JOAN WAS HANDLING the card games, Cloud the wheels. The suggestion that it would be smart to run honest games had been implanted in the zwilniks’ minds, not because of the cards, but because of the wheels; for a loaded, braked, and magnetized wheel is a very tough device to beat.

Joan, then, would read a deck of cards, and a Lensman or a Rigellian would watch her do it. Then the observing telepath would, all imperceptibly, insert hunches into the mind of a player. And what gambler has ever questioned his hunches, especially when they pay off time after time after time? Thus more and more players began to win with greater or lesser regularity and the gambling fever—the most contagious and infectious disorder known to man—spread throughout the vast room like a conflagration in a box-factory.

And Storm Cloud was handling the wheels.

“Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, before the ball enters Zone Green,” the croupiers intoned. “The screens go up, no bets can be placed while the ball is in the Green.”

If the wheels had not been rigged, Cloud could have computed with ease the exact number upon which each ball would come to rest. In such case the Patrol forces would not, of course, have given Vesta the Vegian complete or accurate information. With her temperament and her bank-roll, she would have put the place out of business in an hour; and such a single-handed killing was not at all what the Patrol desired.

But the wheels, of course, were rigged. Cloud was being informed, however, of every pertinent fact. He knew the exact point at which the ball crossed the green borderline. He knew its exact velocity. He knew precisely the strengths of the magnetic fields and the permeabilities, reluctances, and so on, of all the materials involved. He knew just about how much braking force could be applied without tipping off the players and transforming them instantly into a blood-thirsty mob. And finally, he was backed by Lensmen who could at need interfere with the physical processes of the croupiers without any knowledge on the part of the victims.

Hence Cloud did well enough—and when a house is paying thirty-five to one on odds that have been cut down to eight or ten to one, it is very, very bad for the house.

Vesta started playing conservatively enough. She went from wheel to wheel, tail high in air and purring happily to herself, slapping down ten-credit notes until she won.

“This is the wheel I like!” she exclaimed, and went to twenties. Still unperturbed, still gay, she watched nine of them move away under the croupier’s rake. Then she won again.

Then fifties. Then hundreds. She wasn’t gay now, nor purring. She wasn’t exactly tense, yet, but she was warming up. As the tenth C-note disappeared, a Chickladorian beside her said:

“Why don’t you play the colors, miss? Or combinations? You don’t lose so much that way.”

“No, and you don’t win so much, either. When I’m gambling I gamble, brother . . . and wait just a minute . . .” the croupier paid her three M’s and an L. . . . “See what I mean?”

The crowd was going not-so-slowly mad. Assistant Manager Althagar did what he could. He ordered all rigging and gimmicks off, and the house still lost. On again, off again; and losses still skyrocketed. Then, hurrying over to the door of a private room, he knocked lightly, opened the door, and beckoned to Thlasoval.

“All hell’s out for noon!” he whispered intensely as the manager reached the doorway. “The crowd’s winning like crazy—everybody’s winning! D’you s’pose it’s them damn Patrolmen there crossing us up—and how in hell could it be?”

“Have you tried cutting out the gimmicks?”

“Yes. No difference.”

“It can’t be them, then. It couldn’t be anyway, for two reasons. The kind of brains it takes to work that kind of problems in your head can’t happen once in a hundred million times, and you say everybody’s doing it. They can’t be, dammit! Two, they’re Grand Masters playing chess. You play chess yourself.”

“You know I do. I’m not a Master, but I’m pretty good.”

“Good enough to tell by looking at ’em that they don’t give a damn about what’s going on out there. Come on in.”

“We’ll disturb ’em and they’ll be sore as hell.”

“You couldn’t disturb these two, short of yelling in their ear or joggling the board.” The two walked toward the table. “See what I mean?”

The two players, forearms on table, were sitting rigidly still, staring as though entranced at the board, neither moving so much as an eye. As the two Chickladorians watched, Cloud’s left forearm, pivoting on the elbow, swung out and he moved his knight.

“Oh, no . . . no!” Shocked out of silence, Thlasoval muttered the words under his breath. “Your queen, man—your queen!”

But this opportunity, so evident to the observer, did not seem at all attractive to the woman, who sat motionless for minute after minute.

“But come on, boss, and look this mess over,” the assistant urged. “You’re on plus time now.”

“I suppose so.” They turned away from the enigma. “But why didn’t she take his queen? I couldn’t see a thing to keep her from doing it. I would have.”

“So would I. However, almost all the pieces on that board are vulnerable, some way or other. Probably whichever one starts the shin-kicking will come out at the little end of the horn.”

