack, too, darn it—at a distance.”
“And you and I fit like precisely tuned circuits. Jack really meant it, then, when he said that you … that is, he … I didn’t quite believe it until now, but if … you know, of course, what you’ve already done to me.”
Jill’s block went on, full strength. She arched her eyebrows and spoke aloud—“why, I haven’t the faintest idea!”
“Of course not. That’s why you’re using voice. I’ve found out, too, that I can’t lie with my mind. I feel like a heel and a louse, with so much job ahead, but you’ve simply got to tell me something. Then—whatever you say—I’ll hit the job with everything I’ve got. Do I get heaved out between planets without a spacesuit, or not?”
“I don’t think so.” Jill blushed vividly, but her voice was steady. “You would rate a spacesuit, and enough oxygen to reach another plan—another goal. And now we’d better get to work, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Thanks,
