She nodded, flashing the radiant smile which had so aroused his ire during his hospitalization. "I heard you invoke your spaceman's god, but I was beginning to be afraid that you had forgotten this dance."
"And she said she wasn't dating ahead—the diplomat!" murmured an ambassador, aside.
"Don't be a dope," a captain of Marines muttered in reply. "She meant with us—that's a Gray Lensman!"
Although the nurse, as has been said, was anything but small, she appeared almost petite against the Lensman's mighty frame as they took off. Silently the two circled the great hall once; lustrous, goldenly green gown—of Earthly silk, this one, and less revealing than most—swishing in perfect cadence against deftly and softly stepping high–zippered gray boots.
"This is better, Mac," Kinnison sighed, finally, "but I lack just seven thousand kilocycles of being in tune with this. Don't know what's the matter, but it's clogging my jets. I must be getting to be a space–louse."
"A space–louse—you? Uh–uh!" She shook her head. "You know very well what the matter is—you're just too much of a man to mention it."
"Huh?" he demanded.
"Uh–huh," she asserted, positively if obliquely. "Of course you're not in tune with this crowd—how could you be? I don't fit into it any more myself, and what I'm doing isn't even a baffled flare compared to your job. Not one in ten of these fluffs here tonight has ever been beyond the stratosphere; not one in a hundred has ever been out as far as Jupiter, or has ever had a serious thought in her head except about clothes or men; not one of them all has any more idea of what a Lensman really is than I have of hyper–space or of non–Euclidean geometry!"
"Kitty, kitty!" he laughed. "Sheathe the little claws, before you scratch somebody!"
"That isn't cattishness, it's the barefaced truth. Or perhaps," she amended, honestly, "it's both true and cattish, but it's certainly true. And that isn't half of it. No one in the Universe except yourself really knows what you are doing, and I'm pretty sure that only two others even suspect. And Doctor Lacy is not one of them," she concluded, surprisingly.
Though shocked, Kinnison did not miss a step. "You don't fit into this matrix, any more than I do," he agreed, quietly. "S'pose you and I could do a little flit somewhere?"
"Surely, Kim," and, breaking out of the crowd, they strolled out into the grounds. Not a word was said until they were seated upon a broad, low bench beneath the spreading foliage of a tree.
Then: "What did you come here for tonight, Mac—the real reason?" he demanded, abruptly.
"I…we…you…I mean—oh, skip it!" the girl stammered, a wave of scarlet flooding her face and down even to her superb, bare shoulders. Then she steadied herself and went on: "You see, I agree with you—as you say, I check you to nineteen decimals. Even Doctor Lacy, with all his knowledge, can be slightly screwy at times, I think."
"Oh, so that's it!" It was not, it was only a very minor part of her reason; but the nurse would have bitten her tongue off rather than admit that she had come to that dance solely and only because Kimball Kinnison was to be there. "You knew, then, that this was old Lacy's idea?"
"Of course. You would never have come, else. He thinks that you may begin wobbling on the beam pretty soon unless you put out a few braking jots."
"And you?"
"Not in a million, Kim. Lacy's as cockeyed as Trenco's ether, and I as good as told him so. He may wobble a bit, but you won't. You've got a job to do, and you're doing it You'll finish it, too, in spite of all the vermin infesting all the galaxies of the macro–cosmic Universe!" she finished, passionately.
"Klono's brazen whiskers, Mac!" He turned suddenly and stared intently down into her wide, gold–flecked, tawny eyes. She stared back for a moment, then looked away.
"Don't look at me like that!" she almost screamed. "I can't stand it—you make me feel stark naked! I know your Lens is off—I'd simply die if it wasn't—but you're a mind–reader, even without it!"
She did know that that powerful telepath was off and would remain off, and she was glad indeed of the fact; for her mind was seething with thoughts which that Lensman must not know, then or ever. And for his part, the Lensman knew much better than she did that had he chosen to exert the powers at his command she would have been naked, mentally and physically, to his perception; but he did not exert those powers—then. The amenities of human relationship demanded that some fastnesses of reserve remain inviolate, but he had to know what this woman knew. If necessary, he would take the knowledge away from her by force, so completely that she would never know that she had ever known it. Therefore:
"Just what do you know, Mac, and how did you find it out?" he demanded; quietly, but with a stern finality of inflection that made a quick chill run up and down the nurse's back.
"I know a lot, Kim." The girl shivered slightly, even though the evening was warm and balmy. "I learned it from your own mind. When you called me, back there on the floor, I didn't get just a single, sharp thought, as though you were speaking to me, as I always did before. Instead, it seemed as though I was actually inside your own mind—the whole of it I've heard Lensmen speak of a wide–open two–way, but I never had even the faintest inkling of what such a thing would be like—no one could who has never experienced it. Of course I didn't—I couldn't—understand a millionth of what I saw, or seemed to see. It was too vast, too incredibly immense. 1 never dreamed any mortal could have a mind like that, Kim! But it was ghastly, too—it gave me the shrieking jitters and just about sent me down out of control. And you didn't even know it—I know you didn't! I didn't want to look, really, but I couldn't help seeing, and I'm glad I did—I wouldn't have missed it for the world!" she finished, almost incoherently.
"Hm…m. That changes the picture entirely." Much to her surprise, the man's voice was calm and thoughtful; not at all incensed. Not even disturbed. "So I spilled the beans myself, on a wide–open two–way, and didn't even realize it… I knew you were backfiring about something, but thought it was because I might think you guilty of petty vanity. And I called you a dumbbell once!" he marveled.
"Twice," she corrected him, "and the second time I was never so glad to be called names in my whole life."
"Now I know I was getting to be a space–louse."
"Uh–uh, Kim," she denied again, gently. "And you aren't a brat or a lug or a clunker, either, even though I have called you such. But, now that I've actually got all this stuff, what can you—what can we—do about it?"
"Perhaps…probably…I think, since I gave it to you myself, I'll let you keep it," Kinnison decided, slowly.
"Keep it!" she exclaimed. "Of course I'll keep it! Why, it's in my mind— I'll have to keep it—nobody can take knowledge away from anyone!"
"Oh, sure—of course," he murmured, absently. There were a lot of thing that Mac didn't know, and no good end would be served by enlightening her farther. "You see, there's a lot of stuff in my mind that I don't know much about myself, yet Since I gave you an open channel, there must have been a good reason for it, even though, consciously, I don't know myself what it was." He thought intensely for moments, then went on: "Undoubtedly the subconscious. Probably it recognized the necessity of discussing the whole situation with someone having a fresh viewpoint, someone whose ideas can help me develop a fresh angle of attack. Haynes and I think too much alike for him to be of much help."
"You trust me that much?" the girl asked, dumbfounded.
"Certainly," he replied without hesitation. "I know enough about you to know that you can keep your mouth shut."
Thus unromantically did Kimball Kinnison, Gray Lensman, acknowledge the first glimmerings of the dawning perception of a vast fact—that this nurse and he were two between whom there never would nor could exist any iota of doubt or of question.