“Could be, but it won’t be kicking shins. It’ll be slaughter—and how I’d like to be there when the slaughter starts! And I still don’t see why she didn’t grab that queen. . . .”

“Well, you can ask her, maybe, when they leave. But right now you’d better forget chess and take a good, long gander at what that Vegian hell-cat is doing. She’s wilder than a Radelgian cateagle and hotter than a DeLameter. She’s gone just completely nuts.”

Tense, strained, taut as a violin-string in every visible muscle, Vesta stood at a wheel; gripping the ledge of the table so fiercely that enamel was flaking off the metal and plastic under her stiff, sharp nails. Jaws hard set and eyes almost invisible slits, she growled deep in her throat at every bet she put down. And those bets were all alike—ten thousand credits each—and she was still playing the numbers straight. They watched her lose eighty thousand credits; then watched her collect three hundred and fifty thousand.

Thlasoval made the rounds, then; did everything he could to impede the outward flow of cash, finding that there wasn’t much of anything he could do. He beckoned his assistant.

“This is bad, Althagar, believe me,” he said. “And I simply can’t figure any part of it . . . unless. . . .” His voice died away.

“You said it. I can’t, either. Unless it’s them two chess-players in there, and I’ll buy it that it ain’t, I haven’t even got a guess . . . unless there could be some Lensmen mixed up in it somewhere. They could do just about anything.”

“Lensmen? Rocket-juice! There aren’t any—we spy-ray everybody that comes in.”

“Outside, maybe, peeking in. Or some other snoopers, maybe, somewhere?”

“I can’t see it. We’ve had Lensmen in here dozens of times, for one reason or another, business and social both, and they’ve always shot straight pool. Besides, all they’re getting is money, and what in all eleven hells of Telemanchia would the Patrol want of our money? If they wanted us for anything they’d come and get us, but they wouldn’t give a cockeyed tinker’s damn for our money. They’ve already got all the money there is!”

“That’s so, too. Money . . . hm, money in gobs and slathers. . . . Oh, you think . . . the Mob? D’ya s’pose it’s got so big for its britches it thinks it can take us on?”

“I wouldn’t think they could be that silly. It’s a lot more reasonable, though, than that the Patrol would be horsing around this way.”

“But how? Great Kalastho, how?”

“How do I know? Snoopers, as you said—or perceivers, or any other ringers they could ring in on us.”

“Nuts!” the assistant retorted. “Just who do you figure as ringers? The Vegian isn’t a snooper, she’s just a gambling fool. No Chickladorian was ever a snooper, or a perceiver either, and these people are just about all regular customers. And everybody’s winning. So just where does that put you?”

“Up the creek—I know. But dammit, there’s got to be snoopery or some other funny stuff somewhere in this!”

“Uh-uh. Did you ever hear of a perceiver who could read a deck or spot a gimmick from half a block away?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. But what stops me is what can we do about it? If the Mob is forted up in that hotel across the street or somewhere beside or behind us . . . there isn’t a damn thing we can do. They’d have more gunnies than we could send in, even if we knew exactly where they were, and we can’t send a young army barging around without anything but a flimsy suspicion to go on—the lawmen would throw us in the clink in nothing flat. . . . Besides, this Mob idea isn’t exactly solid, either. How’d they get their cut from all these people? Especially the Vegian?”

“The Vegian, probably not; the rest, probably so. They could have passed the word around that this is the big day. Anybody’d split fifty-fifty on a cold sure thing.”

“Uh-uh. I won’t buy that, either. I’d’ve known about it—somebody would have leaked. No matter how you figure it, it doesn’t add up.”

“Well, then?”

“Only one thing we can do. Close down. While you’re doing that I’ll go shoot in a Class A Double Prime Urgent to top brass.”

Hence Vesta’s croupier soon announced to his clientele that all betting was off, at least until the following day. All guests would please leave the building as soon as possible.

For a couple of minutes Vesta simply could not take in the import of the announcement. She was stunned. Then:

“Whee . . . yow . . . ow . . . erow!” she yowled, at the top of her not inconsiderable voice. “I’ve won . . . I’ve won . . . I’VE WON!” She quieted down a little, still shell-shocked, then looked around and ran toward the nearest familiar face, which was that of the assistant manager. “Oh, senor Althagar, do you actually want me to quit while I’m ahead? Why, I never heard of such a thing—it certainly never happened to me before! And I’m going to stop gambling entirely—I’ll never get such a thrill as this again if I live a million years!”

“You’re so right, Miss Vesta—you never will.” Althagar smiled—as though he had just eaten three lemons without sugar, to be sure, but it was still a smile. “It’s not that we want you to quit, but simply that we can’t pay any more losses. Right now I am most powerfully psychic, so take my advice, my dear, and stop.”

