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.Where are you going, and when do you want to get there?"'To my home planet," pointing out mentally its location in the galaxy."I must bethere in two hundred G-P hours.""I see." Kathryn nodded her head."You can—if you promise not to harm him.And I can tell whether you really mean it or not.""As I promise, so I do.But in case I do not promise?""In that case you'll get there in about a hundred thousand G-P years, frozen stiff.For I shall fuse your Bergenholm down into a lump; then, after welding your ports to theshell, I'll mount a thought-screen generator outside, powered for seven hundred years.Promise, or that.Which?""I promise not to harm the mechanic in any way." He surrendered stiffly, andmade no protest at Kathryn's entrance into his mind to make sure that the promisewould be kept.Flushed by her easy conquest of a mind she would previously have been unableto touch, and engrossed in the problem of setting her own tremendously enlarged mindto rights, why should it have occurred to the girl that there was anything worthy ofinvestigation concealed in the depths of that chance-met stranger's mentality?Returning to her own speedster, she shed her armor and shot away; and it wasjust as well for her peace of mind that she was not aware of the tight-beamed thoughteven then speeding from the flitter so far behind her to dread and distant Floor.".but it was very definitely not a human female.I could not touch it.It may verywell have been one of the accursed Arisians themselves.But since I did nothing toarouse its suspicions, I got rid of it easily enough.Spread the warning!"CHAPTER 10: CONSTANCE OUT-WORSELS WORSELWhile Kathryn Kinnison was working with her father in the hyper-spatial tube andwith Mentor of Arisia, and while Camilla and Tregonsee were sleuthing the inscrutable"X", Constance was also at work.Although she lay flat on her back, not moving amuscle, she was working as she had never worked before.Long since she had put herindetectable speedster into the control of a director-by-chance.Now, knowing nothingand caring less of where she and her vessel might be or might go, physically completelyrelaxed, she drove her "sensories" out to the full limit of their prodigious range and heldthem there for hour after hour.Worsel-like, she was not consciously listening for anyparticular thing; she was merely increasing her already incredibly vast store ofknowledge.One hundred percent receptive, attached to and concerned with only thebrain of her physical body, her mind sped at large; sampling, testing, analyzing,cataloguing every item with which its most tenuous fringe came in contact.Throughthousands of solar systems that mind went; millions upon millions of entities either didor did not contribute something worthwhile.Suddenly there came something that jarred her into physical movement: a burstof thought upon a band so high that it was practically always vacant.She shook herself,got up, lighted an Alaskanite cigarette, and made herself a pot of coffee."This is important, I think," she mused."I'd better get to work on it while it'sfresh."She sent out a thought tuned to Worsel, and was surprised when it wentunanswered.She investigated: finding that the Velantian's screens were full up and heldhard— he was fighting Overlords so savagely that he had not felt her thought.Shouldshe take a hand in this brawl? She should not, she decided, and grinned fleetingly.Hererstwhile tutor would need no help in that comparatively minor chore.She'd wait until hewasn't quite so busy."Worsel! Con calling.What goes on mere, fellow old snake?" She finallylaunched her thought."As though you didn't know!" Worsel sent back."Been quite a while since I sawyou—how about coming aboard?""Coming at max," and she did.Before entering the Velan, however, she put on a gravity damper, set at 980centimeters.Strong, tough, and supple as she was she did not relish the thought of theatrocious accelerations used and enjoyed by Velantians everywhere."What did you make of that burst of thought?" she asked by way of greeting."Orwere you having so much fun you missed it?""What burst?" Then, after Constance had explained, "I was busy; but not havingfun.""Somebody who didn't know you might believe that," the girl derided."Thisthought was important, I think—much more so than dilly-dallying with Overlords, as youwere doing.It was 'way up—on this band here." She illustrated."So?" Worsel came as near to whistling as one of his inarticulate race couldcome."What are they like?""VWZY, to four places." Con concentrated."Multi-legged.Not exactlycarapaceous, but pretty nearly.Spiny, too, I believe.The world was cold, dismal,barren; but not frigid, but he—it—didn't seem exactly like an oxygen-breather—morelike what a warm-blooded Palainian would perhaps look like, if you can imagine such athing.Mentality very high—precisionist grade—no thought of cities as such.The sunwas a typical yellow dwarf.Does any of this ring a bell in your mind?""No." Worsel thought intensely for minutes.So did Constance.Neither had anyidea—then—that the girl was describing the form assumed in their autumn by the dreadinhabitants of the planet Ploor!"This may indeed be important," Worsel broke the mental silence."Shall weexplore together?""We shall." They tuned to the desired band."Give it plenty of shove, too—Go!"Out and out and out the twinned receptors sped; to encounter a tenuous, weak,and utterly cryptic vibration.One touch—the merest possible contact—and itdisappeared.It vanished before even Con's almost-instantaneous reactions could getmore than a hint of directional alignment; and neither of the observers could read anypart of it.Both of these developments were starkly incredible, and Worsel's long bodytightened convulsively, rock-hard, in the violence of the mental force now driving hisexploring mind.Finding nothing, he finally relaxed."Any Lensmen, anywhere, can read and understand any thought, howevergarbled or scrambled, or however expressed," he thought at Constance."Also, I havealways been able to get an exact line on anything I could perceive, but all I know aboutthis one is that it seemed to come mostly from somewhere over that way [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]