Second Stage Lensmen (Unabridged). E. E. Smith
into motionlessness relative to the terrain beneath her.
Three G’s, Kinnison reflected, while this was going on. Not bad—he’d guessed it at four or better. He could sit up and take notice at three, and he did so.
This world wasn’t very densely populated, apparently. Quite a few cities, but all just about on the equator. Nothing in the temperate zones at all; even the highest power revealed no handiwork of man. Virgin forest, untouched prairie. Lots of roads and things in the torrid zone, but nothing anywhere else. The speedster was making a rough and unskillful, but not catastrophic landing.
The field which was their destination lay just outside a large city. Funny—it wasn’t a space-field at all. No docks, no pits, no ships. Low, flat buildings—hangars. An air-field, then, although not like any air-field he knew. Too small. Gyros? ’Copters? Didn’t see any—all little ships. Crates—biplanes and tripes. Made of wire and fabric. Wotta woil, wotta woil!
The Dauntless landed, fairly close to the now deserted speedster.
“Hold everything, men,” Kinnison cautioned. “Something funny here. I’ll do a bit of looking around before we open up.”
He was not surprised that the people in and around the airport were human to at least ten places of classification; he had expected that from the planetary data. Nor was he surprised at the fact that they wore no clothing. He had learned long since that, while most human or near-human races—particularly the women—wore at least a few ornaments, the wearing of clothing as such, except when it was actually needed for protection, was far more the exception than the rule. And, just as a Martian, out of deference to conventions, wears a light robe upon Tellus, Kinnison as a matter of course stripped to his evenly-tanned hide when visiting planets upon which nakedness was de rigueur. He had attended more than one state function, without a quibble or a qualm, tastefully attired in his Lens.
No, the startling fact was that there was not a man in sight anywhere around the place; there was nothing male perceptible as far as his sense of perception could reach. Women were laboring, women were supervising, women were running the machines. Women were operating the airplanes and servicing them. Women were in the offices. Women and girls and little girls and girl babies filled the waiting rooms and the automobile-like conveyances parked near the airport and running along the streets.
And, even before Kinnison had finished uttering his warning, while his hand was in the air reaching for a spy-ray switch, he felt an alien force attempting to insinuate itself into his mind.
Fat chance! With any ordinary mind it would have succeeded, but in the case of the Gray Lensman it was just like trying to stick a pin unobtrusively into a panther. He put up a solid block automatically, instantaneously; then, a fraction of a second later, a thought-tight screen enveloped the whole vessel.
“Did any of you fellows .” he began, then broke off. They wouldn’t have felt it, of course; their brains could have been read completely with them none the wiser. He was the only Lensman aboard, and even most Lensmen couldn’t . this was his oyster. But that kind of stuff, on such an apparently backward planet as this? It didn’t make sense, unless that zwilnik . ah, this was his oyster, absolutely!
“Something funnier even than I thought—thought-waves,” he calmly continued his original remark. “Thought I’d better undress to go out there, but I’m not going to. I’d wear full armor, except that I may need my hands or have to move fast. If they get insulted at my clothes I’ll apologize later.”
“But listen, Kim, you can’t go out there alone—especially without armor!”
“Sure I can. I’m not taking any chances. You fellows couldn’t do me much good out there, but you can here. Break out a ’copter and keep a spy-ray on me. If I give you the signal, go to work with a couple of narrow needle-beams. Pretty sure that I won’t need any help, but you can’t always tell.”
The airlock opened and Kinnison stepped out. He had a high-powered thought-screen, but he did not need it—yet. He had his DeLameters. He had also a weapon deadlier by far even than those mighty portables; a weapon so utterly deadly that he had not used it. He did not need to test it—since Worsel had said that it would work, it would. The trouble with it was that it could not merely disable: if used at all it killed, with complete and grim finality. And behind him he had the full awful power of the Dauntless. He had nothing to worry about.
Only when the space-ship had settled down upon and into the hard-packed soil of the airport could those at work there realize just how big and how heavy the visitor was. Practically everyone stopped work and stared, and they continued to stare as Kinnison strode toward the office. The Lensman had landed upon many strange planets, he had been met in divers fashions and with various emotions; but never before had his presence stirred up anything even remotely resembling the sentiments written so plainly upon these women’s faces and expressed even more plainly in their seething thoughts.
Loathing, hatred, detestation—not precisely any one of the three, yet containing something of each. As though he were a monstrosity, a revolting abnormality that should be destroyed on sight. Beings such as the fantastically ugly, spider-like denizens of Dekanore VI had shuddered at the sight of him, but their thoughts were mild compared to these. Besides, that was natural enough. Any human being would appear a monstrosity to such as those. But these women were human; as human as he was. He didn’t get it, at all.
Kinnison opened the door and faced the manager, who was standing at that other-worldly equivalent of a desk. His first glance at her brought to the surface of his mind one of the peculiarities which he had already unconsciously observed. Here, for the first time in his life, he saw a woman without any touch whatever of personal adornment. She was tall and beautifully proportioned, strong and fine; her smooth skin was tanned to a rich and even brown. She was clean, almost blatantly so.
But she wore no jewelry, no bracelets, no ribbons; no decoration of any sort or kind. No paint, no powder, no touch of perfume. Her heavy, bushy eyebrows had never been plucked or clipped. Some of her teeth had been expertly filled, and she had a two-tooth bridge that would have done credit to any Tellurian dentist—but her hair! It, too, was painfully clean, as was the white scalp beneath it, but aesthetically it was a mess. Some of it reached almost to her shoulders, but it was very evident that whenever a lock grew long enough to be a bother she was wont to grab it and hew it off, as close to the skull as possible, with whatever knife, shears, or other implement came readiest to hand.
These thoughts and the general inspection did not take any appreciable length of time, of course. Before Kinnison had taken two steps toward the manager’s desk, he directed a thought:
“Kinnison of Sol III—Lensman, Unattached. It is possible, however, that neither Tellus nor the Lens are known upon this planet?”
“Neither is known, nor does anyone of Lyrane care to know anything of either,” she replied coldly. Her brain was keen and clear: her personality vigorous, striking, forceful. But, compared with Kinnison’s doubly-Arisian-trained mind, hers was woefully slow. He watched her assemble the mental bolt which was intended to slay him then and there. He let her send it, then struck back. Not lethally, not even paralyzingly, but solidly enough so that she slumped down, almost unconscious, into a nearby chair.
“It’s good technique to size a man up before you tackle him, sister,” he advised her when she had recovered. “Couldn’t you tell from the feel of my mind-block that you couldn’t crack it?”
“I was afraid so,” she admitted, hopelessly, “but I had to kill you if I possibly could. Since you are the stronger you will of course kill me.” Whatever else these peculiar women were, they were stark realists. “Go ahead—get it over with. . But it can’t be!” Her thought was a wail of protest. “I do not grasp your thought of a ‘man’, but you are certainly a male; and no mere male can be—can possibly be, ever—as strong as a person.”
Kinnison got that thought perfectly, and it rocked him. She did not think of herself as a woman, a female, at all. She was simply a person. She could not understand even dimly Kinnison’s reference to himself as a man. To her, “man” and “male” were synonymous