“I’m going to—honestly, I am.” Vesta straightened out the thick sheaf of bills she held in her right hand, noticing that they were all ten-thousands. She dug around in her bulging pouch; had to dig half-way to the bottom before she could find anything smaller. With a startled gasp she crammed the handful of bills in on top of the others and managed, just barely, to close and lock the pouch. “Oh, I’ve got to fly—I must find my boss and tell him all about this!”

“Would you like an armed escort to your hotel?”

“That won’t be necessary, thanks. I’m going to take a copter direct to the ship.”

And she did.

It was not until the crowd was almost all gone that either Thlasoval or Althagar even thought of the two chess-players. Then one signalled the other and they went together to the private room, into it, and up to the chess-table. To the casual eye, neither player had moved. The board, too, showed comparatively little change; at least, the carnage anticipated by Thlasoval had not materialized.

Althagar coughed discreetly; then again, a little louder. “Sir and madam, please. . . .” he began.

“I told you they’d be dead to the world,” Thlasoval said; and, bending over, lifted one side of the board. Oh, very gently, and not nearly enough to dislodge any one of the pieces, but the tiny action produced disproportionately large results. Both players started as though a bomb had exploded beside them, and Joan uttered a half-stifled scream. With visible efforts, they brought themselves down from the heights to the there and the then. Cloud stretched prodigiously; and Joan, emulating him, had to bring one hand down to cover a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Excuse me, Grand Master Janowick and Commander Cloud, but the Club is being closed for repairs and we must ask you to leave the building.”

“Closed?” Joan parroted, stupidly, and:

“For repairs?” Cloud added, with equal brilliance.

“Closed. For repairs.” Thlasoval repeated, firmly. Then, seeing that his guests were coming back to life quite nicely, he offered Joan his arm and started for the door.

“Oh, yes, Grand Master Janowick,” he said en route. “May I ask why you refused the Commander’s queen?”

“He would have gained such an advantage in position as to mate in twelve moves.”

“I see . . . thanks.” He didn’t, at all, but he had to say something. “I wonder . . . would it be possible for me to find out how this game comes out?”

“Why, I suppose so.” Joan thought for a moment. “Certainly. If you’ll give me your card I’ll send you a tape of it after we finish.”^[3]

The two Patrolmen boarded a copter. Joan looked subdued, almost forlorn. Cloud took her hand and squeezed it gently.

“Don’t take it so hard, Joan,” he thought. He found it remarkably easy to send to her now; in fact, telepathy was easier and simpler and more natural than talking. “We had it to do.”

“I suppose so; but it was a dirty, slimy, stinking, filthy trick, Storm. I’m ashamed . . . I feel soiled.”

“I know how you feel. I’m not so happy about the thing, either. But when you think of thionite, and what that stuff means. . . ?”

“That’s true, of course . . . and they stole the money in the first place. . . . Not that two wrongs, or even three or four, make a right . . . but it does help.”

She cheered up a little, but she was not yet her usual self when they boarded the Vortex Blaster II.

Vesta met them just inside the lock. “Oh, chief, I won—I won!” she shrieked, tail waving frantically in air. “Where’d you go after the club closed? I looked all over for you—do you know how much I won, Captain Nealcloud?”

“Haven’t any idea. How much?”

“One million seven hundred sixty two thousand eight hundred and ten credits! Yow-wow-yow!”

“Whew!” Cloud whistled in amazement. “And you’re figuring on giving it all back to ’em tomorrow?”

“I . . . I haven’t quite decided.” Vesta sobered instantly. “What do you think, chief?”

“Not being a gambler, I don’t have hunches very often, but I’ve got one now. In fact, I know one thing for certain damn sure. There isn’t one chance in seven thousand million of anything like this ever happening to you again. You’ll lose your shirt—that is, if you had a shirt to lose,” he added hastily.

“You know, I think you’re right? I thought so myself, and you’re the second smart man to tell me the same thing.”

“Who was the first one?”

“That man at the club, Althagar, his name was. So, with three hunches on the same play, I’d be a fool not to play it that way. Besides, I’ll never get another wallop like that . . . my uncle’s been wanting me to be linguist in his bank, and with a million and three-quarters of my own I could buy half his bank and be a linguist and a cashier both. Then I couldn’t ever gamble again.”

“Huh? Why not?”

“Because Vegians, especially young Vegians, like me, haven’t got any sense when it comes to gambling,” Vesta explained, gravely. “They can’t tell the difference between their own money and the bank’s. So everybody who amounts to anything in a bank makes a no-gambling declaration and if one ever slips the insurance company boots him out on his ear and he takes a blaster and burns his head off. . . .”

