Page 126 - Astounding Pulp V2

126 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION GRAY LENS MAN 127
staring mad!'' She started back, then ~m ~oing to marry you, whether you they?" she retorted sunnily. "Now I'll nison can• wait half an hour."
controlled herself with an effort. like 1t or not.'' She blushed a hea_venly In the research laboratory which had
give you a rub and change some of these
" Maybe you can think at people without ~and discordan•t-magenta. but went been assigned to Phillips they found von
a Lens--of course you can. since you 0!1 unfalteringly: "And not out of pity, dressings." H ohendorff with the Posenian. H aynes
just did, at me-bHt you can't see, Kim, e1~her. Kim, or just to take care of you. XXII. was surprised to see the old commandant
possibly. Believe me, ooy, I know that It s older than that-much older." of cadets, .but Lacy quite evidently had
you can't. I was there- " " I t can't be done, Mac." H is thought "Hr, Skeleton-gazer!" Jmown that he was to be there.
" Ho Bio- Chief Feet-on-the-desk!"
l
"I can, though," he insisted. " I got was a protest to hiah Heaven at the in- , "I see that your red-headec . sec ~r " Phillips," the surgeon general b~-
t
b
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a lot of stuff on my second trip to justice of Fate. •1·ve thought it over gan, "explain to Admiral H aynes, 1n
chief is still occupying all strategic sal!-
Arisia that I couldn't let anybody knO\V out_ in space a thousand times- thought ents in force." H aynes had pau_sc<l 111 nontechnical language, what you are
about then, but I can now. I've got as until I was black in the face-but I gel doing." .
the surgeon general's office on h!s way
good a sense of perception as Tregonsee tt:ie same result every time. It's just "The original problem was to discover
to another of bis conferences with the what hormone or other agent caused
has- maybe better. To prove it, you simply no soap. You are much too fine Gray Lensman. "Can't you get riu of
look thin, worn- whittled down to a nub. a woman- too splendid, too vital. too proliferation of neural tissue-:-" . ,.
You've been working too hard--on me." much of everything a woman should be her or don't you want to ?" "Wait a minute; I'd better do it,,
· "Don't want to. Couldn't, anyway, . . "Anyway you wouldn t
b I
"Deduction," she scoffed. "You -to be tied down for life to a thing probably. T he young vixen would tear L acy ro ,e m. ' . h t
would know that I would." that's half steel, rubber, and phenoline. do yourself justice. The first thing t ~
down the hospital- she might even re- P hillips found out was that the ~ro -
"QX. How about those roses over It just simply is not on the wheel, that;s
there on the table? \iVhite ones, yellow all." sign, marry him out of hand, an? lug lem of repairing damaged nervous. tissu~
him off somewhere. You w.ant him to was inextricably· involved wi th sev~r~
ones: and red ones ? \.Yith fern~?'' "You're full of pickles K im." Gone
recover, don't you ?" other unknown things, such as th e o~ig!_-
. "You can smell ~hem. perhaps"--du- was aU her uncertainty a1~d nervousness. th
"Don't be any more of an idiot an nal growth of such tissue, its/ relat1oh-
!~r~usly. Then, with mo.re a~surance: She was calm. pQised ; glowing with a t . I" • 1 the regenera-
\' ou would know that practically all _ transcendent inward beauty. "I didn't you have to. W hat a ques 1011 • ship to growth m genera ,
"Don't work up a temperature about tion of lost members in lower _foi:rns,
the flowers known to · botany would be really know until this minute that you MacDougall, then-. A 1 g as she's and so on: Yott see, H aynes, it ts a
s on
f
I 1ere. " love me, too, but I do no\v. Don't you around him-and that's tvi.:en~ -or known fact that nerves do grow,. or else
"\,Veil, I'll count 'em and point 'em realize, you big. dt11J1b, wonderful th 10 1
out to_ you, then-or, better, how about clunker, that as long as there's one sin- hours a day-he'll get every mg t ~ they could not exist ; and in some lower
Universe . that he can get any goo forms of life they regenerate. ~hose
that little gold locket, with 'CM' en- gle, little bit of a piece of you left alive facts were all be had, at first. In h1gher
graved on it. that you're wearing un- I'll love that piece more than I ever out of." 1 , , forms, even during the growth stage,
"That's so too. This other _t 1~ng_s
der your uniform ? I can't smell that, could any other man's entire being ?" ' . ay Kmnt-
out of our bands now, anywc · . regeneration does not occur spontane-
nor the picture in it-" The man's . " But I can't, I tell you!" H e groaned ' l · · Jong aga111st
son can't hold his position . ously. P hillips se! out to find out why.
1
thought faltered i111 embarrassment. the thought. " I can't and I won't ! My her and himself both-overwhelm ?~! "The thyroid controls growth, b':t
1
1
"AI y picture! Klono's whiskers, Mac, job isn't done yet, either, and the next . J t ell too-c1v1 i-
supen or force. us as w , ,, does not initiate it, he learned. This
where did you get that-and why?'' time they'll probably get me. I ca>i't
zation needs more like those two. fact seemed to indicate that there was
'·It's a reduction that Admiral H aynes let you waste yourself, Mac, on a frac- "Check but the affair isn't out of our an unknown hormone involved-that
let me have made. I am wearing it be- tion of a man for a fraction of a life- ' W ' e got
hands yet by any means. e v certain lower types possess an endocrine
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cause I love you-I've said that be- time !" quite a little more fine work to d there ' gland which is either atrophied or non-
O
fore." "QX, Gray Lensman." Clarrissa was
as you'll see, before it's a. f,:~lly ~ood ·existent in higher types. If the latter,
. The girl's entrancing smile was now serene, radiantly untroubled. She could
job. But about K innison- 'he was sunk. He reasoned, howevli!r ,
111 full evidence. She knew now tqat make things come out right now : every- "Y es. V\Then are you going to fit arms ' that, since higher types evolved from
he could see, that he would never be thing was on the green. "\Ve'll put this and legs on him ? He should be prac- }owd·, the gland in question might very
~he helpless hulk ·which she had so gall- back up on the shelf for a while. 1'111 ticing with them at this stage of the well exist in a vestigial stage. He stud-
rngly thought him doomed to become, afraid that I have been terribly remiss game, I should think-I was." ied animals, thousands of them, from
and her spirits rose in ecstatic relief. in my duties as a nurse. P atients "You shotdd think- but, unfortu-
But he would 11ever take the initiative mustn't be excited ~ or quarreled with, nately, you don't, about anything_ e?':cept tlie germ upward. H e exhausted the
now. \\'ell, then, she would ; and this you know." war," was the surgeon's dry re}omder. patience of the Posenian authorities ; and
\Vas as good an opening as she ever " That's another thing. How come "If you did, you would have p~d more when they cut off his appropriation, on
wc,uld have with the stubborn brute. you, a sector chief, to be on ordinary attention to what Phillips has been do- the ground tqat the thing was impossi-
Therefore: room duty, and night duty at that?" ing. H e is making the final tes_t tod~y. ble, he came here. We gave h im car te
'' More than that. as I said before, I "Sector chiefs assign duties, don't Come along- your conference with K m- blanche.