Cloud flashed a thought at Joan. “Is this another of your strictly Vegian customs?”

“Not mine; I never heard of it before,” she flashed back. “Very much in character, though, and it explains why Vegian bankers are regarded as being very much the upper crust.”

“. . . so I am going to buy half of that bank. Thanks, chief, for helping me make up my mind. Good night, you two lovely people; I’m going to bed. I’m just about bushed.” Vesta, tail high and with a completely new dignity in her bearing, strode away.

“Me, too, Storm; on both counts,” Joan thought at Cloud. “You ought to hit the hammock, too, instead of working half the night yet.”

“Maybe so, but I want to know how things came out, and besides they may want some quick figuring done. Good night, little chum.” His parting thought, while commonplace enough in phraseology, was in fact sheer caress; and Joan’s mind, warmly intimate, accepted it as such and returned it in kind.

Cloud left the ship and rode a scooter across the field to a very ordinary-looking freighter. In that vessel’s control room, however, there were three Lensmen and five Rigellians, all clustered around a tank-chart of a considerable fraction of the First Galaxy.

“Hi, Cloud!” Nordquist greeted him with a Lensed thought and introduced him to the others. “All our thanks for a really beautiful job of work. We’ll thank Miss Janowick tomorrow, when she’ll have a better perspective. Want to look?”

“I certainly do. Thanks.” Cloud joined the group at the chart and Nordquist poured knowledge into his mind.

Thlasoval, the boss of Chickladoria, had been under full mental surveillance every minute of every day. The scheme had worked perfectly. As the club closed, Thlasoval had sent the expected message; not by ordinary communications channels, of course, but via long-distance beamer. It was beamed three ways; to Tominga, Vegia, and Palmer III. That proved that Fairchild wasn’t on Chickladoria; if he had been, Thlasoval would have used a broadcaster, not a beamer.

Shows had been staged simultaneously on all four of Fairchild’s planets, and only on Vegia had the planetary manager’s message been broadcast. Fairchild was on Vegia, and he wouldn’t leave it: a screen had been thrown around the planet that a microbe couldn’t squirm through and it wouldn’t be relaxed until Fairchild was caught.

“Simultaneous shows?” Cloud interrupted the flow of information. “On four planets? He won’t connect the Vortex Blaster with it, at all, then.”

“We think he will,” the Lensman thought, narrowing down. “We’re dealing with a very shrewd operator. We hope he does, anyway, because a snooper put on you or any one of your key people would be manna from heaven for us.”

“But how could he suspect us?” Cloud demanded. “We couldn’t have been on four planets at once.”

“You will have been on three of them, though; and I can tell you now that routing was not exactly coincidence.”

“Oh . . . and I wasn’t informed?”

“No. Top Brass didn’t want to disturb you too much, especially since we hoped to catch him before things got this far along. But you’re in it now, clear to the neck. You and your people will be under surveillance every second, from here on in, and you’ll be covered as no chief of state was ever covered in all history.”

THE TRIP FROM Chickladoria to Vegia, while fairly long, was uneventful.

Joan spent her working hours, of course, at her regular job of rebuilding the giant computer. Cloud spent his at the galactic chart or in the control room staring into a tank; classifying, analyzing, building up and knocking down hypotheses and theories, wringing every possible drop of knowledge from all the data he could collect.

In their “spare” time, of which each had quite a great deal, they worked together at their telepathy; to such good purpose that, when so working, verbal communication between them became rarer and rarer. And, alone or in a crowd, within sight of each other or not, in any place or at any time, asleep or awake, each had only to think at the other and they were instantly in full mental rapport.

And oftener and oftener there came those instantaneously-fleeting touches of something infinitely more than mere telepathy; that fusion of minds which was so ultimately intimate that neither of the two could have said whether he longed for or dreaded its full coming the more. In fact, for several days before reaching Vegia, each knew that they could bring about that full fusion any time they chose to do so; but both shied away from its consummation, each as violently as the other.

Thus the trip did not seem nearly as long as it actually was.

The first order of business on Vegia, of course, was the extinguishment of its five loose atomic vortices—for which reason this was to be pretty much a planetary holiday, although that is of little concern here.

As the Vortex Blaster II began settling into position, the two scientists took their places. Cloud was apparently his usual self-controlled self, but Joan was white and strained—almost shaking. He sent her a steadying thought, but her block was up, solid.

“Don’t take it so hard, Joanie,” he said, soberly. “Margie’ll take ’em, I hope—but even if she doesn’t, there’s a dozen things not tried yet.”

“That’s just the trouble—there aren’t! We put just about everything we had into Lulu; Margie is only a few milliseconds better. Perhaps there are a dozen things not tried yet, but I haven’t the faintest, foggiest smidgeon of an idea of what any of them could be. Margie is the last word, Storm—the best analogue computer it is possible to build with today’s knowledge.”

“And I haven’t been a lick of help. I wish I could be, Joan.”

“I don’t see how you can be. . . . Oh, excuse me, Storm, I didn’t mean that half the way it sounds. Do you want to check the circuitry? I’ll send for the prints.”

“No, I couldn’t even carry your water-bottle on that part of the job. I’ve got just a sort of a dim, half-baked idea that there’s a possibility that maybe I haven’t been giving you and your brains a square deal. By studying the graphs of the next three or four tests maybe I can find out whether. . . .”

“Lieutenant-Commander Janowick, we are in position,” a crisp voice came from the speaker. “You may take over when ready, madam.”

“Thank you, sir.” Joan flipped a switch and Margie took control of the ship and its armament—subject only to Cloud’s overriding right to fire at will.

“Just a minute, Storm,” Joan said then. “Unfinished business. Whether what?”

“Whether there’s anything I can do—or fail to do—that might help; but I’ve got to have a lot more data.”

Cloud turned to his chart, Joan to hers; and nothing happened until Cloud blew out the vortex himself.

The same lack of something happened in the case of the next vortex, and also the next. Then, as the instruments began working in earnest on the fourth, Cloud reviewed in his mind the figures of the three previous trials. On the first vortex, a big toughie, Margie had been two hundred fifty milliseconds short. On the second, a fairly small one, she had come up to seventy-five. On Number Three, middle-sized, the lag had been one twenty-five. That made sense. Lag was proportional to activity and it was just too bad for Margie. And just too damn bad for Joanie—the poor kid was just about to blow her stack. . . .

But wait a minute! What’s this? This number four’s a little bit of a new one, about as small as they ever come. Margie ought to be taking it, if she’s ever going to take anything . . . but she isn’t! She’s running damn near three hundred mils behind! Why? Oh—amplitudes—frequencies extreme instability. . . . Lag isn’t proportional only to activity, then, but jointly to activity and to instability.

That gives us a chance—but what in all nine of Palain’s purple hells is that machine doing with that data?

He started to climb out of his bucket seat to go around to talk to Joan right then, but changed his mind at his first move. Even if Margie could handle this little one it wouldn’t be a real test, and it’d be a crying shame to give Joan a success here and then kick her in the teeth with a flat failure next time. No, the next one, the only one left and Vegia’s worst, would be the one. If Margie could handle that, she could snuff anything the galaxy had to offer.

Hence Cloud extinguished this one, too, himself. The Vortex Blaster II darted to its last Vegian objective and lined itself up for business. Joan put Margie to work as usual; but Storm, for the first time, did not take his own place. Instead, he came around and stood behind Joan’s chair.

“How’re we doing, little chum?” he asked.

“Rotten!” Joan’s block was still up; her voice was choked with tears. “She’s come so close half a dozen times today—why—why can’t I get that last fraction of a second?”

“Maybe you can.” As though it were the most natural thing in the world—which in fact it was—Cloud put his left arm around her shoulders and exerted a gentle pressure. “Bars down, chum—we can think a lot clearer than we can talk.”

“That’s better,” as her guard went down. “Your differential ’scope looks like it’s set at about one centimeter to the second. Can you give it enough vertical gain to make it about five?”

“Yes. Ten if you like, but the trace would keep jumping the screen on the down-swings.”

“I wouldn’t care about that—closest approach is all I want. Give it full gain.”

“QX, but why?” Joan demanded, as she made the requested adjustment. “Did you find out something I can’t dig deep enough in your mind to pry loose?”

“Don’t know yet whether I did or not—I can tell you in a couple of minutes,” and Cloud concentrated his full attention upon the chart and its adjacent oscilloscope screen.

One pen of the chart was drawing a thin, wildly-wavering red line. A few seconds behind it a second pen was tracing the red line in black; tracing it so exactly that not the tiniest touch of red was to be seen anywhere along the black. And on the screen of the differential oscilloscope the fine green saw-tooth wave-form of the electronic trace, which gave continuously the instantaneous value of the brain’s shortage in time, flickered insanely and apparently reasonlessly up and down; occasionally falling clear off the bottom of the screen. If that needle-pointed trace should touch the zero line, however briefly, Margie the Brain would act; but it was not coming within one full centimeter of touching.

“The feeling that these failures have been partly, or even mostly, my fault is growing on me,” Cloud thought, tightening his arm a little: and Joan, if anything, yielded to the pressure instead of fighting away from it. “Maybe I haven’t been waiting long enough to give your brains the leeway they need. To check: I’ve been assuming all along that they work in pretty much the same way I do; that they handle all the data, out to the limit of validity of the equations, but aren’t fast enough to work out a three-point-six-second prediction.

“But if I’m reading those curves right Margie simply isn’t working that way. She doesn’t seem to be extrapolating anything more than three and a half seconds ahead—’way short of the reliability limit—and sometimes a lot less than that. She isn’t accepting data far enough ahead. She acts as though she can gulp down just so much information without choking on it—so much and no more.”

“Exactly. An over-simplification, of course, since it isn’t the kind of choking that giving her a bigger throat would cure, but very well put.” Joan’s right hand crept across her body, rested on Cloud’s wrist, and helped his squeeze, while her face turned more directly toward the face so close to hers. “That’s inherent in the design of all really fast machines . . . and we simply don’t know any way of getting away from it. . . . Why? What has that to do with the case?”

“A lot—I hope. When I was working in a flitter I had to wait up to half an hour sometimes, for the sigma curve to stabilize enough so that the equations would hold valid will give a longer valid prediction.”

“Stabilize? How? I’ve never seen a sigma curve flatten out. Or does ‘stabilize’ have a special meaning for you vortex experts?”

“Could be. It’s what happens when a sigma becomes a little more regular than usual, so that a simpler equation will give a longer valid prediction.”

“I see; and a difference in wave-form that would be imperceptible to me might mean a lot to you.”

“Right. It just occurred to me that a similar line of reasoning may hold for this seemingly entirely different set of conditions. The less unstable the curve, the less complicated the equations and the smaller the volume of actual data. . . .”

“Oh!” Joan’s thought soared high. “So Margie may work yet, if we wait a while?”

“Check. Browning can’t take the ship away from you, can he?”

“No. Nobody can do anything until the job is done or I punch that red ‘stop’ button there. D’you suppose she can do it? Storm? How long can we wait?”

“Half an hour, I’d say. No, to settle the point definitely, let’s wait until I can get a full ten-second prediction and see what Margie’s doing about the situation then.”

“Wonderful! But in that case, it might be a good idea for you to be looking at the chart, don’t you think?” she asked, pointedly. His eyes, at the moment, were looking directly into hers, from a distance of approximately twelve inches.

“I’ll look at it later, but right now I’m. . . .”

The ship quivered under the terrific, the unmistakable trip-hammer blow of propellant heptadetonite. Unobserved by either of the two scientists most concerned, the sigma curve had, momentarily, become a trifle less irregular. The point of the saw-tooth wave had touched the zero line. Margie had acted. The visiplate, from which the heavily-filtered glare of the vortex had blazed so long, went suddenly black.

“She did it, Storm!” Joan’s thought was a mental shriek of pure joy. “She really worked!”

Whether, when the ship went free, Joan pulled Storm down to her merely to anchor him, or for some other reason; whether Cloud grabbed her merely in lieu of a safety-line or not; which of the two was first to put arms around the other; these are moot points impossible of decision at this date. The fact is, however, that the two scientists held a remarkably unscientific pose for a good two minutes before Joan thought that she ought to object a little, just on general principles. Even then, she did not object with her mind; instead she put up her block and used her voice.

“But, after all, Storm,” she began, only to be silenced as beloved women have been silenced throughout the ages. She cut her screen then, and her mind, tender and unafraid, reached out to his.

“This might be the perfect time, dear, to merge our minds? I’ve been scared to death of it all along, but no more . . . let’s?”

“Uh-huh,” he demurred. “I’m still afraid of it. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and doing some drilling, and the more I play with it the more scared I get. It’s dangerous. It’s like playing with duodec. I’ve just about decided that we’d better let it drop.”

“Afraid? For yourself, or for me? Don’t try to lie with your mind, Storm; you can’t do it. You’re afraid only for me, and you needn’t be. I’ve been thinking, too, and digging deep, and I know I’m ready.” She looked up at him then, her quick, bright, impish grin very much in evidence. “Let’s go.”

“QX, Joanie, and thanks. I’ve been wanting this more than I ever wanted anything before in my life. But not holding hands, this time. Heart to heart and cheek to cheek.”

“Check—the closer the better.”

They embraced, and again mind flowed into mind; this time with no thought of withholding or reserve on either side. Smoothly, effortlessly, the two essential beings merged, each fitting its tiniest, remotest members into the deepest, ordinarily most inaccessible recesses of the other; fusing as quickly and as delicately and as thoroughly as two drops of water coalescing into one.

In that supremely intimate fusion, that ultimate union of line and plane and cellule, each mind was revealed completely to the other; a revealment which no outsider should expect to share.

Finally, after neither ever knew how long, they released each other and each put up, automatically, a solid block.

“I don’t know about you, Storm,” Joan said then, “but I’ve had just about all I can take. I’m going to bed and sleep for one solid week.”

“You and me both,” Storm agreed, ungrammatically, but feelingly. “Good night, sweetheart . . . and this had all better be strictly hush-hush, don’t you think?”

“I do think,” she assured him. “Can’t you just imagine the field-day the psychs would have, taking us apart?”

In view of the above, it might be assumed that the parting was immediate, positive, and undemonstrative; but such was not exactly the case. But they did finally separate, and each slept soundly and long.

And fairly early the next morning—before either of them got up, at least—Cloud sent Joan a thought.

“Awake, dear?”

“Uh-huh. Just. ’Morning, Storm.”

“I’ve got some news for you, Joanie. My brain is firing on ten times as many barrels as I ever thought it had, and I don’t know what half of ’em are doing. Among other things, you made what I think is probably a top-bracket perceiver out of me.”

“So? Well, don’t peek at me, please . . . but why should I say that, after having studied in Rigel Four for two years? Women are funny, I guess. But, for your information, I have just extracted the ninth root of an eighteen-digit number, in no time at all and to the last significant decimal place, and I know the answer is right. How do you like them potatoes, Buster?”

“Nice. We really absorbed each other’s stuff, didn’t we? But how about joining me in person for a soupcon of ham and eggs?”

“That’s a thought, my thoughtful friend; a cogent and right knightly thought. I’ll be with you in three jerks and a wiggle.” And she was.

Just as they finished eating, Vesta breezed in. “Well, you two deep-sleepers finally crawled out of your sacks, did you? It is confusing, though, that ship’s time never agrees with planetary time. But I live here, you know, in this city you call ‘Vegiaton,’ so I went to bed at noon yesterday and I’ve got over half a day’s work done already. I saw my folks and bought half of my uncle’s bank and made the no-gambling declaration and I want to ask you both something. After the Grand Uproar here at the ’port in your honor, will you two and Helen and Joe and Bob and Barbara come with me to a little dance some of my friends are having? You’ve been zo good to me, and I want to show you off a little.”

“We’ll be glad to, Vesta, and thanks a lot,” Joan said, flashing a thought at Cloud to let her handle this thing her own way, “and I imagine the others would be, too, but . . . well, it’s for you, you know, and we might be intruding. . . .”

“Why, not at all!” Vesta waved the objection away with an airy flirt of her tail. “You’re friends of mine! And everybody’s real friends are always welcome, you know, everywhere. And it’ll be small and quiet; only six or eight hundred are being asked, they say. . . .” she paused for a moment: “. . . of course, after it gets around that we have you there, a couple of thousand or so strangers will come in too; but they’ll all smell nice, so it’ll be QX.”

“How do you know what they’ll smell like?” Cloud asked.

“Why, they’ll smell like our crowd, of course. If they didn’t they wouldn’t want to come in. It’s QX, then?”

“For us two, yes; but of course we can’t speak for the others.”

“Thanks, you wonderful people; I’ll go ask them right now.”

“Joan, have you blown your stack completely?” Cloud demanded. “Small—quiet—six or eight hundred invited—a couple of thousand or so gate-crashers—what do you want to go to a brawl like that for?”

“The chance is too good to miss—it’s priceless. . . .” She paused, then added, obliquely: “Storm, have you any idea at all of what Vesta thinks of you? You haven’t snooped, I’m sure.”

“No, and I don’t intend to.”

“Maybe you ought to,” Joan snickered a little, “except that it would inflate your ego too much. It’s hard to describe. It’s not exactly love—and not exactly worship, either god-worship or hero-worship. It isn’t exactly adoration, but it’s very much stronger than mere admiration. A mixture of all these, perhaps, and half a dozen others, coupled with a simply unbelievable amount of pride that you are her friend. It’s a peculiarly Vegian thing, that Tellurians simply do not feel. But here’s why I’m so enthused. It has been over twenty years since any non-Vegian has attended one of these uniquely Vegian parties except as an outsider, and a Vegian party with outsiders looking on isn’t a Vegian party at all. But we Storm, will be going as insiders!”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Positive. Oh, I know it isn’t us she wants, but you; but that won’t make any difference. As Vesta’s friend—‘friend’ in this case having a very special meaning—you’re in the center of the inner circle. As friends of yours, the rest of us are in, too. Not in the inner circle, perhaps, but well inside the outside circle, at least. See?”

“Dimly. ‘A friend of a friend of a friend of a very good friend of mine,’ eh? I’ve heard that ditty, but I never thought it meant anything.”

“It does here. We’re going to have a time. See you in about an hour?”

“Just about. I’ve got to check with Nordquist.”

“Here I am, Storm,” the Lensman’s thought came in. Then, as Cloud went toward his quarters, it went on: “Just want to tell you we won’t have anything for you to do here. This is going to be a straight combing job.”

“That won’t be too tough, will it? A Tellurian, sixty, tall, thin, grave, distinguished-looking . . . or maybe. . . .”

“Exactly. You’re getting the idea. Cosmeticians and plastic surgery. He could look like a Crevenian, or thirty years old and two hundred pounds and slouchy. He could look like anything. He undoubtedly has a background so perfectly established that fifteen thoroughly honest Vegians would swear by eleven of their gods that he hasn’t left his home town for ten years. So every intelligent being on Vegia who hasn’t got a live tail, with live blood circulating in it, is going under the Lens and through the wringer if we have to keep Vegia in quarantine for a solid year. He is not going to get away from us this time.”

“I’m betting on you, Nordquist. Clear ether!”

The Lensman signed off and Cloud, at the end of the specified hour, undressed and redressed and went to the computer room. All the others except Joe were already there.

“Hi, peoples!” Cloud called; then did a double-take. “Wow! And likewise, Yipes! How come the tri-di outfits didn’t all collapse, Joan, when those two spectaculars took up cybernetics?”

“I’ll never know, Storm.” Joan shook her head wonderingly, then went on via thought; and Cloud felt her pang of sheer jealousy. “Why is it that big girls are always so much more beautiful than little ones? And the more clothes they take off the better they look? It simply isn’t fair!”

Cloud’s mind reached out and meshed with hers. “Sure it is, sweetheart. They’re beauties; you can’t take that away from them. . . .”

And beauties they certainly were. Helen, as has been said, was lissom and dark. Her hair was black, her eyes a midnight blue, her skin a deep, golden brown. Barbara, not quite as tall—five feet seven, perhaps—was equally beautifully proportioned, and even more striking-looking. Her skin was tanned ivory, her eyes were gray, her hair was a shoulder-length, carefully-careless mass of gleaming, flowing, wavy silver.

“. . . they’ve got a lot of stuff: but believe me, there are several grand lots of stuff they haven’t got, too. I wouldn’t trade half of you for either one of them—or both of them together.”

“I believe that—at least, about both of them,” Joan giggled mentally, “but how many men. . . .”

“Well, how many men do you want?” Cloud interrupted.

“Touché, Storm . . . but do you really. . . .”

What would have developed into a scene of purely mental lovemaking was put to an end by the arrival of Joe Mackay, who also paused and made appropriate noises of appreciation.

“But there’s one thing I don’t quite like about this deal,” he said finally. “I’m not too easy in my mind about making love to a moll who is packing a Mark Twenty Eight DeLameter. The darn thing might go off.”

“Keep your distance, then, Lieutenant Mackay!” Helen laughed. “Well, are we ready?”

They were. They left the ship and walked in a group through the throng of cheering Vegians toward the nearby, gaily-decorated stands in which the official greetings and thank-yous were to take place. Helen and Babs loved it; just as though they were parading as finalists in a beauty contest. Bob and Joe wished that they had stayed in the ship and kept their clothes on. Joan didn’t quite know whether she liked this kind of thing or not. Of the six Tellurians, only Neal Cloud had had enough experience in public near-nudity so that it made no difference. And Vesta?

Vesta was fairly reveling—openly, unashamedly reveling—in the spotlight with her Tellurian friends. They reached the center stand, were ushered with many flourishes to a reserved section already partly filled by Captain Ross and the lesser officers and crewmen of the good-will-touring Patrol ship Vortex Blaster II. Not all of the officers, of course, since many had to stay aboard, and comparatively few of the crew; for many men insist on wearing Tellurian garmenture and refuse to tan their hides under ultra-violet radiation—and no untanned white Tellurian skin can take with impunity more than a few minutes of giant Vega’s blue-white fury.

Of the ceremonies themselves, nothing need be said; such things being pretty much of a piece, wherever, whenever, or for whatever reason held. When they were over, Vesta gathered her six friends together and led them to the edge of the roped-off area. There she uttered a soundless (to Tellurian ears) whistle, whereupon a group of Vegian youths and girls formed a wedge around the seven and drove straight through the milling crowd to its edge. There, by an evidently pre-arranged miracle, they found enough copters to carry them all.